8 ms·

Unique volumes of Brothers Grimm fairy tales discovered in Poland

431 points by coloneltcb 2y ago

alexwhb 2y ago
It’s unclear to me from the article if these volumes had never been discovered before or if the editions of these volumes are unique? Meaning are there wholly unique stories that have been discovered?
- duxup 2y ago
  I wondered the same. They mention the prints are unique and presumably the footnotes they found are ... but I agree, the question of content is surprisingly not mentioned at all.
- avidiax 2y ago
  I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their seats in anticipation of new source material. The fact that these volumes were "lost" suggests to me that there are "new" tales in these pages.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
    > I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their seats in anticipation Until they find out the new tales are about a story teller that let politics ruin all the good stories.
    - tomoyoirl 2y ago
      Do me a favor. Go back and rewatch Dumbo (1941) and prepare a few thoughts regarding its treatment of hot-button issues like miscegenation (hint: what kind of elephant has big ears?). Then, comment again on Disney’s recent discovery of “politics.”
      - octopoc 2y ago
        Speaking of that, there ought to be a streaming service that uses bittorrent and has only old, public domain movies on it. Like popcorntime, but with only legal stuff on it. Internet archive just isn't the same.
      - bigstrat2003 2y ago
        That is an absurd level of reading things into a work. Unless you have actual primary sources which say that's what they intended, I'm calling bullshit.
        tomoyoirl 2y ago
        Look, the other elephants start out the stork delivery scene declaring they’re part of “a proud race” and end it gossiping about “what would Mr. Jumbo think?!?” and “Jumbo? More like dumbo…” We also see what happens to certain black men in the world, during “Song of the Roustabouts” (“when other folks have gone to bed / we slave until we’re almost dead,” “boss man hounding / keep on pounding / ‘grab that rope you hairy ape’”) Afterwards we see the cruel and arbitrary nature of those who mock the poor kid, contrasted to the universal experience of family (“Baby mine don’t you cry”). Eventually the kid ends up with a bunch of (black) crows, including one Mr. “Jim Crow,” who make fun of him, before his buddy from Brooklyn calls them out on how people make fun of them for being different too, and they feel real bad; after finding friendship there, he earns social acceptance for his athletic feats (flight) and later through participation in the armed forces (“Dum-bombers for victory!!” read the newspapers.) You sayin’ that this isn’t about race at all, and the whole storyline is just a coinkydink? Ha! Tell me another one. Disney’s been at this stuff for longer than your parents have been alive.
        DavidPiper 2y ago
        For a good introduction to the problematic social and political content of many Disney films - Dumbo definitely included - I highly recommend Lindsay Ellis' video "Woke Disney" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU1ffHa47YY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU1ffHa47YY
    - bazoom42 2y ago
      Well the Brothers Grimm themselves let politics ruin the good stories, e.g by removing sex and turning evil mothers into evil stepmothers. It is probabaly unavoidable that a retelling of a folktale will reflect the biases of the storyteller. It is just that politics which align with ones own tend to be invisible. Like when having a black stormtrooper is considered political but a white isn’t.
  - bazoom42 2y ago
    Disney only adapted a single Grimm tale, Snow White, in 1937. Other Disney fairy tale moves were based on other sources like Charles Perrault (Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty). Grimm also have variants of these tales, but they are significantly different.
bena 2y ago
I hope this is genuine. It’s the kind of low stakes anthropology that I like. Nothing major, nothing to fight over, just “how fucked up were these guys’ stories”
- Izkata 2y ago
  They didn't write the stories associated with their name, they collected and published existing stories.
egypturnash 2y ago
Well Disney's got some new films in the pipe now I guess.
jareklupinski 2y ago
> A number of their works were considered to be permanently lost following World War 2. However, recent research at the Adam Mickiewicz University Library led to an unexpected discovery — specialists managed to find 27 original volumes with rare prints and unique editions. lots of people mention the advancements and technologies gained from war, but how can we possibly remember what it caused us to lose? it's gone
- MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago
  In this case they had an idea of how many volumes there were before the war and then how many after.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    Think he is just making general case that it is easier to destroy than create, and during war, a lot is lost.
    - MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago
      With recent advancements in generative AI that balance is changing quickly.
- cafard 2y ago
  If you are in Poland it ought to be painfully straightforward to remember the losses it caused.
  - michael9423 2y ago
    The volumes of Brothers Grimm fairy tales found here were german. And they were found in Poland, because some of todays Poland was Germany, and most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage, when the Soviets invaded from the east and burned down all the houses and libraries. Millions of Germans fled and died, and with this large amounts of german knowledge has been lost forever. In this case, due to some luck, some works survived. Edit: "some", not "most".
yorwba 2y ago
