Capra cu trei iezi

"The Goat and Her Three Kids" or "The Goat with Three Kids" (Romanian: Capra cu trei iezi) is an 1875 short story, fable and fairy tale by Romanian author Ion Creangă. Figuratively illustrating for the notions of motherly love and childish disobedience, it recounts how a family of goats is ravaged by the Big Bad Wolf, allowed inside the secured home by the oldest, most ill-behaved and least prudent of the kids. The only one of the children to survive is the youngest and most obedient, who then helps his mother plan her revenge on the predator, leading to a dénouement in which the wolf is tricked, burned alive and stoned to death.

Popularized by the Romanian curriculum and included in primers, Creangă's tale has endured as one of the best-known works in local children's literature. "The Goat and Her Three Kids" has also been the topic of several music, theater and film adaptations, in both Romania and Moldova.

The story opens with an introduction of its protagonists: the hardworking and widowed goat and her three kids, of whom the two older ones are misbehaved, while the youngest obeys his mother. On one day, the goat gathers all three around, telling them that she must leave on a quest for food, instructing them not to open the door unless they hear her singing, in characteristically soft voice, the refrain:

Trei iezi cucuieţi
Uşa mamei descuieţi!
Că mama v-aduce vouă:
Frunze-n buze,
Lapte-n ţâţe,
Drob de sare
În spinare,
Mălăieş
În călcăieş,
Smoc de flori
Pe subsuori.

Three kids with growing horns,
Open the door for your mother!
Because mother is bringing you:
Leaves on her lips,
Milk in her teats,
A ball of salt
On her back,
Cornmeal
On her heel,
A tuft of flowers
In her armpits.

The conversation is overheard by the wolf, who spies on the goat's family. Although being a godfather to the kids (and therefore an in-law, cumătru, to the goat herself), the villain has his eye set on eating the goat's children. A while after the mother has left, the wolf sneaks in front of the door and starts singing her song to the three kids. The ruse succeeds in convincing the eldest two children, who rush in to open the door. They are stopped by the youngest, who notices that the song is performed in an unusually coarse voice.

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Wikipedia