The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

THE NURSERY RHYME:

Ring-a-ring-a-roses

A pocket full of posies;

Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!

We’ve all tumbled down.



or the one whom we know a little bit more better:



Ring around The Rosie

A Pocket Full Of Posies

Ashes, Ashes

We All Fall Down



Traditional Interpretation:



Traditionally the nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosy or Ring-a-Ring o’Rosies was believed to be a description of the people’s experiences with the bubonic plague.



Ring-a-ring o’Rosies : referred to the circular rose-colored rash that appeared on the skin of those who were infected with the bubonic plague.



A Pocket full of Posies: referred to the sweet herbs that people collected in pockets or pouches to carry with them in an attempt to prevent the disease. People believed the plague was transferred by bad smells so the posies were considered a beneficial ward against infection.



Ashes, Ashes / We all fall down!: Falling down clearly refers to death. The phrase ashes, ashes refers to the cremation of the dead. Nearly 60% of the population died from the bubonic plague. The disease was not halted until the Great Fire of London in 1666, which turned the rats who carried the disease into ashes.

The variation A-tishoo! A-tishoo refers to the violent sneezing, which was another manifestation of the disease.

We have all known and fell in love time and time again with Walt Disney's Lovely Fairy tales of Princesses and their Prince Charming's...and how they live happily ever after in a land far far away.

or how the hero beats the villain with courage and effort...and everything seems ever so right once more.

but little do we know that Fairy tales of the past were often full of macabre and gruesome twists and endings. These days, companies like Disney have sanitized them for a modern audience that is clearly deemed unable to cope, and so we see happy endings everywhere. This list looks at some of the common endings we are familiar with – and explains the original gruesome origins. If you know of any others, be sure to mention it in the comments – or if you know of a fairy tale that is just outright gruesome (in its original or modern form), speak up!!

((WARNING: THIS NOTE IS NOT FOR THE WEAK MINDED OR CHILDREN AT ALL....I WILL SPILL THE TRUE IDENTITY OF THESE ORIGINS AND HOW THEY ACTUALLY WERE BEFORE THEY WERE CHOPPED AND SERVED SUGARCOATED TO HELP DIGEST THEM EASIER))



so lets start...



12) Allerleirauh:

No sanitising was ever going to rehabilitate this next fairytale which was nonetheless presented in the Grimms' book for children. Just to show that wicked mothers don't have it all their own way, this example involves a wicked father. A king promises his dying wife that he will not marry again when she dies unless his new bride is at least as pretty and has golden hair. After the queen is dead the king is persuaded that he must remarry so that the land will have a queen. Unfortunately he remains bound by his promise and no-one can find a replacement as good looking as the dead queen. Until that is his daughter grows up. One day the king realises that she fulfils the criteria, since she is as beautiful as her mother and has golden hair. He immediately insists on marrying his daughter, against the advice of his shocked advisers and her wishes. Since she can't dissuade him, the kings daughter disguises herself and runs away. Whilst disguised she's brought back to the king's castle and sent to live in a closet under the stairs (sound familiar?). After enduring a miserable existence as a kitchen slave for a while she makes sure that her father gets to know who she is. He hasn't lost any of his twisted desire to marry his daughter and this time she goes through with the marriage.



11) Rapunzel:

Once a more bawdy tale, the main change for children's consumption has been the disguising of the sexual relationship between Rapunzel and the prince who discovers her. One day after the Prince has been visiting for some time, the naive Rapunzel asks the witch why her clothes have become so tight across her belly and no longer fit her, causing the outraged witch to throw her out of the tower. Whilst the blinded prince is wondering round and living on grass and leaves, Rapunzel gives birth to twins and has a miserable time trying to support them as a single mother.



10) The Pied Piper:

In the tale of the Pied Piper, we have a village overrun with rats. A man arrives dressed in clothes of pied (a patchwork of colors) and offers to rid the town of the vermin. The villagers agree to pay a vast sum of money if the piper can do it – and he does. He plays music on his pipe which draws all the rats out of the town. When he returns for payment – the villagers won’t cough up so the Pied Piper decides to rid the town of children too! In most modern variants, the piper draws the children to a cave out of the town and when the townsfolk finally agree to pay up, he sends them back. In the darker original, the piper leads the children to a river where they all drown (except a lame boy who couldn’t keep up). Some modern scholars say that there are connotations of pedophilia in this fairy tale.



