Very Grimm indeed

Lincoln Allison reads the Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales and comes up with his own composite:

A young man (ex-soldier, huntsman, or peasant chucked out of the family home because there is not enough to eat) is on the move and penetrates deep into the forest. There he meets a dwarf (or old crone or talking animal) who tells him of a cave where he will find a dragon (or large snake etc). Having killed this creature he must extract a ring from its stomach and take it to the city where it will establish his right to marry the local princess and, eventually, succeed as ruler. But when he does this the king (who doesn't think he's posh enough for his daughter) insists on him accomplishing a number of bizarre and pretty well impossible tasks including bringing back a donkey that poos gold bullion. He succeeds, but only with the aid of talking swans (or ravens, frogs, hares, etc) and possibly the devil's grandmother. On completion of the tasks the swans (or whatever) turn into the handsome princes of neighbouring states who had had a spell put on them. He is allowed to marry the princess and somebody who had been unfairly influencing the king against him is torn limb from limb. This can be the king's mother-in-law or wicked brother or a passing Jew, but whoever it is their painful demise causes great rejoicing throughout the land and a period of happiness ensues.

I remember reading a non-watered down version of the Grimm's as a child. In the Cinderella story, the wicked stepsisters are persuaded by their wicked mom to force their feet into the glass slipper. Sister number one cuts off her big toe, crams her foot in the shoe and goes off with the prince (or maybe one of his minions) to live happily ever after. A raven follows them, spots the blood spurting out of the slipper and begins speaking in that way ravens are wont to do in fairytales, thus foiling the sister's plans. They return home, whereupon sister number two chops off her heel and crams her foot in the shoe. You know what happens after that.

As I recall, this was one of the tamer tales in the tome. "It would take Thomas Bowdler to make [these tales] fit children's stories," says Allison.

I think that even people who have never read a tale collected by the Brothers Grimm have received enough of them indirectly to know that they are "gruesome". But if you read them in succession it is not the gruesomeness, but the randomness which gets you down. Scheisse happens, Zauber happens, but not in any way you can control or treat rationally. Dead folk are sometimes brought back to life using herbs from distant mountains, but sometimes they aren't.

He contrasts them unfavorably with the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, which he calls "meaningful modern fables" in contrast to the unrelenting scheisse in the Grimm's. Allison cites the Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea and The Emperor's Clothes approvingly. But what about The Little Match Girl? In that story a poor, barefoot little girl freezes to death on a street corner while hallucinating about a Christmas feast. It has a happy ending, though. In death the little girl is reunited with her Grandmother, the only person who ever loved her.

Then there's The Red Shoes. When our heroine finds that she cannot take the shoes off and that the shoes will not stop dancing, she persuades the local executioner to chop off her feet. He gives her some crutches and some little wooden feet and off she goes. Luckily she dies soon after.

The organ sounded and the children in the choir sang, softly and beautifully. Clear sunlight streamed warm through the window, right down to the pew where Karen sat. She was so filled with the light of it, and with joy and with peace, that her heart broke. Her soul traveled along the shaft of sunlight to heaven, where no one questioned her about the red shoes.

Uplifting, no?

And parents today worry about violent cartoons. No wonder Kierkegaard was such a gloomy fellow; a steady diet of this stuff at bedtime will do that to you.