52 Weeks of Fairy tales Week # 31 - The Three Billy Goats Gruff

For 52 Weeks of Fairy Tales Week #31's  fairy tale, I was inspired at the county fair.

By these three.

So I thought I would share the Norwegian fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

This story is about three billy goat brothers, they have run out of grass to graze on, and must cross a bridge over a stream to get to a lush meadow on the other side, where they will have plenty to eat.  Unfortunately a horrible and mean troll lives under the bridge, and eats anyone who crosses.  The smallest billy goat crosses the bridge first, and as soon as he is part way over the bridge, the troll jumps out and threatens to eat him up.
The littlest goat explains to the troll that he is very small, and if the troll just waits, a larger goat will be along shortly, and the larger goat would make a  better meal.  So the troll lets the smallest goat across the bridge.

Then the medium sized goat makes his way across the bridge, and again the goat is stopped by the hungry troll, who threatens to eat him up.  The medium sized goat also convinces the troll to not eat him, and instead to wait for the larger goat that will be there soon.  So the troll lets the middle goat across the bridge.

Finally the largest billy goat makes his way across the bridge, and once again the troll stops the goat, and threatens to eat him up.  The largest billy goat is a large and strong goat with big horns, and he doesn't put up with the troll at all.  The largest goat then charged the troll, and sent him flying right off the bridge, and into the stream.  The large goat made his way across the bridge to join his brothers in the grassy meadow, where they would have plenty of grass to eat.  From then on the bridge was safe and no one heard from the troll again.

Snip, Snap, Snout.  This tale's told out.  ( This was the classic ending included in some versions of the story, I thought that it was fun.)

~

This is a very fun story to tell, there are many different versions online, as well as some fun animated versions on YouTube.  You can use these online sources to come up with fun ideas for telling the story yourself. This would also be a fun story to tell in conjunction with exploring various bridges.

For my craft, I decided to do another paper cutting for our fairy tale scrapbook.

Here is a close up of the cut out image, I drew on my design, the goat shape I found online and reduced the picture a few times to get the different sizes of goats and cut them out and traced them above the bridge and troll, then cut out the design and mounted the cut out paper to a black sheet of 12 by 12 card stock.  The tricky part of paper cutting is thinking through what you want cut out, and how that will look, and also not cutting so close to the edge that you almost cut the paper in half.  :)  I really enjoy this type of crafting, and our fairy tale scrapbook is coming along nicely.

I also think this story would be fun to make shadow puppets for like I did for the fairy tale The Three Spinners.    The Three Billy Goats Gruff is one of those wonderful classic tales that I grew up hearing, and it is nice passing it down to my children, both of my kids are teens now, but with pop culture so full of fairy tale inspired books, TV shows, and movies, it is nice for them to know the classics.