The Stolen Farthings

The Stolen Farthings
Folk tale
Name	The Stolen Farthings
Aarne–Thompson grouping	ATU 769
Country	Germany
Published in	Grimms' Fairy Tales

"The Stolen Farthings" is Tale 154 from Grimm's Fairy Tales. It is actually a ghost story. It is Aarne-Thompson type 769, A Child Returns from the Dead.

Synopsis

A couple was having dinner with a guest. At midnight, the guest saw a child in white dress come in the house and go straight into the next room. The same thing happened again the next day and the day after that. The guest told the father what happened. The father said he had never seen the child before. One night, the guest peeked in the room. He saw the little child sitting on the floor, and digging up something between the boards of the floor. He reported what he saw to the mother, and she told him that it was probably their child who had died a month ago. The child received 2 farthings from the mother and was planning on giving it to a poor man. The child changed its mind and decided to hide them between the floorboards so it could buy biscuits later. However, it did not get to use them before it died. Thus, it came back to check on the farthings. They donated the farthings to a poor man and the ghost never came back.