9) Little Red Riding Hood:

Little Red Riding Hood was intended to teach (especially well bred young ladies) the danger of talking to strangers. The Grimms' version introduced a last minute rescuer for Little Red, but she had usually been eaten at the end of the tale, often after implied congress with the wolf (who was sometimes a werewolf or an ogre). In an Austrian version Little Red's granny is killed and eaten before Little Red arrives. Granny's entrails are used to replace the string on the door latch and her teeth, jaws and blood stored in her cupboard. When Little Red arrives, she is hungry and so is directed to eat her dead grandmother's teeth (rice) and jaw (chops) and drink her blood (wine). Fake granny then invites Little Red to get naked and climb into bed with her, where as the story puts it, Little Red “noticed something hairy”. Shortly after the unfortunate girl is devoured in a single gulp, with no rescue.



8) The Little Mermaid:

The 1989 version of the Little Mermaid might be better known as “The big whopper!” In the Disney version, the film ends with Ariel the mermaid being changed into a human so she can marry Eric. They marry in a wonderful wedding attended by humans and merpeople. But, in the very first version by Hans Christian Andersen, the mermaid sees the Prince marry a princess and she despairs. She is offered a knife with which to stab the prince to death, but rather than do that she jumps into the sea and dies by turning to froth. Hans Christian Andersen modified the ending slightly to make it more pleasant. In his new ending, instead of dying when turned to froth, she becomes a “daughter of the air” waiting to go to heaven – so, frankly, she is still dead for all intents and purposes.



7) Snow White:

The first Grimms' version of Snow White cast her mother rather than a stepmother as the queen jealous of Snow White's greater beauty. The wicked queen shows herself to be a cannibal by eating what she thinks is the lung and liver of her daughter/stepdaughter (although in reality they belong to a passing bear). When the first attempt at killing Snow White fails, the queen decides personal violence is the answer and attempts to strangle Snow White with lace. Eventually a poisoned apple does the trick and Snow White is dead. When a travelling king's son sees her corpse in the forest he insists on having this dead body at his side forever. He won't even eat unless the corpse is lying next to his food. His servants soon get frustrated with carting a heavy coffin from room to room and one of them picks up the body of Snow White to give it a beating. This dislodges the apple and brings Snow White back to life. At the conclusion of the tale, a pair of iron shoes are heated in the fire until red hot and then brought to the wicked queen. She is forced to put them on and dance in agony until she dies. In some tellings, the seven dwarves are not industrious mining folk, but robbers preying on travellers in the forest.



6) Sleeping Beauty:

In the original sleeping beauty, the lovely princess is put to sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle. She sleeps for one hundred years when a prince finally arrives, kisses her, and awakens her. They fall in love, marry, and (surprise surprise) live happily ever after. But alas, the original tale is not so sweet (in fact, you have to read this to believe it.) In the original, The prince marries Sleeping Beauty the same day and that night, the story makes a point of telling us, the royal couple get no sleep. Unsurprisingly, this leads in due course to two children. But the prince cannot live with Sleeping Beauty as he dare not tell his family about her. Why? Because his mother is an ogress whom his father has married only for her riches and the whole court knows that she cannot resist eating any small children that cross her path (perhaps worth noting that this makes the handsome prince a half ogre). After the prince becomes king he feels confident enough to bring Sleeping Beauty and their two children to the court. However his earlier fears prove well founded. As soon as he goes off to war his mother sends Sleeping Beauty to the country in order to eat her children without interference. When the palace cook objects, the ogress implies that he will be on the menu if he doesn't change his mind. After she thinks she's eaten the two children (although the cook has fooled her), the ogress decides to eat Sleeping Beauty as well. The cook manages to trick her again, hiding Sleeping Beauty and the children in his house. Unfortunately one of the children makes too much noise whilst Sleeping Beauty is whipping him for misbehaviour and the game is given away. The ogress arranges for a large tub to be filled with horrible creatures into which she will throw Sleeping Beauty, her children, the cook, his wife and her maid to be devoured. Fortunately the Prince (now the king of course) arrives back from his war early. This final thwarting of her plan so enrages his mother that she throws herself head first into the tub of horrible creatures and is instantly eaten up.





In an older Italian version, a king discovers Sleeping Beauty (here called Talia) whilst she is still sleeping and rapes her. In due course she gives birth to twins, without waking up. Thankfully a pair of fairies are on hand to help the children suckle. Only when the babies mistakenly attempt to feed from her finger is the original splinter removed and Sleeping Beauty woken. In due course the the king comes back to see Sleeping Beauty again and is even more smitten now she's awake. They have a few days of companionship, after which the king promises to send for her. Unfortunately he neglects to mention that he already has a queen and thus cannot marry Sleeping Beauty. This time it's the king's wife who attempts to have the children eaten by serving them to their unsuspecting father, whilst taunting him with the ambiguous statement that what he eats is his own. The cannibalism is secretly foiled by the cook. The king learns of his wife's actions and thinking that she fooled him into eating his children he has her burned alive. After which he is free to marry Sleeping Beauty and does.



