What are Fairy Tales ?

In the Grimm version of 1812, the huntsman is sent by Snow White’s jealous mother (not her stepmother) to bring back her lungs and liver, which she plans to salt, cook and eat. The Grimm tale also includes the mother’s final punishment: she is forced to attend Snow White’s wedding wearing red-hot iron shoes (forged by the dwarves in some versions) and dance in them until she drops dead.

In the early centuries, the story of the Little Red Riding Hood was used to warn children of the dangerous wild animals in the woods. People were really afraid of wolves back then!

The popularity of fairy tales was boosted by Grimms’ Children’s And Household Tales in 1812.

They are all fairy tales. They belong to no one and have been adapted and retold countless times.

In the seventh edition of the Grimm collection (1857), which was considerably darker than the more famous Perrault retelling of 200 years before, Cinderella’s stepsisters are beautiful but evil, like their mother, who presents them with a knife and tells them to use it to cut their feet until the golden slipper fits.

Fairy tales have been reinvented by various cultures over the years. Hollywood has created popular movie versions of Cinderella, Snow White and Alice in Wonderland. Johnny Depp also starred as the Hatter in Alice in Wonderland (2010).

In general, both Perrault’s and Grimms’ fables were more violent and gruesome than our versions.

They are all fairy tales. They belong to no one and have been adapted and retold countless times.

One of the oldest known versions of the story is a Magyar folk tale. The frog is guarding a well and won’t allow the girl to draw water for her family. His demands become ever more bold until finally he insists to the girl’s father that he let her go to bed with him.

In Roald Dahl’s version of the Little Red Riding Hood, Red Riding Hood is not as helpless as she was in the story we grew up with. She actually strikes back against the wolf!

Fairy tales do not need to be written down to be legitimate. Many tales that your parents or grandparents may have told you off the top of their heads are also fairy tales.

Perrault has the wolf eat Red Riding Hood while the Grimms have Snow White’s jealous mother planning to cook and eat her lungs and liver.

In the Grimm 1857 version, Rumpelstiltskin goes properly mad: “in his rage he drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized the left foot with both hands and tore himself in two.”

. Fairy stories only became associated with children in the mid-19th century.

In Carlo Collodi’s original story, first published in 1883, Pinocchio falls asleep in front of the fire and his feet burn off (he’s already killed the cricket with a wooden mallet). He then gets turned into a donkey, tied to a rock and thrown over a cliff (the man who bought him wants to kill and skin him in order to make a drum)

If a story takes place in a magical land, with fantastical creatures who perform wondrous tasks, it is very likely a fairy tale.

The original title of Sleeping Beauty is La Belle Au Bois Dormant in French, which means The Beauty in the Sleeping Wood. The Grimm brothers titled it “Little Briar Rose” in their collection.

Fairy tales are important because they spark the imagination. They give us an outlet for experiencing things in our minds before we experience them in the real world.

. It has been calculated that to turn a frog into a prince would require an amount of energy equal to about 100,000 Hiroshima atom bombs.

It is where the troubles of the real world can meet the supernatural and mix things up.

In a fairy tale anything can happen and any kind of creature can exist, and when anything can happen, we can find solutions to things in our real lives.

“Snow White and Rose Red” is another story found in Grimm’s Fairy Tales. It is rather different from the Snow White tale mentioned earlier, as there isn’t an evil queen or huntsman in the story. There’s a vicious bear instead though!

Fairy tales are well-liked by famous authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and C.S. Lewis. Charles Dickens also said that fairy tales helped to keep him ever young!

Through imagination, we learn about our world. We can explore outcomes and possibilities.

. Research last year claimed Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin may be 4,000 years old