WEBVTT - How Grimm's Fairy Tales Work 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works 0:00:05.320 --> 0:00:13.720 dot com. Hey, you're welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:16.880 There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Nol. He's back. He's 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:20.400 actually sitting in for this one. And that makes this 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:22.599 stuff you should know. Yeah, we left a trail of 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:27.040 breadcrumbs or pebbles, depending on what part of the episode. 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.560 That's right, we're talking about that's that's my favorite one. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.239 Now that in the Juniper Tree or my favorite and 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.839 the juniper tree. Yeah, and we should say this is 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.360 a two parter um. You should have already previously listened 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.120 to one. We probably should have put this one out 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.320 first and then done the other one. Hey, but whatever, 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:50.280 what evs we we just think this is a nice 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:52.839 I really enjoyed these two. Actually, I think if you 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:54.600 can make the case that we did it in the 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:58.560 right or because now people have thought about fairy tales 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:00.960 and have jailed and bathed in them for like the 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.320 last day or so, and now they're ready to understand 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:06.280 what's been haunting them. But where did they come from? Right? 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.000 What's the deal? And we're going to tell you what's 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:11.480 the deal? This is I really did enjoy these O. 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:14.360 This kind of reignited my kind of brought up a 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.560 lot of stuff. Oh yeah, did you find yourself weeping? 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.920 Not weeping, just kind of like remembering childhood? And I 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:23.679 don't know, I enjoyed it. I guess I didn't read 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.759 that many fairy tales. It reminded me that fairy tales 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:32.720 are No, they're not awful, they're just very um dark, Yes, 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.120 but I appreciate that part. I think it's more just 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:40.200 the have you ever have you ever seen a picture 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:45.920 of a human being without a face. Uh yeah, I 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.160 think that's kind of how I think of fairy tales. 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:53.360 They're they're blank, they're anonymous, they're um flat. I think 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:55.400 it's that I've actually run into that term a lot 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:57.840 in researching for this episode. There's certainly not a lot 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:01.200 of character development and oh and that's part of like 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.040 their charm, their lure. But it's also like, you know, 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.120 that's the memory I formed of them is like, um, 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.679 I'm used to characters or psychologist is lacking as well, 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.639 like people do stuff for almost no apparent reason whatsoever, 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:18.119 and a lot of it's horrible stuff. Um. And that's 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:21.440 actually kind of set the stage for fairy tales to 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:25.359 be told and retold and retold and interpreted and analyzed. 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:28.919 And um, I think that's what makes them so enduring 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:33.000 is that they are there's there's there're so minimalists that 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:38.240 they just survive because humans will change an update and 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.919 we'll go from wearing bell bottoms and macromay vest to 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:46.640 wearing like silver jump suits, which are in right now. Um, 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:49.560 But ultimately we're still like very similar to what we were, 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:53.200 you know, sixty years ago. And I think fairy tales 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:59.119 um reflect that well said. And also I can say 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:01.560 that because from what I understand, despite the fact that 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:06.959 there is serious study of fairy tales, no one really 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.200 has any definitive say over what they are. Like trying 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:13.320 to define what a fairy tale is, chuck, Um, It's 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:18.480 a story usually encompassing like a moral or ethical uh, lesson, 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:27.000 but fantastical elements. Sure, okay, uh that often had dark 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:31.400 undertones or overtones. That's actually a pretty great definition, but 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:33.240 it does raise some questions. It's like, what is the 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:35.640 difference between a fairy tale and a fable, or a 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.400 fairy tale and a nursery rhyme? You know, what's the 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.160 what is it specifically about fairy tales, and I think 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:44.760 it's all I think they're all very similar and it's 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.880 all part of folklore. So if you listened, I think 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:50.840 in February this year, we did one on folklore, so 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:54.160 it ties in heavily with that. Um. And also we 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.720 didn't I don't know why we just defined fairy tale 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:00.200 because we never defined what vocal fry was. Apparently