The Seven Lazy Brothers

The fairy tale of the Bremen Town Musicians is very well known, but probably only a few know the fairy tale of the seven lazy ones. Today I would like to summarize this story for you in my own words because it has a very special message.

Once upon a time, there was a man in Bremen who owned a lot of lands. But his lands were beyond the city walls and were very sandy and often flooded. Therefore the soil was not very fertile. His hay harvest was only enough for one goat and apart from a little cabbage, he couldn't grow anything. The man and his wife had seven strong sons. But instead of helping out, the sons preferred to spend their time watching other people work and lazing around. So the man's sons were soon known throughout the city as the seven lazy ones.

But at some point, the brothers got bored with doing nothing and the food became less and less. The poor father was also getting older. So the seven brothers decided to ask for work at the neighboring farms. But their bad reputation from the past preceded them. No one wanted to hire and feed a slacker. So the brothers had no choice but to go out into the world and look for work in other cities.

Many years later the brothers returned to their hometown. There was great excitement in town. Because everyone wanted to know what had become of the seven lazy ones. The brothers came back with lots of new equipment and got to work the next day. They dug a drainage ditch and built a dam. The soil quality improved and the hay harvest was better than ever. But the neighbors were suspicious of the brothers' work and said, “The old father was hardworking. He got knee-deep into the water and cut off every meager blade of grass. But his sons are lazy, they take it easy and don't feel like working. "

The yields on the land were so good that just a few months later the sons were able to build a large house next to their father's little house. Again the people said: “Oh, those lazy brothers. They don't want to restrict themselves and are not humble.”. As the brothers gradually got married, every one of them built his own house. Until at some point there were seven houses in a row. They planted orchards and vegetable gardens. And after that, they built a paved road to their houses so that when the weather was bad they would not carry the dirt into their homes. They lined the street with lanterns and trees. Whenever a stranger came into town and admired the street with the beautiful houses, the neighbors would only say: "Oh, this is the street of the seven lazy ones."

Although the brothers only worked half as much as the other people in town, their wealth grew steadily. They didn't have to guard their fields at night to keep the rabbits away from the vegetables, because they had put up a fence around their garden. They planted a lot of trees around their houses, so they wouldn't have to go into the forest to collect firewood. They built a nice well in the middle of their street so that they didn't always have to run to the river to fetch water. And yet they were called the seven lazy ones in town. Because in the opinion of the neighbors, everything the brothers did was just a way of avoiding work.

The moral of this story is, if you work smart, you will have to work less hard in the long term and still be successful. But you could also say: laziness creates innovation!

Hope you enjoyed it!