The Valiant Little Tailor

The Brave Little Tailor
The tailor provokes the giants. Illustration by Alexander Zick
Folk tale
Name	The Brave Little Tailor
Also known as	The Brave Little Tailor
Data
Aarne-Thompson grouping	1640
Country	Germany
Published in	Grimm's Fairy Tales
Related	"Jack and the Beanstalk", "Jack the Giant Killer", "The Boy Who Had an Eating Match with a Troll"

"The Brave Little Tailor" or "The Valiant Little Tailor" or "The Gallant Tailor" (German: Das tapfere Schneiderlein) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 20.Joseph Jacobs collected another variant "A Dozen at One Blow" in European Folk and Fairy Tales.Andrew Lang included it in The Blue Fairy Book. Another of many versions of the tale appears in A Book of Giants by Ruth Manning-Sanders.

In the Aarne–Thompson–Uther system of classifying folktales, it is type 1640, with elements of several other story types.

A tailor is preparing to eat some jam, but when flies settle on it, he kills seven of them with one blow of his hand. He makes a belt describing the deed, reading "Seven at One Blow". Inspired, he sets out into the world to seek his fortune. The tailor meets a giant who assumes that "Seven at One Blow" refers to seven men. The giant challenges the tailor. When the giant squeezes water from a boulder, the tailor squeezes milk, or whey, from cheese. The giant throws a rock far into the air, and it eventually lands. The tailor counters the feat by tossing a bird that flies away into the sky; the giant believes the small bird is a "rock" which is thrown so far that it never lands. Later, the giant asks the tailor to help him carry a tree. The tailor directs the giant to carry the trunk, while the tailor will carry the branches. Instead, the tailor climbs on, so the giant carries him as well, but it appears as if the tailor is supporting the branches.

Impressed, the giant brings the tailor to the giant's home, where other giants live as well. During the night, the giant attempts to kill the tailor by bashing the bed. However, the tailor, having found the bed too large, had slept in the corner. Upon returning and seeing the tailor alive, the other giants flee in fear of the small man.