Scholars of classic German Literature were delighted recently when a lost work by the Brothers Grimm was unearthed by workmen, who were refitting a harbour master’s boiler in Oberammergau. The work, which was dated to 1847, was serialised on the back of Bryant & May match boxes. Below, I’ve reproduced verbatim the translation produced by former England winger, Chris Waddle. Any footnotes are my own.
There once was a large orange toad*1 who lived on a golden lily pad in a pond that he’d inherited from his father. He was a bloated insidious creature, yet vain. One day, to give the illusion of youth, he placed a bit of moss on his head. He felt bigly proud.
He looked at his reflection in the water one morning and said to himself “I am the bigliest, most handsomest toad in the pond. Other toads should be telling me this. All toads should like me, and want to be like me, but not be quite as good as me at anything.“ And he smiled. But because he was a large toad, his smile looked like he was emitting gas after a heavy meal.
One day his subconscious, in order to justify his burgeoning narcissism and fascistic tendencies invented the ‘They’. The ‘They’ lived in two separate parts of his head.
The ‘They’ he liked would sing his praises and say such things as ‘Your pond is definitely biglier than other ponds’, ‘More toads came to your birthday party then any other in history. Bigly true. Fact.’, and ‘You are the bestest at being humble. No-one is as humble as you’. To which the Orange Toad would agree and tell everyone.
The other the ‘They’ were his enemy and he would spend all his days making up the kinds of things the ‘They’ would do, such as ‘They are eating the tadpoles, did you know that? They are eating the tadpoles’. Or ‘They are assaulting the female toads, the female toads need protecting, I will protect the female toads’. Or ‘They are pushing insect-based narcotics, They are flooding our pond with drugs, it’s true, just ask the people’. The ‘They’ certainly didn’t belong in his pond.
On a leaf, the Great Orange Toad wrote ‘PIGTIT’ saying it meant ‘Pond is Great, Toad is Terrific’. He placed the leaf on his head on top of the moss. Everyone in the Pond liked this and also wrote ‘PIGTIT’ on a leaf and placed it on their heads. “Folks are loving the PIGTIT,“ said the Great Orange Toad. “They are all buying the PIGTIT leaves. It’s a bigly success. They believe in the PIGTIT.“
He would sit on his bigly golden lily pad shouting out whatever rancid thing popped into his head: “They say I’m the greatest toad ever, that’s what They say.“; or “They’re ruining the lillies, it’s true, it’s what all the toads are saying“. He’d tweet away like a racist bird.
And the toads would think that it was true because it fitted with their subconscious bigoted narratives. It was much easier to blame the dragonflies or waterboatmen than taking any form of responsibility. It certainly wasn’t the fault of those big toads with all the lily pads It certainly wasn’t their fault the poor toads had very little and struggled to put flies on the table, as those toads liked the Great Orange Toad, and he was always right and it was reality that had it wrong. He was very clear about this, in a rambling way.
“You can’t trust reality,“ The Great Orange Toad would say. “Reality is a bigly liar. I am the greatest scientist. No-one knows as much about science as me.“ And he seemed to genuinely believe this.
Other toads that owned multiple lily pads thought ‘here is a toad who will let me keep all these lily pads. I won’t need to look after the little toads or worry about whether they have enough. I can do what I want as the law doesn’t apply to the rich, thanks to the Great Orange Toad.’
One day, the toad married a yellow feather on a stick. Occasionally he’d rub himself up against it for a bit. After a while, he got bored of the yellow feather on a stick and sent it away. The next day, he got another yellow feather on a stick and occasionally rubbed himself up against it. The yellow feather on a sticks would change over the years. Somehow, over this time, several tadpoles emerged and a yellow feather on a stick. Which confused the Great Orange Toad, as he enjoyed rubbing himself against a yellow feather on a stick and yet, apparently, he wasn’t allowed to rub himself up against this yellow feather on a stick, although he did like people to know that if he was allowed e.g. he was another toad and not himself, The Great Toad, he would rub himself up against this yellow feather on a stick. When the tadpoles grew into toads, he placed a bit of moss on their heads and taught them to hate.
The Great Orange Toad decided to use coal to heat the pond. The weasels who owned the coal mines liked the Great Orange Toad.
