Fairy Tales Reflecting Real-Life Events

[James_H]

I was thinking about Hansel and Gretel today after watching an episode of Disenchantment, Matt Groening's so-so new show. I'd been reading a bit about cannibalism during famines more recently (the holodomor, the great leap forward) and wondered if the facts that the witch in the story eats children and that the children in the story have been turned out of their homes due to famine are coincidental, or if the cannibalism of the witch was a way to 'other' the real fact of cannibalism by ordinary people during times of famine.

On looking it up, it seems that some people believe that the story refers to the great famine in Europe of 1315-22, in which many people indeed ate children.

This also reminded me of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, which some believe refers to the sudden loss of children in the Children's Crusade of 1212.

Does anyone else have any examples of fairy tales that may enshrine tragic real-life social events?

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Pinning folk-tales to original events is problematic, since the stories themselves tend to shift and merge, borrowing from each other. What gets transmitted orally is then transcribed and assumes a more fixed identity as one of the Grimms' set or whatever.

The relationship of folk traditions with the written word is complicated. Faced with crude chapbooks and ballads, we tend to attribute them to much earlier dates than fine, printed volumes yet it can be shown that these rough versions were often derived from more scholarly collections!

Decoding folk-memories of ancient troubles in fairy tales does seem to sentimentalize the capacity of unlettered folk as reservoirs of ancient wisdom. In its more common versions, it is hard to see Hansel & Gretel as the record of a famine: the family struggle to live on the income of an easy-going broom-maker. The mother is confined to the house with two children energetic enough to spill a jug of milk by their antics. They are sent to collect berries as a replacement meal. The phantom cottage they encounter seems to offer them a free, if unhealthy, snack. Presiding over the oven, we have the crabbed and agèd hag, a nightmare version of their stressed and scolding mother - according to the more usual psychological interpretation.

The ritual fattening of the children for the oven, the pinching of the arms and the substitution of a stick are the memorable, suspense-laden elements of the tale. The witch is a perverse gourmet in pursuit of a savoury feast; she is not starving, just sick of her own gingerbread! :witch:

 

[EnolaGaia]

This 2014 HuffPost article by author Valerie Ogden:

The True Stories Behind Classic Fairy Tales
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-ogden/fairy-tale-true-story_b_6102602.html

... mentions historical stories underlying or inspiring particular fairy tales (as correlated by Ogden in a book).

She gives the following examples of fairy tales and the historical accounts from which they derived:


Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs = Margarete von Waldeck

Rapunzel = Saint Barbara

Bluebeard = Conomor the Cursed / Gilles de Rais

Hansel and Gretel = Great famine of the 14th century

Little Jack Horner = Bishop Richard Whiting of Glastonbury and his steward

The Pied Piper of Hamelin = Children's Crusade

Cinderella = Rhodopis

 

[James_H]

Thanks for the input guys. Some of these seem more probable than others. I had heard before about Bluebeard being related to Gilles De Rais.

Of course Dick Whittington was a real person, who in fact built a giant public toilet.