The Fairy Tale

[lilithu]

They didn't have to be about someone being punished. Some are about how good triumphs over evil as in Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel. In the end, good triumphs.

Yes, that's what I've been saying!

I think most are about the promise that good will triumph over evil - that people will live happily ever after. That's why they appeal to kids, and to us.

Some are about how things that appear hideous or gross turn out not to be, like Beauty and the Beast or the Frog Prince. Those are about the transformative power of love. When you're afraid of someone, he appears ugly to you. When you love someone, he becomes beautiful to you. In a time when marriages were arranged and girls were forced to go live with strange men they'd never met, these kinds of stories would have been a comfort to them.

 

[lilithu]

Your version of this rhyme is different to the one sung in England. I guess it's been corrupted a little over time. Ours goes:

A ring, a ring o' roses (a ring of roses refers to the bubons - rings of ulcerous spots)
A pocket full of posies
A-tishoo, a-tishoo (sneezing sound)
We all fall down (and originally down was dead - it's been sanitised)

Your comments on the meaning are all about right, except for the glaringly different line - the most deadly (pneumonic) form of bubonic plague does make you sneeze, but plague victims weren't generally cremated but buried in mass graves - cremation was very strongly frowned upon by all Christians until about the 19th century and so wasn't used.

Interesting to know; thanks for the info.

And as for Grimm's fairy tales, they are old folk tales, all the Brothers Grimm did was collect them and write them down. That's why the originals read more like adult tales than the Disney style kiddies versions you get now.

Yes, they are folk tales. But these folk tales were not excluded from children. It's not the case that the violence in them was meant for adults only. The stories were told to everyone. And I still contend that the main target audience was the kids, because the protagonists in these tails are almost always kids. Clearly, as the nursery rhyme above shows, it was not thought that kids should be completely shielded from violence.

The irony is that today, we have this notion that kids should be protected from seeing violence, and yet they are exposed to more gratuitous violence than ever before. Unlike the violence in the fairy tales, which served to show that good will eventually overcome evil, todays violence tells kids that there is no meaning in the world, only chaos and destruction.

 

[Pussyfoot Mouse]

I always heard the violence was included in the fairy tales to scare children into behaving.

Hansel and Gretel...now that one was scary! And each time my Daddy read it to me before bed, the last thing he would say is "Now be good a good girl and go right to sleep!" .......... "Okay Daddy, I'll be good just don't leave me in the woods!"
Funny, I haven't thought of that in years. Now I'm going to have nightmares! :help:

 

[Ormiston]

I like the Pied Piper. Not much scarier than kidnap.