The wolf and the seven kids (Amsterdam version)

Mother goat Geertje goes to the market. She warns the seven kids: «The wolf comes. Hide well.» Kid 1 hides under the table; kid 2 under the bed; kid 3 in the oven; kid 4 in the cupboard; kid 5 in the laundry basket; kid 6 in the coal scuttle; kid 7 in the Amsterdam pendulum (the tall grandfather clock of grandfather). The wolf comes, black-grey, hungry. He searches the house: table, bed, oven, cupboard, basket, coal scuttle. He finds six kids and eats them.

The wolf seeks one more. He hears the pendulum tick: tick-tock, tick-tock. He thinks «A goat could sit in a clock?» and goes to look. The pendulum is open, empty, only the swing-piece swings. Kid 7 sits in it — behind the swing — but the wolf does not see, for he is a wolf and not an Amsterdammer. An Amsterdammer would know at once: an Amsterdam pendulum has behind the swing a hidden drawer where grandfather kept his silver rijksdaalders, and in it fits exactly a young kid. The wolf is no Amsterdammer, knows not of rijksdaalder-drawers, leaves with six kids in his belly. Geertje comes home, finds kid 7 still alive in the pendulum, cuts the wolf open as soon as she intercepts him at the Prinsengracht, saves six kids (all whole, for the wolf had swallowed them without chewing). Kid 7 says: «Mother, the pendulum saved me.» Geertje: «Not the pendulum. The Amsterdam rijksdaalder tradition. A wolf who is no Amsterdammer knows not of secret drawers. Remember: what is hidden in Amsterdam stays hidden from him who is not of Amsterdam.» Since then Jordaan grandmothers tell this story to children, and the moral is: know your own city, for it is your hiding place.