I didn't write this but I think it's really interesting.These are the original fairy tales that Disney has used, well, some Disney, some common knowledge. As you might have guessed they are a bit darker that the typical parent would prefer. But that is why I love history. Enjoy.
Pied Piper - You know the story as a village overrun with rats hires a wandering vagrant dressed in colorful clothes who plays a pipe and gets the rats to leave. The part you don't know is that when the man returned and demanded payment the village didn't cough up, so he played his pipe and took all of the children to a river where they all drowned, except one boy who was lame.
Little Red Riding Hood - The original story, girl goes to grannys, wolf pretends to be granny, Red outsmarts wolf, woodsman saves Red. In the original Red asks for directions from a wolf and is then eaten. The End. Seriously, that is the original version by Charles Perrault. Oh, and in two REALLY old versions Red either gets to watch as Grandma is dissected and then forced to eat her, or she performs a striptease to "distract" the wolf. Yeah, not making this up, I swear.
Little Mermaid - The Disney remake has the princess becoming human and marrying the Prince, and living happily ever after. In the original she sees the Prince marry another princess and is offered a knife with which to stab the Prince to death. However instead of killing the Prince she leaps into the water and dies by turning into froth. Ariel dies. No sequels... There are other versions that involve the king wanting to sleep with her, but nobody truly knows the real original.
Sleeping Beauty - This one is fucking nuts. Ok, so in the remake the girl pricks her finger and falls asleep to wake to her True Loves kiss. They live happily ever after, blah blah blah. In the original an alleged curse is put upon her, making her fall asleep. So then the king sees her, and then proceeds to rape her while she is asleep. Nine months later she gives birth to twins, still asleep. When they are born one of then sucks on her finger and removes a piece of flax, which as it turns out, was keeping her asleep. She awakes to find herself a mother of two and a rape victim. The End, seriously I am not making this up.
Rumpelstiltskin - So this one is interesting. The original (oldest consistent) author wrote two endings. The first was the more toned down one. The second version that the author wrote had Stiltsy running away after the princess guesses his name, except instead of ending it there, he drives his right foot into the ground, grabs his left, and proceeds to TEAR HIMSELF IN HALF. It should be noted (and also quite obvious) that modern retellings don't include this. Also, the child that the lady is protecting dies anyway and in a number of really really old texts Stiltsy gets so mad that he throws himself at the lady and gets stuck... down there. Yeah, a bunch of soldiers have to come pull him out. Ugh...
Goldilocks and the Three Bears - For all you bear lovers out there, and lovers of poetic justice, this one is for you. In modern retellings Goldy finds the bears house, eats their food, sits in their chairs, and sleeps in the little bears bed. Then she escaped out of a window, that food stealing tramp. There are two possible original version. The first, and my personal favorite, had Goldy waking up to the bears around her, and then having them tear her apart and eating her. The second one had Goldy as an old hag who jumps out the window and then either breaks her neck or gets sent to jail. Either way, there is a moral there.
Hansel and Gretel - In the modern retelling two lost children find themselves at a gingerbread house, are met by a witch, and are captured until she can figure out how to eat them. They escape and throw the witch into a fire. In the original they are met by a devil, not a witch. When the devil realizes that the children are trying to trick him he get a sawhorse to put the children on so that he can bleed them. Yeah, thats right, bleed them. The kids look like they don't know what a sawhorse is and when the devil shows the kids what to do they reach out and slit his throat with a knife. Lets see Disney do that one.(For the love of God please don't)
Cinderella - Ok, so you all know the story so I am just going to give you differences. Most notably, when the stepsisters are trying on the slipper (not glass) they actually cut off parts of their feet to get them to fit. The Prince is alerted to this by two pigeons who peck out the sisters eyes. The sisters then spend the rest of their lives as blind beggars. Oh, and the slipper was also probably a vagina that the prince had to try on for size. Yeah. Most of the texts predating the Grimm version have the slipper be fur. Fur slipper. Shakespeare used more crafty metaphors. So when you put that in context it means that the Prince was roaming the land looking for a woman with the perfect fur slipper, figure it out yourself.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Ok, the retelling is long so wikipedia it if you want the disney version. In the Victor Hugo original Esmeralda captures the heart of the Hunchbacks father (adopted) Frollo. Eventually Frollo orders Quasimodo to get her. Hunchy gets caught and is tied down and whipped. Ezzy sees him and gives him water. Later Ezzy is accused of killing somebody Frollo actually killed and is sentenced to hang. Hunchy grabs her and takes her up to the cathedral where she is supposedly safe under law. Frollo gets a number of criminals to rush the tower but the King acts instead, sending soldiers to the tower to get her and keep the peace. Hunchy fights them to protect Ezzy. Frollo then betrays them, hands over Ezzy to be hanged, and makes Hunchy watch her hang. Huchy then throws him out of the top of the Cathedral and then runs down to where she was thrown after she hung and lays with her until he dies of starvation days later. Two years pass and people find them together, Ezzy, with her neck broken, and Hunchy, holding her. In short, everybody dies. The End.
Snow White - The witch is a cannibal and asks for not only her heart, but her liver, lungs, etc. Including a vial of her blood stoppered with her toe, because she literally wants to eat them. In the Disney version she falls off a cliff, which is intense, but in the Grimm version she is made to wear red hot shoes and dance till she dies via torture. Fun stuff. Also, Snow white is only seven. Pedophilia city.
In conclusion the Middle Ages were not very big on being happy. Fairy Tales were tools to keep children in check with sets of morals attached to them. They preyed off of superstition created by intense religious practicing and simple superstition in general. (Oh, and all of these stories really did originate in the Middle ages as opposed to the Renaissance and after. The Grimm tellings and others are just written accounts and stories based on oral stories passed down, hence the diverging stories and impossibility to find a true original).
