Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales
Valerie Paradiž
Clever Maids was published in 2005, and includes illustrations by Walter Crane that were originally published in Household Stories from the Collection of the Brothers Grimm in 1886.
“There was once a woman who lived with her daughter in a beautiful cabbage-garden; and there came a rabbit and ate up all the cabbages.”
“Once on a time the cock and the hen went to the nut mountain, and they agreed beforehand that whichever of them should find a nut was to divide it with the other.”
“There lived in a certain village a poor old woman who had collected a mess of beans, and was going to cook them.”
“There was once a shoemaker, who, through no fault of his own, became so poor that at last he had nothing left but just enough leather to make one pair of shoes.”
This fairy tale – Die Wichtelmänner is the original German title – has three parts: the latter two are shorter than the first, which is the only one out of the three I’m familiar with (I’ve always known it as The Elves and the Shoemaker). The fact that I had no knowledge of the two other parts is not really a surprise to me, because I became familiar with the first part in my childhood, and the other two parts wouldn’t be as appropriate in stories for children, in my opinion.
“There was once a tailor, who was a quarrelsome fellow, and his wife, who was good, industrious, and pious, never could please him.”
Sharing Joy and Sorrow is another example of a not-so-child-friendly fairy tale. Domestic abuse and sleazy activity is packed into less than 200 words, illustrating that a description of the negativity of humankind does not have a minimum word requirement.
