Fairy tales do not pretend to be authentic - they are full of miracles that were difficult to believe even for a medieval person, not to mention a modern one. There are a lot of liberties and assumptions of the narrator in them - that's why there are so many variations on the theme of one fairy tale plot. But for all the inaccuracies, fairy tales often contain something more truthful - real stories that happened in time immemorial and so shocked contemporaries that they turned them into folklore.
Mermaid
The story of the daughter of a sea king who fell in love with an earthly prince was written in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen. However, the whole world knows the plot from the 1993 Disney cartoon. A young mermaid who is ready to give up her life at sea in order to get a human soul and the prince's love fails - the prince marries another, and the grief-stricken mermaid jumps off a cliff into the sea and dies.
Later, the end of the tale was rewritten in more rosy tones, but the story of an unfortunate girl who fell in love with a prince and threw herself on the rocks is very common in European folklore. There are great real reasons for this - in the Middle Ages, impressionable girls of noble families preferred death than the opportunity to remain unmarried.
Little Red Riding Hood
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Little Red Riding Hood is a very popular European folk tale about a little girl who meets a wolf. The tale has been known since the Middle Ages - it was especially common in the alpine foothills. The contents of the basket changed depending on the geographic location: in northern Italy, the granddaughter brought fresh fish to her grandmother, in Switzerland - a head of young cheese, in the south of France - a pie and a pot of butter.
In the original version of the tale, there was neither a grandmother nor a woodcutter, but only a wolf and a little girl who walked the wrong path right in the teeth of the predator. Considering the fact that in the Middle Ages wolves in the Alps were the main enemies of the peasants, the fairy-tale plot takes on a real background.
Pied Piper of Hamelin
The eerie tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is based on a true story. The piper of Hamelin is a famous character in the medieval German legend. It says that the musician, deceived by the government of the city of Hameln, which refused to pay for ridding the city of rats, took the city's children with him with the help of witchcraft. The maniacal background of the tale is today recorded by many researchers of folklore - the horrors of medieval cities, enveloped by plague and the invasion of rats, could well have given rise to such a character.
Snow White
The Brothers Grimm's tale about the beautiful daughter of the king, who was sheltered in the forest by the gnomes, saving her from the wrath of an evil stepmother, tells about the enchanted dream of the protagonist. This fairy tale was a real hit in the late Middle Ages - it was retold throughout Europe in different variations, staged in the theater and modified as best they could. Researchers believe that the story about Snow White could be based on a real case of prolonged coma, which once happened to a young girl of noble blood.
Rumplestiltskin
An evil dwarf who creates gold from straw offers his services in exchange for small children. You can only bring the kids back by calling his name - Rumplestiltskin. A similar scheme of working with secret names is found in exorcism - the religious skill of casting out demons. Only by giving the true name of the demon, the priest can expel him - in the Middle Ages, lists of the names of demons were specially published for such tasks, which were listed at every suspicion of the interference of a demon.
Hansel and Gretel
One of the most popular fairy tales in the Brothers Grimm collection tells the story of brother and sister Johannes and Margaret, who are threatened by a man-eating witch who lives deep in the forest in a gingerbread house. The witch lures the kids to her place and heats up the cauldron to cook them, but she herself gets into it. The plot of the tale unequivocally hints at the bonfires of witches that burned in the Middle Ages throughout Europe.
Cinderella
The Tale of Cinderella is one of the most popular "wandering stories" of the European Middle Ages, which has over a thousand incarnations in the folklore of different peoples of the world. The earliest version of the tale is found on Egyptian papyri. The main heroine of the tale is a girl named Rodopis, who was born in Greece. She was kidnapped by pirates who brought her to Egypt and sold her into slavery. The owner bought her delicate gilded leather sandals. While Rodopis was bathing in the river, the falcon (this falcon was the god Horus) stole her sandal and took it to the Pharaoh. The sandal was so small and graceful that the pharaoh immediately announced a wanted list. When he found Rodopis - Cinderella - he immediately married her.
Three Bears
The story of a little girl who climbed into the house of three bears was born in the Alpine regions of Germany and Switzerland. In the original version of the tale, the girl who fell asleep in a strange house is immediately eaten by bears. In such a simple way, parents tried to convey to their children the danger of wild animals, of which there were much more in the past.