Fairytales research

The Buried Moon

Once upon a time, the Carland was filled with bogs. When the moon shone, it was as safe to walk in as by day, but when she did not, evil things, such as bogies, came out.
One day the moon, hearing of this, pulled on a black cloak over her yellow hair and went to see for herself. She fell into a pool, and a tree bound her there. She saw a man coming toward the pool and fought to be free until the hood fell off; the light warned off the man and scared off the evil creatures. She struggled to follow until the hood only fell back over her hair, and all the evil things came out of the darkness and buried her under a snag.
The moon never rose again, and the people wondered what had happened until the man she had rescued remembered and told what he had seen. A wise woman sent them into the bog until they found a coffin, a candle, and a cross; the moon would be nearby. They did as the wise woman said, and freed the moon.

Little Red Riding Hood

The version most widely known today is based on the Brothers Grimm variant. It is about a girl called Little Red Riding Hood, after the red hooded cape or cloak she wears. The girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her sick grandmother.
A wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public. He approaches the girl, and she naïvely tells him where she is going. He suggests the girl pick some flowers, which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He swallows the grandmother whole, and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandmother.
When the girl arrives, she notices he looks very strange to be her grandma. In most retellings, this eventually culminates with Little Red Riding Hood saying, "My, what big teeth you have!"
To which the wolf replies, "The better to eat you with," and swallows her whole, too.
A hunter, however, comes to the rescue and cuts the wolf open. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerge unharmed. They fill the wolf's body with heavy stones, which drown him when he falls into a well. Other versions of the story have had the grandmother shut in the closet instead of eaten, and some have Little Red Riding Hood saved by the hunter as the wolf advances on her rather than after she is eaten.
The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no written versions are as old as that.

Peter Stump

Peter Stumpp, whose name is also spelt as Peter Stube, Pe(e)ter Stubbe, Peter Stübbe or Peter Stumpf,and other aliases include such names as Abal Griswold, Abil Griswold, and Ubel Griswold, was born at the village of Epprath near the country-town of Bedburg in the electorate of Cologne. His date of birth is not known, as the local church registers were destroyed during the Thirty Years' War (17th c.). He was a wealthy farmer and influential member of the rural community. In the 1580s he seems to have been a widower with two children; a girl called Beele (Sybil), who seems to have been over fifteen, and a son of an unknown age. In the years before his trial he had an intimate relationship with a distant relative called Katharina Trump (also spelt "Trumpen" or "Trompen").

Accusations

In 1589, Stumpp had one of the most lurid and famous werewolf trials in history. After being stretched on the rack, he confessed to having practiced black magic since he was twelve years old. He claimed that the Devil had given him a magical belt, which enabled him to metamorphose into "the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws." Removing his belt, he said, made him transform back to his human form.
For twenty-five years, Stumpp had allegedly been an "insatiable bloodsucker" who gorged on the flesh of goats, lambs, and sheep, as well as men, women, and children. Being threatened with torture he confessed to killing and eating fourteen children, two pregnant women, and their foetuses. One of the fourteen children was his own son, whose brain he was reported to have devoured.
Not only was Stumpp accused of being a serial murderer and cannibal, but also of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter, who was sentenced to die with him, and he coupled with a distant relative, which was also considered to be incestuous according to the law. In addition to this he confessed to having had intercourse with a succubus sent to him by the Devil.
Execution
His execution is one of the most brutal on record: He was put to the wheel, where flesh was torn from his body, in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been strangled and were burned along with Stumpp's body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stumpp's severed head.
It is impossible to determine whether Stumpp really committed the crimes of which he was accused. He may have been a serial murderer, though there are a number of details in the London pamphlet that are inconsistent with the historical facts.
The years in which Stumpp was supposed to have committed most of his crimes (1582-1589) were marked by internal wars in the Electorate of Cologne after the abortive introduction of Protestantism by the former Archbishop Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg. He had been supported by Adolf, Count of Neuenahr, who was also the lord of Bedburg.
Stumpp was most certainly a convert to Protestantism. The war brought the invasion of armies of either side, the assaults by marauding soldiers and eventually an outbreak of the plague. Murder and violence were the rule.
When the Protestants were defeated in 1587, Bedburg Castle became the headquarters of Catholic mercenaries under the command of the new lord of Bedburg - Werner, Count of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck, who was a staunch Catholic determined to re-establish the Roman faith.
So it is not inconceivable that the werewolf trial was but a barely concealed political trial, with the help of which the new lord of Bedburg planned to bully the Protestants of the territory back into Catholicism. If it had only been just another execution of a werewolf and a couple of witches, as sprang up around this time in various parts of Germany, the attendance of members of the high aristocracy – maybe including the new Archbishop and Elector of Cologne – would be surprising.
Furthermore, the trial remained a singular event, nor did the judges refer to the new paradigma of werewolfism (explaining the animal transformation as an infernal delusion).

