Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. ~
Well, the updated fairy tales read the way Chesterton described them, but they didn’t all start that way. There’s a dark side, or there was as the stories were originally written. That’s right. They were edited for public consumption. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. People’s proclivities haven’t changed that much since the first fairy tale was spun, and that’s been a great many years.
Once upon a time
One source I referenced, BBC News, tells us that Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin are 4,000 years old; Jack and the Beanstalk is 5,000 and The Smith and the Devil a whopping 6,000 years old. I’ll admit it surprises me that people communicated well enough then to even consider telling stories. Yes, I’m that ignorant about the stages of development and had no idea the Bronze age had attained that degree of civilization. Or perhaps I’m overstating that. What I am clear on is that I didn’t know the original versions of those stories, and you might not either.
Would you have read the rest of the story to your children?
The answer is probably not. I have found numerous resources that relate the same brutal endings for a few of our favorite fairy tales. Certainly they don’t qualify for tie-it-all-in-a-pretty-bow conclusions that we love. Further, very similar stories existed across different countries. Odd, that, but it just proves we are more alike than not, regardless of where we come from. Back to the topic; here’s what I found referencing Bookriot’s site and my Brothers Grimm book:
- Snow White, or Little Snow White, was only seven when her mother (the Queen) wanted to kill her and eat her organs. That was in the first version. The Grimm Brothers changed the story to include a stepmother who simply wanted proof of death by seeing the organs.
- The original Cinderella was called Ashputtel, and her unsanitized story included her visits to her mother’s grave where she cried so often and for so long over a planted twig that it grew into a tree. Not so bad, you think? How about the stepsisters (not ugly, by the way) who butchered their feet* to fit into the slipper offered by the prince? *One cut off her big toe and the other forced the shoe onto her heel so violently [or cut off part of her heel] that her stockings were bloodied.
- Little Red Riding Hood was a sweet young thing, but not very bright. She met the wolf in the woods before she got to grandma’s house, but didn’t recognize him as a problem. Fair enough. She was sheltered. She then dilly-dallyed for so long the wolf got to the house ahead of her and swallowed her grandmother whole, then dressed in her clothes and got into bed. When Little Red arrived, he swallowed her whole as well. But THEN, a woodsman came by and decided to check on the old lady. When he saw the wolf, he took out shears (who carries shears around with them?) and slit its stomach open to retrieve the girl and the grandmother. But the wolf still wasn’t dead somehow, so they loaded up his belly with stones so he’d be immobile and die. There’s more, if you want to check it out.
I will just say that those boys (the Grimms) were well-named. However, in their defense, they didn’t write the stories. They collected tales that had been handed down orally for centuries. As they were born and raised in Germany, it is likely many of their stories originated there. However, the rest of Europe also had its share, as well as other parts of the world. Too dreadful for children, you say? Yes, but our precious youngsters weren’t the original target audience.
C. S. Lewis was intelligent, so it’s difficult to imagine that he wasn’t aware of the darker side of fairy tales. Perhaps he was suggesting that we can return to embracing the whimsical side of life that we believe we outgrew at the ripe old age of 12.
Why tell stories, anyway?
Well before oral communication was a thing, people drew pictures on cave walls to pass along the location of food sources for the hunters and gatherers. As early humans developed, they apparently allocated time for leisure and entertainment. I can picture it now, the chatty one in the bunch spinning a story about seeing Bigfoot. How hairy and ferocious he looked as he peered through the cave opening, hoping to surprise a loner as he made his way out for a breath of air. And how on that night nobody, but nobody, decided to head out of the cave for any reason.
No, the stories weren’t for littles, not originally. Apart from dispensing practical information for hunting, stories also taught moral lessons and ways to react to adverse conditions. Unsurprisingly, I have never watched a film based on fairy tales and thought, “So many lessons learned here. I need to take this to heart.” Not once. Reading the original stories, I have a different take. The content is much grittier, and happy endings are not a given.
Still. I am gaining a new appreciation of the unflinching approach taken hundreds of years ago. In the 19th century writers (no, I don’t have names) softened the stories to transform the old tales into narratives suitable for children. That’s likely as it should be, but it’s akin to listening to the first half of a Paul Harvey story (check out an examples here: https://youtu.be/2vgBwOJ3dEg). With the newer versions of these ancient tales, you are reading only part of the narrative, and it isn’t particularly satisfying.
I just purchased a Grimm’s Fairy Tales book that contains over 60 stories. I believe I will make it a point to read them all, one per week, to see if I can figure out what each one is trying to tell me. I’ll either come out the other side with a bucketful of wisdom or nightmares from the barbarism. You never know what kind of lessons you’ll encounter when you take a good, hard look.
Feel free to follow up to make sure I’m good on my intentions. Even if I don’t follow through, perhaps I’ll at least learn enough to be able to make up a tall tale about why I fell off the wain. I know there has to be a handful of my readers who’ll be glad to hold my feet to the fire.
You?
