Grimm Reviews – “Sharing Joy and Sorrow”

My introductory post.  

“Sharing Joy and Sorrow”

There was a miserable tailor always arguing with and beating his wife. It got so bad he was put in jail. When he was released, he had to promise he wouldn’t beat her and share joy and sorrow with her.

He was good for some time, but then he started arguing with her again and pulled her hair. He chased her around the yard throwing his scissors and stuff at her. He was taken back to the magistrate where he said he hadn’t beat her and had shared joy and sorrow with her. When he hit her with the scissors, he had joy and she sorrow; when he missed, she had joy and he had sorrow. The final sentence of the story is “The judges were not satisfied with this answer, but gave him the reward he deserved.”

#

This is the kind of story I almost wished ended with, “So one day, the wife baked him some bread with rat poison in it, and she lived happily ever after.” I guess it’s just tough to like a story about a wife beater, even if he got the “reward he deserved.”