The Three Billy Goats gruff

The story introduces three male goats named Gruff of varying size and age, sometimes identified in the story as youngster, father and grandfather, but more often they are described as brothers. There is no grass left for them to eat nearest to where they live, so they must cross a river to get to a "sæter" (a summer farm in the hills), but the only way across is over a bridge that is guarded by a fearsome troll who eats any who pass that way. The youngest goat, knowing nothing of this, crosses the bridge and is threatened by the troll but is spared when he tells the troll that his brothers are larger and more gratifying as a feast. The middle goat sees that the youngest one has crossed and reaches the conclusion that the bridge must be safe after all, but when he crosses and the troll challenges him, he too tells him of his eldest brother. When the eldest and largest of them attempts to cross, the troll comes out to seize him but is gored by his horns and knocked into the river. From then on the bridge is safe, and all three goats are able to go to the rich fields around the summer farm in the hills.

The Ugly Duckling

When the tale begins, a lexi's eggs hatch. One of the little birds is perceived by the duck’s neighbors as a homely little creature and suffers much verbal and physical abuse. He wanders sadly from the barnyard and lives with wild ducks and geese until hunters slaughter the flocks. He then finds a home with an old woman but her cat and hen tease him mercilessly and again he sets off on his own. He sees a flock of migrating wild swans; he is delighted and excited but he cannot join them. Winter arrives. A farmer finds and carries the freezing little bird home, but the foundling is frightened by the farmer’s noisy children and flees the house. He spends a miserable winter alone in the outdoors but, when spring arrives, he is welcomed into a flock of beautiful swans for he has matured into one of them.
In reviewing Hans Christian Andersen: A New Life by biographer Jens Andersen, British journalist Anne Chisholm writes “Andersen himself was a tall, ugly boy with a big nose and big feet, and when he grew up with a beautiful singing voice and a passion for the theatre he was cruelly teased and mocked by other children". The ugly duckling is the child of a swan whose egg accidentally rolled into a duck's nest.
Speculation suggests that Andersen was the illegitimate son of Christian Frederik, the Crown Prince of Denmark (later King Christian VIII of Denmark), and found this out some time before he wrote the book, and thus that being a swan in the story was a metaphor not just for inner beauty and talent but also for secret royal lineage.
Bruno Bettelheim observes in ‘’The Uses of Enchantment’’ that the Ugly Duckling is not confronted with the tasks, tests, or trials of the typical fairy tale hero. “No need to accomplish anything is expressed in “The Ugly Duckling”. Things are simply fated and unfold accordingly, whether or not the hero takes some action.” In conjunction with Bettelheim’s assessment, Maria Tatar notes in ’’The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen’’ that Andersen suggests the Ugly Duckling‘s superiority resides in the fact that he is of a breed different from the barnyard rabble, and that dignity and worth, moral and aesthetic superiority are determined by nature rather than accomplishment.

