Fairy Tales

[Xepher]

It occurs to me that the world needs more fairy tales. Not just fantasy stories, though I do love those, but real fairy tales. Those weird, moral-hefting tidbits meant to frighten children and such. If anyone's read "The Diamond Age" (Neal Stephenson) then you know the bit where he explains how important it is for children to grow up with darkness in their stories. Neil Gaiman wrote a good one called "Coraline" that I read recently. The opening quote of that book is from G.K. Chesterton: "Fairy tales are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten!"

Today I was looking over Ursula Vernon's website... http://www.metalandmagic.com and she's recently finished a short illustrated tale that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's a "children's story" for the most part, but it's intelligent and dark as well. Reminded me a lot of a "Lilo & Stitch" if it had been done by the Brothers Grimm. http://www.webcomicsnation.com/uvernon/littlecreature/series.php?view=archive&chapter=4602&mpe=1&step=1

[thefemnazi]

I love fairy stories.  But I love them in their original states, before the patriachs screwed them up and made all the girls wusses that had to be saved by idiots carrying axes.

I have a great collection of modern fairy stories called "Don't Bet On The Prince."  Good stuff for the feminists amoung us.  Grimm's Grimmest is also great, and pretty close to the original versions of the German tales.

[Ashley_Rose]

*humps Harm*

[Kira Dwenna]

Forgive me for being uneducated, Xeph, but have you any clue if the religious ones came as a result of the Church trying to cast the die in their favor?

It's a weird question, I know.  The reason I'm asking it is because I've often checked (and re-checked) a book out from my local library called The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, and it has an entire section in there devoted to religious fairy tales - i.e., one about St. Peter, etc.

Now, I know that a lot of pagan holidays got the 'religion' stamp on them when Christianity came through their areas.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?

But did those fairy tales actually begin as religious fairy tales, or did they start as something else (like the aforementioned 'holidays')?

And yes, I'm strictly talking about the Brothers Grimm at the moment.  Fairy tale is a bit too wide of a field to drop someone into without a few directions.  

[Xepher]

I honestly don't know. I've never seen a "religious fairy tale" well... beyond things like "Adam and Eve" or "Noah and the Ark" :-)

[thefemnazi]

Christian Mythology, the stories that Xeph is talking about, were slowly created and refined orally by Judaism cultures, like any other mythlology set.  The religion fairy tales, it very much depends on the story itself.  Many were created by the church and then propogated to help Christianity dominated, but some are old "paganistic" fairy stories twisted into something that won't get the storyteller arrested for being a heretic.  And still some, the "younger ones" are truly created by the masses.

A similar evolution can be found in the fairy stories that everyone knows.  In the original oral stories, the girls portrayed as getting into trouble (the red riding hood archetype) either save themselves through their own clever minds, or they die.  However, the brothers Grimm and Perrault, when they moved the stories from oral to written, changed things, because they did not believe little girls of the noble class should hear such horrid things.  Grimm just edited them slightly, but Perrault practically outright killed them.  Hence, fairy stories that we all know and love show the female heroines fainting and calling for help alot.  And being rescued by big strong men whom they must immediately marry.

[Kira Dwenna]

Thank you.  That's been something my curiousity has tweaked around for a while now.

Xeph- I shall try to make it to the library and pull out the good ol' Brothers' Grimm volume so I can show you what I'm talking about.

[thefemnazi]

Hey, I live to overshare.