I 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:03.240 feel like we did. Yeah, we got some complaints like 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.120 you never said what it was, but we demonstrated it 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.680 over and over. Yeah, and we said it's like a flat, 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.160 creaky way of speaking. Yeah. I don't know. I feel 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:17.240 like we got the point across. Um. Okay, So fairy 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:21.600 tales specifically, when you think of fairy tales, you you 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:23.440 might think of Disney, but if you give it a 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.839 little more thought, you're probably going to come up with, um, 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:31.599 the Brothers Krim, Yeah, Matt Damon and um Heath ledger 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:36.640 R yeah for real, uh yeah, Jacob and Wilhelm Graham 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:40.640 uh and of course there Well, let's just go ahead 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:42.360 and say there's a couple of types of fairy tales. 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:47.200 There's the there's the oral tale. Yeah, the oral tale, 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.760 which is and and the grand Brothers kind of exists 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:52.240 between the two worlds. But one is the oral world, 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:56.120 which we talked about in folklore, the age old tradition 0:04:56.160 --> 0:05:01.200 of passing stories down um via mouth parts, over and 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.120 over and over, changing them, adding some spice, just like 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.320 telling a joke or a ghost story or something like that, 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:10.040 right exactly, um. And fairy tales specifically, as far as 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.320 they went with oral tales are typically associated with women 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:19.320 and typically associated with women, um, undertaking domestic chores. That 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:23.160 that's typically where they were passed down. Um. And so 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.479 you've got the oral tale and well, which makes sense. 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.159 Though when I read this, I was like, why are 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:30.560 there so many fairy tales to have women at the 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:34.360 loom or spinning stuff, because apparently that's where they were told. 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.080 It makes sense. Yeah, it's like, hey, I'm I'm bored 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:41.040 out of my mind here spending the straw into gold. 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:43.800 Let me eat some peyote and make up a story 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.880 and you sit there and listen. Um. There's also the 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:51.839 literary fairy tale, which appears to be there's a handful 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:56.560 of people like Charles Perrault or challer Piero right um. 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:00.440 And then there's also Hans Christian Anderson very famously, and 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:04.320 these people are are reputed as having created, you know, 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.520 many fairy tales, and those are called literary fairy like 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:12.240 they were original authors and made these upright. That's apparently 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:17.760 a total like misattribution. Like for example, Little Red riding Hood, right, 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:23.040 is a great example that's typically attributed to Charles Parrault 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.720 in the I think the seventeenth or sixteenth century. Charles 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:33.240 Charles Parralt his ancestor um and Charles Pearl. He was 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:37.080 very famous, as famous as Hans Christian Anderson was um 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.360 for for writing down fairy tales and the collections and 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.160 just being delightful, right, and he was great and at 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:44.760 the end of every one of his there was a 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:49.159 moral to the story. Um. But the people tend to 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:51.160 think that either if he didn't come up with it, 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.560 it was originated right before then. But we found an article, 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.200 um that was from it covered a two thousand nine 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:02.440 study carried out cultural anthropologists who basically went to some 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:04.880 biologists and said, hey, do you guys know how you 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:09.240 trace um species and create the tree of life the 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:13.080 taxonomy of biology? Can you do that with Little Red 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.080 Riding Hood? And they said, man, you are one crazy 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.040 lady or one whacked out hepcat actually may have been 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:23.640 a man, doctor Jamie Trani. It was a man and 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.119 still is probably. I mean it's only been six years. 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.200 You never know. Um. So Dr Tarrani went to some 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:32.960 biologists and figured out how to apply the same methods 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:36.520 to this story Little Red Riding Hood, and he found 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:39.160 that not only was it not just like a few 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.680 years older than Pearl's version, it was as as as 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:47.000 much as years old. Basically, yeah, they found variations in 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.120 China and Iran and the Middle East. Um, they found 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:55.760 some unit for the asp stables another person, they said, 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.480 they found some of those from sixth century BC. So 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.640 basically what they're saying is maybe nobody made these up. Well, 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:06.360 someone at some point did, at least as far as 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:09.840 Little Red Riding Hood goes. That there's some common ancestor 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:14.240 that predates years before the present, and um it was. 