I love the violent horribleness of many fairy tales! I'm pretty interested in how fairy tales originated, because of course the brothers Grimm and especially Perrault tidy them up a lot. For instance, I like Andersen's The Wild Swans, which probably comes to Andersen via Grimm, but I've read a Middle English story called The Swan Knight which has quite a lot of similarities with this, so it's probably a very old legend.
As a kid I always enjoyed stories of transformation such as the Norweigan fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon and variations on the English folktale Catskin (this is an archetypal story; versions exist in several languages with local variations). Because my mother is Irish I was also exposed to quite a few Irish fairytales, such as the incredibly depressing Children of Lir.
Least favourite... Hm. Rumplestiltskin bothered me, because why does the girl want to marry a prince/duke who locks her up and threatens her?! (I wrote my own version addressing this issue.) Jack and the Beanstalk I find kinda boring.
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Date: 2011-02-08 09:34 am (UTC)As a kid I always enjoyed stories of transformation such as the Norweigan fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon and variations on the English folktale Catskin (this is an archetypal story; versions exist in several languages with local variations). Because my mother is Irish I was also exposed to quite a few Irish fairytales, such as the incredibly depressing Children of Lir.
Least favourite... Hm. Rumplestiltskin bothered me, because why does the girl want to marry a prince/duke who locks her up and threatens her?! (I wrote my own version addressing this issue.) Jack and the Beanstalk I find kinda boring.