In The Olden Days When Wishing

This is the celebrated opening line of "The Frog King" (Der Froschkönig), the very first tale in the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812). Its placement as the collection's first story was deliberate; the phrase "in the olden days, when wishing still worked" (in den alten Zeiten, wo das Wünschen noch geholfen hat) establishes the enchanted logic of the entire collection — a world governed by different rules than the modern one.