The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was "The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was" or "The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear" () is a German folktale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is tale number 4 in the collection. It was also included by Andrew Lang in "The Blue Fairy Book" (1889). The Grimms' first, 1812 edition contained a much shorter version, "Good Bowling and Card Playing" (). It is classified as its own Aarne–Thompson index type 326 of a male protagonist's unsuccessful
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was their wedding, the boy's continuing complaints annoyed his wife to no end. Reaching her wits' end, she sent for a bucketful of stream water, complete with gudgeons. She tossed the freezing water onto her husband while he was asleep. As he awoke, shuddering, he exclaimed that while he had finally learned to shudder, he still did not know what true fear was. The fairy tale is based on a tale from the German state of Mecklenburg and one from Zwehrn in Hesse, probably from Dorothea Viehmann, as told by Ferdinand Siebert from the area of the Schwalm. In the first