Watch Jim Hensons The Storyteller online: Episode 5 Hans My Hedgehog

From an early German folk tale. A farmer's wife drives her husband mad with her desperate measures to have a baby. On the advice of the village Midwife, she tries sleeping upside down, bathing in nettles and so on. She wants a baby so badly that she doesn't care what she gets, even a hedgehog. That, of course, is she gets: a baby covered in quills, as soft as feathers. His mother calls him 'Hans My Hedgehog' and she is the only one to love him. The farmer grows to hate him, people laugh at him and children call him names, like 'Grovelhog'. Finally, Hans asks his father for a saddle for his rooster (which is the size of a small horse), so that Hans can leave for a place where he can't hurt anyone and where no one can hurt him. Twenty years later, a king gets lost in a dark forest. Coming to a strange palace he asks the owner, the now grown Grovelhog, for food and a place to sleep. The king wants to reward his host, and asks him to name the gift he desires.

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