At the edge of a small village, in a cottage with a shabby thatched roof, there lived a poor widow and her daughter. Aside from the modest roof over their heads and a few chickens, they had nothing. Most of the time they ate only what the mother gathered in the forest during the summer, and the only money they had was what the daughter earned by selling eggs at the market. With that, they could at least buy bread and warm shoes for the winter.
One summer day, the mother was not feeling well, so her daughter went into the forest to pick strawberries. She wrapped a slice of hard bread in her apron, took a large pot, and set off. When she had filled the pot with wild strawberries, she sat down by a little well to eat. Just then, an old woman in torn clothes appeared by the well. She looked like a beggar.
“My dear girl, would you have a little piece of bread for me? I haven’t had a bite to eat since yesterday,” the old woman asked.
“Of course, Granny. I’ll gladly give you the whole slice,” the kind-hearted girl replied. “I only hope it won’t be too hard for you,” she added thoughtfully.
The old woman was delighted. “Thank God, my dear girl, thank God! Since you helped me, I must give you something in return. Here is a little pot. It is no ordinary pot. It is magic. If you say to it, ‘Little pot, cook!’ it will make as much porridge as you want. When you have enough porridge, all you need to say is, ‘Little pot, enough!’ and it will stop cooking at once. You must only remember exactly what to say.”
As soon as she handed the little pot to the girl, she vanished.
The daughter ran home and immediately told her mother about the strange gift from the old woman. Her mother suggested they try it right away. So the daughter placed the little pot on the table and shyly said, “Little pot, cook!”
What the two women saw was unbelievable. In an instant, the little pot was filled to the brim with oatmeal porridge. The daughter quickly said, “Little pot, enough!” The porridge stopped cooking, and the women grabbed their spoons and began to taste it.
Mmm, delicious! The porridge tasted heavenly. Neither of them had ever eaten anything so wonderful. When they had finished the whole batch and licked their lips, the daughter still had to gather the eggs from the chickens and hurry to the market.
While the mother waited at home for her daughter, she kept glancing at the magic little pot. Then she grew hungry. That porridge had been so, so good. She would have loved another potful. And the young girl was still nowhere to be seen.
After a while, the mother could not stand it anymore and hungrily said, “Little pot, cook!”
She went to get a spoon, but when she came back, the porridge was already overflowing from the little pot onto the table. Frightened, she did not know what to do. She ran to fetch a large pot so she could put the overflowing little pot inside it. But by the time she returned, the porridge was already pouring off the table onto the floor and making its way across the room.
The mother tried with all her might to stop the stream of porridge. She shouted every command she could think of.
“Little pot, stop!” “Little pot, halt!” “Little pot, quit!” “Little pot, don’t make me mad!”
But none of those were the right words to stop the magic porridge pot. And so the porridge began flooding the whole cottage, and the woman had to climb onto the roof and sit behind the chimney so she would not drown in it.
But if only it had ended with the cottage! The porridge poured out through the doors and windows and began spreading everywhere. It flooded the road and the surrounding area, while the little pot kept cooking more and more porridge. The poor widow watched the whole porridge disaster from the roof, but she could do nothing except wring her hands. She still did not know how to stop the little pot.
Who knows how the whole ordeal would have ended if her daughter had not just then returned from the market. When she saw the disaster, she kept her wits about her and cried out, “Little pot, enough!”
Fortunately, those were the right words to stop the flow of porridge. By then, however, there was more than enough of it all over the village. The farmers returning from their hard work in the fields could not get through the mountain of porridge, so they had to eat their way back to their homes.
Well, perhaps the tasty porridge came in handy after such a long day of work. One thing is certain: thanks to the little pot, the poor girl with the good heart never had to go hungry again.
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