Prowling about, she finds the bears' beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear's bed. The old woman eats the Wee Bear's porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Assured that no one is home, she walks in.

She looks through a window, peeps through the keyhole, and lifts the latch. She is impudent, bad-mannered, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty, and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction. She has been sent out by her family because she is a disgrace to them. An old woman approaches the bears' house. One day they make porridge for breakfast, but it is too hot to eat, so they decide to take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. Each of these 'bachelor' bears has his own porridge bowl, chair, and bed. Southey describes them as very good-natured, trusting, harmless, tidy, and hospitable. In Robert Southey's version of the tale ('The Story of the Three Bears'), three anthropomorphic bears – 'a little, small, wee bear, a middle-sized bear, and a great, huge bear' – live together in a house in the woods. Illustration in 'The Story of the Three Bears' second edition, 1839, published by W. 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' is one of the most popular fairy tales in the English language. The story has elicited various interpretations and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media. What was originally a frightening oral tale became a cozy family story with only a hint of menace. The second version replaced the old woman with a young girl named Goldilocks, and the third and by far best-known version replaced the original bear trio with Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. When the bears return and discover her, she wakes up, jumps out of the window, and is never seen again. She eats some of their porridge, sits down on one of their chairs and breaks it, and sleeps in one of their beds. The original version of the tale tells of an obscene old woman who enters the forest home of three bachelor bears while they are away. ' Goldilocks and the Three Bears' (originally titled ' The Story of the Three Bears') is a 19th-century British fairy tale of which three versions exist. Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1918, in English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steel

Goldilocks original story