Grey Tales

On June 26, 1284, a hundred and thirty children left the German town of Hamelin. Not one came back. This isn't an invention of the Brothers Grimm: a church window, a record from 1384 and a fifteenth-century manuscript all remember it. But the oldest sources have no rats, no unpaid fee and no revenge. In the final episode of my Grimm series, I peel back the layers of the Pied Piper legend, ask when and why the rats were added, and go through the major theories: plague, dancing mania, the Children's Crusade and emigration to the east. There's no answer. But there is a street where, to this day, no music is played.📚 Sources and Further ReadingWolfgang Mieder: The Pied Piper: A Handbook. Westport: Greenwood, 2007. → A comprehensive handbook on the legend, its sources and its reception.Robert Browning: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin." In: Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. → The best-known English-language version.Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: Deutsche Sagen. 2 vols. Berlin, 1816/1818. No. 245: "Die Kinder zu Hameln." → The Grimms' version, compiled from eleven older sources. English translation in Donald Ward (ed. and trans.): The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm.Hans Dobbertin: Quellensammlung zur Hamelner Rattenfängersage. Göttingen: Schwartz, 1970. → The foundational edition of the sources. (German)Hans Dobbertin: Quellenaussagen zur Rattenfängersage. Hameln: Niemeyer, 1996. → An expanded source collection with Dobbertin's own interpretation. (German)Jürgen Udolph: "Zogen die Hamelner Aussiedler nach Mähren? Die Rattenfängersage aus namenkundlicher Sicht." Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 69 (1997), pp. 125–183. → The place-name argument for the eastward-settlement theory. (German)

A gold ring from Roman Britain with a thief's name engraved on it. A pub chair that killed everyone who sat in it. A purple stone locked away in seven boxes. And a cheap print of a crying child that, in 1985, half of Britain was afraid to keep at home.For this Halloween special, I'm telling four short stories about cursed objects. First the legends, the way their believers tell them. Then a quick look at what's really behind each one: a Roman curse tablet that still exists, a chair that turned out to be 140 years too young, a horror writer who may have staged his own curse, and a tabloid panic that ended in a bonfire.Four objects, four storytellers. And the question I keep coming back to on this channel: who tells a story, and why?Sleep well… Yours, CrisSourcesR. G. Collingwood, "Inscriptions" (1932), in R. E. M. and T. V. Wheeler, Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire. Publishes the Silvianus curse tablet and the faint "rediviva" addition.J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Name 'Nodens'" (1932), appendix to the same Lydney report. Tolkien's study of the god's name, the link between Lydney and Middle-earth.Francis Haverfield, "Further remarks on the Ring of Senicianus" (1888–89), Transactions of the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. An early warning against linking ring and tablet on the strength of a name alone.Chaloner W. Chute, A History of The Vyne in Hampshire (1888). The family history that first set the ring and the curse side by side.William Grainge, The Vale of Mowbray (1859). Local history recording the 1702 murder of Daniel Auty by Thomas Busby.Stuart Minting, "18th Century murderer's chair continues to captivate supernatural fans", The Northern Echo (2014). Reports the furniture historian's dating of the chair to around 1840.Natural History Museum, London, behind-the-scenes blog on the cursed amethyst. Full text of Heron-Allen's 1904 letter and the curators' view that the curse was likely invented.Christopher Blayre (Edward Heron-Allen), "The Purple Sapphire" (1921). The short story the curse may have been staged to promote.Massimo Polidoro, "Curse That Painting!", Skeptical Inquirer (2012). Overview of the Crying Boy panic of 1985.Punt PI, BBC Radio 4, Series 3, Episode 4 (2010). Steve Punt's fire tests on original Crying Boy prints.David Clarke on the Crying Boy curse, Squaring the Strange podcast, episode 141. On the late origin of the Don Bonillo legend.#GreyTales #CursedObjects #Halloween #Folklore #HauntedObjects

