The Maid of Brakel
Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm · 1884
A girl sings a hopeful little rhyme to Saint Anne asking for help finding a husband, then loses her temper when a voice from behind the altar tells her no. Short, funny, and very human.
From Grimms' Household Tales. See the whole collection.
A girl from Brakel once went to St. Anne’s Chapel at the foot of the Hinnenberg, and as she wanted to have a husband, and thought there was no one else in the chapel, she sang,
“Oh, holy Saint Anne! Help me soon to a man. Thou know’st him right well, By Suttmer gate does he dwell, His hair it is golden, Thou know’st him right well.”
The clerk, however, was standing behind the altar and heard that, so he cried in a very gruff voice, “Thou shalt not have him! Thou shalt not have him!” The maiden thought that the child Mary who stood by her mother Anne had called out that to her, and was angry, and cried, “Fiddle de dee, conceited thing, hold your tongue, and let your mother speak!”
Public domain. Text from Grimms' Household Tales (Margaret Hunt translation, 1884), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition