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The Gruesome Origins of 5 Popular Fairy Tales

By Stuart Layt February 28, 2008 1,617,332 views
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#4.
Snow White: Prince Pedophile, More Cannibalism

The Version You Know
Well, you've all seen the movie, you know how this goes. Evil step-mom hates that her daughter is prettier than her so she tells one of her men to take out to the woods and kill her, and bring back her heart as proof. He can't follow through, so he tells her to run away and never return.

Snow White flees, and she falls in with seven friendly dwarves. The step-mom finds out and sneaks her a poison apple. Snow goes into a coma until a handsome prince rescues her and they live happily ever after.

What Got Changed
In the Disney film the wicked step-mother winds up dead (she falls off a cliff). So that's pretty hardcore we guess. It's got nothing on the Grimm version, though, where the step-mother is tortured by being forced to wear red-hot iron shoes, and made to dance until she falls down dead (you can picture the puppet thing from Saw spelling this out for her over a closed-circuit monitor).

The issue of Snow's actual age is a point of contention as well. The Grimm's explicitly refer to her as being seven years old when the story starts, and while there's no firm indication of how much time has passed, it's no more than a couple of years. So unless that's an eight-year-old Prince Charming who comes along and rescues Snow, we're backing away from this one before we become the subject of an NBC reality show.

The biggest change, and the bloodiest, is step-mom's ... unusual eating habits. Namely, when she asks her man to bring back the heart of Snow White, she isn't just after proof the girl is dead. She wants to eat it. Depending on the version of the story, the Queen asks for Snow's liver, lungs, intestines and pretty much every other major internal organ, up to and including one gruesome version where she asks for a bottle of Snow's blood stoppered with her toe.

And if you think the fairy tales were gruesome back then, you should have seen the merchandising tie-ins.

That was lifechanging. When the porn industry tells the tail truer to the story (and our weird dreams) you have to rethink your life values set from childhood.

6/21/2009 3:49:04 AM
Minjen

When I was a kid, back in the ancient 70's, I found an old old book of fairy tales in my Grandma's attic. It included many of the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Anderson, and "Mother Goose" collected stories. But medieval style. There was no Cinderella in this book, it was called "The Cinder s**t." She was called this because she slept in the fireplace, and presumably was a little loose.

These stories were graphic, extremely violent, and contained incest, bestiality, rape, and many of our least favourite spam topics. Imagine my surprise when school tried to tell me I was a liar, and these stories never ended the way I claimed. 30 years later, I still have no trust for authority...

5/17/2009 1:47:53 PM
Big_Jingle

I knew about the feet mutilation thing, but not the other stuff. I was in a local production of "Into the Woods" which includes Cinderalla, but the whole feet thing was done with a cute, hardly audible song about the prince and their rather too huge desire for him. (what they would do to themselves for him *cough* *cough*)

5/5/2009 9:26:41 PM
Fairytalelover

What about Hansel and Gretel? Child abuse, cannibalism, incest and.... oh wait, that never got taken out.

3/30/2009 10:58:56 PM
ElectroSophie

There's versions of Cinderella that involve bulls pulling picnic baskets out of their ears, cow horns getting stuck to peoples heads and other totally fucked up things.

3/27/2009 9:11:18 PM
captain_north

i've actually heard parts of or all of most of these. in fact there is a comic book that was made that kinda relates to these versions. dnt remember its name tho

3/24/2009 7:33:43 PM
yin_yang

Little Red Riding Hood asked the Big Bad wolf " Are you going to eat me whole ?' " No", the Wolf replied "I.m gonna spit that part out !"

3/8/2009 8:26:28 PM
Two_Guns

Damn, I was hoping for more jaw dropping moments. For some reason, the idea of the prince nailing sleeping beauty really didn't surprize me LOL

2/21/2009 10:03:32 PM
Cambell

My social studies teacher told us about the sleeping beauty one. I was like ;-;

2/10/2009 10:43:22 AM
Nikacho

Honey chile, you just didn't read far enough back in time! You must go back to the Bronze Age to find the real origins of Mr. Big Bad Wolf. At that time it was a god who bounced out of yon Wolf's jaws after being swallowed whole (whether wolfie's name was Fenrir among the Norse or something less pronounceable among the proto-Hindus). And our hero the woodsman was victorious in his second go-round with Sir Big Teeth after bonking the baddy on the noggin. Little Red wasn't really in the original story, though. Neither was Granny. But a lot of water was, penned up like so many cows. It was released upon the death of Mr. Bad, which was the point of the whole exercise. And I'll have you know Calvert Watkins agrees with me on this. Only Mr. Bad back then wasn't a wolf. He was a Dragon.

1/28/2009 5:32:38 AM
DianaGainer

In one of the original versions of Snow White, she coughs up the apple and wakes up.

1/2/2009 2:18:28 PM
QwertyGirl

@Hermit: you know I think that is actually very possible !

12/28/2008 12:47:39 PM
OilPaint

AHAHAH AWESOME !!! I used to listen to and read the grimms brother version when I was little so when I saw the film for the first time I wondered where the hell all the mutilation was

12/28/2008 12:42:58 PM
OilPaint

I'm sure most people have heard of the other version of cinderella... I heard it when I was three. Told by my grandma. My first thought was, "Man, that musta been painful."

12/13/2008 3:09:00 PM
arrowblossom

Aw man.
My childhood emories will never be the same again!

12/8/2008 5:10:16 PM
JasBerryStorm

So Rumplestiltskin dived up her vagina, eh?

I think you missed out on the obvious masturbation angle..

A stilt with a rumpled skin? Oh ho hooo... moral of the story is clearly that girls shouldn't use dildos!

12/4/2008 1:28:41 PM
Jammers

Man, we had the teacher read us the Horrifying Version of Cinderella in fifth grade. My thoughts were an odd combination of "Man, this is gross" and "Man, this is AWESOME!"

12/1/2008 7:26:02 PM
PostmodernMacro

The nuns at my school told us that Little Red Riding home was actually a cautionary tale for young girls. They said that it is really about puberty and menstruating ("little red") and the "wolves" (aka boys) who are suddenly on the hunt. My childhood is looking more unfortunate by the minute.

11/21/2008 2:09:32 PM
hermit

It's not "comatose sex", it's rape. Rape is not sex.

11/20/2008 6:35:54 PM
harryhair

@ Zoey: Grimms with an apostraphe indicates the possessive sense, however as it's already a pluralisation, the apostraphe should be after the S, e.g Grimms', not Grimm's or Grimms's. The latter would be the contraction. Any typos or errors in this sanctimonious bit of preaching shall be explained away by the brilliance of Talisker malt whisky. I advise everyone to develope a dependance to it. For the price of one small problem, you virtually eradicate life's big problems. Good trade off. I wonder how long it'll be before anyone else comments on this ancient article? I could make this comments section my own. I rule this comments section! My opinion is all that counts. It's nice to feel important. It takes away the suffocating pain that real life brings me. It is very important that nobody ruins my dream comments section.

11/19/2008 3:04:50 PM
Malky