[goto11]

Important point many are missing: Folktales were not originally for children. They were told among adults after children had gone to sleep. But when folklorists (like the Grimm brothers) started collecting and publishing folk tales, it became a trend to publish sanitized edition for children.

Read something like the Arabian Nights tales in an uncensored version - these were clearly not intended for children anymore than 50 Shades of Grey are for children. The children's editions are heavily sanitized.

I suspect their change into children literature was because of cultural changes - educated 19th century adults couldn't take folktales serious anymore (except as anthropological studies) and found them childish. The same way that 19th century popular literature like Dumas and Verne became children's books in the 20th century.

Walt Disney is often criticized in this context, but both Snow White and Cinderella are actually pretty faithful to the source material. Cinderella is just based on the Charles Perrault version of the story, not the Grimm version which contain a lot more maiming.

[dannygarcia]

> Folktales were not originally for children.

I learned this the hard way. I purchased a beautifully made "Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales" to read to my then toddler. There are some particularly disturbing stories but I was surprised by how many were flat out nonsensical or silly (like The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear [0]). It's fascinating to read these in their (translated) original form. Not your typical bedtime story.

[0] https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm004.html

[taneq]

Even the 'sanitized' versions of them haven't aged well and are often pretty silly IMO. Maybe it's just because we tend to see them as morality plays these days and try to infer a lesson, while the originals seem to just have been local stories from various villages. Terrible people do well for themselves, lots of people die to no real gain or purpose, etc.

[vharuck]

I recently got this surprise when practicing Japanese by translating a folk tale [0]. Even revenge I was able to understand quickly turned into outright sadism. Maybe it was the morals of another time, maybe the tellers didn't care if all the characters were unlikable.

[0]: http://life.ou.edu/stories/sarukani.html

[forgotmypw16]

I think it's an effective and impressive warning, which makes one think about the tale at length. And the warning is that if you piss someone off by being greedy, you might accidentally get much worse punishment than you actually deserve for a small mischief.

The tale wouldn't make nearly as much of an impression if, let's say, the crabs just roughed the monkey up a little bit and then they all made up and lived happily ever after.

Nor would it be a realistic or helpful lesson, because that is not now reality works: sometimes actions have serious consequences.

[MichailP]

It kinda makes sense to me. In the end he learned to shudder with his SO (she did a weird trick but is it that weird?)

[vorpalhex]

I must be broken because this is reasonably sensible to me. The boy was too naive and his life too austere to know fear, and thus was able to survive the night (and his other challenges). It wasn't until he knew what it was to have a warm bed, food and a wife that he was able to shudder with fear.

[canada_dry]

> flat out nonsensical e.g. The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear

That reminded me of GOT... the ending was a disappointment to an otherwise interesting tale.

[voldacar]

Wow, what a strange story. Super surreal and dreamlike

[edjrage]

seriously what the fuck did I just read

[barry-cotter]

> Important point many are missing: Folktales were not originally for children. They were told among adults after children had gone to sleep.

Do you have any evidence for this? Nothing I’ve ever read in anthropology supports it. When most children die before their fifth birthday, the average family lives in one room and a family is rich if they have two beds, a table and six good chairs people think very differently than the fabulously wealthy Victorians. And they were pretty much ok with children working in factories or as chimney sweeps.

Life used to be nasty, brutish and short. Attitudes were substantially less delicate as a result.

[watwut]

1.) One bit of context is that German propaganda during WWI did not allowed death at all in children books. This is something I have from book about occupied territory.

2.) The other is that "folk" likely did not told stories to kids every evening the way we do. This I gather as unprobable after reading book about childhood in Germany before wars. The kids did not get as much individual attention and general attention.

Demographic that was ok with kids working in factories had both parents working 12 hours a day with no weekend. These had 5 years old whole day alone on the streets or "responsible" for gooses with no adult present. There was no one to gently tuck them to bed and tell them story so that they learn "morals" or what. These were overworked adults desperately needing a bit of rest for themselves.

Your kids are not getting bedtime stories at all in that situation.

3.) My observation from kids: We push stories and reading on kids a lot and very soon. Sooner then they actually like it. Small kids like shorter super simple stories. The original form is not for kids not just because it is dark, but also because it is unnecessary long and slow moving for such kid.

[barry-cotter]

Your “we” is likely unrepresentative even now. Reading or telling stories to children every night is not a universal pastime. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s below 50% though it’s quite common.

