Hell, as I recall, there was a theory that european folktales about Trolls and similar monsters were basically a passed-down folk memory of Neanderthals, when they existed alongside homo sapiens.
Countering this, someone else wondered if stories about elves and the “fair folk” might be similarly passed down stories about humans FROM Neanderthals (current science indicating that they had interbred with our species at least somewhat). :eek:
Sigh. No. There is absolutely no evidence to support this, and plenty of comparative evidence against it in the form of similar tales with no Neanderthal substrate. Not to mention the time depth is against it. A lot of people in this thread seem to be operating on the assumption that the tales’ plots are fairly solid, but that’s not quite how they work. They’re more like legos, with component parts that naturally fit together in certain patterns but are endlessly recombinable. The set of legos is undoubtedly stone age, but tales such as “The Kind and the Unkind Girl” (Frau Holle) are pretty widespread and might be some of the earlier ones. The specific motif of shaking the bed to make it snow could be a primeval weather spirit, but it’s equally likely to be someone who has seen a bunch of feathers floating around and thought it looked like snow. It’s more fun if it’s an ancient pagan survival, but Occam’s Razor often works against that.
My friend, you have the science behind storytelling firmly on your side. But you’ll sure never have a grasp on telling a good story.
Thanks: that’s actually a really nice compliment. People often hear “folklorist” and think “storyteller,” a respectable profession / avocation but an entirely different kind of animal.
My head is hurting from trying to come up with the difference between “fable”, “fairy tale” and “legend”, but all three seem to vary widely in setting. They can all go from being very specific in time and place to being “a long, long time ago in a kingdom far, far away”, and the setting chosen will vary with when and by whom is the story being told (as in the Disney vs. “original folklorist/writer” cases already mentioned); in some cases, no setting is mentioned (The Three Pigs, The Green Grapes). Aladdin is often set in Arabia, but my grandmother had a book where it was set in China: does that change the nature of the tale? Not really, at least to a Spanish kid; it will change it for a kid who’s from Arabia or from China.
Actually, while I love the movie, I think it *did *“totally kill the fairy-tale mood”. The movie is great, but it’s no longer a fairy tale without the supernatural elements of the tree/fairy godmother/magic dress stuff. The movie had a lot of great things (although Barrymore’s accent was not one of them) and a great mood, but it was not a “fairy-tale mood”. It was trying pretty hard to not have a fairy-tale mood, because the whole premise was “What would it have looked like if the Cinderella story was based on a real girl? (who just happened to know DaVinci and have oddly 20th century American ideas for a 16th century French girl, but whatevs.)”
I’m quite a fan of this particular genre in books, although I can’t really come up with a name for it. Perhaps a librarian or bookseller would know one. I tend to refer to it as “historical fiction meets fairy tale,” but I know there’s got to be a better tag.
This is only tangentially related to what you wrote, but I was reminded of my favorite children’s novel, The Perilous Gard – the book involves a band of “fair folk” in rural 16th century England who live in caves, and one of the characters in the story postulates that these are mere mortal humans whose ancestors have lived in caves for hundreds of years, the originals being pagans who fled the Christianization of their land. Over time, local rumors and legends transform these secretive people into mystical fairies.
Is this a real theory in the field of folklore?
It was, a hundred years ago. It’s been discredited for a long, long time. That doesn’t keep me from loving The Perilous Gard though—I have an extra copy on the shelves because I’m worried that I’ll eventually wear out the first one from re-reading.
Then it was taken in exactly the way it was intended. You’re welcome. 
Panniers and farthingales are structures worn under the skirt to make the skirt itself look fuller. If you’re talking about poofs of fabric draped on top of the skirt to create a hip-bubble look as in the classic Cinderella gown, that’s a type of peplum.
Perhaps suggesting that the troll legends were inspired by Neanderthals is a bit much; I take that as an entertaining idea but don’t give it much credence, much like some Native American legends supposedly about extinct megafauna. On the other hand, the fading away of German paganism is incomparably less remote. Openly practiced paganism there ended somewhere between the early sixth and early ninth centuries, depending on when Charlemagne’s army came and burned down the local temple or sacred tree. Undoubtedly it must have gone on privately for some time after that, and figured into then-contemporary folklore --what one might have called the urban legends of that time. But it doesn’t make sense to suggest that the Märchen, which had already been told for some centuries at the time when they were compiled, are devoid of any and all references, however disguised, to Germanic polytheism. On the other hand, I don’t think that the tales should be taken as referring to any actual story or even a consistent mythology.
