"Enduring delight and enthrallment"

That was one of the critiques on the back of a book I found as I was going through some piles of books I had. Another read, "Among the few indispensable, common-property books upon which Western culture can be founded...It is hardly too much to say that these tales rank next to the Bible in importance..." What book is this, you ask? The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Some of you may have read this "indispensable" book before and realized that the fairy tales we love and cherish and that many a Disney movie have been made about, are really quite morbid.

Take the ending of Cinderella, for example. This is after the step-sisters have tried to trick the Prince that they were the fair maiden he was dancing with by slicing off their big toe (step sister 1) and their heel (step sister 2) to fit into the slipper left behind at the dance. Their bloody stumps tip the prince off that these are not his beloved. Finally, he figures it all out and at the blissful union of him and Cinderella, this fate falls upon the stepsisters:

"When the betrothed couple went to church, the elder was at the right side and younger at the left, and the pigeons pecked out one eye from each of them. Afterwards as they came back, the elder was at the left, and the younger at the right, and then the pigeons pecked out the other eye from each. And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness all their days."

That'll teach 'um. I don't remember the movie ending that way, do you?

Or what about Snow White? It ends with the wicked stepmother being forced to wear burning hot iron shoes until she drops dead. Nice. Or Hansel and Gretel? That story is just warped. The mother makes the dad abandon her kids twice in the woods in order to save themselves from starvation. Then they find the witch's house and she wants to eat them, all the while making poor Gretel be the one to fatten her brother up. At the end, Gretel shoves the witch into the oven and they escape with all her jewels as she howls in the background burning to death. But what really threw me, was the last line of the story. It reads:

"My tale is done, there runs a mouse, whosoever catches it, may make himself a big fur cap out of it."

Ooookaaaay. I'll get right on that.

There are a lot of really weird stories in there, and I can see why most did not become mainstream fairy tales. All of them contain some form of ghastly death or people being wounded in some nasty way. I seriously think the Brothers Grimm were some sick puppies.

For example, there is a story called The Robber Bridegroom about a miller's daughter who is betrothed to this guy she doesn't know and so one day she goes deep into the forest to his house. The bird warns her it is a murderer's house. Then she finds an old woman in the cellar that tells her to hide because the men who live there "will cut you to pieces without mercy, will cook you, and eat you, for they are eaters of human flesh." So the girl hides and while she is there, they come with another girl and "thereupon they tore off her delicate raiment, laid her on a table, cut her beautiful body in pieces, and strewed salt thereon." One of the killed girl's fingers with a ring on it flies off and "falls straight into the bride's bosom." She eventually escapes and at her wedding dinner tells the story that she "only dreamt" and then pulls out the finger to expose her fiance. Him and the others are duly executed. I see psychopath written all over that. What about you?

Aren't these just the kind of fairy tales you grew up with and want to pass down to your kids? What, you don't have The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales? Want mine? I'd rank it up there with the Bible, wouldn't you? On that note, good night, kids, sleep tight.