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.960 It's a very widespread tale. Um. Not only did Dr 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:24.280 Tehranni um trace the lineage back to six BC, UM 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:27.679 he found that you could take these tales all around 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:29.960 the world and lump them into groups, just a few, 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:34.280 a handful of groups, and that UM places as desparate 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.400 as Iran and Nigeria and Europe all were in the 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.880 same group, whereas like Japan and Burma and China were 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.600 in their own group. But they all kind of bear 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.000 this resemblance where there is a lion or tiger or 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:53.400 a wolf who was posing as something else in order 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.800 to get the drop on someone else. Yeah, and it's 0:08:57.080 --> 0:08:59.600 sometimes usually a little girl, but I think in Iran 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:04.880 it was a boy. So details change again simple folklore, 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.199 I think, but the structure, the skeleton of the story 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.720 is still very much the same, traceable back years. So 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.440 that that kind of answers the question that I don't 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:18.720 know if we raised or not yet who owns or who? Who? 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.000 Who came up with fairy tales? But humans did. That's 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.040 the best answer you could possibly come up with. These 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:27.000 humans came up with it and over the over the years, 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.560 like you said, people in bellyship, people add people subtract um, 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:34.400 and the Grimm brothers did exactly that same thing. All right, 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.160 let's let's talk a little bit about these these grim bros. 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:41.439 Um Jacob and Wilhelm did already say that they were 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:45.520 born in Yakub in Part one, which I appreciated yea 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:51.200 and wille Helm Jacob or Yakub was born in seventy five, 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.679 home just a year later, and they were they were 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:57.000 kind of rich kids. Their dad was a lawyer and 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.199 they had some money. Uh. Their original house if you 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:01.640 look at it, it's funny. It looks like I mean, 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:06.320 it's a total Bavarian like gingerbread house. And Um, they 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.400 grew up in Germany and when they were ten years old, 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.480 their dad died of pneumonia. Uh, and all of a 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:13.960 sudden they didn't have the kind of dough that they 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:17.120 were used to having. They did was not good and 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:18.640 in a little scary. I don't get the sense that 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:21.400 they were like dirt poor or anything, because they still 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:23.839 had some relatives that had some cash well. Plus also, 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:25.440 I mean they made it all the way through law 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.800 school in honor of their father, So I mean that 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:31.360 wasn't free even back then. Yeah. There, I think their 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:36.200 aunt paid for school. Uh. They graduated each graduate at 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:38.280 the top of their class, and I guess what would 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:40.720 be considered high school. And then their auntie paid for 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.240 law school. And it wasn't long after law school that 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.800 they got into the UM. It was about to say 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.760 writing that they did right. But the editors for sure, 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:55.640 collecting and editing and writing business. They were what's called philologists. 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.720 Curating is the word I met um. And they were 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.120 also they consider of themselves and were considered linguists as well. 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:04.360 And by the way, they were Hessians, which means that 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.120 they were um from the same place as the headless 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:11.800 horseman from a sleepy hollow legend. He was a Hessian mercenary. 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:17.120 That yeah, Um. So anyway, they they came. They graduated 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:21.720 from law school during this period called German romanticism um, 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:26.800 which was basically this idea that before years before, in 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:30.520 the in the midsts of history, the Germanic people were 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:35.080 very interesting. They had a very good grasp on things, 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:39.040 and a lot of this was passed down through oral 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:43.440 folk folklore and um. That this stuff was disappearing thanks 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:45.840 to industrialization. So you get the idea that there's a 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.920 little bit of nervousness at least among the intellectual um 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:54.120 people of Germany at the time, that this cultural history 