Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic FFQ: Favorite fairytales

So what's your favorite fairytale or classic children's story?

that is such a hard question for me to answer...
You have to understand, I wear a pin on my lapel that is a crystal frog... with a crown... My Frog Prince! I absolutely adore fairy tales!

I love the little mermaid, beauty and the beast, and all of them. It's too hard to pin down a favorite!

Thanks, Desiree. So is that Disney's version or the classic?

Elisabeth

Sleeping Beauty.

I don't really know why though. I might be influenced by the Disney movie, I still think it's among the prettiest.

alcyone

well, Disney was the first I was exposed to, but I have read so many diffenent versions of many of them. Disney makes them too 'happy' and 'clean'. Do you know what I mean? nothing really bad ever happens to characters in Disney (except the bad guys of course), but in the originals (and I use this term to desrcibe the versions found in cultures the world over), the characters are darker and have more real life experiences. the stories are meant for adults, not children...

hmmm.... I went off on a tangent. Oh well, guess thats because I studied a bit of fairy tale history a few years back.

Snow Queen (most versions, especially the 2002 TV movie version )

I've moved this into OT, Elisabeth, as there's no indication it has anything to do with fanfic.

Favourite fairytale...hmmmmm. Well, that depends. On DVD, it's actually The Swan Princess. A beautifully WAFFy and funny rendition of Swan Lake. Not made by Disney. It has great characters, a romantic storyline and terrific songs. It has such depth and layers that it seems demeaning to call it a cartoon.

Favourite Disney on DVD...would have to be The Lion King.

Back when I was a teenager, I used to devour fairytale books at the local library. There was a whole series of books themed by colour: The Green Book of Fairytales, The Lilac Book of Fairytales...I was delighted a while back to find them all again on the Project Guttenburg site.

My favourite fairytale though comes from a very old book that I have on my shelves which is a collection of folk tales from Asia. It's called The Tiger's Whisker. Basically, it's the story of a young woman whose husband has returned from war much changed. He's moody and violent and in despair she goes to an old mountain man for a spell to give her back the sweet, lovable husband she used to have.

The wise man tells her that the spell requires the whisker of a living tiger. Horrified, the young woman turns away, convinced it's an impossible task. However, some months later, she returns with the required whisker. The wise man examines it and then, convinced it's from a living tiger, throws it into the fire.

The woman is shocked. Why did he do that?

The wise man asks her how she got the whisker. She explains that over many months she hid in the jungle watching the beast, gradually, slowly moving closer, feeding it tidbits, earning its trust, until one night she had earned its trust to the point where it let her snip off a whisker.

The old man nods. "And is your husband any less able to appreciate patience and kindness than the tiger?" he asks.

I just love that.

LabRat

Actually Labby, this is for a fanfic that Elisabeth is working on. She just forgot to indicate as such.

James

I liked quite a few of the Grimms Brothers products, Snow White and Rose Red were a favorite, so is The Merchant's Wife and Good King Thrushbeard, but my favorite was Indian in origin, called "The Tiger's Tail" It's pretty short, but has a wealth of meaning.

This farmer was walking down a road and in a pile of rocks ahead he sees the twitching tail of a tiger. Knowing the tiger will jump on him as he passes the rocks, the farmer takes intiative, drops his sickle and grabs the tiger by the tail, trapping the tiger on the other side of the rocks, but now neither can move but to tug back and forth.

The poor farmer waits desperately for help and finally a buddahist monk comes along. The farmer cries for help, asking the monk to pick up his sickle and kill the tiger. The monk argues that it is against his belief to kill any living thing. The farmer says if he lets go of the tiger, the tiger will kill him, but the monk still refuses to kill the tiger. Finally the farmer asks the monk to hold the tiger's tail and HE will kill the tiger. Since there's nothing in the rules about holding a tiger's tail, the monk agrees and grabs the tigers tail.

The farmer lets go, dusts himself off, picks up his sickle and begins to walk away. The monk is shocked, hollering for help, begging the farmer to kill the tiger, but the farmer says that the monk's gentle heart has convicted him and from here on out, he will not kill any living creature.....


ROFLMAO!!!!!

Hmmm... I'd have to say my favorite fairy tale of all time is The Last Unicorn, originally a book by Peter S. Beagle, but the movie is what I love!

It's about this Unicorn who discovers she's the last Unicorn left in the world. So she travels to King Haggard's lair (where she heard the unicorns had gone) along the way picking up a clumsy magician. When they get to the King's Lair, the red bull (which is what gathered all the other unicorns) starts chasing her down. So the magician turns her into a human to save her. When they go to the King's Lair, he is suspicious of her and so he keeps an eye on her. Anyway, at some point they find out that the red bull has pushed all the unicorns into the ocean because they are the only thing that makes the king happy. He keeps them there to look at them. The unicorn/human falls in love with a prince and starts to forget she was ever a unicorn. But she ends up turning back and saving all of the other unicorns. But now she is different then the other unicorns because she has regret and she knows what love is, even though she can no longer love the prince; she remembers... *sniff*. I cry everytime I see that movie. It has some great dialogue too.

