Art & Literature Top 10 Gruesome Fairy Tale Origins

Fairy tales of the past were often full of macabre and gruesome twists and endings. These days, companies like Disney have sanitized them for a modern audience that is clearly deemed unable to cope, and so we see happy endings everywhere. This list looks at some of the common endings we are familiar with – and explains the original gruesome origins. If you know of any others, be sure to mention it in the comments – or if you know of a fairy tale that is just outright gruesome (in its original or modern form), speak up.

10: The Pied Piper

In the tale of the Pied Piper, we have a village overrun with rats. A man arrives dressed in clothes of pied (a patchwork of colors) and offers to rid the town of the vermin. The villagers agree to pay a vast sum of money if the piper can do it – and he does. He plays music on his pipe which draws all the rats out of the town. When he returns for payment – the villagers won’t cough up so the Pied Piper decides to rid the town of children too! In most modern variants, the piper draws the children to a cave out of the town and when the townsfolk finally agree to pay up, he sends them back. In the darker original, the piper leads the children to a river where they all drown (except a lame boy who couldn’t keep up). Some modern scholars say that there are connotations of pedophilia in this fairy tale.


9: Little Red Riding Hood

The version of this tale that most of us are familiar with ends with Riding Hood being saved by the woodsman who kills the wicked wolf. But in fact, the original French version (by Charles Perrault) of the tale was not quite so nice. In this version, the little girl is a well bred young lady who is given false instructions by the wolf when she asks the way to her grandmothers. Foolishly riding hood takes the advice of the wolf and ends up being eaten. And here the story ends. There is no woodsman – no grandmother – just a fat wolf and a dead Red Riding Hood. The moral to this story is to not take advice from strangers.


8: The Little Mermaid

The 1989 version of the Little Mermaid might be better known as “The big whopper!” In the Disney version, the film ends with Ariel the mermaid being changed into a human so she can marry Eric. They marry in a wonderful wedding attended by humans and merpeople. But, in the very first version by Hans Christian Andersen, the mermaid sees the Prince marry a princess and she despairs. She is offered a knife with which to stab the prince to death, but rather than do that she jumps into the sea and dies by turning to froth. Hans Christian Andersen modified the ending slightly to make it more pleasant. In his new ending, instead of dying when turned to froth, she becomes a “daughter of the air” waiting to go to heaven – so, frankly, she is still dead for all intents and purposes.


7: Snow White

In the tale of snow white that we are all familiar with, the Queen asks a huntsman to kill her and bring her heart back as proof. Instead, the huntsman can’t bring himself to do it and returns with the heart of a boar. Now, fortunately disney hasn’t done too much damage to this tale, but they did leave out one important original element: in the original tale, the Queen actually asks for Snow White’s liver and lungs – which are to be served for dinner that night! Also in the original, Snow White wakes up when she is jostled by the prince’s horse as he carries her back to his castle – not from a magical kiss. What the prince wanted to do with a dead girl’s body I will leave to your imagination. Oh – in the Grimm version, the tale ends with the Queen being forced to dance to death in red hot iron shoes!


6: Sleeping Beauty

In the original sleeping beauty, the lovely princess is put to sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle. She sleeps for one hundred years when a prince finally arrives, kisses her, and awakens her. They fall in love, marry, and (surprise surprise) live happily ever after. But alas, the original tale is not so sweet (in fact, you have to read this to believe it.) In the original, the young woman is put to sleep because of a prophesy, rather than a curse. And it isn’t the kiss of a prince which wakes her up: the king seeing her asleep, and rather fancying having a bit, rapes her. After nine months she gives birth to two children (while she is still asleep). One of the children sucks her finger which removes the piece of flax which was keeping her asleep. She wakes up to find herself raped and the mother of two kids.