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.280 was drying up very quickly, and there was a movement 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:01.600 to collect this oral knowledge before it disappeared. And that's 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:04.480 what um, that's what the Grimm brothers were doing when 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:07.760 they set about collecting these stories, although they weren't very 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.559 honest about it at least at first. Yeah, it was, um, 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.360 we know them now is as just simply the grim 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:19.720 Brothers fairy tales. But the original collection was called um 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:25.080 Nursery and Household Tales or die kenda went house minchen 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:30.079 and german Man. You're German? Is it's coming back? And 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.960 there are eighty six stories originally in the collection. And 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:35.839 by the way, big shout to the article from the 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:38.240 New Yorker Once Upon a Time A Lord of the 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:43.080 fairy Tale by Joan uh at Casella. Yes, very nice. 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.559 I think that's it. Yeah, she wrote a great article. Um, 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:49.480 and that's the largely the basis of our podcast. By 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:51.400 the way, that's right, so thanks for that. But um, 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.080 eighty six original stories. And like you said, originally they 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.199 in the in the forward, in the introduction they were like, 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.200 this is a this is all German all the time, 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.800 basically word for word. We went around to the peasantry 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:10.240 and collected this um these marks was it marching or marking? 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:16.439 Uh for what the tales German for tales the marching 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:21.439 or marken house myrchin merchant. So they went around to 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:26.760 the Vulk the peasantry and collected the merchant from them. Yeah, 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.679 it didn't change a word specifically. They said they had 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:35.360 a primary source, a woman named Dorothea VMan, and she 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.760 was a peasant and a village near them. Um. But 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.480 it turns out and that all of this again was folklore, 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:43.319 which I can't fault them too much because that was 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:45.760 their business. No, but they jumped it up to be 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:47.360 a little more folks tho than it was. Well, they 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:51.280 both basically lied in there in the introduction in their 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:54.520 first um, the first edition, which was published in two 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:57.560 volumes in eighteen twelve and eighteen fifteen. Right, and so 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.920 this nursery and household tales became known as rooms fairy tales. 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:06.200 And at first it was definitely um a much more 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:09.240 of an intellectual pursuit. There are lots of footnotes. They 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:12.000 tried to make it seem like they were just collecting 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:15.160 and preserving this German folk knowledge and all that. But 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:18.679 it turns out that they they did have that primary 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:20.800 source and that woman, but she was pretty far from 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.040 a peasant. Apparently she was the wife of a tailor, 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:25.880 which was part of the merchant class, not the peasant class, 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.600 and she was just one source. They relied on friends 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.320 and family and relatives and other collections of fairy folk 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.440 folk tales and fairy tales that they just lifted. Um. 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:37.480 And we're not suggesting there were thieves. This was a 0:14:37.480 --> 0:14:40.280 common thing to do. It was. But again they bald 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:43.040 faced ly lied in there in the in the introduction 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:46.440 in preface, which is funny, but it's um. Yeah, they were. 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.720 They were they were trying to adopt an aura for 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.120 their project that they wanted it to have that it 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:55.200 didn't necessarily have. Well, yeah, and I don't think we 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:59.400 mentioned the source wasn't even a German descent. She was 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.320 a French. You cannot. Yeah, So they even kind of 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:04.240 trump that up right, which means that a lot of 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:08.480 the stuff that, like Red Riding cap Um, is a 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.720 rip off of Charles Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood or 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.440 an adaptation whatever you want to call it. But again, 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.720 this is in the midst of this German romanticism, where 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:22.120 German culture was trying to be promoted and um uh, 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:26.640 celebrated and preserved. Um. So all of this stuff was 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:31.920 very much painted as German, even though not necessarily any 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:34.520 of it was German. In origin, but it was far 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:36.600 more ancient than even the French that they were lifting 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.680 it from. That's right. Um, all right, here, let's take 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:41.840 a little break and let's come back and let's talk 0:15:41.920 --> 0:16:07.240 a little bit more about these grand brothers and we're 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.400 back and Chuck. Before we get back to it, I 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:13.080 want to shout out to guest producer Noel, who is 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.520 responsible for the fairy tale themed jingle that this episode 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:18.680 in the first one too. Yeah, we asked and he 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.000 was like, too easy, I'll do with my eyes closed 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.240 while I'm asleep. He did with an alligator chasing me. 