I've just read a thread about The Pied Piper. It's based on real events apparently.
I did find it unsettling as a kid.
The one that sticks in my head as frightening me is Rumplestiltskin. I cant even remember the story all that well, I just remember it was creepy as fuck!
No. Some cartoons did, but they were not about actual fairy-tales. It seems adults or people who grew up with fairy-tales and looked at their original forms are the ones most disturbed by the hidden messages; not the kids.
You'll be pleased to know that the Miller's Daughter (later Queen) outwitted Rumpelstiltskin and got to keep her firstborn baby. That, and Rumple went to hell.
😄 thanks! I think it was probably the illustrations that went with the story that frightened me.
I had a book of pinocchio and one picture was his feet on fire, and he had the most horrific expression on his face!
You should have watched the cartoon I did when I first learned about Rumpelstiltskin. In that he was just annoying, and the animation was pretty and colorful. I also watched a live-action version where a dwarf actor played Rumple, and a beautiful redhead played the Miller's Daughter.
shareI didn't hear any fairy tales or any other kinds of tales when I was a kid. That didn't happen until we got a television. But not to worry I got my share of being frightened all the same.
When my brother was a little boy, he got scared by the witch in "Hansel & Gretel", or rather, he got scared by the illustrations of her in a book. That ended with him throwing the book into a ditch full of sewage water.
shareShoot the messenger. Same old story.
To be fair though, I don't believe that he was much more than a toddler at the time.
shareNice digs you had back then.
That was kind of what they did in the countryside when indoor plumping was new.
Somebody (maybe my father did it himself) digged a ditch to a nearby creek for sewage.
We never thought much about it growing up there and not knowing anything else.
But my brother got sick once, when he fell into the sewage water as a kid.
These days, it is not legal to empty your nastiness into a creek anymore.
However, it was okay back when Dad installed indoor plumping in the '60s.
So that is what us three kids grew up with.
Speaking of digs. We dug our own sewage trench to connect to the sewage pipes back in the day. Before that it was the old shit can out in the thunderbox in the back yard.
There used to be an outhouse loo connected to our byre.
But my father tore it down when I was a kid, because by then it had started to fall apart.
Did this book happen to be a collection of stories and was the illustration green and black? There is a book I still have from when I was young and I used to read it to my little kids and it would scare the hell out of them.
shareMy brother is fourteen years older than me, so the book was long gone when I was born.
I have to ask my mother if she remembers more.
If you read the original versions of many fairy tales, the endings can be rather dark and sometimes gruesome. They were meant to be cautionary or morality stories. I can think of a couple off the top of my head:
Both Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are eaten by the wolf at the end.
Cinderella's step-sisters are punished for trying to fool the prince when they tried on the slipper. They have their feet cut off.
There are many other examples. Most people aren't aware of these because they are used to the sanitized Disney versions of these tales.
I can't remember any stories that were read to me as a kid that gave me nightmares. The idea of Hansel and Gretel being lost in the woods was maybe a bit unsettling. I was more affected by the movie versions instead. Although technically not a fairy tale, the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence from Fantasia with the giant demon emerging from the mountain scared the ____ out of me when I was four years old!
These stories have staying power because they are potent. They speak to us at a fundamental level. I am a fan of the Maleficent movies for this reason but I wish they had made them as full on adult versions rather than the kid friendly films that they are.
Yeah, I agree that many fairy-tales come across as creepier to an adult than to a child.
Especially if you were spared from the nastiest details as a child.
"Cinderella's step-sisters are punished for trying to fool the prince when they tried on the slipper. They have their feet cut off."
The horrible thing is that they cut their own feet to fit in the slipper! And in the Grimm version birds peck out their eyes as punishment!
I believe that there's a reason why my mother called them "bröderna Grym", with "grym" being the Swedish word for "grim" or "cruel". Of course, she had no idea that the Grimm brothers didn't make the fairy-tales up.
I knew about the step-sisters cutting their feet as a child, but not the even worse birds pecking their eyes out bit.
Neither was I told that Snow White's stepmother had to dance in shoes made out of not iron!
Or that "Red Riding Hood" originally ended with Red and her grandmother staying in the wolf's stomach...
The Grimm brothers had the hunter save Little Red Riding Hood and grandma in their final version. Perrault let them die, though.
Stepmoms dancing in hot iron shoes until they drop dead, witches eating children and being pushed in ovens, wolves drowning in wells, dwarfs tearing themselves apart, kings marrying their own daughters, girls having to cut of their own feet which keep on dancing afterwards. It's the stuff nightmares are made of!
Okay, I guess I mixed up the Grimms and Perrault there.
Yes, some of these stories are nasty!
Yes Rumplestiltsken! Fuck that was creepy. Also Hansel and Gretel.
shareBut I hate the girl's father in "Rumpelstiltskin" too!
It is very messed up that he would lie to the king and put his daughter's life into danger.
And he would have been exposed the next day if Rumpelstiltskin hadn't come by and saved the girl.
So I don't see the point of the lie anyway.
This short movie scared the shit out of me as a kid. Basically a snowman comes to life, abducts a small boy and fly's away with him.
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1697823257?playlistId=tt0084701&ref_=tt_pr_ov_vi