Knoist and his Three Sons
Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm · 1884
A tiny nonsense riddle: a blind son shoots a hare, a lame son catches it, and nothing in the tale behaves as it should. It's over almost before it starts, but the sheer silliness of it lands well read aloud.
From Grimms' Household Tales. See the whole collection.
Between Werrel and Soist there lived a man whose name was Knoist, and he had three sons. One was blind, the other lame, and the third stark-naked. Once on a time they went into a field, and there they saw a hare. The blind one shot it, the lame one caught it, the naked one put it in his pocket. Then they came to a mighty big lake, on which there were three boats, one sailed, one sank, the third had no bottom to it. They all three got into the one with no bottom to it. Then they came to a mighty big forest in which there was a mighty big tree; in the tree was a mighty big chapel in the chapel was a sexton made of beech-wood and a box-wood parson, who dealt out holy-water with cudgels.
“How truly happy is that one Who can from holy water run!”
Public domain. Text from Grimms' Household Tales (Margaret Hunt translation, 1884), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition