I
have always loved reading fairy tales.
When I was little, I had a book called 50 Famous Fairy Tales, which I read hundreds of times. Most, if not all, of its stories come from
the Grimm Brothers. The book has all of
the old favorites like Cinderella and Snow White, but I also became acquainted
with such lesser known stories as Clever Gretel; Six Soldiers of Fortune; and
The Spindle, the Shuttle, and the Needle.
I had planned to reread at least part of 50 Famous Fairy Tales for this review, but then I realized that my
old book is somewhere at my mother’s house, and I didn’t have a chance to
search for it. Not to worry,
though. I remembered that a few years
ago I added Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales
to my personal library. It’s a lot more
interesting.
Jacob
and Wilhelm Grimm first published their collection of fairy tales in Germany in
1812 and 1815. These stories had been
handed down for centuries among the people of northern Europe. Grimm’s
Complete Fairy Tales, incorporating 211 stories, is unabridged and
unfiltered. For example, in its version of
Cinderella, the evil stepsisters cut off parts of their feet as they try to
cram them into the slipper and be claimed by the prince. Rather Grimm, eh?
Then
there’s the story of Rapunzel. Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales pretty much
follows the familiar storyline. The
witch discovers that the prince has been visiting Rapunzel in the tower via
Rapunzel’s hair ladder. The witch cuts
off Rapunzel’s hair, banishes Rapunzel, and waits for the prince’s next visit. When the prince climbs the hair ladder this last
time, he finds not his beloved, but the mean old witch. He jumps from the tower and lands on a bed of
thorns, which scratch his eyes and blind him.
He wanders aimlessly until – lo and behold – one day he finds
Rapunzel. Her tears heal his eyes so that
he can see again, and they live happily ever after. There’s just one detail in the Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales that I have
not found in any other version of Rapunzel.
When the prince comes across Rapunzel, she is living with her twins, a
boy and a girl. Hmmm…sounds like there’s
another story behind all of those tower trysts.
Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales
also contains some really obscure tales, like Lean Lisa, which is hilarious,
and Old Rinkrank (what a great name!).
Some stories even explain how certain things came to be as they are, as
in The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean.
The three escape certain death in a kitchen and set out to find their
fortune in foreign lands. When they come
to a brook, the straw stretches herself across it so that the other two can
cross. The coal gets scared halfway across, stops, and burns the straw in
two. Both fall to their death in the
water below. The bean laughs so hard at
all of this that she splits herself open.
A kind tailor passing by sews her up, using black thread. Therefore, all beans since then have a black
seam.
Gore, false
imprisonment, illegitimate children, and schadenfreude: great stuff for the
kiddies to read.
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