When my Spanish group came round we learned vocabulary for warnings and roadsigns and very useful it will be too, if I'm ever in a Spanish-speaking country. The German group on the other hand, whom I joined after a pleasant half hour riding my bike beside the canal today, read a nineteenth century children's book in rhyming couplets: the story of Max und Moritz and their "seven boyish pranks," by Wilhelm Busch. Very famous in German-speaking countries, these "pranks" are actually quite nasty (grausam!) in places, as is the naughty boys' come-uppance in prank the seventh and last, when they get eaten by some geese.
Max and Moritz weren't the only ones of their kind. They call to mind Till Eulenspiegel, Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter, and Hilaire Belloc's Matilda, Henry, Rebecca and Jim.
The other cautionary tale I read this week was the Manitoban author Margaret Laurence's novel, The Stone Angel, describing the death of a wilful old lady in her nineties. That one was not so funny.
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