Grimm Reviews – “The Giant and the Tailor”

My introductory post.  

“The Giant and the Tailor”

There was a boasting tailor who went out to see the world. At one point he came across a giant who hires him as a servant.

The giant asks the tailor to bring him a jug of water, and the tailor asks if he should bring the well instead. “He can bring a well,” the giant thinks, “he must be a wizard.” The giant was a bit stupid. The giant then asks him to cut some wood and some boars, the tailor asks if he should cut the whole forest and a thousand boar. The giant becomes scared the tailor is some wizard and can’t sleep that night.

The next day they came to a marsh with some willow trees. The giant has the tailor climb up to the top of one to see if he could bend it down. And then somehow he was catapulted away and the giant never saw him again.

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So maybe giants are really stupid, but I didn’t understand why the giant in this story automatically assumed the tailor was a wizard. But what really confused me was the ending. This is what is in the book. The giant wants him to sit on one of the willow branches to see if he could bend it down. “All at once the tailor was sitting on it, holding his breath, and making himself so heavy that the bough bent down. When, however, he was compelled to draw breath, it hurried him (for unfortunately he had not put his goose in his pocket) so high into the air that he never was seen again.” What the hell does that mean?

Besides the idea of holding your breath to make yourself heavier, what the hell is with the goose? There was no goose in the story, and how would that have helped him from flying off?

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This is the second story in the book, but it so confused me when I first read I almost stopped reading. But I continued, so you’ll get more of my Grimm Reviews.