Here in the States, most kids grow up learning the stories of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, the Princess and the Pea, Hansel and Gretel, etc.
What common fairy tales did our non-U.S. Dopers grow up with? Don’t forget to give summaries!
OK, I’m in the US but my Dad was German. At any rate, I think the tales you’ve listed and many others would be just as common in Europe, since they were collected and packaged by the Brothers Grimm in the early 1800s (the stories, of course, are much older).
As well as the ones you mention, in England, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Three Billy Goats Gruff are commonly told.
Sorry, I didn’t me to imply that us 'merikans invented those fairy tales. I was looking for ones that may not be commonly known to those living in the US.
Gotcha. It’s a neat question. For instance, the most recent movie adaptation of The Little Princess had some fantastic sequences where Sarah tells the Indian legends she learned while her father was stationed there. I’d love to know more about those, and their ilk.
That reminds me! I took Russian in high school, and our teacher had us read very simple versions of some Baba Yaga stories. I should hunt up some English versions.
They were fairly standard in the fairy story books when I was a child. Pretty much anything in the Hans Christian Andersen or Brothers Grimm volumes was fair go. My grandmother specialised in great oral stories about a wonderful, magical land. You got there on a moonbeam from the upstairs bedroom windows and then had all sorts of great, localised Australian adventures (i.e. not involving things like snow or castles or all of the other slightly “alien” things that appeared in the traditional tales). My brother, sister and I used to love them. The stories always used to end the same way: we’d fly back home on the back of a black swan.
My kids have encountered the Brothers Grimm and HC Andersen fairy tales, but I think I can safely say their favorites are the traditional Norwegian fairy tales compiled by Asbjørnsen and Moe, of which “The Three Billy-Goats Gruff” is the most familiar to English speakers. Except you get the censored version, where the billy goats push the troll off a cliff or some such nonsense. In the original, that troll suffers. And kids eat it up.
Actually most fairy tales were originally bloodier and more gruesome than in their current incarnations, but the A&M stories are still told with all the guts and gore. I read one to the kids at the kindergarten where I work yesterday, where a young boy challenges a troll to an eating contest and tricks the troll into cutting a huge gash in its stomach. Needless to say this is rather fatal. The boy then robs the dead troll’s house and takes all the gold and silver home to his family. This particular story was specifically recommended to me as “a nice thing to read to the little ones, not as scary and morbid as some of those others.”
Andersen and Grimm fairy tales, the “Three Billy-Goats Gruff”, the fables.
There are also a few Juan Bobo stories, these are local. One of them relates how the mom left Juan in charge of the pig they owned while she went to church. Juan took good care of her (pig was female), but then decided that the pig should also go to church. So he dressed up the pig in all of his mom’s jewelry and good clothes and make up, and took it to church. I think it ends with the mom grounding Juan for his stupidity.
In Korea children grow up with European as well as Korean fairytales. We have a “Cinderella” story, although I can’t remember the details - I don’t think there’s a shoe involved, and there’s only one ugly stepsister. I think the story doesn’t end with the marriage either - later the stepmother kills Cinderella but she comes back as a bird or something.
Oh, there are two I remember more clearly. The story of two brothers, one rich, one poor: the poor brother helps a swallow with a broken leg, who brings him back a seed that grows into a vine with gourds full of rice (or gold?). The rich brother tries to replicate his brother’s success by deliberately breaking a swallow’s leg and then fixing it. The swallow brings back a seed, but the gourds turn out to be filled with shit (like, literal shit).
The other one I remember is about a girl - the daughter of a fairy king or something, and she falls in love with a shepherd. The two of them start neglecting their duties, which angers her father and he creates the Milky Way in order to keep them from ever seeing each other again. (I suppose this is more of a legend than a tale).
Hmm… there’s one about a woman who gives birth to a snake that ends up marrying a princess, and one about a tiger that eats children but is eventually fooled by a clever boy… gah. It’s been so long, and I never read them as a child but later for academic purposes. I do remember that a lot of them are quite similar to European ones - the snake that marries a princess, for example, has its parallel in the Grimm fairytales, except there it’s a hedgehog, I think.
Oh, and how could I forget - the story of Shimcheong (translates to Pure Heart). Shimcheong had a blind father, and some temple told her they could heal his blindness, but only if she gave them a lot of rice (300 seoks, but I dunno how big a seok is). The only way she could do this was to agree to be a sacrifice for the sea god (the priests would pay the 300 seoks of rice for her if she did this). She throws herself into the sea, but the sea god takes pity on her and takes her to his palace. Later he sends her back to the surface inside a waterlily, which is found by the king. He falls in love with her and they get married. Shimcheong later throws a party for all the blind men in the kingdom so she can find her father (it turns out the temple was a hoax or something) and when he hears her voice he is so overcome with happiness that his blindness is cured.
Yes, and there is one more that comes to mind - the turtle and the hare. The sea god is ill (or maybe he was just a king, not a god) and needs the liver of a hare to get better. The turtle entices the hare to come with him, with promises of something (can’t remember what), but when the hare finds out that all they want is his liver, he tricks them into thinking that he left his liver at home and must go back to fetch it. And of course in the end he escapes.
Andersen, Grimm, fables etc. Also Finnish folk tales, usually involving Finnish forest animals or clever people outsmarting trolls and elves.
Then there are also the Hölmöläiset stories. “The Stupids.” These stories feature a village full of dumb people who come up with stupid solutions for simple problems and have a hard time until a smarter friend of theirs from another village gives them helpful advice. For example, in one story the Hölmöläiset build a house but neglect to put in windows. They attempt to solve this situation by holding burlap sacks open outside in the sunshine and then carrying the light into their house. Their friend hints at maybe adding a few windows to let in a little light, and the Hölmöläiset take this to another level by reasoning that if a few windows let in a little light, then more windows will let in more light, and they saw more and more windows into the walls until they collapse.
I encountered a few of the 1,001 Arabian Nights stories when I was a kid - Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves being the most prominent.