Children got less attention because there were more of them and people were busy but they weren’t feral. When it’s dark and cold outside they were mostly inside. There’s always work but if you spend a lot of time in cramped quarters with no tv, radio or books people’s people want entertainment apart from gossip. That means music, song or story telling. You’re not going to get a five year old to sit still for half an hour to listen to a recitation of a book of the Iliad or Odyssey but ten minutes is an unremarkable attention span.

Total agreement on reading. Be like Finland, leave it til primary school, which starts at 7 years old.

[watwut]

> Your “we” is likely unrepresentative even now. Reading or telling stories to children every night is not a universal pastime.

I meant we as a society. Not everyone does it, but it is general recommendation. It was not even recommendation back then. The point is, we as society are collectively doing it a lot more. We as a society also push parents to do it a lot more. In 19 century, you would not had people claiming that someone must read to babies every night - although you do see people and even educators pushing this one.

> Children got less attention because there were more of them and people were busy but they weren’t feral

The origin of kindergarten are German cities with poor kids in city running around whole day. Middle class kids lives were highly controlled, including a lot of control over their entertainment, hobbies and so on. But poor families could not afford any of that.

In rural villages, even my grandmother remembered being responsible for gooses along other kids while adults worked fields (they were comparatively rich family with rather larger farm). It was the normal way of raising kids even in 20 century.

> People want entertainment apart from gossip. That means music, song or story telling

Yes, but these are songs and story telling for adults. The kids can listen, but the original claim is that these stories were aimed at adult audience. Which is true. The fun things for children and for adults are much different. And the original stories when I read them while ago tended to be much longer then what I read to small kids. As kids grow they start to have preference for older and 10 years old will like long version. But 4-5 years old less likely.

[goto11]

See for example Decameron - upper class adults telling stories (many of them folktales) to each other for entertainment. No kids in sight. It was a widespread tradition before mass media, among rich and poor. It was the Victorians who turned the folktales into children's literature. (And I think you are mixing a few things up about the child factory workers and chimney sweeps - these were the urban poor after industrialization. Grimm had to go to the countryside to record the folktales because the tradition was lost in industrialized urban society.)

> Life used to be nasty, brutish and short. Attitudes were substantially less delicate as a result.

I don't think you can draw a simple correspondence between brutality in real life and brutality in fiction. For example there is a lot more explicit violence in TV today than 50 years ago, even though by all account there is less violent crime in western society overall. And it is not like Grimms Cinderella is exceedingly brutal compared to say Saw or Game of Thrones. On the other hand we don't consider public executions appropriate entertainment for the whole family anymore.

[mikeInAlaska]

> Walt Disney is often criticized in this context

Disney hired Pixar to put out Tolstoy 1 and 2, then they acquired Pixar and have since released Tolstoy 3 and 4.

[jan_Inkepa]

For those interested in seeing the scope/variation of cinderella stories, there’s a book “cinderella; three hundred and forty-five variants” https://archive.org/details/cu31924007918299 that is ... I wouldn’t recommend reading it cover-to-cover like I did, but there are some interesting variants hidden in it!

[renewiltord]

Were they not for children or did we decide later that children should read bowdlerized forms? After all, I read Arabian Nights uncensored with people cavorting[0] with courtesans and that one with the false sexual assault but with bad defence arguments when I couldn't have been even a teenager.

Also all the Russian stories published translated to English by Pravda involved a lot of violence and head cutting and men trying to sleep with daughters and whatnot.

Turned out all right.

0: Pretty sure that's where I learned the word 'cavorting'.

[goto11]

They were passed on orally, not read, and they were not in particular intended for children. The frame itself is Scherazad telling the stories to her husband, a grown man.

[MichaelMoser123]

On the other hand I am not quite sure what these people told their kids and if one can apply the same standards. I think people used to be more cruel than they are now, for example public executions were drawing huge crowds. Also mortality was higher and people died at a younger age, especially child mortality used to be much higher. The concept and meaning of childhood was probably not exactly the same as today, child labor was quite common. As a result I don't quite know how to read the cruelty in original folk tales.

In addition to that you can't tell exactly if the Grimm brother weren't doing some editing on their own behalf.

[romwell]

>Important point many are missing: Folktales were not originally for children.

How does this apply? What is this in response to?

Tolstoy's stories weren't based on folk tales, and were specifically meant for children.

Yet they are, at times, pretty grim, and often lack a punchline or a clear point, other than "such is life".

Which might have been the point anyway.

[goto11]

I wrote in the response to the article and many comments here which assumes that folktales were intended for kids. I'm not asserting anything about Tolstoys stories which I don't know (and I'm not sure the article gives a fair representation of them).