FAIRY TALES AND OTHER THINGS WITH WITCH TO FRIGHTEN CHILDREN

Once upon a time, long, long ago the brothers' Grimm wrote stories. After the plague in the middle ages, a little ditty called "ring around the rosy" was composed and I remember singing it in a circle of friends and loving the "all fall down" part.

Fables, Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes have been age old traditions. They seem to have become even more popular since they have been redone in movies, and now with TV's Once Upon A Time and Grimm.

These tale sure have legs. I'm of course wondering why?  And so I did some research on the origins of fairy tales and fables and short stories.


There was a lot to digest out there, and being the impatient, imperfect human that I am, I made a judgment call. I'll summarize and spare you the long quotes from Wiki,  and Madame d'Aulnoy from  the late 17th century  and an article called the Dark Side of the Grimm Fairy Tales by  Jesse Greenspan.

Fairy tales have a very long history and many have been lost because they were oral. Their beginning was as short, little stories and were not meant for children.
                                                                            
Madame d'Aulnoy collected stores, during the 1600s, that were intended for adults of the upper classes. They began, however, to be used by servant women, who probably overheard their employers, and they started telling them to children. Whether for pleasure or fear, I don't know.

In the modern era, The Grimm's wrote their tales. The were shortly afterward "forced" to rewrite many of their tales so they could be read to children.

In trying to find out how long ago people started telling children tales, I came up with nada. The same thing for bedtime stories.  All I was able to find were the good reasons to read to children, books that sites wanted to sell me so I could  read them  to children.

Therefore I am going to have to come up with a "that's right  my, children" a

HYPOTHESIS:
 
See, all you kids were paying attention all along.  My guess would be that it started as passing down a tribes oral history to their young. My first thought was about the Native American Cultures and how they were very big on story telling. From there, I realized that pretty much all history started out this way.

Most people couldn't read or write, so story tellers and minstrels passed along information. Oral history was king until the written language developed and matured.
 
BACK TO FAIRY TALES



IN THE BEGINNING, children were viewed as mini adults so I suppose it didn't matter what they heard. Gore, death, legends. They were fit for consumption by all.
It was only recently, if you recall, that children actually began to have a clothing line that was all their own.  Remember all those great old portraits where the children were dressed in adults clothes?  It wasn't because it was Halloween.

End of Digression. Hopefully.

ADULT FAIRY TALES were all that had been written. That appears to be, until some people complained to the Grimm's bros, that they really needed to do an edit on their tales.
  Sorry, I had to cut and past this one.

In the modern era, fairy tales were altered so that they could be read to children. The Brothers Grimm concentrated mostly on sexual references;^[62] Rapunzel, in the first edition, revealed the prince's visits by asking why her clothing had grown tight, thus letting the witch deduce that she was pregnant, but in subsequent editions carelessly revealed that it was easier to pull up the prince .—On the other hand, in many respects, violence‍—‌particularly when punishing villains‍—‌was increased.^[64]  

 So the originals were sexy and violent. I'm not sure what "pulling up the prince meant" except that most of the newer versions have handsome, moral, decent princes. The old tales contained child abuse, incest, anti-Semitism and rotten mothers, who were not just of the step kind.  Nice to know that the world hasn't changed. 
Although it has.

CHILDREN BECOMING CHILDREN:

Children worked from the time they could be productive. Ancient, and so ancient days saw them as just another mouth to feed and part of the labor force.  Again, I had no idea that my thinking about tales would lead me to this place.

It really is a recent phenomenon that there is such a thing as childhood. At least as we see it in current western civilization.  Did you know that it is only since the end of World War II that boys and girls were dressed in either pink or blue? Prior to that, it didn't matter.  I could go back to railing against marketing, but that ship has already sailed.

SHOULD WE OR SHOULDN'T WE SCARE KIDS?

I'm thinking that reading fairy tales is tradition. People don't usually think about it, they just follow it.  I recently read some of the old Mother Goose Rhymes and most made no sense to me. I do know, from my studies as a school psychologist, that the ability to rhyme, has been linked to reading and learning disabilities. Maybe just hearing the rhythms was beneficial.

The same for the stories. Our parents heard them and then read them to us. They didn't think about witches scaring us. And, there are children who liked to be scared. Baby adrenaline junkies perhaps.  Most of the tales were cleaned up enough so that they have become tales of morality. Good over Evil. Parents like that. Well, so do I.

DOES OR DID YOU CHILDREN HAVE FAVORITES?

"READ THAT ONE AGAIN".  Who hasn't heard that?  I wasn't lucky enough to have my own, but I've spent a lot of time with little ones of friends and listening to tales of the parents.  Particularly in the age of the VCR,

Does anyone remember how many times their 2 to 4 year old repeatedly watched a particular video?  You wanted to cut off your ears and put out you own eyes, and yet the child couldn't get enough.

Part of it has probably got to do with mastery. If you see if enough times you get to know it well enough to know what's coming and I think for a little one, the predictability may give a sense of security and control.

I do wonder though, why each child has a favorite and it's not the same as all the other kids because they are usually too young to be at that place of knowing who's watching what.

I wonder if you could make some prediction about the child's personality, like and dislikes, based on the choice of which DVD they repeat.   Well, that I will leave to you, since at the moment, I've got none that I am aware of. And the children's channels on TV may have changed that as well.

CONCLUSION:

I got nothing. LMAO.  That of course won't stop me from saying something. It never does. You may have noticed.

Fairy tales are complex in their history and simple in their telling. They are part of an age old tradition, and that works for me. Except maybe the violence parts. Although, kids need to learn about the world at some point, so maybe in their fantasy days it's the right time.

P.S.

Could someone explain about the "and they lived happily ever after" part. Maybe it should be left out. Or explained. Like, they lived happily until after the birth of their first child when they realized the castle wasn't big enough for a nursery and they started to fight about what kingdom they should move to.  You know. Stuff like that.
 

 

 

 

 

o