Hansel and Gretel were really two adult bakers who murdered a rival in the Spessart forest in 1647 to steal her gingerbread recipe. That's what a 1963 book claimed, and half of Germany believed it. The catch: it was a satire by the cartoonist Hans Traxler. In episode 4 of my Grimm series, I look at invented origins: from the Baker Witch to the Snow White of Lohr, which started as an April Fool's joke among tavern regulars and now appears on highway signs, to the question of why one region of Hesse calls itself Little Red Riding Hood Country. And why fairy tales so badly need a home address.📚 Sources and Further ReadingVanessa Joosen: Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011. → Includes an analysis of Traxler's book as a "fictive nonfictional text."Donald Haase (ed.): The Reception of Grimms' Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. → Discusses the reception of Traxler's hoax among other responses to the Grimms.Tim Harford: "The Truth About Hansel and Gretel." Cautionary Tales podcast, October 2021. → An English-language podcast episode on Traxler's satire.Christine Shojaei Kawan: "Innovation, Persistence and Self-Correction: The Case of Snow White." Estudos de Literatura Oral 11–12 (2005–2006), pp. 237–252. → On the international tradition of Snow White and attempts to localize it.Hans Traxler: Die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel. Frankfurt am Main: Bärmeier & Nikel, 1963 (new edition Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007). → The satire itself; the new edition includes an appendix on its origins and reception. (German)Wolfgang Vorwerk: "Das 'Lohrer Schneewittchen'. Zur Fabulologie eines Märchens." In: Christian Grandl / Kevin J. McKenna (eds.): Bis dat, qui cito dat. Festschrift for Wolfgang Mieder. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015, pp. 491–503. → The detailed origin story of Snow White of Lohr, by a member of the Lohr circle. Available online via the town of Lohr. (German)Bernhard Lauer: "Wem gehört 'Schneewittchen'?" Hessische Blätter für Volks- und Kulturforschung 44 (2009), pp. 390–425. → A folklorist's view of the places that claim Snow White. (German)Eckhard Sander: Schneewittchen. Märchen oder Wahrheit? Gudensberg-Gleichen: Wartberg, 1994. → The Margaretha von Waldeck and Bergfreiheit thesis. (German)Hans Moser: "Vom Folklorismus in unserer Zeit." Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 58 (1962). → The essay that introduced the concept of folklorism. (German)

In the Grimms' version, a huntsman saves Little Red Riding Hood. In Perrault's, she's eaten. But in a peasant tale from Burgundy, recorded in the 1880s, the girl eats her own grandmother's flesh, undresses in front of a werewolf, and in the end saves herself. In episode 3 of our Grimm series, we dig for the dark roots of Little Red Riding Hood: from a Latin schoolbook written around 1023, through the Paris salons of Charles Perrault, to a study that analyzes fairy tales with the tools of evolutionary biology. And we ask whether that ancient oral tradition ever really existed, or whether it's a fairy tale itself.📚 Sources and Further ReadingJamshid J. Tehrani: "The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood." PLOS ONE 8/11 (2013), e78871. → The family-tree study of Little Red Riding Hood and related tales. Open access.Jan M. Ziolkowski: "A Fairy Tale from before Fairy Tales: Egbert of Liège's 'De puella a lupellis seruata' and the Medieval Background of 'Little Red Riding Hood'." Speculum 67/3 (1992). → The key study of Egbert's girl among the wolves.Ruth B. Bottigheimer: Fairy Tales: A New History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. → The counter-thesis of a book-based history of fairy tales.Journal of American Folklore 123, no. 490 (2010). → Responses to Bottigheimer by Dan Ben-Amos, Francisco Vaz da Silva and Jan M. Ziolkowski.Alan Dundes (ed.): Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. → A collection of key texts and interpretations, including an English translation of the Story of Grandmother.Paul Delarue / Marie-Louise Tenèze: Le Conte populaire français. Vol. 1, Paris 1957, further volumes to 1985. → The great catalogue of French folk tales in which Delarue published the Story of Grandmother. (French)Yvonne Verdier: "Grands-mères, si vous saviez… Le Petit Chaperon rouge dans la tradition orale." Cahiers de Littérature orale 4 (1978). → The ethnological reading of the needles and pins. (French; full text available via the BnF)Yvonne Verdier: Façons de dire, façons de faire. La laveuse, la couturière, la cuisinière. Paris: Gallimard, 1979. → The village study from Minot on which her reading is based. (French)Charles Perrault: Histoires ou contes du temps passé. Paris, 1697. → Perrault's original, with its verse moral. Public domain, widely available online and in translation.

