The Golden Goose

A man had three sons, and the youngest was mocked by everyone in the family as a simpleton for his plain, unremarkable ways. When the two older sons set off into the forest to cut wood, each refused to share his food with a hungry little grey-haired man they met along the way, and each was punished for his selfishness by accidentally injuring himself with his own axe soon after.

The youngest son, setting off in turn, happily shared his own modest meal with the same little grey man, who rewarded him by directing him to a hollow tree containing a goose with feathers of pure gold. Delighted, the young man carried the goose off toward an inn to spend the night, unaware that the innkeeper's three daughters, each scheming to pluck a golden feather for herself while he slept, touched the goose one by one — and found themselves stuck fast to it and to each other, unable to let go.

The next morning, as the young man carried on his way with the goose still under his arm, the three girls trailing helplessly behind him stuck together, they were joined one by one by a parson, a sexton, and two laborers, each grabbing at the ridiculous procession to help and each getting stuck in turn, until an entire absurd chain of people trailed behind the goose through the streets. When they passed before a princess who had never once laughed in her life, the sheer ridiculousness of the sight finally broke her long-held silence into helpless laughter — winning the simple, kind-hearted youngest son her hand in marriage after all, proof that plain kindness, however mocked, often outlasts cleverness in the end.