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:28.000 That's right, So thanks Noel. It's awesome. All right. These 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:30.760 are grand brothers. Uh. They were. They were tight. They 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:32.920 were really really close with each other. They were they 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:35.280 worked really close with each other. They were buddies from 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:38.480 what I can tell. Uh, And apparently for most of 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:41.520 their career they worked at desks facing each other. That 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:46.440 classic writing partner than we are now, Yes, even though 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:51.800 it's one desk, right and we only sit here to record. Yeah, 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:55.680 I guess there is some similarity here there. Sure we're 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:59.880 making magic and they were too. I think that's the similarity, right, Sure, 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.840 yakop was it was a difficult introvert in Willehelm was 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:07.600 pretty laid back. Wilhelm would eventually get married because he 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.119 was more outgoing and had four kids, whereas Yakop stayed 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:15.040 a bachelor his whole life. Um, and they were tight. 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.800 They worked as librarians together for a lot of their career. Uh. 0:17:18.840 --> 0:17:23.719 And like you said, they were uh philologists. It is 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:26.480 um like they worked on most things, I think eight 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.480 things together. Yakop wrote twenty one books on his own, 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:31.960 bill Holm fourteen. And they were I mean, one of 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:34.200 them wrote a book on grammar. One of them wrote 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:36.239 like a history book. They were smart dude. They were 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:40.119 smart dudes. Um. But their their life's work, aside from 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.560 the fairy tales, ended up being they seemed to be 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:49.000 sort of obsessed with making a German dictionary complete, like 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:51.919 writing a dictionary. Yeah, they've made it to f I 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.680 believe before they died. Yeah, and then some some other 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:56.560 people came along and said we're going to carry on 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:58.439 this work and finish and it was completed. But it 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.360 was a massive project. Yeah, I mean, like for decades 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:03.800 they worked up just to get through f right and 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:08.560 I think, um who died first, I believe Wilhelm, the 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:12.159 younger one, died first and Jacob carried the dictionary on 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:16.520 for four more years even after his death. But um 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:19.800 Yacob said, Okay, I'm done with the fairy Tales. I'm 0:18:19.800 --> 0:18:22.479 gonna move on to other stuff. And Wilhelm actually edited 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:26.119 that thing for forty five years. It went through seven 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.160 editions of the Fairytale Thing, Yes, the Nursery and Household Tales, 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.680 the Grim fairy Tales, Scary it went, I'm sorry, I switched. 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.800 Um it went from uh, it went from yeah, I 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:41.960 guess eighteen twelve to yeah. Eighteen fifty seven was when 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.320 he released the last edition, and they were very different 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:47.880 books by the time the first edition in the last 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:50.960 edition came out, and even between the first and second editions, 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:55.240 they were tremendously different books. Because Um, the Grimm brothers 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.199 decided that their book wasn't selling like they thought it 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:01.159 would e G. Hot k Yeah, if you listen to 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:04.560 the previous episode, it was originally much darker and aimed 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:08.440 at adults and was poorly reviewed and didn't sell well. Right, 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.320 and for grammarians listening by e G. I'm an example 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:14.359 not that is I would have said I E had 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:17.560 I meant that. But um, they they decided that if 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:19.479 they could just kind of alter their book just a 0:19:19.480 --> 0:19:23.800 tiny bit, it would sell a lot better. So they 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:27.920 went through and took out all the sex, basically. Yeah, 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.600 and tradition of modern Americans take out the sex, pump 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.200 up the violence, right, But these are like early nineteenth 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:39.320 century Germans doing this, and I guess it's that that 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:43.320 same thing. Um, And here, Chuck, I have a question, 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.080 and it's a rhetorical question, but so you know how 