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Study 072 - Hansel and Gretel (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-28 14:00:04
Imported:
2026-06
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We take our final trip into the woods of Grimm's Fairy Tales, accompanied by the original wonder twins: Hansel and Gretel!

Special thanks to our reader, Rachel Lackey of Rachel Watches Star Trek!

Check out Harryhausen's Hansel and Gretel.

And here's Bugs Bunny's version: "Bewitched Bunny"

Save big money AT MENARDS!!!

We are reading this month's selections in The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated and annotated by Jack Zipes.

Non-Fifer musical selections: Carnival of the Animals: XIII. The Swan and VII. Aquarium by Camille Saint-Saëns | Nocturnes in C-Sharp Minor and E Minor by Frédéric Chopin

Next up: a look at 100 years of Weird Tales with The Thing of a Thousand Shapes!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Comments

Thom Scullion

If you go out for dinner in a gentrified neighbourhood there is a decent chance you will be served pie on a roof shingle.

Oleh R

When I first moved to the Midwest and saw Menards, I read the sign in my head as “me nards!” Like a pirate who just got kicked in a private area. Sometimes I still say it like that to myself.

The Aaron Campbell Studio

Cockaigne pronounced cah-Cane is a very interesting subject and one that is woefully overlooked and Medieval studies. There are very few texts concerning it, which is probably due to the fact that cockaigne existed solely for the benefit of the poor and dispossessed just like other oral folktale traditions. It was in essence a secular heaven. or a fools paradise and embodied the topsy-turvy world where the lowliest amongst humanity occupied the highest positions of authority. It was said that in order to find the mythical land of cockaigne one first had to eat through a literal mountain range of custard. Once inside this land roast pigs were said to wander the fields with forks sticking out of their backs ready to be dined upon. Open your mouth and a cooked bird would fly into it. In fact everything was edible. The king was the man who could fart the loudest and work of any kind was a punishable offense. The medieval practice of the feast of fools has its origin in this mythology and you can even see it echoed as late as the great depression in songs like The Great Rock Candy Mountain. From an early text: “this land is in fact, so filled with pleasure and delights that may be tasted of daily that there is no other place like it under the sun. Whether ones arrow hits the target or goes elsewhere the winner is the one who shoots farthest from the bull’s-eye, and when there are races, the winner is always the one who comes in last.” And “ it is also very easy to earn money there for those who are so lazy that they do nothing but sleep earn sixpence for every hour they spend sleeping. Those who can let a reasonable fart earn half a Crown.“

Thunk

On pronunciation, it is Hansel and Jekyll

Penny Nicoles

These tales you've been sharing have reminded me of a weird little gem of a book I downloaded years ago called "British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions, By Wirt Sikes." It's got lots of practical advice on how to deal with witches or changelings, as well as different collected anecdotes of very reputable people who encountered familiars, selkies, goblins and the like.

Eldritch Golem (JPM)

Really enjoyed this month of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Now I need to share with you my favorite thing about Hansel and Gretel and that is the 1963 book Die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel (The Truth About Hansel and Gretel) by Hans Traxler which details the exploits of German primary school teacher and armature archeologist Georg Ossegg who uncovered the true crime behind this beloved fairy tale. Inspired by Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of the city of Troy using Homer's The Iliad, Ossegg began wondering if Grimm's fairy-tales might not be based on a similar historical reality. In January 1945, Ossegg traveled to the small village of Steinau an der Straße in the German state of Hesse where he began systematically surveying the nearby Spessart woods, which were locally known as the Hexenwald, or “witch’s forest.” Eventually he discovered the remains of a 17th-Century bakery which had been destroyed in a fire. When the earth inside the remains of one of the bakery's four stone ovens was excavated the charred skeleton of a woman was found. Consulting local court records, Ossegg was able to discover that the bakery had belonged to a 35-year-old (at the time of her death) woman named Katharina Schraderin who was famed for her recipe for Nürnberger Lebkuchen (gingerbread). As it turned out Schraderin had also been murdered after being accused of witchcraft by a rival baker named Hans Metzler and his sister Grete (who were both adults, not children). This then is the true story behind the Grimm's tale. Only it isn't. Because Georg Ossegg never existed. The author of the book, Hans Traxler, was a well known Czech satirist who had written The Truth About Hansel and Gretel is honor of the 100th anniversary of Jacob Grimm’s death and as a parody of the kind of work that real folklorists and archeologists - like Schliemann - were doing at the time. The problem was that Traxler's satire was too good! Most readers and reviewers took The Truth About Hansel and Gretel at face value and the book became a best-seller in 1960s Germany on both sides of the Berlin Wall (the Marxists especially loved it because it was seen as evidence of the corrupting influence of capitalism). It was only when international scholars began contacting Traxler wanting to consult with Ossegg that he was forced to come clean. Also in 1964, Traxler was sued for fraud, though his lawyers got the case dismiss by arguing that satire/parody need not announce itself as such since to do so would ruin the joke. But it remains an amazing story about how badly we all want our favorite fiction to be, on some level, true. If you want to read more about this case I recommend the 2019 Atlas Obscura article "How a Literary Prank Convinced Germany That ‘Hansel and Gretel’ Was Real" which reproduces a number of the (obviously) faked photographs that appeared in Traxler's book. There are also two podcasts which have covered this story, The Folklore Podcast Ep. 35 and Imaginary Worlds Ep. 212, both of which are excellent. Imaginary Worlds also did a great episode (no. 166) on the Grimms and the role their stories played in the development of modern Germany as a nation and includes an interview with Jack Zipes.

