Grimm brothers’ fairytales have blood and horror restored in new translation

The Guardian ^ | 11/12/2014 | Alison Flood

[Borges]

Rapunzel is impregnated by her prince, the evil queen in Snow White is the princess’s biological mother, plotting to murder her own child, and a hungry mother in another story is so “unhinged and desperate” that she tells her daughters: “I’ve got to kill you so I can have something to eat.” Never before published in English, the first edition of the Brothers Grimms’ tales reveals an unsanitised version of the stories that have been told at bedtime for more than 200 years.

The Grimms – Jacob and Wilhelm – published their first take on the tales for which they would become known around the world in December 1812, a second volume following in 1815. They would go on to publish six more editions, polishing the stories, making them more child-friendly, adding in Christian references and removing mentions of fairies before releasing the seventh edition – the one best known today – in 1857.

[Shamrock498]

agreed

[Borges]

They weren’t intended for kids. They were a collection of European folk tales.

[RikaStrom]

Eht Hmmm (looking at the Christmas Tree) ;-)

[Gefn]

Betteheim’s “Uses of Enchantment”, used the old Grimm tales, not the Disneyfied ones.

I’ll never forget sitting in a class, and my fellow peers were thunderstruck that Cinderella was not a happy story

[bgill]

Then there was Mother Goose with Jack busting his head open, babies falling from tree limbs, children burning in their homes, a dude falling off a wall breaking into so many pieces and rats running everywhere including into your eye hole. Yes, those should send everyone into peaceful slumber.