Exactly what the title says it is.
This is adapted from Monsters and Villains of the Movies and Literature by Gerrie McCall, Dragons: Fearsome Monsters from Myth and Fiction by Gerrie McCall, and Mythical Monsters by Chris McNab.
All the information...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
BODY: The witch is a bent old hag with a crooked back that requires her to walk with a cane. She cannot move quickly and relies on trickery or spells to capture children. HANDS: She uses her bony hands and clawlike nails to pick the last bits of meat from the bones of the children she has eaten. NOSE: A keen sense of smell enables the awful witch to sniff the air and smell Hansel and Gretel approaching from a great distance. EYES: Her eyes cannot see well, enabling Hansel to trick her when she checks how fat he is getting.
Deep in a forest in southern Germany lives a cannibal witch, who dines on the tender flesh of children. Hansel and Gretel, the children of a poor woodcutter, are abandoned deep in the forest when there is not enough food for their family to survive. Hansel cleverly leaves a trail of breadcrumbs when he and his sister are led into the forest, thinking they can follow it back home. However, the birds eat the breadcrumb trail and the children are lost. They find a gingerbread house with sugar windows and a cake roof. The hungry children start to nibble at the house, not knowing it the home of an evil witch.
The witch invites Hansel and Gretel in for a meal. She imprisons Hansel in a shed and forces Gretel to cook for her brother so that he will fatten up. Hansel eats rich food everyday, but Gretel is fed only scraps. The day arrives when the witch is ready to eat Hansel. She fires up her oven and orders Gretel to get in to test how hot it is. Sensing a trick, Gretel shoves the witch in and slams the door shut on her.
DID YOU KNOW? Every day, the nearsighted witch tested how fat Hansel was getting by feeling his finger. Hansel fooled her into thinking he was staying thin by holding out a small chicken bone instead of his finger for her to feel.
Because of Gretel's quick thinking, the witch is baked in her own oven. Gretel frees Hansel from the shed and they stuff their pockets with jewels from the witches house. They return to their father's house with the riches, and no one in their family goes hungry again.
An operatic version of the story titled Hansel und Gretel was written by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) in 1891.
