Today we head back into the dark forest of Grimms’ Fractured Fairy Tales to learn the importance of self-confidence coupled with the ability to exaggerate. Come take a look behind the reality distortion field to learn how killing flies can lead to becoming King. Any similarity between the little tailor and current events is purely coincidental.
Once upon a time, there was a little tailor who spent his days sewing in obscurity. One day he made a jam sandwich for lunch. He wanted to finish a jacket before eating his lunch. He set the sandwich in his window.
A swarm of flies, which had been dining on the corpse of a dog, smelled the jam and flew up for dessert. They landed on his bread, aggravating the tailor. He grabbed a piece of cloth and smote the flies to get them off his sandwich.
After his smiting, seven flies lay dead on the bread. He was overjoyed at his victory. He immediately sewed a golden sash with the words “SEVEN WITH ONE BLOW” to commemorate his glorious heroism.
To show the town what a hero he was, he set out on a quest wearing his beautiful sash. He stuffed a handful of cream cheese and a bird into his vest pocket and proceeded to promenade. He ran into a Giant at the top of a mountain.
The Giant saw the tailor’s sash, which impressed him with the tailor’s boast of killing seven men. The Giant decided to test how strong the tailor was. The Giant crushed a rock with his bare hands and dared the tailor to do the same.
The tailor pulled out the wad of cream cheese and squeezed it until water ran out, telling the Giant that it was better than the Giant’s rock crushing. The Giant then picked up a boulder, throwing it into the air until it went so high it was out of sight, then eventually falling to the ground. The tailor said, “That’s nothing. When I throw a rock, it never comes down.”
The tailor pulled the bird out of his vest and tossed it into the air. The bird flew away, never to be seen again. (Giants, though big, are easy to fool.)
Bored with Giant fooling, the tailor went on his way to the King’s castle. The peasants saw his sash with SEVEN WITH ONE BLOW, and ran to tell the King. The King decided he needed to make the tailor the Field Marshal of his army due to his ability to kill seven men with one blow. The King’s army was unhappy about this promotion as they feared the tailor could kill them all. The army asked the King to rethink the promotion.
The King, who was already having second thoughts about making the tailor Field Marshal, began to worry the tailor might kill him. The King, like most fairy tale kings, had a beautiful daughter whom he promised would marry the tailor and receive half his kingdom as her dowry if the tailor would perform a little task of killing two Giants.
The tailor cheerfully agreed to off the Giants. He found them sleeping under a big tree. He climbed the tree and dropped stones onto the Giants, waking them up. Each Giant thought the other one was hitting him.
Angry, they fought each other until both were dead. Mission accomplished. The King was sincerely nervous now. If the tailor could kill Giants, what could he do to a mere king? He assigned the tailor another task of capturing a rogue rhinoceros. The tailor tricked the rhino into getting stuck in a tree and then saved him. The rhino was so grateful that he became tame.
The King came up with a final task of catching the meanest wild boar in the forest. The tailor trapped the boar in a woodland chapel, fulfilling his quest.
The King had no choice but to marry his daughter to the tailor. To quote Grimm: “The wedding was arranged with great splendor but with little joy.” (Many other weddings to this day have followed this pattern.) On their wedding night, the Princess heard the tailor talking in his sleep, saying: “Hurry up with that jacket and patch the trousers or I’ll clout you with a yardstick.”
The Princess told the King that “I think my husband is nothing but a common tailor.” The King told her to leave her bedroom door unlocked that night.
When the tailor was asleep, the King’s servants would tie him up and put him on a slow boat to China.
Word of this plot got back to the tailor. That night, the tailor pretended to be asleep when the servants came to the bedroom door. He yelled, “I’ve slaughtered seven with one blow, killed two giants, tamed a wild rhino, and captured a wild boar; I’m not afraid of quivering servants standing outside the bedroom.” This scared the Bejeezus out of the servants, who ran away.
The tailor became king and lived happily ever after with the beautiful Princess.
Moral: As George Costanza said about beating the polygraph, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)