Sleeping Beauty

The Disney version of Sleeping Beauty is about a princess who is cursed by a witch, pricks her finger, and falls into a deep, seemingly endless sleep.  Eventually, a prince finds her and wakes her up with a kiss.  Of course, they live happily ever after.

An original Italian version provides Sleeping Beauty with a more gruesome plot, making it more entertaining and horrifying.

While Sleeping Beauty was asleep, a King finds her and rapes her.  Because of this, she gives birth to twins while she is still in a deep, endless sleep.  The fairies that watch over Sleeping Beauty help the children suckle.  One child attempts to fed from Sleeping Beauty’s finger.  This removes the poisoned splinter from her finger which finally woke her up.  The King finally returns and becomes even more in love with Sleeping Beauty now that she is awake.


However, the King is already married to the Queen.  The King’s wife finds out and is enraged.  She creates a plan that involves cooking the twins and feeding them to her husband.  The cook, however, only pretends to cook the children.  The Queen tells her husband that he ate his own children.  The King flips out (rightfully so) and buries his wife alive.  With his wife dead, the King is single again and decides to marry Sleeping Beauty. 

It sounds just like the random, twisted plots from Soap Opera on television!

Hansel and Gretel

The sweet version of Hansel and Gretel is already a bit violent with the ending.

It tells about two children, Hansel and Gretel, who go wandering into the forest and get lost.  They come across a gingerbread house and decide to enter.  The witch who lives there kidnaps them and fattens them up to eventually eat them.  When she is about to cook them, Hansel and Gretel escape by pushing the witch into the fire.

Even though the story is violent enough for children, the French version, “The Lost Children”, takes it a little step further.

The witch is actually the devil’s wife.  The devil’s wife puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on.  She wants the children to bleed slowly.  The children pretend not to know how to get on, and so the devil’s wife demonstrates.  As she is lying down, the children slice her throat and are able to escape.

Surprisingly, the endings do not have that much of a difference.  Either way, the witch/devil’s wife is brutally murdered.  It only depends on the reader’s preference to the villain being burned alive or getting their throat sliced.

Moral of the story: Never take candy (or any kind of food) from strangers... especially one that lives in a gingerbread house that is deep in the woods.

The Pied Piper

The story most of us know about the Pied Piper is that there was a town that was being infested with mice.  No one knew how to get rid of this swarm.  Finally, a hero emerged.  This hero was a man who played some type of wind instrument, most likely a flute, to lure the mice out of the village.  He was successful and the village was saved.

In the original version, this story was theorized to have actually occurred in Hamelin, Germany.  This version does not have a happy ending.

The town was able to rid themselves of the mice by hiring the Pied Piper, but when it was time for them to pay him for the wonderful job he did, they refused.  The Pied Piper was enraged by this and so he came up with a revenge plot.  He uses his magical instrument to make every single child in the town follow him.  The parents and elders just stare at him, thinking their children will stop eventually.  The Pied Piper lured the children into the cave, the cave door shut, and the children were never to be found again.  Only one lame boy survived because he could not keep up with all the other children.

Some versions have the children being drowned by the Pied Piper, while others have them safely returned when the elders finally pay up.  The version that ends with the children being stuck in a cave is worse than any other.  It causes your mind to wander about what could have actually happened to those poor children who were captured by an angry man.

This fairytale teaches you that promises, especially ones about money, should never be broken.

Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood is a story that teaches children not to talk to strangers.  The girl's grandmother is eaten by a wolf, who then tricks the girl, but gets thwarted when the axman arrives.  The grandmother is safely taken out of the wolf, and the wolf is killed.

When there is a wild animal involved in a story, the characters are most likely going to be eaten or mauled. In children's fairytales, they take it down a notch by making the characters come back without even a scar.  The original Austrian version of this fairytale makes sure to include graphic details that make it somewhat more realistic and rated (at least) R.


The original story goes like this: Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother gets eaten by the wolf.  The wolf then uses the grandmother's intestines as a string on the door latch and her teeth, jaws and blood as rice, chops, and wine for Riding Hood to consume.  After Riding Hood eats her own grandmother, she gets into bed with the wolf, without any clothes on (who the heck knows why she was naked).  Once she is in the bed, she notices something "hairy" and the wolf eats her in one gulp.  There is no axman to save her.  The wolf actually wins.

If I heard the gruesome version as a child, I would be scarred for life and never talk to strangers!

Rapunzel

Rapunzel is a story about a girl with abnormally long hair who lives in a tower with a witch.  One day, she is rescued by a handsome prince who climbs her hair and sets her free.  They both live happily ever after.  This is a typical ending that occurs in all the delightful versions of fairytales.

An older version was not so kind to the characters in the stories, but this makes it all the more entertaining to read.

Rapunzel, who is given away to the witch in exchange for some plants her mother is obsessed with, goes to live in a tower far away from the world.  As she grows, her hair grows.  The witch uses Rapunzel’s hair as a means to get into the tower.  A prince happens to witness this strange event after hearing a lovely singing voice from above.  Once the witch leaves, he climbs Rapunzel’s hair and they meet for the first time. The prince goes to the tower every night after this first meeting and the two teenagers have some fun.  Rapunzel, not knowing what it meant to be pregnant, wondered why her clothes were getting to small for her.  When the witch found out about the prince, she tricked him into entering the tower, pushed him out of the window.  He landed in a thorn bush which injured his eyes and blinded him.  Rapunzel was then sentenced to a life of loneliness in a deserted place. 

Surprisingly, this gruesome story actually has a happily ever after.  The prince, still blind, comes across Rapunzel, who recognizes him immediately.  Her tears, which randomly have magical powers, heal the prince.  The prince, finally being able to see, finds his out he is the father of twins.  They are able to get back to his kingdom to live happily ever after.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

The delightful rendition of this fairytale tells of Goldilocks entering a stranger’s house, eating the food, and sleeping in the beds.  At the end, she is awoken by three bears, but manages to run away unscathed.

The two gruesome renditions of this fairytale are more violent and surprising, making it very entertaining.  In one version, Goldilocks is awoken by the three bears who rip her to shreds and devour her.  In the other version, Goldilocks survives, but at a high cost.  When frightened by the bears’ return, she jumps out of the window.  The story leaves the reader not knowing exactly what happened, but says that Goldilocks either breaks her neck due to the fall, or was arrested and sent to the “House of Correction”.