Zena D'Silva

There once lived a young baker and his wife in a little village. Pa baker and Ma baker loved little children but couldn’t have any themselves. So they adopted 12 little children from the parson’s orphanage. ‘What do we name them?’ Pa baker asked his wife one night. The wife unable to sleep was counting sheep. ‘One sheep, two sheep, three sheep…’ Pa baker mistaking the numbers for names christened his children one, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve. The children never went out alone. They would eat together, play together and even go to school together. Very soon they came to be known in the village as the ‘baker’s dozen’. Then one day the parson asked Pa baker if he could care for another child. He was none too pleased. The parson convinced him God would shower him with blessings, peace and prosperity. Pa baker finally relented. He took the waif-like creature under his wing. But that didn’t change a thing. The villagers continued calling his brood of thirteen the ‘baker’s dozen’.


Poster on a bakery.