5: Rumpelstiltskin

This fair tale is a little different from the others because rather than sanitizing the original, it was modified by the original author to make it more gruesome. In the original tale, Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold for a young girl who faces death unless she is able to perform the feat. In return, he asks for her first born child. She agrees – but when the day comes to hand over the kid, she can’t do it. Rumpelstiltskin tells her that he will let her off the bargain if she can guess his name. She overhears him singing his name by a fire and so she guesses it correctly. Rumpelstiltskin, furious, runs away, never to be seen again. But in the updated version, things are a little messier. Rumpelstiltskin is so angry that he drives his right foot deep into the ground. He then grabs his left leg and rips himself in half. Needless to say this kills him.


4: Goldilocks and the Three Bears

In this heart warming tale, we hear of pretty little Goldilocks who finds the house of the three bears. She sneaks inside and eats their food, sits in their chairs, and finally falls asleep on the bed of the littlest bear. When the bears return home they find her asleep – she awakens and escapes out the window in terror. The original tale (which actually only dates to 1837) has two possible variations. In the first, the bears find Goldilocks and rip her apart and eat her. In the second, Goldilocks is actually an old hag who (like the sanitized version) jumps out of a window when the bears wake her up. The story ends by telling us that she either broke her neck in the fall, or was arrested for vagrancy and sent to the “House of Correction”.

3: Hansel and Gretel

In the widely known version of Hansel and Gretel, we hear of two little children who become lost in the forest, eventually finding their way to a gingerbread house which belongs to a wicked witch. The children end up enslaved for a time as the witch prepares them for eating. They figure their way out and throw the witch in a fire and escape. In an earlier French version of this tale (called The Lost Children), instead of a witch we have a devil. Now the wicked old devil is tricked by the children (in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel) but he works it out and puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on to bleed (that isn’t an error – he really does). The children pretend not to know how to get on the sawhorse so the devil’s wife demonstrates. While she is lying down the kids slash her throat and escape.


2: The Girl Without Hands

Frankly, the revised version of this fairy tale is not a great deal better than the original, but there are sufficient differences to include it here. In the new version, a poor man is offered wealth by the devil if he gives him whatever is standing behind his mill. The poor man thinks it is an apple tree and agrees – but it is actually his daughter. The devil tries to take the daughter but can’t – because she is pure, so he threatens to take the father unless the daughter allows her father to chop off her hands. She agrees and the father does the deed. Now – that is not particularly nice, but it is slightly worse in some of the earlier variants in which the young girl chops off her own arms in order to make herself ugly to her brother who is trying to rape her. In another variant, the father chops off the daughter’s hands because she refuses to let him have sex with her.


1: Cinderella

In the modern Cinderella fairy tale we have the beautiful Cinderella swept off her feet by the prince and her wicked step sisters marrying two lords – with everyone living happily ever after. The fairy tale has its origins way back in the 1st century BC where Strabo’s heroine was actually called Rhodopis, not Cinderella. The story was very similar to the modern one with the exception of the glass slippers and pumpkin coach. But, lurking behind the pretty tale is a more sinister variation by the Grimm brothers: in this version, the nasty step-sisters cut off parts of their own feet in order to fit them into the glass slipper – hoping to fool the prince. The prince is alerted to the trickery by two pigeons who peck out the step sister’s eyes. They end up spending the rest of their lives as blind beggars while Cinderella gets to lounge about in luxury at the prince’s castle.

10 Biblical Facts That Everyone Gets Wrong

10: Adam and Eve

Contrary to popular belief, Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden not because they ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but in order to prevent them from eating from the tree of life (both forbidden trees are in Genesis 2:9) which would have made them eternal. God doesn’t like competition! Here is the verse (Genesis 3:22-23): “And he said: Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure, to till the earth from which he was taken.”


9: Jonah and the Whale

We all know the tale of Jonah and the whale… but how well do we know it? Well enough to know that he wasn’t eaten by a whale? It was no mammal that ate Jonah – it was a huge fish – though its type is not mentioned. Of course, I am presuming that everyone reading this list knows that a whale is not a fish.


8:Samson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah is a famous story from the Old Testament which ends rather badly, as Samson’s long hair is cut short to destroy his strength. The common misconception is that Delilah was the one to give him the chop – a kind of ancient hobbit if you will. But in fact, it was Delilah’s servant who did it.


