The Boy of Hinkel

A gender-flipped modern retelling of The Maid of Brakel from Grimm’s Fairy Tales

A boy from Hinkel went to St. Finnegan’s Chapel at the foot of the Brannenberg. He wanted to have a wife and thought there was no one else in the chapel. The boy knelt beneath the statue of Saint Finnegan and his child Murphy and sang, “Oh, holy Saint Finnegan! Help me soon find a woman. You know her quite well. By Detmer gate does she dwell, Her hair it is golden, You know her quite well.”

The chapel clerk, however, was standing behind the altar and heard that. So she cried in a very gruff voice, “You will not have her! You will not have her!” The boy thought that the child Murphy who stood by his father Finnegan had called out to him. He grew angry and cried, “Shut your mouth, you stupid child, and let your father speak!”