Previous story (6) - Till Eulenspiegel - Next story (8)
The 7th story tells of how Till Eulenspiegel and the other boys were forced to eat too much bread and were beaten on top of it too
In the neighbourhood where Till and his mother lived, there existed a custom: when a householder slaughtered a pig the local children would go to his house and he would feed them soup or gruel. That meal they called the "wake bread."
Now, in the same neighbourhood there lived a landlord who was very stingy with his food, yet unable to deny the children their wake bread. So he came up with a devious plan to make them lose their appetite for it: He filled a large bowl with pieces of stale bread crusts. When they children came--boys and girls, among them Eulenspiegel--he let them in, shut the door and poured soup over the bread. But there were much more bread crusts than the children could possibly eat. If one of them was full and wanted to go home, the householder would come and put the cane to the child's backside, so that every one of them would have to eat too much. And he knew enough about Eulenspiegel's pranks to make him pay close attention to him. So if he beat one child well, he beat Eulenspiegel even better. This went on until the children had eaten all the bread, which they liked about as much as a dog is fond of eating grass.
After that no child wanted to go back to that house to eat wake bread or tripe soup.
English translation created for E2 from the original by Hermann Bote at the German project Gutenberg.
| 
