The Gingerbread Man
Told by AnonymousUnited StatesTale type ATU 2025
- Age
- 3 to 8
- Reading time
- 8 minutes
- Scariness
- 1 of 5Mild tension, resolved at once
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The story
There was a little old woman and a little old man, and they lived by themselves in a little old house, and there were no children in it at all.
One morning the little old woman was making gingerbread, and she had some dough left over, and she thought she might as well do something with it.
So she rolled it out and cut out a little man. She gave him two currants for eyes and a strip of candied peel for a mouth, and three more currants down his front for buttons, and she put him in the oven and shut the door.
Then she went to the window and did the washing-up and forgot about the time, the way you do.
When she opened the oven again the gingerbread man sat up.
He looked at her. She looked at him. Then he was over the edge of the tray and down onto the floor and off across the kitchen, and out through the door that she had propped open because of the heat.
"Stop!" said the little old woman.
"Run, run, as fast as you can," he called back, "you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"
And he could not be caught, because he was newly baked and full of energy and nobody in that house had run anywhere in twenty years.
The little old woman ran after him. The little old man put down his newspaper and ran after her. They got as far as the gate and had to stop and hold on to it.
The gingerbread man went down the lane.
He passed a cow in a field, who lifted her head slowly, the way cows do, and thought about it, and then decided to have a go. She got over the fence in a heap and came after him with her bell clanging.
"Stop!" said the cow.
"I've run away from a little old woman and a little old man, and I can run away from you, I can!"
And he could.
He passed a horse leaning over a gate, half asleep. The horse woke up properly for the first time in a fortnight and came out onto the lane, and got up to a canter, which was more than the horse had planned to do that day.
"Stop!" said the horse.
"I've run away from a little old woman, a little old man and a cow, and I can run away from you, I can!"
And he could.
By now there was a procession. The old woman and the old man, the cow with her bell, the horse, and after them some threshers from the barn who did not know what was happening but did not want to be left out. It went right along the lane and past the pond and out towards the wood, and the gingerbread man stayed in front of the whole thing and never once looked tired.
Then he came to the river.
He stopped. It was wide, and it was moving, and he was made of gingerbread, which is a material with exactly one weakness.
Behind him he could hear the bell.
"You'll not get over that," said a voice.
There was a fox sitting on the bank, quite still, with his tail curled round his feet. He had been there for some time.
"Jump on my tail," said the fox. "I'll take you over."
The gingerbread man was in a hurry, and the bell was getting louder, so he jumped on the fox's tail, and the fox went into the water.
They had gone a little way when the fox said the water was getting deeper, and that the gingerbread man had better move up onto his back.
So he moved up onto his back.
They went a little further, and the fox said the water was deeper still, and that he had better move up onto his shoulder.
So he moved up onto his shoulder.
And a little further, and the fox said the water was very deep now, and that the safest place of all would be to hop up onto the end of his nose.
So the gingerbread man hopped up onto the end of the fox's nose.
And the fox reached the far bank, and put his head back, and that was the end of the Gingerbread Man.
On the other side of the river the old woman and the old man and the cow and the horse and the threshers arrived, out of breath, and stood in a row, and looked at the water.
Nobody said anything for a while.
Then the little old woman said that she supposed she had better make another one.
And the little old man said that if she did, she might think about shutting the oven door properly.
And they all walked back up the lane together, which is the furthest any of them had been in years, and the cow had to be got back over the fence, and the horse went back to his gate and stood there thinking about what he had done.
Here is the thing about the gingerbread man. He was right every single time. He said he could run away from the old woman, and he could. He said he could run away from the old man, and the cow, and the horse, and he could run away from all of them.
He was never once caught by anybody who chased him.
He was caught by somebody who sat still and offered him a lift.
What is the moral of The Gingerbread Man?
The one who catches you is rarely the one running behind you.
Every boast the gingerbread man makes is completely true. He really can outrun all of them, and he does. The story is not punishing him for being wrong about his own abilities. It is showing that his abilities were never going to be the thing that mattered. The fox does not chase him, argue with him or try to prove him wrong. He waits by the one obstacle the gingerbread man cannot solve, and offers help. That is a far more useful thing for a child to notice than a lesson about pride.