This is an entirely different statement than those above, and quite sensible. In fact, such an idea was part of the Grimms’ motivation for collecting them in the first place, and occasionally connections can in fact be made. My point was that pure speculation isn’t a solid methodology.
First, there are different words in German: well = Brunnen. In illustrations this is commonly the old Ziehbrunnen - a small brick wall, with a bar across to let down the bucket and pull up, sometimes with a covering on top.
Fountain = Quelle. This is what naturally springs from the earth.
Spring = Quelle. Here I don’t know the difference between the two English words well enough. Or maybe it’s another case of one word coming from Anglo-Saxon, and the other from French/ Latin, but both meaning the same?
Frau Holle, or Goldmarie, Pechmarie is not only one of the still better known (including the rhyme with which the girls are greeted when returning: Kikeriki, unsere goldene/schmutzige Jungfrau ist wieder hie! ), but also well interpreted. Frau Holle is linked to the pre-Christian goddes Hulda who was a wise-woman, powerful (weather is important!), and got hidden into a fairy tale.
That you fall down into a well to come out into a country somewhere in the clouds / far away is a very common motif in many fairy-tales. The usual interpretation is that a well resembles or symbolizes the womb, so you are being re-born. Couple that with time spent learning woman’s duties and skills at a wise woman, and a studious girl would indeed come back richer = wiser woman. (The spindle is already a reference to the woman skills. Blood being spilt, which is the official reason to go the well and wash the spindle also points toward some kind of initiation ceremony or transition, where the girl first has to sacrifice some blood and than overcome her fear by jumping / falling down a well.
More background in the German wiki article.
The only place I recall mentioning this was “Eaters of the Dead” from Micheal Chricton, a retelling of Beowulf (and made into the movie The 13th warrior). And even there, it’s only speculation that the cannibalistic creatures are left-over neanderthals or just an enemy tribe looking differently than the Vikings.
That’s why fairy-tales could be classified by Arne-Thompson - because so many elements recur in so many different combinations. The motifs of the elements: that good people get rewarded, and bad people punished (and that good people are good-looking, but bad people ugly), that if you are pious and help animals and old people, you will be rewarded, that sometimes you need courage, but also smarts - those motifs go back to the first time humans sat around a fire, and are the reason why so different cultures like Medieval Europe, Japan, or Mexico have similar elements. (Of course there are also influences, like Cinderella tracing back to China and therefore, the tiny feet, and fairy tales unique to a specific culture). That’s the mythical part that speaks to us.
The Grimm brothers noted this, how they compiled a dozen or more variations of one fairy tale and edited it to what they considered the best version (they also changed a lot of mothers into step mothers because they thought it too cruel to have real mothers hate their children.) Just looking now at the different editionsof the Frau Holle Märchen from the Grimm brothers themselves there are many changes between 1st and later editions.
**Constanze **- a fountain is a man-made object like this , a spring isa natural welling up of water from the earth.
Ah. I thought fountain also refers to a spring. In that case, fountain = Springbrunnen in German
Spring = Quelle
The private TV station Pro 7 did a new take on traditional fairy tales with comedians and aimed at adults - rather funny. One of them was Frau Holle(with famous Hella von Sinnen* playing the title role). You can see an extract here. They changed the good-looking/ dark-ugly position around: the “bad” sister is the blond ditz named “Chantal” who works hard to look good; the dark-haired is the sensible one who knows how much work can be done at Frau Holle’s house to not cause bad counter-effects on earth, and who generally tries to keep her dumb sister out of trouble, which the blonde resents because she knows what’s best!
Oh - another clipwith Hoecker who as a running gag tries to get a part in the tale told by the narrator.
And with Bernd das Brot- he’s part of the children’s programme on public television. Spiegel magazine called him typically German because he’s depressive (or melancholy, or realistic.) The stories are chock-full of cultural references…
Meeting the apple tree (both the apple tree and the bread don’t want to be helped in this version, but she ignores them, like the original bad sister did).
No, you were right, but that use of “fountain” is unusual in English. It is the sort of usage you might find in the more old-fashioned English translations of fairy tales, for instance.
