Grimm's Fairy Tales - Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Published by Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd.: London, Date Unknown.
I mean, wow.
When I was in my early twenties, a friend and I started writing "blog novels", each taking a turn to write a chapter. It was a fun pastime, and we ended up with ten and a half novels before we finally ran out of steam (as of this post). We didn't plan the stories in advance, and often used to try and end a chapter somewhere awkward, so our co-writer would have to be creative to keep the plot going.
Why do I bring that up now?
Because there were numerous times during Grimm's Fairy Tales that reminded me of two co-writers making up stories as they went along.
Of course, the Brothers Grimm are famous for their fairy tales being violent, and there is that element to a number of the stories, but it was the weirdness of the stories, and the fact that they would go in all kinds of directions within an individual story that hit me the most.
To give an example of this randomness, lets outline one of the lesser-known tales from the book: 'The Twelve Brothers.' In this story a King and queen have 12 sons, but when their 13th child is a daughter, the King vows to kill all his male children so the inheritance of the daughter can be greater. He even has 12 coffins made for the sons. The queen, however, warns her sons, who escape into the forest. Making their home in a little hut they find, they vow to kill any girl they see as vengeance for their father's decision. The daughter grows up, sees 12 shirts drying on washing day (why?!) and learns from her mother that she has 12 brothers. She takes the shirts, enters the forest and comes across the hut. Her youngest brother, Benjamin, is there, who, remembering the vow, hides her. The other brothers arrive home, Benjamin says he has news but makes them promise not to kill the first girl they see if he is to tell them what it is, then reveals the sister. Now the siblings all happily live in the forest, until one day the princess picks 12 white lilies growing in the garden, only for her brothers to be transformed into 12 ravens, while the entire hut vanishes. An old woman appears and scolds her for her decision, then says the transformation is permanent. '"Alas!" said the maiden, "is there no way of restoring them to their own shape?" "No," returned the old woman, "none; for there is but one way in the world, and that is so difficult that it is indeed useless even to mention it....' (Page 77). Anyway, the princess has to remain silent for seven years to save her brothers. She climbs a tree and begins spinning to pass the time. A King arrives in the woods, finds the princess and falls in love with her even though she is silent. He proposes, and she nods in assent, so he takes her home as his bride. The Kings evil mother then convinces the King that because his wife is mute, she must be EVIL and should be BURNED TO DEATH! So, of course, the King believes his evil mother, builds a fire and puts his wife on it. She is about to be consumed by the fires when the seven years are finished, the 12 ravens return, turn into her brothers and put out the fire, and she is able to tell her husband why she was silent. The story ends with the sentence: 'The King rejoiced greatly when assured of her innocence, and they lived ever after in uninterrupted harmony; but the wicked stepmother was found guilty of falsely accusing the queen, and being thrown into a vessel filled with boiling oil and poisonous snakes, died a miserable death' (Page 79).
So, that is a very long-winded synopsis, but highlights to me the bizarre twists and turns of so many of the stories contained in this collection. So many possible plot-threads are picked up, aimed for, and then dropped casually (like the brothers' vow to kill the first maiden they meet). Very much as if Jacob and Wilhelm were making the stories up as they went along.
And yet, I fully recommend this book. The stories are so bizarre that they should be read. Not one that would be easy to read cover to cover in one go (especially when certain storylines begin to double up on occasion), but an individual story here or there is entertaining, strange, and often very grim.
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