This is the whole tale, the same ten pages it runs in Pillowbook on the phone. Read it here tonight if that is easier. Nothing is cut, nothing asks you to sign up, and every picture was painted for this book.
Reading time is about five minutes at an unhurried pace, one page every thirty seconds or so. Four old animals frighten off robbers by singing badly. Funny rather than tense.
There was a donkey who had carried sacks to the mill for a great many years, and one morning he understood that nobody expected him to carry anything ever again. He thought about this in the field until dinner. Then he pushed the gate open with his nose and set off down the road for Bremen, because he had a good loud voice and a town needs music.A little way along he passed a hound lying in the ditch with his chin on his paws, breathing hard from nothing at all. He was grey round the muzzle and no use in front of a hare any more, and he said so. The donkey said he was going to Bremen to be a musician, and that a deep voice underneath was exactly what the thing wanted. They went on together.On a milestone in the sun sat a cat with one ear and a very old face. Her teeth were blunt, the mice had noticed, and the house had begun to talk about it in front of her. The donkey explained about Bremen. The cat said she had been told all her life that she sang badly, and she had always considered that a matter of taste, and got down off the stone.At the last farm before the woods a rooster was standing on the gate making an enormous noise about Sunday. The three of them stopped and listened properly, which nobody there had done in years. Then they told him that a voice like that was wasted on a gatepost, and the four of them went on up the road together with the sun coming up behind them.Bremen turned out to be further than any of them had been led to believe. Dark came down while they were still in the wood, so the donkey and the hound lay under a tree and the cat went up into it, and the rooster went higher still, to the very top, to have a look round before sleeping. From there he could see a light.It was not far. They came up quietly through the trees to a cottage with the shutters open and a great deal going on inside: three men at a table, a very good supper on it, and money in a heap by the bread. The donkey put his front hooves on the sill and looked in and reported. The others wanted to know chiefly about the supper.So they made a plan, and it was a ridiculous plan, and they were all extremely pleased with it. The hound climbed onto the donkey's back. The cat climbed onto the hound. The rooster went up last and stood on the cat, gripping carefully, and the whole arrangement wobbled its way up to the lit window and steadied itself.Then they sang. All four, at once, with everything they had, straight through the glass. Nobody in the cottage had time to work out what it was. The table went over, the door came off its latch, and the three men were out and across the clearing and into the trees before the last note had finished, and they did not stop to collect anything.The four walked in and shut the door. They ate as though they had been planning it for weeks, which they had, for about ten minutes. Then they put out the light and each one found the place that suited him: the donkey on the straw in the yard, the hound behind the door, the cat by the warm ash, and the rooster up on the beam.One of the men came creeping back in the dark for the money and got the fright of his life: he trod on something soft that howled, walked into something large and warm that shoved him, and was seen off by a voice from the ceiling shouting about the morning. He ran. They never came back. And the four of them never got to Bremen, and never mentioned it again.
The end.
Read any of the 12 tonight, free
12 classic fairy tales, ten painted pages each, one story an evening. No sign-up before you can read.
Yes. All ten pages of The Bremen Town Musicians are on this page, each with the illustration that belongs to it. Nothing is held back for the app.
Is it suitable for a three year old?
It is written for children between three and eight. Four old animals frighten off robbers by singing badly. Funny rather than tense.
How long does it take to read aloud?
About five minutes at an unhurried pace, which is roughly one page every thirty seconds.
Where do the pictures come from?
They were painted for Pillowbook, one plate per page, in a single visual voice shared across all 12 tales. They are not stock illustrations.
Can I read the other tales here?
Yes. All 12 are on this site in full, free and without an account. The app is for reading them at bedtime — offline, no advertising, one page to a screen — and for the tale it writes about your own child.
