Once upon a time there was a peasant who had money and land enough, but as rich as he was, there was still something missing from his happiness: He had no children with his wife. Often when he went to the city with the other peasants, they would mock him and ask him why he had no children. He finally became angry, and when he returned home, he said, “I will have a child, even if it is a hedgehog.”
Then his wife had a baby, and the top half was a hedgehog and the bottom half a boy. When she saw the baby, she was horrified and said, “Now see what you have wished upon us!”
The man said, “It cannot be helped. The boy must be baptized, but we cannot ask anyone to be his godfather.”
The woman said, “And the only name that we can give him is Hans-My-Hedgehog.”
When he was baptized, the pastor said, “Because of his quills he cannot be given an ordinary bed.” So they put a little straw behind the stove and laid him in it. And he could not drink from his mother, for he would have stuck her with his quills. He lay there behind the stove for eight years, and his father grew tired of him, and thought, “if only he would die.” But he did not die, but just lay there.
Now it happened that there was a fair in the city, and the peasant wanted to go. He asked his wife what he should bring her.
”A little meat, some bread rolls, and things for the household,” she said. Then he asked the servant girl, and she wanted a pair of slippers and some fancy stockings.
Finally, he also said, “Hans-My-Hedgehog, what would you like?”
”Father,” he said, “bring me some bagpipes.”
When the peasant returned home he gave his wife what he had brought for her, meat and bread rolls. Then he gave the servant girl the slippers and fancy stockings. And finally he went behind the stove and gave Hans-My-Hedgehog the bagpipes.
When Hans-My-Hedgehog had them, he said, “Father, go to the blacksmith’s and have my cock-rooster shod, then I will ride away and never again come back.” The father was happy to get rid of him, so he had his rooster shod, and when it was done, Hans-My-Hedgehog climbed on it and rode away. He took pigs and donkeys with him, to tend in the forest.
In the forest the rooster flew into a tall tree with him. There he sat and watched over the donkeys and the pigs. He sat there for years, until finally the herd had grown large. His father knew nothing about him. While sitting in the tree, he played his bagpipes and made beautiful music.
One day a king came by. He was lost and heard the music. He was amazed to hear it, and sent a servant to look around and see where it was coming from. He looked here and there but only saw a little animal sitting high in a tree. It looked like a rooster up there with a hedgehog sitting on it making the music.
The king said to the servant that he should ask him why he was sitting there, and if he knew the way back to his kingdom. Then Hans-My-Hedgehog climbed down from the tree and told him that he would show him the way if the king would promise in writing to give him the first thing that greeted him at the royal court upon his arrival home.