BUILD A SWEET EATABLE HOUSE, AND I'LL GIVE A CLASSIC ORIGINAL FAIRYTALE YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW ABOUT

The Red Riding Hood lore has had so many re-workings that it is difficult to work out which is the ‘earliest’ version. Though the most expurgated versions simply use the wolf as an allegory to warn against talking to strangers, several darker accounts reveal a violent and destructive layer beneath the initial veneer of purity. One version hints at the wolf and the grandmother being one and the same person, another hints at Red Riding Hood ‘graciously’ allowing the wolf to eat her grandmother before she kills the wolf, so as to be able to seize her grandmother’s property.

This archetypal story of unjust oppression has been re-interpreted in various films and literature, and has even been used in psychological terminology. Though the ending remains the same in the less “sanitized” versions of the lore, the existence of the glass slippers has very much been an unexplained error in oral transmission; in the earlier versions, the slippers were made of squirrel fur. When the prince was seeking his elusive love he was, according to the Brothers Grimm, almost tricked by the two stepsisters, both of whom cut off parts of their foot in order to fit into the slipper; it was only through the heavenly doves that the Prince realized that the sisters were bleeding from their self-inflicted amputations. Furthermore, in a spirit of quasi-macabre comedy, some versions end with the stepsisters’ eyes being pecked out by the same doves, thus allowing evil to be justly punished.

A German tale that is the subject of much fascination (and parody), the idiom ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair’ has become one that is all too memorable. The happy couple, however, had to endure many more trials and tribulations than it initially appears, for they were only reunited after Rapunzel had been cast out, pregnant and alone, into the wilderness by the irate witch, while the prince was blinded after falling from the tower and into the thorny brambles below. In addition to this, the more cynical of the narratives also end the tale unhappily; in these versions, though Rapunzel does indeed get pregnant and cast out by the witch, she is then abandoned and forgotten by the prince who, as it seemed, had no intention of marrying her. It is to be assumed that the tale serves as a caution against the dangers of seduction.