5 beloved fairy tales with dark and disturbing origins

Let us bust some myths!

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5 beloved fairy tales with dark and disturbing origins
5 beloved fairy tales with dark and disturbing origins

According to research, fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast can be traced back to thousands of years. Using techniques commonly applied by biologists, academics studied the links between stories from around the world and found that some of them had prehistoric roots.

Fairy tales are magical and inspiring, enchanting and full of learning. Some fairy tales are based on legends that incorporated a spiritual belief of the culture in which they originated and were meant to imitate truth.

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However, many fairy tales and the legends behind them are actually the diluted version of uncomfortable and gruesome historical events. These dark stories might be too terrifying for many kids and even adults. These stories with horrific origins often involved rape, incest, torture, cannibalism and whatnot, are sugar-coated and topped with sophistication and magic.

These tales cannot be forgotten easily and have lessons more powerful than the safe and bland fairy tales of today.

Let us bust some myths!

1. Sleeping Beauty

In the version of Sleeping Beauty that you must have heard, the beautiful princess is put to sleep forever when she pricks her finger on a spindle. She sleeps for one hundred years when a prince finally arrives and kisses her. They fall in love, get married and get their happily ever after.

But in the original version, the young woman is put to sleep because of a prophecy, rather than a curse. And it isn't a kiss of a prince that wakes her, but in fact a king sees her asleep and rapes her. After nine months, while still asleep, she gives birth to two children. One of the children sucks her finger, removing the piece of flax which was keeping her asleep. She wakes up to find herself raped and the mother of 2 children.

2. Snow White

In the Disney version, when the Queen asks the huntsman to kill Snow White and bring her heart back as proof, the huntsman cannot do it and brings the heart of a boar back. In the original version, however, the Queen asks for the liver and lungs of Snow White.

Also, in the movie, Snow White wakes up from a magical kiss by the Prince, but in the original version, she is woken up from the jostling of Prince's horse who is taking her back to his castle (you can imagine what a prince would like to do with a dead girl's body).

And, in the Grimm's version of Snow White, the tale ends with the Queen being forced to dance to death on red hot iron shoes.

3. The Little Mermaid

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In the Disney version of The Little Mermaid, the film ends with Ariel being changed into a human so she can marry Eric. They get married at a beautiful ceremony attended by humans and merpeople. However, in the very first version by Hans Christian Anderson, the mermaid sees the prince marrying a princess and she despairs. She is offered a knife to kill the prince but she instead jumps into the sea and dies by turning to froth. Andersen later modified the ending slightly to make it more pleasant.

In the new ending, the mermaid, instead of dying by turning to froth, becomes a "daughter of the air" waiting to go to heaven-which still means she is dead.

4. Little Red Riding Hood

Our own widely-heard version of the Little Red Riding Hood ends with Riding Hood being saved by the woodsman who kills off the wicked wolf. But actually, the original French version of the tale by Charles Perrault of the tale was not this happy. In the original version, the little girl is a well-bred young lady who is given false instructions by the wolf to her grandmother's house. She takes the advice and gets eaten by the wolf and the story ends here!There is no woodsman, no grandmother just a lesson to not take advice from strangers.

5. The Pied Piper

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All of us have heard about the pipe playing rat-catcher from the popular fairy tale who took away the town's children as an act of revenge when not paid his dues. Ever wondered if there is a story behind it?

In the tale of Pied Piper, a village is swarming with rats. A man arrives dressed in clothes of pied (a patchwork of colours) and offers to rid the town of rats. To this, villagers agreed to pay a huge sum of money if the piper could do it, which he does. He plays music on his pipe and draws all the rats out of town. When he returns, the villagers refused to pay the money so the Piper decided to rid the town of children too!

In the modern versions, the piper draws the children to a cave out of the town and when the townsfolk finally agree to pay up, he sends them back. In the darker original, the piper leads the children to a river where they all drown (except a lame boy who couldn't keep up). Some modern scholars say that there are connotations of paedophilia in this fairy tale.

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Read: Unmasking fairy tales: Was the Pied Piper of Hamelin real?

So, now you know the true side of some most famous fairy tales. There are many more, but let's leave it for some other day.