Le Petit Poucet

Little Thumb

A poor woodcutter and his wife have seven sons; the youngest, no bigger than a thumb at birth, is le Petit Poucet: he speaks little but listens a lot. In a year of famine the parents decide to lose the children in the forest. Poucet overhears, fills his pockets with white pebbles, drops them along the way and leads his brothers home. The lord of the village pays the parents ten écus, and the family is happy until the money runs out. The second time the door is locked, Poucet drops breadcrumbs instead, and the birds eat them. Lost in the night and the rain, he climbs a tree, sees a light and leads his brothers to a house: the house of an ogre who eats little children. The ogre's wife hides them under the bed, but the ogre smells fresh meat, finds them and is held back only until morning. In the night Poucet puts his brothers' caps on the ogre's seven daughters and their golden crowns on the boys; the ogre, groping in the dark, kills his own daughters. The boys flee; the ogre chases them in his seven-league boots, tires, and falls asleep on the rock where they hide. Poucet sends his brothers home, pulls off the magic boots, which shrink to his feet, and tricks the ogre's wife into giving him all the ogre's riches. Perrault adds that some say Poucet only kept the boots, ran messages for the king and the ladies of the court, grew rich, and set up his whole family.

Retold from Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (Claude Barbin, Paris 1697): Le Petit Poucet by Charles Perrault (public domain).