7:Rapture

The “Rapture” is not in the Bible! Despite being believed by a large number of protestants (many of whom also believe that only that which is in the Bible can be true) it was actually invented in the 1600s by one Cotton Mather – otherwise famous for murdering women by strangling them to death (by hanging) in the Salem witch trials. The term in the Bible commonly mistranslated to the word “rapture” actually comes from the Greek ἁρπάζω (harpazo) which actually means “caught up” or “taken away” and it refers to one person only (Philip).


6:Three Wise Men

There weren’t three and they didn’t visit Jesus in a manger. The Bible gives neither the number of men (but does the number of gifts as three, which is probably where this misconception stems from). Additionally, Herod demanded the death of all boys under two, making it probable that Christ had been born up to two years prior. Also, the wise men visited Jesus when he lived in a house according to the Biblical account in Matthew 2:11.

5: Get Rich Quick

The Bible does not condemn drinking alcohol (remember that Jesus’ first public miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding party), or gambling and betting. The closest it comes to the latter is to recommend against get rich quick schemes (Ecclesiastes 5:10) and loving money excessively. Be sure to remember that next time you are sipping your wine at the local casino. Addendum: “The Bible does NOT condemn the drinking of alcohol – that misconception is a holdover from Calvinistic and Puritanical Protestantism – which worked its way into Methodism etc; What the Bible DOES say is “Be not DRUNK of the fruit of the vine” – at the same time many gainsayers will claim that the water was turned into grape juice – but the original Gospels clearly use a word which translates from the original Greek as WINE a “fermented grape beverage”. [addendum courtesy of carra 23]. Traditionally drunk means “falling down drunk” – in other words, the loss of the will to control oneself.

4: Help

“God helps those who help themselves” – a wise and good quote that everyone knows is from the Bible. But, in fact, it isn’t. It was a man, not a god who coined the well known (and overused) proverb. It was Benjamin Franklin in his Poor Richard’s almanac.


3: Brother’s Keeper

Another quote we all know from the Bible is “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Now ask yourself – do you know what God’s answer was to this question? You don’t – no one does because the Bible doesn’t tell us what He replied. If God were to have answered, we can presume it would have been in the affirmative if all of the other commands to look after our brothers in the New Testament are taken into consideration.


2: Christmas Travel

The Virgin Mary is not described in the Bible as having traveled to Bethlehem on a donkey. No mention is made at all in the gospels of the mode of transport used in the journey. The first mention of her riding a donkey comes from the non-Biblical Protoevangelium of James which you can read here. It was written around 150AD and is also one of the oldest works to describe Mary as a virgin both before and after the birth of Christ. The exact quote from the Protoevangelium is “And he [Joseph] saddled the ass, and set her upon it;”


1: Horned Moses

This has been mentioned in passing in comments on previous lists but it definitely warrants a mention here. Unlike most of the misconceptions here which deal specifically with what the Bible says or doesn’t say, this one is a misconception about the translation of part of it. The Old Testament refers to Moses as having horns on his head after he went up the mountain to see God. This prompted Michelangelo to sculpt him with the horns. Many people believe that this was due to a mistranslation of the description of Moses but, in fact, it isn’t. Moses really is described as being horned. And the reason for this? In Old Testament times, a person who was believed to have seen or been touched by God was described as having horns (or rays of light) coming from their head. It was an ancient symbol much like today’s glorious.

Fairy: True or False?

A dead fairy discovered at Derbyshire Countryside.
The 8 inch remains complete with wings , skin, teeth and flowing red hair have been examined by anthropologists and forensic experts who can confirm that the body is genuine.
Please see below pictures, true or false?

How To Make Your Fairies Happy

Fairies will stick around your home tending to your gardens; the fruits, flowers and even the vegetables. They love to go about fixing things and they even like to clean. But, there are things that you must do if you would like to keep the fairies around. They do what they do because it is in their nature, but if they become unhappy they will move on to a new home where they feel more appreciated. So, in order to make sure that your fairies are feeling very appreciated there are a few steps that you can take that will keep them happy and flitting around your property!

