The Absolute Gospel According To Hansel And Gretel

Once upon a time, there was a less-than-reliable-in-the-truth-telling department brother/sister partnership, their names: Hansel and Gretel van Oberschnarfenheisenburgenhausenbrecher. Well, one day, Hansel and Gretel ventured into the Black Forest in search of the rare gateau bush, in order to feed their poor parents, their twenty seven brothers and sisters, and themselves. After a couple of hours skipping merrily and gaily through the forest, Hansel stopped dead. After Gretel had performed emergency CPR on her brother, he stood up and dusted himself down.
"Gretel," he said, "I think we're lost."
"Lost?"
"Yes, lost."
"Waaaaargh!" Gretel cried "How do you know we're lost?"
"Well, remember the last time we got lost? I saw that bush over there, and I can see that bush over there again (it's over there), so I know exactly where we are: we're lost."
"Oh fair enough." said Gretel, losing interest quickly, "Ooh, look, a cottage of artichokes and broccoli." She pointed out a cottage made of artichokes and broccoli (and lettuce leaves and cauliflowers and peas).
"That's nothing." said Hansel "Look at next door." Gretel looked at the cottage next door to the green vegetable cottage and saw a veritable wonderland of sweets and biscuits. Liquorice doors! Toffee walls! A roof of custard creams and bourbon biscuits! A doorhandle of solid fudge! A garden packed to the chocolate finger fences with Blackjack bushes and marshmallow plants! A river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies! A privy built out of radishes and cabbages! Hansel and Gretel ran happily up to the cottage and immediately began to feast on the dentists' nightmare. While they were halfway through a Curly Wurly window sill, a gnarled old woman with green skin and a wart on the end of her long pointed nose hobbled out of the sweet house. She was dressed entirely in black, from the tip of her tall pointed hat down to her steel capped Doc Marten boots.
"Oi!" she shrieked "You kids! Stop eating moi house!"
"Oops." Hansel said guiltily.
"Sorry, old lady," Gretel apologised as sincerely as she could, "But we're kids, the cottage is made of sweets... well, you know the score."
"Why don't you come inside?" the old lady said craftily, wringing her hands together melodramatically, "Oi've got lots more sweets inside, which oi mainly use for repairs."
"Okey dokey!"
Following Hansel and Gretel inside, the old lady cackled evilly, as witches are inclined to do.

"So, moi dears, what are your names?"
"I'm Hansel van Oberschnarfenheisenburgenhausenbrecher," said Hansel van Oberschnarfenheisenburgenhausenbrecher, "And this is my sister, Gretel van Oberschnarfenheisenburgenhausenbrecher."
"Hallo." said Gretel van Ober, etc etc.
"You two need a bath." Old Lady said. "Oi'll run you a couple of baths each. No, oi'll run you each a couple of baths. No, hang on... Oh, oi've got it, oi'll run a couple of baths for you, one each. Yeah, that's it. Two baths, two people, one bath each. Yeah, that's the one."
"Thanks, old lady." Hansel said after ensuring she had finished, "cos we, being a couple of kids, do enjoy and look forward to bathtime."
"Um, excuse me," Gretel said nervously, "But are those two things there our baths? i mean, the two cauldron-shaped things?"
"Yup."
"But, um, they're cauldrons. Um. Cauldron-shaped."
"Yup."
"Oh, okay."
"Eat your sweets." Old Lady ordered, "Fatten yourselves up. Feel free to nibble on the furniture, it's real nougat."
The siblings van Oberschnarfenheisenburgenhausenbrecher dug merrily into their carefully controlled diet of, basically, sugar in a sugar casing topped with sugar and marinated in sugar, wholly unsuspecting of the evil fate the Old Lady was intending for them. Meanwhile, the aforementioned pensioner was filling the baths-not-cauldrons with hot, slightly salted water, and chopping up a few carrots as a side dish. She went back into the living room to check up on her dinner.
"Eating well, are we?" she asked Hansel, while pinching his side, testing for fat. There was plenty of it by now. Hansel made affirmative grunts in between toffee and liquorice. Gretel nodded her agreement and took a brief respite from her fudge to ask:
"Why are you so keen to fill us up with sweets, Old Lady?"
"Never you mind, you ingrate." Old Lady snapped, and then muttered to herself, "About twenty minutes over a hot flame should do it."
"I mean," Gretel continued, "Most grown-ups have a coronary if we're seen to have more than two jelly-tots, yet here you are letting us eat your entire home."
"Stop yer yakkin'. Here, have another bit of table leg." The old lady left the room to stand in a darkened corner and wring her hands again. Oh, melodrama.

"Burp." said Hansel, much later, and leant back. "I don't think I could ever eat another sweet ever again. Ever." he added for good measure.
"Me neither." his sister concurred, staring at the still considerable amount of unlikely sugar-based furnishings which lay all around them.
"Don't worry, litle... er, large ones, you won't have to." said Old Lady, stepping ominously out of the shadows. "The oven's ready."
"Eh?"
"Er, oi mean your baths are ready." Phew, she thought, oi think oi got away with that one. "Come on, then."
Hansel and Gretel climbed awkwardly to their respective feet, taking care not to make any sudden movements which might unsettle their frightened stomachs, and followed Old Lady into her kitchen, where the two black round cauldron shaped baths lay waiting. Beside the baths was a chopping board, upon which was a stack of chopped vegetables.
"Climb in," the elderly one said, "The water's still nice and hot."
The now obese brother and sister clambered into the baths, both looking rather suspiciously at their host.
"Ouch!" Gretel yelped, "This water's 'ot!"
"Well, what do you expect?" Old Lady snapped, "Oi can't cook in cold water now, can oi?"
"Cook? Are you planning to cook us?" Gretel began to climb out of the cauldron. Old Lady's face broke into the very picture of innocence.
"No, of course not!" she said in a voice brimming with reason and sincerity. She didn't mean a word of it, of course. "How could oi even think of cooking and eating you, in a lovely garlic sauce with... um, no, oi'm not planning to cook you. Um. Haha. Ulp."
"I think you are." Gretel said accusingly. She and Hansel cornered the old hag.
"I think you are too." Hansel said. Before Old Lady could put up a fight, or turn them into frogs, or whatever, the two van Oberschnarfenheisenburgenhausenbrecher kids beat her into submission and piled her into her own cauldron, and escaped into the night with their lives (but not with their clothes, unless a part of the narrative has been missed out).

That was the story as told to me roughly first hand and probably with a little tweaking of the facts (such as the entire story).
The moral of this tale is:

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