# Quick Disney question... on fairy tales **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 13, 2006, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933 "2006-12-13T05:17:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bbs2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e495f1/32.png) [@bbs2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bbs2k)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/1 "2006-12-13T05:17:27Z")
Were the early Disney movies Like Cinderella and Snow White based off of previous fairy tales or were they original works? Oddly enough a Rammstein video made me think of this question. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/2 "2006-12-13T05:22:09Z")
> **[Cinderella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella)** > > "Cinderella",\[a\] or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world. The protagonist is a young girl living in forsaken circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune, with her ascension to the throne via marriage. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between 7 BC and AD 23, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered to be the earliest known variant The... Cinderella is based on based on a story from China circa ad 840, the current version comes from a french story written in 1697. > **[Snow White](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White)** > > "Snow White" is a German fairy tale, first written down in the early 19th century. The Brothers Grimm published it in 1812 in the first edition of their collection Grimms' Fairy Tales, numbered as Tale 53. The original German title was Sneewittchen; the modern spelling is Schneewittchen. The Grimms completed their final revision of the story in 1854, which can be found in the 1857 version of Grimms' Fairy Tales. > The fairy tale features such elements as the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, the g... Snow White was a european fairy tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/3 "2006-12-13T05:26:11Z")
[QUOTE=bigbabysweets2000] Were the early Disney movies Like Cinderella and Snow White based off of previous fairy tales or were they original works? Oddly enough a Rammstein video made me think of this question. [/QUOTE] Cinderella and Snow White were both pre-existing fairy tales before Disney made them their own. Cinderella (and Sleeping Beauty) were both [Perrault](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Perrault) stories, many of which were pre-existing folk tales. Snow White was another very old story collected by the Brothers Grimm. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/4 "2006-12-13T05:53:38Z")
I was going to make my own list, but [here’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_animated_feature_film_source_material) a decent (but incomplete) wikipedia list of source material. [Here’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_animated_features_canon) the Disney animated canon. _Lady and the Tramp_ was the ‘most’ original of the early works, but it, too had an original short story basis. ---
**Author:** ![bbs2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e495f1/32.png) [@bbs2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bbs2k)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/5 "2006-12-13T06:13:43Z")
Thanks for the wikipedia link. Much enjoyed, except much puzzeled over something else. The Lion King, it says, was partially inspired by Bambi? I don’t see the connection. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/6 "2006-12-13T06:17:36Z")
[QUOTE=bigbabysweets2000] Thanks for the wikipedia link. Much enjoyed, except much puzzeled over something else. The Lion King, it says, was partially inspired by Bambi? I don’t see the connection. [/QUOTE] Just as a WAG: baby animal loses a parent, befriends amusing animal companions, and must eventually face a coming-of-age trial. ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/7 "2006-12-13T06:25:55Z")
[QUOTE=Antinor01] > **[Cinderella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella)** > > Cinderella (or The Little Glass Slipper) is a folk tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world. The protagonist is a young girl living in unfortunate circumstances who is suddenly blessed with remarkable fortune, ultimately ascending to the throne through marriage. The earliest known version of the Cinderella story is usually considered to be the Greek story of Rhodopis, as described by the scholar Strabo sometime between 7 BC and 23 AD, about a Greek slave girl who m The ... Cinderella is based on based on a story from China circa ad 840, the current version comes from a french story written in 1697. [/QUOTE] I studied a bit of fairytales in one of my classes, and the interesting thing about Cinderella is that it’s difficult to pinpoint where it actually begin. Every culture, it seems, has some version of the story. While Perrault’s version is obviously the source from which our moderning understanding of the tale comes from, it’s impossible to trace the origins of the story itself. Our professor speculated that it might be some human meme that sprung up independently in various cultures rather than all versions sharing a single source. (Sorry, no cite for this, unless you want me to show you my notes from the class. 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/8 "2006-12-13T06:59:40Z")
[QUOTE=BayleDomon] Just as a WAG: baby animal loses a parent, befriends amusing animal companions, and must eventually face a coming-of-age trial. [/QUOTE] Could be that, or it could be a mistake on the part of the anonymous Wiki author regarding [the controversy over whether Disney stole The Lion King from Kimba, the White Lion](http://www.kimbawlion.com/rant2.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/9 "2006-12-13T07:33:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Could be that, or it could be a mistake on the part of the anonymous Wiki author regarding the controversy over whether Disney stole The Lion King from Kimba, the White Lion. There was a controversy in Wikipedia on this issue (to which I was a party). The consensus was that the article should only reflect the sources that Disney acknowleged. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/10 "2006-12-13T13:21:52Z")
Whether or not The Lion King took from Kimba the White Lion (heck, I grew up with Kimba, and was convinced that there was some ionfluence there. How could there _not_ be?), TLK certain took major plot elements from Hamlet (as all the critics noted) and Henry IV (which, for some reason, they didn’t, evenm with the clear Falstaffian characters in place). ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/11 "2006-12-13T13:44:38Z")
[QUOTE=Antinor01] > **[Cinderella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella)** > > Cinderella (or The Little Glass Slipper) is a folk tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world. The protagonist is a young girl living in unfortunate circumstances who is suddenly blessed with remarkable fortune, ultimately ascending to the throne through marriage. The earliest known version of the Cinderella story is usually considered to be the Greek story of Rhodopis, as described by the scholar Strabo sometime between 7 BC and 23 AD, about a Greek slave girl who m The ... Cinderella is based on based on a story from China circa ad 840, the current version comes from a french story written in 1697. [/QUOTE] Ah, Wikipedia, my old nemesis… once again, I find you spewing misinformation. **HazelNutCoffee** has already said some of this, but overkill never hurts, does it? “Cinderella” is shorthand for what is known as a “Tale Type,” (specifically # 510A) a complex of folk motifs arranged in a certain order. The earliest (well-)known version is a story from China circa AD 860. _ **The Chinese version is not the source of all other versions** _. This idea is based on ignorance of oral tradition. Of the many hundreds of versions of Cinderella collected from oral tradition worldwide, none shows a clear literary debt to the Chinese version. We have no idea how old the story is, but best guesses all put it much earlier than 840 AD. At the very least, Wikipedia ought to consider the story of Rhodopis, a Cinderella-like tale mentioned as earliy as Herodotus, which predates the Chinese story by a thousand years. (Nothing against Chinese folk literature, but I’m just tired of this factoid being promulgated as truth). Perrault’s immediate source was evidently French oral tradition, but his was a highly literary version, and he himself seems to have invented a number of the familiar details. With all the fairy-tale movies, Disney changed a lot. D’s \*Snow White \* was based on the English translation of, as far as I can tell, the 1823 version of the Grimms’ tale, which in turn is based on German oral sources (with some influence from French oral tradition). The good anthologies of _Grimms’ Fairy Tales_ you find now are usually based on the 1857 edition of the tales, which were first published in 1812. (Over the years they took out a lot of the sex and added some violence.) ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/12 "2006-12-13T15:18:15Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] Whether or not The Lion King took from Kimba the White Lion (heck, I grew up with Kimba, and was convinced that there was some ionfluence there. How could there _not_ be?), TLK certain took major plot elements from Hamlet (as all the critics noted) and Henry IV (which, for some reason, they didn’t, evenm with the clear Falstaffian characters in place). [/QUOTE] Obligatory “the Master speaks” [link](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a991224.html). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2006, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quick-disney-question-on-fairy-tales/383933/13 "2006-12-13T15:22:06Z")
Well, I thought **scotanderson** ’s link above covered this, and threw my own 2 cents in. And I notice Uncle Cec still didn’t have anything to say about Henry IV.