Talk about it
- Was the gingerbread man boasting, or was he just telling the truth?
- Why does the fox sit still instead of chasing him like everybody else?
- The fox asks him to move three times. When should the gingerbread man have got suspicious?
- Everybody joins the chase, even the threshers who do not know what is happening. Why do you think people do that?
- If you had been the gingerbread man at the river, what would you have done?
Who is in the story
The Gingerbread Man
protagonist · gingerbread
Four seconds of decoration and a lifetime of about half an hour, most of it spent winning.
The Fox
antagonist · fox
Was already on the bank. Had been there for some time. Did not chase anybody.
The Cow
supporting · cow
Lifted her head slowly, considered the whole matter, and then got over a fence in a heap.
The Little Old Man
supporting · human
Put down his newspaper, ran as far as the gate, and had a very good point to make afterwards.
The Little Old Woman
supporting · human
Made him out of leftovers in about four minutes, and then went to do the washing-up.
In a nutshell
A little old woman bakes a gingerbread man and forgets about the time. He sits up, gets out through a propped-open door, and outruns everybody who chases him: the old woman, the old man, a cow, a horse and a barn full of threshers. Then he reaches a river, and a fox who has been sitting quite still offers him a lift.
Scene by scene
19 moments from the tale.
- Scene 1The Little Old Kitchenquiet
A house with nobody in it but them
A little old house on an ordinary morning. A little old woman and a little old man live in it by themselves. There are no children in it at all, and the story mentions this once and then leaves it alone.
Two people, one house, and a very great deal of quiet.
- Scene 2The Little Old Kitchenidle
Some dough left over
The gingerbread is made and the tins are full and there is a lump of dough sitting on the board with nothing to be done with it. She thinks she might as well do something. The whole story starts here, in a small economy about not wasting food.
She had a little dough left, and no particular plan for it.
- Scene 3The Little Old Kitchencareful
Two currants and a strip of peel
She cuts out a little man and gives him two currants for eyes and a strip of candied peel for a mouth, and three more currants down his front for buttons. Then she puts him in the oven and shuts the door on him.
Eyes first. Then a mouth. Then the oven door.
- Scene 4The Little Old Kitchendistracted
She went to the window
She goes to the window and does the washing-up. The oven gets on with it behind her. She forgets about the time in the ordinary way that everybody forgets about the time, and the story does not hold it against her.
She did the washing-up, and forgot about the time, the way you do.
- Scene 5The Little Old Kitchenastonished
When she opened the oven again
She remembers the time, wipes her hands and opens the oven. The gingerbread man sits up on the tray. The story gives no explanation for this and offers none afterwards.
She opened the oven. He sat up.
- Scene 6The Little Old Kitchensudden
One second of looking
They look at one another for about a second. Then he is over the edge of the tray and down onto the floor and off across the kitchen, out through the door she had propped open because of the heat. He calls back as he goes that he can run and cannot be caught.
He looked at her. She looked at him. Then he was gone.
- Scene 7The Lanecomic
Stop, said the little old woman
The old woman runs after him and tells him to stop. He calls back that he can run and that she cannot catch him. Indoors the old man puts his newspaper down, folds it, and comes out after her.
She said stop. He explained, at some length, why he would not.
- Scene 8The Lanebreathless
As far as the gate
The two of them reach the gate at the end of the garden and have to stop and hold on to it. He goes off down the lane without a backward glance. Neither of them has the breath to say much about it.
They got as far as the gate, and that was that.
- Scene 9The Laneabsurd
The cow thought about it
He passes a cow in a field. She lifts her head slowly, the way cows do, and thinks about it, and then decides to have a go. She gets over the fence in a heap and comes after him with her bell clanging.
She lifted her head slowly, the way cows do, and decided to have a go.