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.560 nursery rhymes are just fairy tales are just weird. They're 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:54.480 very weird. There's a lot of random things that just 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:57.399 seem really out of talking eggs that break and right, 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:01.080 but also like really horrific violence for children's story and 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:04.880 all that. Yeah, I think that this is the point 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:08.159 where that weirdness sets in because they went through and 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:10.800 they took the same tales and they altered them just 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:14.960 slightly for children. But it went from these are adults 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.880 or these are stories for adults meant to be told 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.520 from one adults to another, not for kids, to let's 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:26.119 adapt these for kids. And um, in that adaptation, that 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:30.160 weirdness set in that's still there today. Yeah, I think 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:32.720 that's when it happened. That wasn't even a rhetorical question. 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:36.840 That was just a statement, thank you you're putting it 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.040 out there. Had I ended an up speak, though, I 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:42.760 could have made the case that it was rhetorical. Uh So, 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:44.960 in this and then the very next edition out of 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.520 the seven, they went ahead and after the bad sales 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:51.160 and stuff, and like I said, they sanitized it and 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:53.920 geared it too kids, but they also dropped that stuff 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:56.919 from the intro. All the lies in the intro were like, 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.359 I guess, why why do we even do that? Yeah? 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.080 You know, of course, sorry everybody. That was just dumb 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:06.240 on our parts. It was Wilhelm yaco Is likes like 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:08.960 no yucom and it just goes back and forth for 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:12.040 like eight pages. Uh So, in the previous podcast we 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:17.840 mentioned Rupunzel. How that was, um, how Rapunzel. Basically the 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:23.040 lady in question got pregnant after having sex. Yeah, so 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:26.600 they would they would, uh, they would whitewash that kind 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:29.359 of stuff. They would sanitize the sexier parts. Right, They 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:31.240 just took out the fact that she got pregnant and 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.440 didn't mention what the prince and she were doing, right, 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:36.720 They just left it up to the parents to imagine 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:38.639 and the kids to just be dummies and not know 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.240 what they were talking about. Right, But like we said 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.240 to the violent stayed um and in some cases even 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:49.640 got worse, like when Um Hansel and Well, the violence 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.400 got worse, but they also did sanitize it a little bit, 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:54.800 just to make it a little more palatable, like in 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:57.960 Hansel and gretel Uh. In the previous show, we mentioned 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:02.040 that Um it was it was a stepmother, an evil stepmother, 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:04.480 which we'll we'll talk about later as a recurring motif 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:07.000 UM that took the children out in the woods to 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:09.919 abandon them, and the original version it was both a 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.800 real mother and a real father, And they were like, 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:15.720 all right, you know that's really bad, so let's at 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:18.600 least make it an evil stepmother that the dad tries 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:21.000 to battle and say no, don't do this, right, but 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:23.520 eventually gives into, gives into and the kids are still 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:26.000 taking out in the woods to die, but it's just 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:29.439 a little bit more like, Okay, well it's not the 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:32.080 real parents because that's just horrific. So the violence is 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:34.600 still there, but they've taken away a little bit of 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:40.080 the psychological terror by replacing the mother slightly with a stepmother. UM, 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:44.320 and yeah, I think that that's a I guess that 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:48.040 is something of a cleansing process as far as editing goes. 0:22:48.080 --> 0:22:50.679 But the violence is still in there, and it seems 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:53.359 very weird, especially today when you look back at this 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:55.760 and think like they were reading this to kids. But 0:22:55.840 --> 0:22:59.080 there's a very smart woman named A s byatt who's 0:22:59.359 --> 0:23:02.679 children's off herself but also an expert on children's books, 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:08.199 and she wrote the introduction to a UM collection I 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.640 think actually the an addition of the Grimm's Fairy Tales 0:23:13.080 --> 0:23:17.520 by Maria Tatar, who's a basically the foremost expert on 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:22.000 fairy tales working today. Yeah, that's Zip's not around anymore. 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:25.520 He's retired because that guy, He's still available for comment 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:29.040 for sure, but Tatar seems to be the She's taken 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:32.080