Nothing added, nothing embellished: that's what the Brothers Grimm promised in the preface to their fairy tales. At the same time, they rewrote their book again and again over nearly half a century and seven editions. In episode 2 of our Grimm series, we lay the versions side by side: how Rapunzel's pregnancy disappeared, how Snow White's mother became a stepmother, why Rumpelstiltskin ends three different ways, and why Cinderella's sisters only lost their eyes in 1819. Plus the big debate: were the Grimms preservers, editors or forgers?📚 Sources and Further ReadingMaria Tatar: The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987 (expanded 2nd edition 2003). → On how violence increased across the editions while sexuality was erased. A very readable entry point.Ruth B. Bottigheimer: Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. → A quantitative analysis of punishment, speech and silence among female and male characters.John M. Ellis: One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. → The controversial argument that the Grimms deliberately misrepresented their sources.Jack Zipes: "Mountains out of Mole Hills, a Fairy Tale." Children's Literature 13 (1985), pp. 215–219. → A critical response to Ellis.Jack Zipes (trans.): The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. → The 1812/1815 texts in English, including the tales later dropped, so you can compare them with the familiar versions yourself.D. L. Ashliman: Rumpelstilzchen von den Brüdern Grimm – a comparison of the 1810, 1812 and 1819 versions. University of Pittsburgh (online). Ashliman's site also offers English translations of several Grimm tales in multiple versions. → The three versions side by side, sentence by sentence. (German texts)Heinz Rölleke (ed.): Die älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder Grimm. Synopse der handschriftlichen Urfassung von 1810 und der Erstdrucke von 1812. Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1975. → The basis for any comparison between the manuscript and the first printed edition. (German)Heinz Rölleke: Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Eine Einführung. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2004. → Overview of the editing style, the stylistic ideal and the relationship between Jacob and Wilhelm. (German)Lothar Bluhm / Heinz Rölleke: "Redensarten des Volks, auf die ich immer horche." Märchen – Sprichwort – Redensart. Stuttgart/Leipzig: Hirzel, 1997 (expanded new edition, Trier: WVT, 2020). → The key study of Wilhelm's insertion of idioms and proverbs. (German)Lothar Bluhm: Märchen als Literatur aus Literatur. Die "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" der Brüder Grimm. Berlin: Metzler, 2023. → Reads the collection as the product of a deliberate literary design. (German)Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbuch zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. → Standard reference on the versions of every single tale. (German)

Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White: ancient German folk tales, passed down by old peasant women at the spinning wheel? Not quite. In the first episode of our five-part Grimm series, we ask who actually told the Brothers Grimm their fairy tales. We follow a manuscript that traveled through a Trappist monastery in Alsace all the way to Geneva, watch Heinz Rölleke bury a star witness who never existed, and look behind the most famous portrait in German fairy-tale history.📚 Sources and Further ReadingHeinz Rölleke (ed.): Die älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder Grimm. Synopse der handschriftlichen Urfassung von 1810 und der Erstdrucke von 1812. Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1975. → The standard edition of the Ölenberg manuscript, setting the 1810 manuscript beside the 1812 first edition. Replaced the older Lefftz edition.Heinz Rölleke: "Die 'stockhessischen' Märchen der 'Alten Marie'. Das Ende eines Mythos um die frühesten KHM-Aufzeichnungen der Brüder Grimm." Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift N.F. 25 (1975), pp. 74–86. → The article that dismantled the "Old Marie" attribution and identified Marie Hassenpflug as the contributor. (German)Heinz Rölleke: Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Eine Einführung. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2004. → Concise overview of how the collection came about, who contributed and how the texts were edited. (German)Joseph Lefftz (ed.): Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Urfassung nach der Originalhandschrift der Abtei Ölenberg im Elsaß. Heidelberg: Winter, 1927. → The first complete edition of the Ölenberg manuscript. Superseded by Rölleke 1975, but important for the history of research. (German)Holger Ehrhardt (ed.): Dorothea Viehmann. Kassel: Euregio, 2012. → Collected volume on Viehmann's life and tales, with contributions by Heinz Rölleke and others, including an essay on French influences in her stories. (German)Holger Ehrhardt: "Ein übersehenes Märchen von Dorothea Viehmann." Fabula 64 (2023), no. 3–4, pp. 243–281. → Argues that "The White Bride and the Black Bride" goes back to Viehmann, based on newly found early manuscripts. (German)University of Kassel: press release on the discovery of 54 previously unknown early Grimm manuscripts, December 2023. → Background on the new manuscript finds. (German)Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbuch zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. → Standard reference on every tale in the collection, its sources and versions. (German)For English-language readers: Jack Zipes' translation of the 1812/1815 first edition, "The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm" (Princeton University Press, 2014), includes the tales later removed, such as Bluebeard and Puss in Boots.The Ölenberg manuscript can be viewed in digitized form at e-codices, the Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland.