The Wounded Lion

A poor girl got a job herding cows. One day, she heard a moan, and found a lion with a thorn in its paw. She pulled it out, and the lion thanked her by licking her face, but she could not find the cows again. Her master beat her and set her to herding donkeys. A year later, she found the lion wounded again, and when she aided it, the donkeys vanished. Her master beat her again and set to her to herding pigs. A year later, the lion appeared for a third time, wounded, she aided it, the pigs vanished, and she decided to wait and see if she could find them.
She climbed a tree and saw a man coming down a path and vanishing behind a rock at sunset. She decided to stay until she saw him come out. At dawn, a lion came out. She went down and behind the rock. A beautiful house stood there; she tidied it up and ate a meal before coming out to climb the same tree. The man came at the same time, and the next morning, the lion looked about before going on.
After three days of this, she could not discover his secret, so she descended and asked him. He told that he was enchanted by a giant into that form by day and was the lion she had helped; furthermore, the giant had stolen the cows, donkeys, and pigs in revenge for her aid. She wanted to free him. He told her that the only way was to get a lock of hair from the king's daughter and make a cloak from it for the giant.
The girl got the princess to hire her as a scullion. She dressed very neatly every day, and it came to the ears of the princess, who set her to comb her hair. The girl begged a lock of hair from her until she gave it. The girl wove a coat from it, but it was too small. She went back to the princess, who gave her another lock on the condition that she would find her a prince to marry. The girl said she had already found him, took the lock, and made the coat larger. The giant asked her what reward she wanted. She wanted to turn the lion back into a man. After some argument, the giant told her to kill the lion, cut him up into pieces, burn them, and throw the ash into water. The prince would arise from it a man.
She went away weeping, afraid that the giant had lied and she would kill the prince. The prince comforted her and told her to do it, and it worked. He said he would marry her. The girl told him she had promised the princess that she had found her a bridegroom. They went back to the princess, and her parents, the king and queen, knew him for their own son. So he married the girl who had saved him.

Beauty and Pock face

The older of two sisters, the child of the first wife, was beautiful and called Beauty, but her younger sister, the child of the second wife, had a pocked face and was called Pock Face. The first wife had died when her child was young and come back as a yellow cow. The wicked stepmother abused Beauty and set her tasks. The yellow cow did them for her, but the stepmother found out and had the cow killed. Beauty collected the bones and put them in a pot. One day, her stepmother did not take her to the theater, so Beauty broke everything at home, including the pot; when she did that, a horse, a dress, and a pair of shoes come out. She put on the clothing and rode the horse, but she lost one shoe in the ditch. Men came by, she asked them to get her the shoe, and each one agreed if she would marry him. She refused a fishmonger for smelling of fish, a rich merchant for being covered with dust, and an oil merchant for being greasy, but agreed to marry a scholar.
Three days after the wedding, Beauty went to pay her respects to her parents. Pock Face lured her to the well, pushed her in, and sent word to the scholar that she had contracted small pox. After a time, she went herself and explained her looks by the illness. Beauty, however, had become a sparrow and came to taunt Pock Face while she was combing her hair; Pock Face taunted her back. The scholar heard and asked her to come to a cage if she were his wife; she came. Pock Face killed the sparrow and buried it. Bamboo shot up on the grave. The shoots tasted delicious to the scholar but gave Pock Face ulcers on her tongue. Pock Face cut the bamboo down and had a bed made from it, but though the scholar found it comfortable, it poked Pock Face with needles, so she threw it out. An old woman took it home. She found that dinner was cooked for her whenever she came home. In time, she caught Beauty, who had her give her some cooking things, which enabled her to appear.
Beauty gave the old woman a bag to sell by her husband's house. When she did so, the scholar questioned her and brought her back home. Pock Face proposed tests to determine who was the genuine wife. First they walked on eggs; Beauty did not break any, and Pock Face broke them all, but she would not admit it. Then they climbed a ladder of knives; Beauty did not cut her feet, and Pock Face did, but she would not admit it. Finally, they jumped into boiling oil; Beauty emerged alive, but Pock Face died. Beauty sent her body back to her stepmother, but her stepmother thought it was carp. When she saw it was her daughter, she fell down dead.