The Hazel-nut Child
"The Hazel-nut Child" is a Bukowinaer fairy tale collected by the Polish-German scholar Heinrich von Wlislocki (1856-1907) in Märchen Und Sagen Der Bukowinaer Und Siebenbûrger Armenier (1891, Hamburg: Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei Actien-Gesellschaft). Andrew Lang included it in The Yellow Fairy Book (1894) and Ruth Manning-Sanders included it in A Book of Dwarfs (1964).
Synopsis
A childless couple prayed for a child, though he were no bigger than a hazel nut, and then they had such a son. He never grew, but he was very clever. When he was fifteen, he said he wanted to be a messenger. His mother sent him to get a comb from his aunt. He climbed on a horse that a man was riding by, and poked and pinched it until it galloped to the village. There he got the comb, and took another horse the same way. This convinced his mother.
One day, his father left him in the fields with a horse while he went back home. A robber tried to steal the horse. The hazel-nut child jumped on the horse and pricked it until it ignored the robber and galloped home. The robber was jailed.
When he was twenty, the hazel-nut child left home, promising to return when he was rich. He climbed on a stork as the storks were flying south. In Africa, he amused the king until the king gave him a large diamond. The hazel-nut child took it with him when the storks flew north again, and so he and his parents were rich thereafter.