Last week we told the old stories. Today we ask who wrote them.The leprechaun probably isn't named after his "little body" at all, but after Roman priests whom Irish monks took for a race of wolf-men. His oldest story is a teaching tale about the law of distraint. In the nineteenth century he wore red, not green. The book that made him famous was lost by its editor and rewritten by his friends, and then translated by the Brothers Grimm. And when Walt Disney was offered Ireland's greatest folklore archive, he chose an American children's book instead.Sources— Jacopo Bisagni, "Leprechaun: a new etymology", Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 64 (2012), pp. 47–84. The core source for this episode. Shows that the oldest manuscript form is lupracán, argues that the "little body" reading is linguistically very hard to sustain, and derives the word from the Luperci, whom Irish scholars, via Augustine, understood as a race of shapeshifters. Also contains the critique of Binchy's eighth-century dating of the Fergus saga.— D. A. Binchy, "The Saga of Fergus mac Léti", Ériu 16 (1952), pp. 33–48. The standard edition of the Fergus saga; source of the traditional etymology and dating.— Neil McLeod, "Fergus mac Léti and the Law", Ériu 61 (2011), pp. 1–28. Shows that the Fergus saga was constructed as a legal teaching tale on distraint.— Simon Rodway, "Mermaids, Leprechauns, and Fomorians: A Middle Irish Account of the Descendants of Cain", Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 59 (2010), pp. 1–17. Edition of the tale of Ambia the siren and Becnait, mother of the leprechauns.— Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, "An Leipreachán san Ainmníocht", Béaloideas 50 (1982), pp. 126–150, and "The Leipreachán and Fairies, Dwarfs and the Household Familiar: A Comparative Study", Béaloideas 52 (1984), pp. 75–150. The foundational folkloristic study, based on more than three hundred manuscripts from the Irish folklore archives; places the leprechaun with dwarfs and household spirits rather than the fairy host.— Maureen Murphy, "Croker, Thomas Crofton", Dictionary of Irish Biography. Source for the lost manuscript, the co-authors, the edition history and the later criticism.— Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology (later edition). Contains Keightley's admission that he invented The Soul Cages from a legend collected by the Brothers Grimm.— Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (trans.), Irische Elfenmärchen, Leipzig 1826. Translation of Croker's collection with the introduction "Über die Elfen".— Frank Kinahan, "Armchair Folklore: Yeats and the Textual Sources of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 83C (1983), pp. 255–267. Traces Yeats's fairy classification back through McAnally to O'Hanlon.— Tony Tracy, "When Disney Met Delargy: 'Darby O'Gill' and the Irish Folklore Commission", Béaloideas 78 (2010), pp. 44–60. The main source for the Killarney chapter.— Diane Negra (ed.), The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture, Durham 2006. Background for reading the modern leprechaun as a descendant of anti-Irish caricature.— General Mills, "The History of Lucky Charms"; Atlas Obscura on Waldo the Wizard. Sources for the launch and temporary replacement of the Lucky Charms mascot.— Dáil Éireann, debate of 11 December 1963. John A. Costello's criticism of Irish tourist advertising.Next episode: the start of our series on the Brothers Grimm.

