The Elves and the Shoemaker

5-7 min read
12 pages

The elves and the shoemaker, the Brothers Grimm tale to read aloud. The shoes are finished every morning, and nobody has seen who does it.

There was a shoemaker who through no fault of his own had got so poor that he had leather left for exactly one pair of shoes.

That evening he cut the leather out, ready to sew in the morning, and went to bed with a clear conscience and an empty cupboard.

In the morning the shoes were on the bench, finished. Not merely finished — made better than he could make them, every stitch even, and he stood and looked at them for a long time.

A customer came in that day and paid well above the price, because the shoes were remarkable, and with the money the shoemaker bought leather for two pairs.

He cut them out in the evening. In the morning both pairs stood finished on the bench.

It went on like that. He cut out four pairs and found four; he cut out eight and found eight. By the middle of the winter he was no longer a poor man, and he still had no idea who was doing it.

A few nights before Christmas his wife said: «Let us stay up and see.» So they left a candle burning behind the cupboard and hid themselves and waited.

At midnight two small men came in — bare naked, both of them — and sat down at the bench and took up the leather, and their small fingers went so fast that the shoemaker could not follow them. They did not stop until every shoe was done, and then they were gone.

«They have made us comfortable,» said the wife the next morning, «and they have nothing on at all. I shall make them each a shirt and a coat and a waistcoat and trousers, and knit them each a pair of stockings. You make them each a little pair of shoes.»

They laid it all out on the bench on Christmas Eve instead of leather, and hid, and waited.

At midnight the two came in ready to work, and found clothes. They stood still for a moment, and then they dressed, and then they began to jump and dance about the room — over the chairs and the bench and out through the door, singing something the shoemaker could not quite make out.

They never came back. But the shoemaker did well for the rest of his life, and his wife always said it was because they had done the one thing that had not been asked of them.

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Text source: Plot by the Brothers Grimm (1812), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

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The Elves and the Shoemaker

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