The Gingerbread Man

The Gingerbread Man (also known as The Gingerbread Boy or The Gingerbread Runner) is a fairy tale about a gingerbread man's escape from various pursuers and his eventual demise between the jaws of a fox. The Gingerbread Boy makes his first print appearance in "The Gingerbread Boy" the May 1875 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine in a cumulative tale which, like "The Little Red Hen", depends on rhythm and repetition for its effect with one event following hard upon another until the climax is reached. According to the author of the 1875 story (whose name is not known), "A servant girl from Maine told it to my children. It interested them so much that I thought it worth preserving. I asked where she found it and she said an old lady told it to her in her childhood."

In the 1875 St. Nicholas tale, a childless old woman bakes a gingerbread man who leaps from her oven and runs away. The woman and her husband give chase but fail to catch him. The Gingerbread man then outruns several farm workers and farm animals while taunting them with the phrase:

The tale ends with a fox catching and eating the gingerbread man who cries as he's devoured, "I'm quarter gone...I'm half gone...I'm three-quarters gone...I'm all gone!"

The Gingerbread Man remains a common subject for American children's literature into the 21st century. The retellings often omit the original ending ("I'm quarter gone...I'm half gone...I'm three-quarters gone...I'm all gone!") and make other changes. In some variations, the fox feigns indifference to the edible man. The cookie then relaxes his guard and the fox snatches and devours him. In other versions, the Gingerbread Man halts in his flight at a riverbank, and after accepting the fox's offer as a ferry, he finds himself eaten mid-stream.

In some retellings, the Gingerbread Man taunts his pursuers with the famous line:

Folk tales of the runaway food type are found in Germany, the British Isles, and Eastern Europe, as well the United States.

In Slavic lands, a traditional character known as Kolobok (Russian: Колобок) is a ball of bread dough who avoids being eaten by various animals (collected by Konstantin Ushinsky in Native Word (Rodnoye slovo) in 1864). "The Pancake" ("Pannekaken") was collected by Peter Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe and published in Norske Folkeeventyr (1842-1844), and, ten years later, the German brothers Carl and Theodor Colshorn collected "The Big, Fat Pancake" ("Vom dicken fetten Pfannekuchen") from the Salzdahlum region and published the tale in Märchen und Sagen, no. 57, (1854). In 1894, Karl Gander collected "The Runaway Pancake" ("Der fortgelaufene Eierkuchen") from an Ögeln cottager and peddler and published the tale in Niederlausitzer Volkssagen, vornehmlich aus dem Stadt- und Landkreise Guben, no. 319. The Roule Galette story is a similar story from France.

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Wikipedia