Forget the green suit. Forget the rainbow.In his oldest stories the leprechaun isn't a mascot. He's a solitary, cunning and occasionally murderous creature. He comes out of the sea to drown sleeping kings. He lives in the wine cellar and refuses to move out. And he wins every single time, not through strength, but because he knows exactly where a human being looks when you distract them.Part 1 of the Ireland Special is an extended story hour. No analysis, no context, just the tales, the way people in Ireland told them. The analysis comes in Part 2.Sources— D. A. Binchy, "The Saga of Fergus mac Léti", Ériu 16 (1952), pp. 33–48. The standard edition and translation of the Old Irish tale in which the lúchorpáin appear. Binchy's translation underlies the retelling in chapter I, including the bellows comparison, the seven years of concealment, and Fergus's last words.— Thomas Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, London 1825. The earliest major collection of Irish fairy legends. Three of tonight's stories come from it: "The Haunted Cellar" (Ballinacarthy and Naggeneen), "The Field of Boliauns" (Tom Fitzpatrick) and "The Little Shoe" (Molly Cogan). Croker uses the word Cluricaune throughout for all of these beings.— Thomas Crofton Croker, "Seeing is Believing", ibid. Source for Moirna Hogaune's account, and for the notes on the spré na skillenagh and the trick with the two purses.— Lady Morgan, O'Donnel: A National Tale, London 1814. Quoted by Croker in his notes; contains the description of the creature as a guardian of treasure buried "in the troubles", and the explanation of why any marker you leave behind multiplies overnight.— D. R. McAnally Jr., Irish Wonders, Boston 1888. Source for the regional variants in chapter VI: the northern Irish leprechaun, the Lurigadawne of Tipperary, the Luricawne of Kerry, the Cluricawne of Monaghan, and the frieze-coated west coast version.— W. B. Yeats (ed.), Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, London 1888. Groups the Lepracaun together with the Cluricaun and the Far Darrig among the "solitary fairies" — a classification we'll return to in Part 2.

Last time, I only told the stories. This time, we open our eyes. Part 2 of our Norway special asks the why behind the troll legends: where does the troll come from? Why does the sun kill him? Why does he flee the church bell? What really stood at that cradle – and why does this overwhelming creature lose in almost every story? A journey through etymology, National Romanticism, and the most honest, darkest folk belief in Norway.📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING– Ármann Jakobsson, work on the meaning of the word "troll" in the Middle Ages (incl. The Troll Inside You, 2017) – on the breadth of the Old Norse term.– Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology (2003) – on the origin of trǫll and its relation to jötunn and þurs.– Andreas Faye, Norske Folke-Sagn (1833/1844) – the early foundational collection of place-legends.– Peter Christen Asbjørnsen & Jørgen Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr (from 1841); Asbjørnsen, Norske Huldreeventyr og Folkesagn (1845–48) – the origin of the distinction between eventyr and sagn/huldreeventyr.– Oscar J. Falnes, National Romanticism in Norway (1933) – on the link between folklore and national identity after 1814.– Reidar Th. Christiansen, The Migratory Legends (1958) – the standard catalogue of Norwegian migratory legends (petrification, church legends, the changeling).– D. L. Ashliman, studies and text collection on the changeling – on reading the belief as an explanatory model for failure-to-thrive and disabled children.– On the visual tradition: Theodor Kittelsen (1857–1914) and Erik Werenskiold (1855–1938).🎧 Grey Tales is also available as a podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.#Trolls #NorwegianLegends #Folklore #Mythology #Norway #Changeling #GreyTales

Norway is full of trolls. You just have to know how to read the mountains. In this first part of our Norway special there's no analysis, no explaining – only stories. A full story-hour at double length: the great petrification legends of the coast, the classic troll tales of Asbjørnsen & Moe, and the ancient belief about the child in the cradle. The interpretation follows in Part 2.Sit down, turn the lights low, and come up into the mountains.📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READINGTonight's tales come from the classic collection by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen & Jørgen Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr (from 1841 onward): "De tre bukkene Bruse" (The Three Billy Goats Gruff), "Askeladden som kappåt med trollet" (The Boy Who Had an Eating Match with a Troll), "Risen som ikke hadde noe hjerte på seg" (The Troll/Giant with No Heart in His Body), and "Kjetta på Dovre" (The Cat on the Dovrefjell).– Andreas Faye, Norske Folke-Sagn (1833/1844) – the early foundational collection of Norwegian place-legends and folk belief.– Reidar Th. Christiansen, The Migratory Legends (1958) – the standard catalogue of Norwegian migratory legends, including petrification, the changeling and church-bell motifs.– The Torghatten / Seven Sisters legend is the well-known place-legend of the Helgeland/Nordland coast (Brønnøysund, Alsten, Leka, Lofoten).– On the visual tradition: Theodor Kittelsen (1857–1914), who still shapes how we picture Norway's trolls.Note: this episode retells the legends. Their origin, interpretation and source-criticism are covered in full in Part 2.