First of all you will want to make your fairy friends a home that will help them to stay happy and content. Use things that you find in nature to make it with. Build it in a nice secluded area where they will feel safe and hidden and where no one might accidentally step on it or disturb them. Start out by collecting some bigger sized rocks that you can stack into an igloo like shape, making sure to leave a doorway. Build a table out of sticks for inside and use smaller stones for seats. Small shells make great dishes. Use leaves to make a comfy bed for the fairies and flower buds for pillows.

Leave the fairies some edible treats, like berries and sweets that they can eat. Berries are one of their favorite foods and any kind of them will do. But they also like human snacks because it gives them a treat that they don’t get often. Make them a special batch of rock candy, using real oils like lemon and peppermint. When you make muffins and cupcakes leave them any crumbs that may be left, or even a whole one they can snack on for the whole week!

Fairies enjoy music very much and they even like it when you help them out with some of the chores that they do for you. When you do work in your garden bring some music along, or sing yourself! Pull your weeds to some classical music. Water the flowers to some Celtic tunes. The fairies will be dancing around joyously on their mini vacation while you get some work done. This time off will make them extra happy to, as they spend most of their time being busy. They are sure to make your flowers bloom extra big and bright and make sure that your fruits are extra sweet.

If you need some help in the house from the fairy folk there is an easy way that you can let them know they are invited in. Leave one of your windows open and place a shiny object on the sill for them to keep. This shiny little gift can be a coin, a piece of tinsel, a jewel or even a piece of cellophane wrapped candy. This shiny treat will lure them to the house and once they enter they will know exactly what it is you wanted of them. Fairies are very intelligent creatures so they can always tell what your intentions are!

A Short History on Fairies

A brief history of Fairies.

Stories of Fairies have been with us for thousands of years. They have been prevalent in nearly every culture, on nearly every continent. Like Dragons, Vampires and other legendary creatures, they seem to have the ability to cross boundaries and be present in the folklore of most countries. They range from stories of cute little pixie like creatures that fly around magically and cause mischief to mysterious and powerful ethereally beautiful High Elves. Even before Tolkien came into the picture, there were stories of Fairies and the Daoine Sidhe or other versions of tall humanoids with pointy ears. They all seem to have a tendency to kidnap hapless victims who crossed their paths and have magic that was both powerful and frightening. They had the ability to beguile and bemuse, to hinder or help on a whim.

Fairies have not always been strictly about the cute and delicate looking pixies and the proud Elves that we associate them with today. They have a dark and varied past. From Evil Djinn to Celtic Water Horses, Red-Caps, pookas, Bane-sidhe, trolls, ogres and giants. Each creature has it’s dangers and cautionary tales. The Djinn (or Genies) would grant wishes that would go horribly wrong. Water Horses would entice you to hop on for a ride and carry their helpless victims into deep water and drown them. Red-Caps would devour badly behaved children and dip their caps in their blood. Pookas were shape changing dry land versions of Water Horses would could appear in many forms from a Raven to a black horse. Then there was the Wild Hunt, which would slay anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path as they rode across the country side.

There are also the more innocent versions of Fairies. The little mischievous pixies who play tricks upon the mean and unwary. The brownies who keep house and help the thrifty and kind. Gnomes who tend gardens and help things grow. From simple bedtime fairy tales to cautionary tales of bloodshed and misery Fairies have been a favorite topic of conversation for those who love both the fanciful and the dangerous. Fascination with the magical world of Fairies, Elves, Gnomes and other magical creatures has always been a prevalent theme in our imaginations and hearts.

The Brothers Grimm made Fairies more commonly known. Magic and mysterious creatures that could hinder or help the Questing hero became a common feature in our fiction. Tolkien took all of this and created a work of fiction that has fired the imagination of millions of people all over the world. Now we have not only books and movies of Fairies and magic, but also Role Playing Games. From table top Dungeons and Dragons, Tale of the Five Rings, White Wolf Changeling on to World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online. Our fascination has become a cultural obsession that seems to have no end in sight. I for one am glad to know that Fairies will continue to be a part of our every day world as we stretch our imaginations and create more stories and games to entertain and enjoy.