Little Red Riding Hood (Unabridged)

Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault - is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf.[1] Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th century European folk tales.

Tale
The story revolves around a girl called Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hooded cape that she wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sickly grandmother (wine and cake depending on the translation). In the Grimms' version, her mother had ordered her to stay strictly on the path.

A stalking wolf wants to eat the girl and the food in the basket. He asks her where she is going. She tells him. He suggests that she pick some flowers as a present for her grandmother, which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be Riding Hood. He swallows the grandmother whole (in some stories, he locks her in the closet) and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandmother.

When the girl arrives, she notices that her grandmother looks very strange. She says, 'What a deep voice you have!' ('The better to greet you with', responds the wolf), 'Goodness, what big eyes you have!' ('The better to see you with', responds the wolf), 'And what big hands you have!' ('The better to embrace you with', responds the wolf), and lastly, 'What a big mouth you have' ('The better to eat you with!', responds the wolf), at which point the wolf jumps out of the bed and eats her, too. Then he falls asleep. In Charles Perrault's version of the story (the first version to be published), the tale ends here.

In later and better-known versions, the story continues. A woodcutter in the French version, or a hunter in the Brothers Grimm and traditional German versions, comes to the rescue with an axe, and cuts open the sleeping wolf. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge shaken, but unharmed. Then they fill the wolf's body with heavy stones. The wolf awakens and attempts to flee, but the stones cause him to collapse and die. In the Grimms' version, the wolf leaves the house and tries to drink out of a well, but the stones in his stomach cause him to fall in and drown (similarly to the story of 'The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids').