Fairy Tales are Weird! Ten Tales that Should Be Talked About Way More Than They Are

[00:00:00]Hello everyone and welcome to another video by falling down the rabbit hole.

[00:00:04]Today I thought I would tell you about 10 forgotten fairy tales that I believe deserve a lot more attention than they get. These are in no particular order. I just spent the morning grabbing my favorites off the shelf. Also, I will not be including any Grimm's fairy tales or any of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales in this because those fairy tales have received so much attention and there are so many more writers and collectors of fairy tales that I'd like to focus on. So, let's jump into it. The first tale I want to recommend is from the book Japanese Fairy Tales by Yay Theodoro Ozaki. And the tale is Urashima TTO, which is about a young man who's very popular in his village. And he finds some kids throwing rocks at a turtle, and he can't handle to see this uh uh animal in pain. So he eventually gets the turtle from the kids and takes it and lets it go back in the ocean. And the next morning when he's out fishing, the turtle returns to him and takes him to an underwater kingdom where he lives very happily for a few days and has to make a promise that he's not able to keep. Wonderful tale with another world in a completely and really truly kind of a tragic tale. Uh give it a read. I think you'll really enjoy it. Next up, I'd like to talk about a tale from Basile's The Pentamarone, which is the oldest European fairy tale collection. And the story that I want to talk about in this book is called The Myrtle. And this is a story of an older couple that very much want a child. And they beg and they beg and eventually they end up giving birth to a plant, a myrtle plant. And this couple treats it as their own daughter. And eventually a prince sees the myrtle in the window and is so taken with how beautiful this myrtle is that he asks them if they can if he can have it. And they're worried to let it go. But he is a prince. So they let him have it. And he takes it home. And suddenly he starts receiving a visitor at night. This is the first fairy tale in Europe's first complete collection of fairy tales. And in my opinion, it is the best. It's a really strange story that includes a transforming plant. And I really enjoy transformations in fairy tales. Next, I want to talk about a Russian fairy tale.

[00:02:41]And this is my copy of Vasilla the Beautiful Russian fairy tales. And the tale that I want to talk about is Go I Know Not Where and Fetch I Know Not Not What, which is probably the most epic fairy tale I've ever read. The quest that this person goes on is absolutely incredible. But it starts with a transformation and this archer who works for the Zar is out hunting and he's not having a very good day of it. But eventually he spots this bird and he tries to shoot it, but he just wings it and he picks up the bird and he's about to put it in his pouch when the bird starts speaking to him in a human voice.

[00:03:23]And the bird says, "Hey, take me home.

[00:03:25]Put me on your window seal." And when I start to fall asleep, hit me with your right hand. And he's like, "Okay." And he does this. He goes home and he puts the bird on the window seal and it starts to fall asleep and he smacks it with his with his right hand. And the bird suddenly turns into an absolutely beautiful woman. And they quickly get married. But the woman is so beautiful.

[00:03:48]Even the Zar himself begins to get jealous. And [snorts] he is sent again and again on these impossible quests.

[00:03:55]And these quests are absolutely insane.

[00:03:58]Well, well worth a read. Really, really interesting fairy tale. Next up is a fairy tale from the collection of As Bjornson and Mo, Scandinavian fairy tales. And this fairy tale is called Tatterhood. And this is one of my favorite fairy tales just because it is absolutely mind-bendingly weird. And this is the story of a woman who very much wants a child and she's just never blessed with a child. So eventually she goes and talks to someone and they say, "Hey, here's what you got to do. You got to go through this whole process. In the end, this process will grow two very specific flowers. One of them will be beautiful and lovely and you need to eat that one.

[00:04:39]The other one won't be so beautiful.

[00:04:41]Don't eat that one. So she goes through the process and these two flowers grow and she eats the beautiful one. It is the greatest thing that she has ever tasted in her life. She loves it so much. And she loves it so much that unfortunately she also eats the other one. And she gives birth to twins. And the first child that is born is literally born riding a goat with a spoon in her hand. And this is Tatterhood. And then she looks up. Her mom is terrified. But Tatterhood tells her mom, "Don't worry. I've got a sister in there. She's coming soon. She'll be much more beautiful." And sure enough, the uh mother then gives birth to another child who is beautiful and perfect in every way. And this is the story of the adventures of Tatterhood and her sister. And they are wacky. At one point, Tatterhood's sister gets her head replaced with the head of a goat.

[00:05:38]And Tatterhood has to go take care of that. Uh, but the entire time, Tatterhood is a boss and she's badass and so much fun to read. If you've never read Tatter Hood, you absolutely have to. It is a wonderful, wonderful fairy tale that I think deserves a lot more attention. Next is from the book Nigerian Folktales and I want to talk about a story in this book that is called The Hunter and the Witch. And this story I love because it has the strangest monster I've ever read in a fairy tale. And this monster is a huge pile of teeth. Like a like a blob of teeth that rolls over anything and just gnaws it. The entire point of this monster is that it is only teeth. So it can only gnaw and chew. Very, very terrifying monster. Wonderful fairy tale. Absolutely worth a read. Next up is a fairy tale by George McDonald, who wrote a lot of literary fairy tales. And this is called The Son of the Day and the Daughter of the Night. And this one's kind of right on the line between a fairy tale and a fantasy story, but it is absolutely incredible. It's about a witch that has a wolf in her head, and she decides to do an interesting experiment. She gets two children. She raises one of them to only ever see daylight and light and and everything good. And she raises another one in like a converted room in a tomb to only see darkness and night. And all the music that she listens to is depressing and so on. And she rais raises these two in completely different worlds. And then one day they accidentally meet. And the way that George Macdonald goes allin on what this would look like and how these two would have such a hard time communicating with each other is incredible. It's really, really wonderful read. I wish more people would talk about George McDonald. Next up, we have what is considered the world's first literary fairy tale. And when I say literary, that means that it is a fairy tale that is written down and meant to be read. which means of course there's many fairy tales in oral tradition that are probably much older than this but this is the world's oldest literary fairy tale and it was written by Aulius who wrote a novel called the golden ass and well it's actually called Metamorphoses but it was eventually nicknamed the golden ass and in this novel somebody tells somebody else a fairy tale and the fairy tale that they tell is called Cupid and Psyche which scholars believe is the tale that eventually gave us Beauty and the Beast.

[00:08:32]And you'll see a lot of similarities, but this is the story of Psyche, who is a woman that is born so beautiful that people on Earth start worshiping her more than they do Aphrodite. And this really pisses off Aphrodite. So eventually she gets her son Cupid involved. And Cupid accidentally falls in love with Psyche. and Psyche never wanted to be this beautiful and her life is ruined because of it. And she eventually ends up being married to an invisible monster. And she is secreted away to this invisible monster's palace. And in this palace, there are invisible servants that see to her every need. And every night, there is this invisible lover in her bed. It's a wild story. It's an old story. and it is absolutely worth a read. If you like Beauty and the Beast, you will love it. If you like fairy tales, you will love it. I mean, it's it's like I said, the first literary fairy tale. Next up, we're going to jump the tracks a little bit and talk about a fairy tale retelling.

[00:09:41]And this is uh Tanith Lee's Red is Blood, where she retells a lot of old fairy tales. And the tale that we're going to be talking about in this uh book is a story called Thorns. And this is an interesting story because it is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. But Tanith Lee does an interesting thing in that she changes the point of view character.

[00:10:07]And I know you're thinking, "Oh, this is going to be one of those stories where we get the point of view of Maleficent."

[00:10:13]But that is not the case. We do not get the story from the evil fair's point of view. We get the story from Prince Charming's point of view. And your first thought might be, well, that's a weird point of view to take because he really doesn't do much. But that's the brilliance of this story. When you look at Sleeping Beauty from Prince Charming's point of view, the entire story looks so different cuz it's just about a guy that's traveling around and he wanders into this very strange kingdom that is lost in time. Incredible retelling. One of the best I've ever read. Next, we're going to go to France.

[00:10:59]And when people think of France, they think of Charles Perau. So, we're not going to talk about Charles Perau. We're going to jump to Madame Dul Noir, and we're going to talk about her fairy tale, The White Cat. This is the story of a king who is starting to get nervous that his sons are going to try and take his kingdom away from him. So, he decides to send them on random quests just to keep them busy. So, he's like, "Hey, I want the world's smallest, cutest dog. go find me the world's smal smallest cutest dog. And his sons, oh, and he says, "And whoever finds me the smallest, cutest dog will get the kingdom." So the sons are like, "Oh man, this is a big deal." And they all go split up and they start looking for the smallest, cutest dog they can find. And the youngest son is out walking around and he just happens upon this palace.

[00:11:51]And when he walks in, it's all run by cats. And the the queen of this palace is a cat. and he starts just hanging out with this cat and he loves this cat.

[00:12:02]This cat is awesome. Uh and he slowly falls in love with the cat and the slow reveals of this story just go on and on and it's it's very epic. It's such a wonderful tale and it's got a little bit of uh the you know animal bride story in it, but it's also got Rapunzel in it.

[00:12:23]Really wonderful, wonderful tale. I'm not going to be able to fit this up here, so I'm going to have to put it down. And last but not least, I want to talk about a story that was recorded by Francois Lzelle and is in his epic three volume book called Folktales of Lower Britany and it is called The Black Cat.

[00:12:47]And this is a Cinderella-like story where a widow and a widowerower get married and each of them has a child from their first marriages and the stepmom really prefers her child over the uh her her new husband's child. So, we get kind of a Cinderella beginning and then we get a trying to switch the bride motif, but then the tail just goes insane. And this witch tells the stepmother to force her young stepdaughter to eat a black cat in a stew, which the stepmother prepares and feeds her, even though the young stepdaughter doesn't know what she's eating. And eventually she turns up pregnant and she's marooned on this island and she gives birth to this cat and it just gets stranger and stranger as it goes. And it's a wonderful read.

[00:13:46]Unfortunately, this tale has not been translated into English yet. And the only way I read it was I just uh threw it parab paragraph by paragraph into Google Translate and was able to read it that way without any of the real artistry that an actual translator would bring to it. Currently, one of the fans of this site is working on translations of this story. Uh so hopefully they will publish those. Uh, but as of now, the only place to read this is in scans of that original French book from Francoisam Lzelle, Folktales of Lower Britany. All right, there you go. 10 fairy tales that I feel are absolutely worth a read. The world has a tendency to focus on the Grimms and Anderson, and I feel like there's so much more out there. Thank you very much for watching. I'm sure I will do more of these in the future because there are so many fairy tales that are worth being looked at. All right, if you liked this, click like. If you like this kind of content, click subscribe because I'll be doing a lot more like it. Thank you so much for watching.