Tales of the past were sometimes so terrible, full of all sorts of disgusting bloody details - it's hard to imagine who could fall asleep after reading such a night. Today many of them have already been rewritten and refined. And those that went through the hands of Disney got a good ending.
We want to remind you what fairy tales familiar from childhood were like at the very beginning, when they were just born.
Pied Piper
The most famous version of the tale of the Pied Piper today, in a nutshell, is:
The city of Hameln was attacked by hordes of rats. And then a man with a pipe appeared and offered to rid the city of rodents. The residents of Hamelin agreed to pay a generous fee, and the rat-catcher honored his part of the contract. When it came to payment, the townspeople, as they say, "threw" their savior. And then the Pied Piper decided to rid the city of children too!
In more modern versions, the Pied Piper lured the children into a cave away from the city and, as soon as the greedy townspeople paid off, sent everyone home. In the original, the Pied Piper took the children into the river, and they drowned (except for one lame, who lagged behind everyone).
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Red Riding Hood
The fairy tale familiar to everyone from childhood ends with the fact that the woodcutters saved Little Red Riding Hood and grandmother. The original French version (by Charles Perrault) was nowhere near so cute. There, instead of a little girl, a well-mannered young lady appears, who asks the wolf for directions to her grandmother's house and receives false instructions. The stupid girl follows the advice of the wolf and gets it for lunch. And that's all. No woodcutters, no grandmother - just a satisfied, well-fed wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, which he bitten.
Moral - don't ask strangers for advice.
Mermaid
At Disney, the film about the Little Mermaid ends with the magnificent wedding of Ariel and Eric, where not only people, but also sea inhabitants have fun. But in the first version, which was written by Hans Christian Andersen, the prince marries a completely different princess, and the grief-stricken Little Mermaid is offered a knife, which she, in order to escape, must plunge into the heart of the prince. Instead, the poor child leaps into the sea and dies in sea foam.
Then Andersen slightly softened the ending, and the Little Mermaid became no longer sea foam, but a "daughter of the air" who is waiting for her turn to go to heaven. But it was still a very sad end.
Snow White
In the most popular version of the tale of Snow White, the queen asks the gamekeeper to kill her hated stepdaughter and bring her heart as proof. But the huntsman took pity on the poor thing and returned to the castle with a boar's heart.
This time around, the Disney company changes were not so dramatic. Just a couple of details: in the original, the queen ordered to bring the liver and lungs of Snow White - they were prepared and served for dinner that evening! And further.
In the first version, Snow White wakes up from being pushed by the prince's horse on the way to the palace - not from a magic kiss. And in the Brothers Grimm version, the tale ends with the queen being forced to dance in red-hot shoes until she dies in terrible agony.
sleeping Beauty
Everyone knows that the sleeping beauty is a beautiful princess who pierced her finger with a spindle, fell asleep and slept for a hundred years, until the prince finally arrived and woke her up with a kiss. They immediately fell in love with each other, got married and lived happily ever after.
The original is far from cute. There, the girl fell asleep because of a prophecy, and not at all because of a curse. And it was not the prince's kiss that woke her up - the king, seeing the beauty asleep and helpless, rapes the poor thing.
Nine months later, two children were born (the girl is still asleep). One of the children sucks on the mother's finger and pulls out a splinter from the spindle, because of which, as it turned out, she could not wake up. After waking up, the beauty learns that she has become a victim of violence and the mother of two children.
Rumplestiltskin
This tale differs from the others in that it was modified by the author himself, who decided to catch up with even more horror. In the first version, the evil dwarf Rumplestiltskin weaves golden threads from straw for a young girl so that she can avoid execution. For his help, he demands to give him the future firstborn. The girl agrees - but when the time of reckoning comes, she, naturally, cannot do it. And then the dwarf promises that he will release her from the obligation if she guesses his name. Having overheard a song in which the dwarf sang his name, the young mother gets rid of the need to pay a terrible debt. The embarrassed Rumplestiltskin runs away, and this is how it all ends.
The second option is much more bloody. Rumplestiltskin stomps his foot in anger so that his right foot sinks deep into the ground. Trying to get out, the dwarf tears itself in half.
Three Bears
This cute fairy tale features a little golden-haired girl who got lost in the forest and got into the house of three bears. The child eats their food, sits on their chairs, and falls asleep on the bear cub's bed. When the bears return, the girl wakes up and runs out of the window in fear.
This tale (first published in 1837) has two originals. In the first, the bears find the girl, tear her apart and eat her. In the second, instead of goldilocks, a little old woman appears, who, after being woken up by the bears, jumps out the window and breaks either her leg or her neck.
Hansel and Gretel
In the most popular version of this tale, two young children lost in the woods stumble upon a gingerbread house in which a terrible cannibal witch lives. Children are forced to do all the housework while the old woman feeds them in order to eventually eat. But the children are smart, throw the witch into the fire, and escape.
In an early version of the tale (called "The Lost Children"), the devil himself appeared instead of the witch. The children outwitted him (and tried to deal with him in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel with the witch), but he managed to escape, built goats for sawing wood, and then ordered the children to climb up and lie on them instead of logs.
The children pretended not to know how to lie on the box correctly, and then the devil told his wife to demonstrate how to do it. Seizing the moment, the children saw through her throat and run away.
Girl without hands
In truth, the new version of this tale is not much kinder than the original, but still the differences between them are enough to get into this article. In the new version, the devil offered the poor miller untold wealth in exchange for what is behind the mill. Thinking that we are talking about an apple tree, the miller happily agrees - and soon learns that he sold his own daughter to the devil. The devil tries to take the girl away, but he cannot - because she is too clean. And then the unclean person threatens to take her father in her place and demands that the girl let her father cut off her hands. She agrees and loses her arms.
This, of course, is an unpleasant story, but still it is somewhat more humane than the earlier versions, in which a girl chops off her own hands to become ugly in the eyes of her brother, who is trying to rape her. In another version, the father chops off the hands of his own daughter, because she refuses to enter into intimacy with him.
Cinderella
The modern fairy tale ends with the beautiful hardworking Cinderella getting a no less handsome prince as her husband, and the evil sisters marry two noble gentlemen - and everyone is happy.
This plot appeared in the first century BC, where the heroine of Strabo (Greek historian and geographer; approx. Mixednews) was called Rodopis (rosy-cheeked). The story was very similar to the one we all know well, except for the crystal slippers and the pumpkin carriage.
But there is a much more brutal variation from the brothers Grimm: their evil sisters cut their own feet to the size of crystal shoes - in the hope of deceiving the prince. But the trick does not work - two pigeons fly to the aid of the prince and peck out the eyes of the scammers.
In the end, the sisters end their days as blind beggars, while Cinderella enjoys luxury and serene happiness in the royal castle.