Banat
11-12-2005, 05:44 PM
Dispite the misleading thread title, this is still an interesting read. An authentic folk version of the fairy tale I have just found.
We all know the famous story about a boy and a girl abandoned by their parents in the woods and captured by a wicked witch that lived in a house made of gingerbread, who wanted to eat them up. A common folk story told for centuries throughout Europe, written and standardized by Grimm brothers in 1857 (first version in 1812), based on 'various stories from Hessen' of the time.
An interesting version of the folk story was being told in Serbia at the time, with that difference that there weren't the gingerbread house and the wicked witch, but the Jews and the Jews' mother.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/09/Gretel.png/250px-Gretel.png
(Gretel and the witch, Wikipedia)
(After finding out that forest beasts have eaten the crumbs they dropped to mark their way home).
When the children saw that, they burst into tears, and returned to the fire. At that moment, some Jews appeared from somewhere, and when they saw the fire they approached the siblings asking them what they were doing there, and if they were alone. And when they told them what happened, the Jews invited the siblings to come with them, promising that everything would be alright.
The siblings accepted the offer and went off with the Jews, so they took them to their house. They had no one else there but their mother, and when they came they locked the boy to fatten and left the girl to serve the mother. One day when the Jews went to work, they saw that the boy was fat enough and they ordered their mother to bake him, so they could eat him in the evening, when they return.
But the girl had learned a few Jewish words during the time, so she was able to understand what the Jews told their mother about her brother. ( . . . )
What follows is very similar: the girl tricks the old woman, throws her into the oven and frees the brother.
(The end is somewhat different. Running away, the siblings met a ragged, dirty woman, who was actually a disguised sorceress or a fairy testing them, and who blessed them with gifts and showed them their way home).
This is a very interesting folk version, of which I was totally ignorant. The version of 'Hansel and Gretel' told here today came with the media and popular culture and is in fact the Grimm version, translated as 'Johnny and Mary' to fit the original names of the siblings.
Hansel and Gretel, a comparison of the versions of 1812 and 1857 -> LINK (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015a.html)
(The quotation is my translation of the part of the story, written down in 1827 in Serbia).
We all know the famous story about a boy and a girl abandoned by their parents in the woods and captured by a wicked witch that lived in a house made of gingerbread, who wanted to eat them up. A common folk story told for centuries throughout Europe, written and standardized by Grimm brothers in 1857 (first version in 1812), based on 'various stories from Hessen' of the time.
An interesting version of the folk story was being told in Serbia at the time, with that difference that there weren't the gingerbread house and the wicked witch, but the Jews and the Jews' mother.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/09/Gretel.png/250px-Gretel.png
(Gretel and the witch, Wikipedia)
(After finding out that forest beasts have eaten the crumbs they dropped to mark their way home).
When the children saw that, they burst into tears, and returned to the fire. At that moment, some Jews appeared from somewhere, and when they saw the fire they approached the siblings asking them what they were doing there, and if they were alone. And when they told them what happened, the Jews invited the siblings to come with them, promising that everything would be alright.
The siblings accepted the offer and went off with the Jews, so they took them to their house. They had no one else there but their mother, and when they came they locked the boy to fatten and left the girl to serve the mother. One day when the Jews went to work, they saw that the boy was fat enough and they ordered their mother to bake him, so they could eat him in the evening, when they return.
But the girl had learned a few Jewish words during the time, so she was able to understand what the Jews told their mother about her brother. ( . . . )
What follows is very similar: the girl tricks the old woman, throws her into the oven and frees the brother.
(The end is somewhat different. Running away, the siblings met a ragged, dirty woman, who was actually a disguised sorceress or a fairy testing them, and who blessed them with gifts and showed them their way home).
This is a very interesting folk version, of which I was totally ignorant. The version of 'Hansel and Gretel' told here today came with the media and popular culture and is in fact the Grimm version, translated as 'Johnny and Mary' to fit the original names of the siblings.
Hansel and Gretel, a comparison of the versions of 1812 and 1857 -> LINK (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015a.html)
(The quotation is my translation of the part of the story, written down in 1827 in Serbia).