For example, when the king discovers that Lady Amalthia (the unicorn) is really a unicorn he says:

ooooohhh goosebumps!

My favorite Disney movie is The Little Mermaid.

I very much liked the "Goose girl" as this fairy tale is obviously called in english. I like the german title much better

Wikipedia offers a summary:
Goose girl

Beauty and the Beast is definitely my favourite. I've always liked the story and loved the Disney version. Since then I've also read two retellings of the story by the author Robin McKinley. If anyone else here particularly likes Beauty and the Beast, I would urge you to try them!

~Anna.

Thanks so much to everyone who gave feedback. I may need to check some books out at the library, since I needed at least half a dozen more stories that were well-known enough that anyone would recognize them.

My brother loves the Frog Prince, but I've never actually read it. I'm also not familiar with The Goose Girl. The Lion King is probably too long for my purposes.

My own short list:
The Tortoise and the Hare
The Lion and the Mouse
The Ugly Duckling
The Three Little Pigs
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Snow White--which I can't use
Little Red Riding Hood--which I can't use
The Little Mermaid--it may be too dark for my purposes. We'll see.
Sleeping Beauty
Beauty and the Beast
Cinderella
Chicken Little

If I need to, I can stick to the above list, but I was hoping for a couple more to round it out. Are there any on the above list you don't recognize? Are there any you think everybody will recognize which I forgot? I need stories that would be several pages long when typed up, but wouldn't take an hour to tell--a bedtime story length.

Thanks again,


Elisabeth

Sorry. I missed the Merchant's Wife. Does everyone know that one?

Elisabeth

Hansel And Gretel (sp?)
The Little Match girl
Rapunzel
Aladdin
Peter Pan
The Elves and the Shoemaker
The Princess and the Pea
The Pied Piper of Hamlin
The Emperors New Clothes
The Gingerbread Man
Pinocchio
Jack and the Beanstock
Rumplestiltskin
Three Billy Goats Gruff
King Midas

My absolute favorite Disney movie is Aladdin. But actual fairy tale? I need to grab my book. *rustling is heard is Karen jumps up to get her book, sits down, then flips through it* Always did like Snow White & Rose Red, the Goose Girl, King Thrushbeard (both of which I remember from a live action series in the 80s), and the Six Swans. And there's Faithful John, which is a little macabre, but aren't most of the Grimm tales? The funniest is probaby Prudent Hans.

Was that the same live action series that Christopher Reeve played the prince in Sleeping Beauty? With Bernadette Peters?

That was a great series.

The Merchant's wife is this guy(the merchant) marrying the king's daughter because she totally insults everybody she meets. The beginning's almost the same as Good King Thrushbeard, only the Merchant wins the princess over by psyching her out, a little bit like Taming of the Shrew, he won't let her eat because the food's not good enough for her, won't let her sleep because the servants didn't clean the bedroom well enough, killed his favorite dog because it jumped on her. I think it's Italian in origin.

TEEEEEJ

My favorite story was probably about the Seven Chinese Brothers, each of them with a special ability and were identical septuplets. I hope I got that name right, but it's been decades since I read it.

My favorite Disney movie would probably be Beauty and the Beast, partly because I like the fact that the heroine is probably the strongest of all the Disney Princesses and actually saves the prince. And also she's a book-reading nerd like me.

Aladdin would come in a close second, mostly because it has some of the best songs.

If anyone hasn't seen the movie, Enchanted, I'd encourage you to see it. It's a Disney movie that is both a parody and an homage to the Disney animated princess classics. There are literally hundreds of references to other Disney movies in it, some of them so obscure that you need to find a geek website that lists them all. It's a fabulous movie with great songs. The best two scenes would have to be with the songs, "Happy Working Song" and "That's How You Know." Three of the small parts are played by the actresses who voiced the parts of Ariel (Jodi Benson), Pocahontas (Judy Kuhn), and Belle (Paige O'Hara).

<"He knows that song. How does he know that song? I've never heard that song before."> Chuckle.

Mulan was also a Disney Princess who saved the prince. A good movie as well, but not one of my favorites.

Desiree

Swan Princess! One of my favorites <3

That was in Shelley Duvall's Fairy Tale Theatre, but I don't see anything about The Goose Girl or King Thrushbeard in that series.

Thanks so much, folcs. It sounds like I have a good list going of stories almost everybody knows. (I needed universally known stories so that they are still recognizable when I mess with them in my L&C story.)

I'm intrigued by the Goose Girl, which I haven't read yet. It sounds like I'm missing out on something.

BTW, I love the Seven Chinese Brothers. I don't know if it is well-known enough to use, but it makes a great story.


Elisabeth
who just realized I probably am looking for childhood folk tales and not fairytales.

The Goose Girl

The ending is a bit gruesome, but it's an interesting story.

Oh that ending made me laugh! Yes, I am strange. But so many fairy-tales are gruesome. I suppose it's to keep the adults amused since they're the ones who have to read them to their kids.