5) Rumpelstiltskin:

This fair tale is a little different from the others because rather than sanitizing the original, it was modified by the original author to make it more gruesome. In the original tale, Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold for a young girl who faces death unless she is able to perform the feat. In return, he asks for her first born child. She agrees – but when the day comes to hand over the kid, she can’t do it. Rumpelstiltskin tells her that he will let her off the bargain if she can guess his name. She overhears him singing his name by a fire and so she guesses it correctly. Rumpelstiltskin, furious, runs away, never to be seen again. But in the updated version, things are a little messier. Rumpelstiltskin is so angry that he drives his right foot deep into the ground. He then grabs his left leg and rips himself in half. Needless to say this kills him.



4) Goldilocks and the Three Bears:

In this heart warming tale, we hear of pretty little goldilocks who finds the house of the three bears. She sneaks inside and eats their food, sits in their chairs, and finally falls asleep on the bed of the littlest bear. When the bears return home they find her asleep – she awakens and escapes out the window in terror. The original tale (which actually only dates to 1837) has two possible variations. In the first, the bears find Goldilocks and rip her apart and eat her. In the second, Goldilocks is actually an old hag who (like the sanitized version) jumps out of a window when the bears wake her up. The story ends by telling us that she either broke her neck in the fall, or was arrested for vagrancy and sent to the “House of Correction”.



3) Hansel and Gretel:

In the widely known version of Hansel and Gretel, we hear of two little children who become lost in the forest, eventually finding their way to a gingerbread house which belongs to a wicked witch. The children end up enslaved for a time as the witch prepares them for eating. They figure their way out and throw the witch in a fire and escape. In an earlier French version of this tale (called The Lost Children), instead of a witch we have a devil. Now the wicked old devil is tricked by the children (in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel) but he works it out and puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on to bleed (that isn’t an error – he really does). The children pretend not to know how to get on the sawhorse so the devil’s wife demonstrates. While she is lying down the kids slash her throat and escape.



2) The Girl Without Hands:

Frankly, the revised version of this fairy tale is not a great deal better than the original, but there are sufficient differences to include it here. In the new version, a poor man is offered wealth by the devil if he gives him whatever is standing behind his mill. The poor man thinks it is an apple tree and agrees – but it is actually his daughter. The devil tries to take the daughter but can’t – because she is pure, so he threatens to take the father unless the daughter allows her father to chop off her hands. She agrees and the father does the deed. Now – that is not particularly nice, but it is slightly worse in some of the earlier variants in which the young girl chops off her own arms in order to make herself ugly to her brother who is trying to rape her. In another variant, the father chops off the daughter’s hands because she refuses to let him have sex with her.



1) Cinderella:

In the modern Cinderella fairy tale we have the beautiful Cinderella swept off her feet by the prince and her wicked step sisters marrying two lords – with everyone living happily ever after. The fairy tale has its origins way back in the 1st century BC where Strabo’s heroine was actually called Rhodopis, not Cinderella.

In the Grimms' tale, Cinderella's fortunes are turned around not by a fairy godmother, but a macabre tree growing out of her mother's grave, which she waters with her tears. Like the Disney version, Cinderella is able to call on birds to perform the tasks set by her wicked stepmother and a bird provides her with suitable clothing for the ball. But when the king's son turns up on the familiar quest to find the foot that fits the shoe, these stepsisters are prepared to go above and beyond to get their man: one cuts off her toe and the other slices off her heel to make the shoe fit. Unsuprisingly each attempt is given away when one of Cinderella's bird friends helpfully points out the blood running out of the shoe. Vengeance on the stepsisters is completed at Cinderella's wedding to the prince. As the sisters go into the church, birds peck out an eye from each sister. After the wedding, the same birds peck out each woman's remaining eye, thus “punishing them with blindness all their days”.

In older variations it's Cinderella who kills her original mother or stepmother, only to get the wicked stepmother as a replacement. An interesting social aspect is the lost significance of the heroine having a small foot. One of the original versions of the Cinderella story comes from ancient China at a time where wives were often chosen by their foot size. Having a small foot suggested that you had agreed to it being bound and were therefore obedient and dependent, traits then seen as highly desirable in a wife.







in my opinion, i think they should have never dissected and removed anything that didnt belong to them, in fact these stories would make better movies than the shit Walt Disney came up with...because life isnt always happy-go-lucky! and i know, i know...what about the children? well what about them? there are worse things they are filling their minds with besides this subject, why lie to them and think their beloved fairy tales are so sweet and innocent, when thats far from the truth?!?! plus, there isn't a better time for them to find out the truth then the present! :D hehe maybe its my weird mind or maybe im just insane, but i like these tales alot more than the sugarcoated crap they try to force on us!

thanks for reading...

buh bye! :D