- Scene 10The Laneunexpected
The horse woke up properly
He passes a horse leaning over a gate, half asleep. The horse wakes up properly for the first time in a fortnight, comes out onto the lane and gets up to a canter, which is considerably more than the horse had planned to do that day.
It was the first time the horse had woken up properly in a fortnight.
- Scene 11The Laneridiculous
By now there was a procession
The old woman and the old man, the cow with her bell, the horse, and behind them some threshers from the barn who do not know what is happening but do not want to be left out. It goes right along the lane and past the pond, and he stays in front of all of it and never once looks tired.
The threshers joined in without knowing why, in case they missed something.
- Scene 12The Riverbankstopped
Then he came to the river
He comes to the river and stops. It is wide and it is moving. He is made of gingerbread, which is a material with exactly one weakness, and behind him he can hear the bell.
It was wide, and it was moving, and he was made of gingerbread.
- Scene 13The Riverbankstill
There was a fox sitting on the bank
A voice says he will not get over that. There is a fox sitting on the bank, quite still, with his tail curled round his feet. He had been there for some time, and the story mentions this without drawing any conclusion from it.
He had been there for some time.
- Scene 14The Riverbankobliging
Jump on my tail
The fox offers to take him over. The gingerbread man is in a hurry and the bell is getting louder, so he jumps on the fox's tail, and the fox goes into the water without any fuss at all.
It was offered as a favour, and accepted as one.
- Scene 15The Rivercreeping
The water is getting deeper
A little way out the fox says the water is getting deeper and he had better move up onto his back. So he moves onto his back. A little further and it is deeper still, so he moves onto the shoulder. And a little further, and the safest place of all turns out to be the end of the fox's nose.
Three requests, each of them entirely reasonable on its own.
- Scene 16The Riverfinal
The far bank
The fox reaches the far bank. The camera stays on the water and on the empty bank he came out of. The story says what happened next in one clause and does not linger over it.
And the fox reached the far bank.
- Scene 17The Riverbankhushed
They stood in a row and looked at the water
On the other side of the river the old woman and the old man and the cow and the horse and the threshers arrive, out of breath, and stand in a row and look at the water. Nobody says anything for a while.
Nobody said anything for a while.
- Scene 18The Riverbankpractical
She had better make another one
The little old woman says she supposes she had better make another one. The little old man says that if she does, she might think about shutting the oven door properly. That is the entire funeral.
And if she did, he said, she might think about shutting the oven door properly.
- Scene 19The Lanecompanionable
They all walked back up the lane
They all walk back up the lane together, which is the furthest any of them has been in years. The cow has to be got back over the fence. The horse goes back to his gate and stands there thinking about what he has done.
It was the furthest any of them had been in years.
Where it happens
The Lane
lane
A dusty country lane between hedges, where the procession forms.
The Little Old Kitchen
kitchen
A warm kitchen in a little old house with no children in it, and a door propped open because of the heat.
The River
river
Wide, moving, and the one thing a biscuit cannot argue with.
The Riverbank
riverbank
Where the lane runs out and the running stops.
How they are connected
The Gingerbread ManThe Foxrival
The only creature in the story who does not chase him is the only one who gets him.
The Gingerbread ManThe Little Old Womanfamily
She made him in four minutes out of leftovers and he left within a second of meeting her.
The Little Old WomanThe Little Old Manfamily
Two people who run as far as the gate together and then hold on to it.
The Gingerbread ManThe Cowrival
The first stranger to join in, for no reason at all.
Things you might not know
Nobody knows who wrote this story down. It was printed anonymously in St. Nicholas Magazine in May 1875, with no name attached anywhere, and the index of the volume lists only the title and the page number.
The person who submitted it in 1875 explained where it came from: a girl from Maine told it to their children, and she had heard it from an old lady when she was small. That is the entire paper trail for one of the most famous stories in America.
The rhyme everybody knows, run run as fast as you can, is not in the 1875 text at all. The original taunt is I've run away from a little old woman, a little old man, and I can run away from you, I can.
