Märchen

Märchen are the oral narratives that most of us know by the name of "fairy tales." The most famous of these, perhaps, are those collected by the Grimm brothers in Germany. They called them Kinder- und Hausmärchen, which means "children and house tales." They were not told only to children like we tell fairy tales, but told to children and adults. The original stories collected by the Grimm brothers are, in fact, much more grimm than the versions we know.

Terri Windling, in The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors, a collection of stories and poems which tell some old märchen in new ways, has this to say about märchen, which she refers to as "fairy tales":

The notion that fairy tales were exclusively meant for children's ears is one that came about largely in Victorian times, when the adult storytelling tradition was widely replaced by printed novels and a new fashion for stories of social realism. As the old oral tales were banished to the nursery, the more violent or sexual stories were changed, watered down to make them more suitable for "innocent ears." Even folklore enthusiasts like the Brothers Grimm used a heavy hand to edit the tales, changing, for instance, cruel mothers and fathers into wicked "stepparents" instead (Windling 13).

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