The Baker's Daughter
Do you know why the owl hoots so angrily at night: (Hoot, hoot!)? If not, we’ll tell you. In the olden days—it wasn’t my time, nor your time, nor anyone’s time—there was a lot of mischief in England. All sorts of creatures like elves, pucks, giants, talking toads, and more roamed the land. And, of course, there were fairies, who were all-powerful and omnipotent. They often took on human forms to uncover people’s secrets. But what fairies loved most was punishing people for bad deeds and rewarding them for good ones.One evening, one such powerful fairy came to a village in Hertfordshire disguised as a poor beggar woman and knocked on the door of a baker’s house. The door was unlocked, and the fairy entered the shop. It was quite dark inside, smelling of freshly baked bread, and in the back, a huge oven blazed with heat. In front of the oven, a pretty, tidy girl—the baker’s daughter—was busily working. Beside her, on a large low table, lay a pile of fresh, crusty loaves. The fairy admired the girl as she skillfully pulled a batch of crusty loaves from the blazing oven and loaded in a new one. The girl tapped the finished loaves with her knuckles to check if they were baked through, then placed them on the low table.
“Give a piece of bread to a poor woman!” the fairy, disguised as an old beggar, asked in a trembling voice. The baker’s daughter barely glanced at the old woman as she continued tending to her bread. After a moment, without saying a kind word, the girl tore off a piece of raw dough and threw it to her.
“But I have no fire in my hut to bake it,” said the old woman, picking up the dough from the floor. “Let me put it in the oven with your loaves.” The baker’s daughter was too proud to respond to some beggar woman. However, when it was time to load the next batch of loaves into the oven, she allowed the old woman to place her piece of dough on the wooden peel. When the loaves turned golden and the girl pulled them out of the oven, she saw that the small piece of dough had turned into the largest, most golden loaf. The beggar reached for it, but the girl pushed her away. “Go away, dirty beggar!” she shouted. “This isn’t your bread!”
No matter how much the old woman pleaded, the girl refused to give her the bread and instead threw her another piece of raw dough, even smaller than the first. But when the old woman put it in the oven, it too turned into a large, golden loaf, even bigger and more golden than the first. Yet again, the girl wouldn’t let the old woman take the bread and tried to chase her away. But the old woman asked for one last, third piece of dough to try her luck. The girl tossed her a tiny lump, not even looking at the old woman. And she should have looked... As we’ve said, the baker’s daughter was too proud to pay attention to some old beggar. If she had looked when she pulled the third enormous, golden loaf from the oven—a loaf that had come from the tiny lump of dough she had thrown to the beggar—she wouldn’t have pushed her away or stammered angrily, “Hoot... hoot... go away!” Instead, she would have noticed the extraordinary transformation that had suddenly come over the old beggar. The hunched old woman had turned into a tall, young lady, her ragged clothes replaced by a shimmering robe, and her crooked cane transformed into a gleaming magic wand. But the girl didn’t look in time. Instead, after pulling the large, golden loaf from the oven, she roughly shoved the fairy and stammered in anger:
“Hoot... hoot...”
But before she could finish, she suddenly turned into a gray owl and flew out the window with a loud “Hoot, hoot!” And now you know why owls hoot so angrily: “Hoot! Hoot!”
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