REO Jackwagon

Well, slap some burning iron slippers on your feet and tear yourself in half in anger, this has been a lovely Grimmcember. Thanks Chris, chad, Heather, and Rachel! Happy Holidays!

Sanjay Mathew

My kid always insisted that the stepmother *was* the witch because the Ladybird edition of Hansel and Gretel we read had the stepmother disappear rather than die at the end.

Markus Lauerer

Just wanted to mention that the "a" in "Hänsel" is pronounced somewhat like the "e" in "went" in the original German. So your "wrong" version is actually quite close to the correct sound.

Ryan Thomas

Bugs Bunny is another lying manipulator we applaud.

Ryan Thomas

THANK YOU, CHAD, for the Tweet, Tweet! It flitted through my fancy, too, right before you let it fly. Future song lyrics? I want credit! What a Lovely Bird I am!!! Little known background: This tale's dodo dad, Dennis Dunderman, had married Debbie Dastardly after she divorced Dick and ate his dog, Muttley. Captain Cave-Maaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaan is in there somewhere, too, / Because he had bigger fingers than Hansel would ever do.

Jim Cannon

I mean, aside from the house of bread, this IS a serial killer story. Weird that she's a witch, considering that most Medieval serial killers are werewolves. But its a big concept that can contain many interpretations.

Jeremy Impson

Greg House from House, M.D. would be a recent example of a manipulative force for good. My first thought, though, was a minor character archetype that I first recall encountering in Isaac Asimov short stories (and those of his contemporaries). I don't recall a specific example, but the usual situation was that two or more people in power (always male) colluding to bend or even break some rules to help someone less empowered out. They are usually described as mavericks, despite somehow being well entrenched in the power structure, and usually act "behind the scenes" (from the perspective of the power structure).

Andrew Buchanan

Face from The A Team and Radar from M.A.S.H. are who I thought about right away of manipulative characters we cheer for.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

- Another manipulator we root for is P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves. - The Grimms' collection of tales around the German-speaking world was part of the 19th-century wave of Romantic nationalism that would lead to a few failed revolutions and then finally the actual unification of Germany. Probably another reason the Nazis approved. - I've studied bits of the "evil stepmother" motif in the context of ancient Rome. The historian Tacitus, for example, deploys it in his portrayal of the various empresses of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (i.e., the women in "I, Claudius," if that helps). It's a trope that shows up all through Greek and Roman literature. There's probably scholarship more recent than Patricia Watson's 1994 "Ancient Stepmothers: Myth, Misogyny, and Reality" but I'm not going to Google it because I'd feel like I had to read it.

David Halstead

"Debbie Does Grimm's Fairy Tales" not as sexy as I imagined.

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

The bone Hansel was presenting to the witch as his own finger may have been that of a child she had previously dined on, not that of a chicken or any other animal she’d have to labor to raise for food. That’s what the candy house is for. To do the work for her. It’s like the Farm of the Future.

Long time hater

Have to agree with Ryan Thomas, we all get behind bugs catfishing Elmer Fudd as a sexy giant rabbit lady...as the hero of the story. Have enjoyed this month of Grimm Tales, would love a Charles Perrault month; older versions of these stories compiled in the 18th century that make the Grimm versions comparatively the clean Disney versions of some of these stories

Bag Of Coins

Chad's perspective on the mouse-fur hat as a story-ending element seems correct to me. When I was a kid, my Czech grandmother used to always end her bedtime stories with a few whimsical, rhyming couplets in Czech that conveyed a similar message along the same nonsensical lines. These couplets, as she told me when I was older, were passed down from her childhood nanny. I believe they served as a subtle way to indicate to the listeners that the bedtime story was coming to an end and they had to go to sleep as it was time for the storyteller to leave. The only couplet I remember translates to something like, "You've now heard your story, and I must go get my little bunch of bagels/buns." This practice would have originated from the traditions of the wealthy families, like the Wild sisters, who likely had nannies. I'd go so far as to suggest that the original version of the mouse-hat lines (before transcription and translation) would have implied that it was the storyteller who needed to leave to catch mice for a mouse-fur hat, thus excusing their departure. And with that, I've officially entered the 'No Evidence, Just Vibes' zone of speculation.