Here's a link to something that gave me nightmares as a child - it makes me laugh now, but Good God!

Little Suck-a-Thumb

Thanks for this thread, Elisabeth. I've been doing searches for books I liked as a kid, and getting all nostalgic.

Way to suck me in. Actually, fairytales as we conceive of them today are not really like the way they were used in the past, thus explaining the gruesome, non-Disney, endings. No one is exactly sure where they came from. We see them as fun, entertaining tales, almost always with a happy ending. In reality, they were usually meant as a way to entertain and a way to teach lessons. As such, they were, in the Western tradition at least, passed own orally via the women in the family. This explains why there are so many variations on a theme in many different cultures. Propp and Levi-Strauss are two major theorists on the whys and wherefores of fairytales. Just in case you're interested...but frankly, I wouldn't read them unless you're dying to know. They tend to put me to sleep, and the translations are horrid.

I would have to say that ''Beauty and the Beast'' is my favorite fairy tale .

Camy

In very many traditional fairy tales, the principal evil-doer is a woman, who eventually meets with a gruesome death. This reeks of the witch hunts, if you ask me.



Here in Scandinavia, we had the brilliant story-telling Dane, H.C. Andersen.



It was Andersen who originally wrote the fairy tale about the little mermaid. But Andersen's original is just so sad! The little mermaid saves the prince's life and falls in love with him, and in order to have a chance to be with him, she sacrifices her voice so that she can have a pair of legs instead and be able to walk on land. But she can't tell the prince what she has done for him, and he just doesn't understand at all... he doesn't care about her... Okay, here it is:

Little Red Riding Hood

Anyway, it sure is a fascinating story.



Ann

Ann, if you haven't already, you need to read Hazel's LNC fairytale:


The Evil Stepmother\'s Manifesto



LabRat

Oh wow, LabRat!!! That's just wonderful! Hansel and Gretel, indeed, and their wicked stepmother and the wicked witch!!!



Ann

Project Gutenburg

Heres a link to a lot of Fairy and Folk Tales!


Desiree

Yes, that's where I was able to download for free all those wonderful fairy tale collections from my childhood. The Green Book of Fairy Tales, The Lilac Book of Fairy Tales and so on. I don't remember how many there were in the series, but it was quite a lot. I'd recommend them to anyone who's interested in fairytales.

ETA: I checked them out. I had the detail slightly wrong, but I remembered (how I have no clue after all these years!) that they were all edited by Andrew Lang. You can find them here . Brown Fairy Book, Green Fairy Book and so on.

LabRat

In case anyone wants to read the werewolf version of Little Red Riding Hood, it is here.

Ann

my (non-Disney) fave's were always:

Cinderella... really sad/happy at the same time... loved the Drew Barrymore version
The little match girl
Rumplestiltskin

and although not really fairy tails...
The Secret Garden
and The little Princess
by Francess Hodgson Burnett

Oooh
and don't forget the Australian Classic The Complete Adventures of Snuggle...e Ragged Blossom and Little Obelia"
by May Gibbs ..... not sure if her works are as well known overseas...


favourite DISNEY one's include:
Little Mermaid (First movie I ever saw at the cinema... aged 4)
Aladdin (Just gotta love that Robin Williams as Gene)
and
Beauty and the Beast... so moving...I cried in this one when we think the beast dies...

Thanks so much to all who posted here.

Y'all take your fairytales very seriously. I've always tended to believe that fairytales were violent because that was what was popular in entertainment during that time period. If you look at the television, movie and radio stories which were popular in the middle of the twentieth century, it's obvious that most of them would not be nearly as popular 50 years later and vice versa. Some of that, of course, has to do with a society that pushes limits, but much of it also has to do with changing ideas of entertainment.

Anyway, thanks so much for all of this. I'll get to writing as soon as my Kerth nominations list is complete.

Elisabeth

I think you're right in saying that this was popular in entertainment. I want to point out though, that more than just entertainment it was folk entertainment, 'old wives tales' meant to be told outloud, not read, so we probably have a limited amount of all the ones that existed (although the orality makes it sketchy to even pinpoint at an origin). A lot of them were passed down from mother to daughter and while I subscribe to the view that superficially they were cautionary morality tales, I think there was also a vicarious pleasure in narrating the violent demise of evil doers. I like to think of it in terms of the Middle Age mentality of living in fear and these tales as providing some sort of comfort in the uncertainty. Because of course nothing in fairy tales tends to be uncertain (the handmaiden was EVIL she deserved her fate!).

Anyway as far as this displays women's (often devalued) creativity I feel there is something subversive about them. Kind of like fanfiction (in that it exists outside the sphere of commodification). That is right up until fairy tales got coopted by the bourgois salons and aspiring (male) writers. Then it was watered down (gah, imagine how nasty they must have been if what we always get has been edited already), made palatable to the upper classes and sent forth as quaint little tales that they could enjoy as they continued oppressing the lower classes.

alcyone