“Be patient!” the merchant’s wife soothed.
“Time will bring us a child.”
But years passed, and more years, and no
child came.
The merchant became grumpy and short-
tempered. He worried about what his friends
would think of him—he, who had no child
to carry on his name and inherit his money!
Anytime he looked down from his high win-
dow he could see peasants hurrying past, each
with six or seven children in tow.
“It’s not fair!” he’d complain to his wife.
“It’s not right! Those ragged peasants with-
out two pennies to rub together have more
children than they can feed. Here am I, a
man who could feed and clothe a child like
a prince, but do I have a child? No, not me!”
His wife would sigh. “Time will bring us
one,” she’d say, but even she didn’t believe it
anymore.
One day, grumpier than usual and at his
wit’s end, the merchant cried, “It’s not fair!
God above or devil below, why don’t you send
me a child? Any child! Let it be as ugly as a
lump of coal. Let it be a hedgehog, I don’t
care! Just send me a child!”Once, in a small town, there was a
rich merchant and his wife who could have
anything in the world that money could buy.
But there was one thing they wanted more
than the world itself, and money couldn’t buy
it. They wanted a child of their own.
Now you know and I know that there are
things you shouldn’t say, for tempting fate is a
risky thing. But the merchant wasn’t thinking
of that. Fate hadn’t been kind anyway, had
it, sending children to everyone but him? At
any rate he soon forgot his angry plea, for to
his joy his wife found that she was with child.
The merchant started smiling again, and the
happy couple assembled everything a child
could need.
Finally, the child was born. From tummy
to toes he was a normal baby boy, but—heav-
ens! From nose to navel, he was a hedgehog!
They christened him Hans Hedgehog, and
they couldn’t stand the sight of him.Hans Hedgehog
A GERMAN FOLK TALE
as told by Quillon DaytonIllustrated by José Sanabria
text © 2018 by Quillon Dayton, art © 2018 by José Sanabria 39