An UN-bearable Story for Unpleasant Dreams
Last Christmas my sister gave a copy of Grimm's Grimsest,a collection of the most dismal stories from Grimm's Fairy Tales. I'm reproducing one of the worst ones here. I have found three different places claiming the copyright on exactly the same translation, so I'm going to assume it's in the public domain.Once upon a time there was a child who was willful and did not do what his mother wanted. For this reason God was displeased with him and caused him to become ill, and no doctor could help him, and in a short time he lay on his deathbed. He was lowered into a grave and covered with earth, but his little arm suddenly came forth and reached up, and it didn't help when they put it back in and put fresh earth over it, for the little arm always came out again. So the mother herself had to go to the grave and beat the little arm with a switch, and as soon as she had done that, it withdrew, and the child finally came to rest beneath the earth.
Yuck! This sounds like a typical German story, all moral and no entertainment value other than terrifying the daylights out of little kids if they don't do what they're told. What a morbid tale. And the book burners want Harry Potter banished from the library! Are they nuts? Do they ever actually READ anything that's already in the Library? No, of course not. If they could read, they wouldn't be so anxious to ban books.
I am troubled by whatever it is in the northern European culture that produces folk tales like this one. Maybe it's just so cold and dark in the wintertime that people brood too much and think up dismal stories.
All I know is I'm going to read Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak's book Bears now to get this dreadful image out of my mind. (Another gift from my sister.) It's a great story. With only has 47 word, I should manage to finish it in less than half-an-hour if I don't move my lips.
May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.
Wayne
posted by Wayne @ 11:46 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I remember reading stories like that as a child! The most traumatic story I recall reading was "The Juniper Tree" --- it was about a boy and girl... and I cannot remember the details... but the step-mother (who was the birth mother of the girl) greatly disliked the boy. So she lured him to her bedroom with a chest full of shiny red apples and CLOSED THE CHEST on his body - chopping off his head! And then she made a stew of him, I think. He came back as a beautiful bird who then bestowed presents on everyone, except his step mother. On her, he dropped a big weight.
It's been at least a decade since I've read that story.
- Tori
I know the story. As a matter of fact it was you who introduced me to it. Ugh!
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