In the original ending the fox eats him, and the gingerbread man narrates it himself, counting down as he goes: I'm quarter gone, I'm half gone, I'm three-quarters gone, I'm all gone. Most modern retellings quietly drop it.
This is not one story but a whole family of them, catalogued as tale type ATU 2025, The Runaway Pancake. Norway has a runaway pancake, Russia has a runaway loaf called Kolobok, and Hungary has a dumpling that eats an entire army.
Joseph Jacobs published a close cousin called Johnny-Cake in 1890, and a Scottish one called The Wee Bannock in 1894. They are often confused with this tale, but The Gingerbread Man is neither of them and is not Jacobs's work.
There was a Broadway musical in 1905 in which the Gingerbread Man turns out to be the King of Bon Bon Land, transformed by a sorcerer named Machevelius Fudge. The producers gave away 25,000 dough statuettes in New York to promote it.
It is a cumulative tale, which means the list of pursuers grows every time it is repeated. The form is designed so a child can join in with the chorus by the third round, which is exactly why it has survived without an author.
What things stand for
- The propped-open door
- The whole story turns on a small piece of household carelessness. Nobody let him out; the heat did.
- The currant eyes
- A face made in about four seconds out of what was in the cupboard, which then turns out to have opinions.
- The boast
- A statement of fact that everybody hears as arrogance. He is right every single time he says it.
- The river
- The one problem that running cannot solve, and the fox knew where it was long before the gingerbread man did.
- The fox sitting still
- The opposite of the chase. Everybody behind him wanted to catch him; only the fox thought about how.
The same story elsewhere
Folk tales are not owned by whoever wrote them down first.
The Pancake (Pannekaken)
Norway, 1842-1844
Collected by Asbjornsen and Moe. A pancake rolls away from a mother and seven hungry children and meets a pig by a stream. Older than the American gingerbread version.
Kolobok
Russia, traditional
A round loaf escapes an old man and an old woman and sings his way past a hare, a wolf and a bear, before a fox flatters him into coming closer to be heard better.
Johnny-Cake
England, 1890
Joseph Jacobs's version in English Fairy Tales, taken from an American source. His johnnycake rolls rather than runs, and the fox pretends to be deaf so that the boasting has to be repeated closer and closer.
A kis gombac
Hungary, traditional
The Little Dumpling, in which the runaway food does the eating instead. It swallows the family that made it and then a whole army, until a swineherd cuts it open from the inside.
Where you might already know it from
Most children meet a screen version first. Here is what those changed.
The Gingerbread Man
musical, Alfred Baldwin Sloane and Frederic Ranken, 1905
A Broadway musical that opened at the Liberty Theatre on Christmas Day 1905. The title character is really the King of Bon Bon Land, transformed into gingerbread by a sorcerer called Machevelius Fudge. The producers gave away 25,000 dough statuettes in New York to promote it.
Journey Cake, Ho!
book, Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Robert McCloskey, 1953
A picture book in which a boy chases a runaway journey cake around a farm. Its pictures won a Caldecott Honor in 1954.
The Gingerbread Boy
book, Paul Galdone, 1975
A picture book that keeps the old title and the old ending. The runaway outruns everyone he meets, until he comes across a fox who is cleverer than he is.
Questions parents ask
- What is the moral of The Gingerbread Man?
- The one who catches you is rarely the one running behind you.
- What is The Gingerbread Man about?
- A little old woman bakes a gingerbread man and forgets about the time. He sits up, gets out through a propped-open door, and outruns everybody who chases him: the old woman, the old man, a cow, a horse and a barn full of threshers. Then he reaches a river, and a fox who has been sitting quite still offers him a lift.
- What age is The Gingerbread Man for?
- The Gingerbread Man suits ages 3-8.
- How long does The Gingerbread Man take to read?
- About 8 minutes read aloud.
- Where does The Gingerbread Man come from?
- The Gingerbread Man is a traditional tale from United States.
Sing it
Every story here has its own song. This one is cheeky, breathless, comic, about 138 beats a minute.
You Can't Catch Me
bright bouncing skiffle
There is no recording yet. The words are here so you can sing it yourself.
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