“The weasels are great,“ the Great Orange Toad would say, “great guys. They love the Toad. They love the Pond. And by the way, we’re making this Pond great again. That’s what They say. We are doing a great job – the best.“
So the Great Orange Toad burned the coal. “The woke fishes,“ he’d say, “They say the Pond is getting warmer, that the coal makes the water warm. Bigly lies. Coal does not warm water. It’s the wrong type of heat. That’s a fact. The bigly scientists come to me, They say, Great Toad, that’s what They call me, Great Toad, we don’t know why the coal doesn’t heat the Pond. They come to me, the Great Toad, for the answers. I’m a bigly scientist. Wrong type of heat, I tell them, wrong heat. True fact. They say, wow Great Toad, you’re a bigly scientist, the bigliest.“
The Great Orange Toad invited some newts to measure the Pond to prove that it was bigly and that he was super important. They came back and said it was four foot by four foot. The Toad did not like this. So he had a sign put up that read “The bigly Pond is twelve feet by twenty feet – that’s what the ‘They’ say and the ‘They’ really know what they’re talking about. Great guys. Big penises. You ask anyone.“
One day, an Angry Stoat from the Red Forest arrived. He owned a massive hammer, which he used to hit the head of anybody in the Red Forest who disagreed with him. The Great Orange Toad liked this as he wasn’t terribly fond of people disagreeing with him. Mainly as he knew he was always right as the ‘They’ were fond of telling him. Unlike the ‘They’ who were full of bigly lies. The Great Orange Toad praised the stoat: ‘He’s a great stoat. Strong, you know. Love the hammer. In the Red Forest, they do things his way. They love that guy. Love the hammer.’
He was also terribly fond of the Fat Pig that lived in the Dark Cave that no-one could enter. “I love the Fat Pig. Love the Fat Pig. We have the same dietician. You know, he has the right idea, the Fat Pig. No-one is allowed in the Cave. No-one. None of the pigs are allowed out too. There’s no dragonflies in the Cave. No waterboatmen. No crime. The They will try to tell you that’s a coincidence. Bigly lies. We know who causes crime in the Pond. Not the Toads. Not the rich Toads. They all love the Pond. Love it. The Fat Pig is a strong leader. He’s a great pig. He’s bigly great. Love that pig.“
The Old Newt who lived in the Pond pointed at the Great Orange Toad and suggested that not everything he said was true and that actually dragonflies were quite nice. The creatures of the Pond listened to the Old Newt briefly, but when he started forgetting where his hat was all the time, they got bored and settled back into the comfortable bigotry of the Great Orange Toad who said no-one ever really listened to the Old Newt anyway and that it was in fact the Great Orange Toad that people had wanted all along, and that the Old Newt was a thief anyway.
The Great Orange Toad decided to give some of his friends jobs to help run the Pond. The Old Mad Otter who believed that medicine made you ill he put in charge of the sick residents of the Pond. The Greasy Crow who touched people even when they said no, he put in charge of saying whether something was morally right or wrong. The Bland Parrot who vacationed to the Red Forest every year, he put in charge of keeping secrets. He hired the Fighting Heron to be in charge of the tadpole crèche. “The dragonflies, the water boatmen, are coming in and stealing our tadpoles.“ “He’s right,“ agreed the Fighting Heron with its mouth full of tadpoles.
The Angry Stoat from the Red Forest with the hammer decided he’s quite like to own the little glade next to the Red Forest. The squirrels who lived there weren’t too keen for the Angry Stoat and his hammer to wander in. The Great Orange Toad wasn’t really bothered as the glade wasn’t in the Pond. And he quite liked the thought of having his own hammer. The Angry Stoat was strong. He was bigly strong too.
The Great Orange Toad decided that pebbles and stones should be built up around the Pond to stop the dragonflies and the waterboatmen getting in. “No-one should get in,“ said the Great Orange Toad, pointing at his PIGTIT and leering. As the pebbles and stones mounted up, so the Toad’s poisonous lies just echoed back and forth across the Pond, a cacophony of self-aggrandising falsehoods and bile. And the mound of stones and pebbles became higher and higher until they curved right over the Pond and formed an impenetrable Dome, cutting the Pond off from the rest of the valley.
And so it remained. Closed off from everyone. A Dome filled with the echoing cries of a xenophobic toad.
Many years later, a dashing Prince-impersonator on a purple charger arrived and started to remove the pebbles and the stones that had formed the Dome. The vision that befell his eyes was a grotesque one. Dead toads lay scattered about the surface of the fetid pond, its waters polluted and simmering.
On his shrivelled golden lily pad, a crown balancing on the moss on his head, sat the dying Great Orange Toad. Hoarsely it croaked through dried, cracked lips, blistered by heat and un-vaccine restrained pox, his final word: “The Great Toad is bigly great. Everyone loves the Great Toad. That’s what the They say. PIGTIT.“*1It is worth noting that ‘orange’ was also treated as synonym for ‘lying’ in the German Hessa dialect of that time due to the longstanding animosity towards the Dutch.
Treatises of Gloria 