The article references reporting by Nauka w Polske, which I believe is https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezione-w-poznaniu-ksiazki-z-biblioteki-braci-grimm-daja-wglad-w-ich https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi... which in turn references an article published by the library https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35512 https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... which has an English abstract: The private book collection that belonged to Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm testifies to the sixty-year-long period of the fertile research (and artistic) output of the famous German researchers and founders of the German philology, and in itself is an important subject to study. This book collection, comprising rare prints and unique editions, is more than just a series of items of significant material of bibliophile value. It is particularly valuable primarily as a source of knowledge on the research methods used by the two researchers. In the footnotes and indexes to their publications of fairy tales or folk legends, both Jakob and Wilhelm were very meticulous in providing their written source material, i.e. the sources that they held in their book collection, the items of which had purposefully been acquired by the duo to preserve for subsequent editions of old relics European and German literature. Equally important for the research on the literary output and research activity of the Grimm Brothers is the analysis of hand-written underlining, notes and annotations that the texts were typographically enhanced by during the reading. The volumes from the portion of the working collection of the Brothers Grimm found in the Poznań University Library were long though to had been lost during the WWII, and now can be of significant value in their contribution to the development of modern research on the Brothers’ literary and scientific output. The very fact that they have been found allows us to believe that the book collections at the Library can hold other volumes that belonged to the private book collection of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm still to be discovered. So it's not about books written by the Brothers Grimm, but books which they used in their research.
- ikari_pl 2y ago
  best part about > Polish science news outlet Nauka w Polske reported is that "Nauka w Polske" is not correct Polish. I hate to be the grammar Nazi everywhere I show up but to prevent copy pasting errors, that should be "Nauka w Polsce". original src: https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezione-w-poznaniu-ksiazki-z-biblioteki-braci-grimm-daja-wglad-w-ich https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi...
senorqa 2y ago
I'm glad all of those works belong to to public domain.
ulrischa 2y ago
Poznań is Posen - a former German area with lot of German literature culture
- pkfz 2y ago
  Do you mean a former German area during the WW2 occupation of Poland or after the Second Partitioning of Poland at the end of 18th century?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cezary 2y ago
  Poznań has been Polish for a millennia, it was a part of Germany from 1793 to 1919. It was majority Polish during that period, with Germans making up at most 40% of the population, or ~65000, when it became a part of Poland again.
  - trompetenaccoun 2y ago
    Neither "Germans" nor "Poles" have existed for millennia, the idea of national identity isn't that old. Also going back only 2 millennia, it was Germanic territory, the Burgundians lived in the area before they were displaced by Slavs coming from the east during the Migration Period. So if one were to make the argument that territory belongs to whoever was there first, Germanic peoples would have a better claim on it by that logic. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Empire_125.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Em...
    - cezary 2y ago
      Poles have existed for a millennia, the first Polish state started in 966 AD as the Kingdom of Poland with the adoption of Western Christianity by the first Polish king. Maybe the idea of a nation hadn't been formed yet, but Poland had. The Polish word for Germany is "Niemec" or land of mutes, because they were unintelligible. Why would anyone make that argument? Claiming Poznań as German reeks of irredentism. Germanic != German. Do germans still claim the cities of other Germanic countries and former lands like Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Baltics as German?
thih9 2y ago
Title is inaccurate, including article's title. No volumes of fairy tales were found - only books used for research. Could we update the submission title to: "Portion of Brothers Grimm working library found at University Library, Poznan" and point it to: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35512 https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... ?
- Nydhal 2y ago
  Which is even more interesting since that could pointing to older unknown works.
  - thih9 2y ago
    I saw nothing indicating that; is there a source?
- egorfine 2y ago
  Of course. As a Ukrainian I would never trust a ukrainian news site.
jobs_throwaway 2y ago
I always find discoveries like this so encouraging. There are so many treasures out there to re-discover
Archelaos 2y ago
Here is the original article about the finding, including a complete list of the books: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35512 https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... (PDF, in Polish)
wnissen 2y ago
Anyone with the slightest bit of interest in the tales should read the recent English translation of the first edition. https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-original-folk-and-fairy-tales-of-the-brothers-grimm-the-complete-first-edition-0691160597 https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-original... or https://archive.org/details/originalfolkfair0000unse https://archive.org/details/originalfolkfair0000unse It's obvious reading the originals that it they were more a collection of tales with no particular moral, some unspeakable brutality, and a ton of hallucinatory weirdness. Why does an anthropomorphic needle go down the road? Heck if I know! The later versions, as explained in the preface of the above book, were sanitized and Christianized for popular consumption.
- hodgesrm 2y ago
  I think there are morals in Grimms Fairy Tales even in the earliest versions. What is striking to me when I read them is that many of the stories come from people at the bottom level of society and reflected their struggle for survival. These include terrifying consequences for misbehavior and that violating group norms (including those imposed from above) is a big no-no. A lot of the stories feature tricksters who cleverly got around these restrictions. These patterns don't show up clearly in individual stories. But it's pretty strong if you read them from end to end.
  - octopoc 2y ago
    Yeah, this is definitely the case IME. It's easy to read these stories and go away thinking "WTF." But it's important to remember that these stories come from oral societies, which means 90% of the communication is lost since it's only written on paper. But that communication can be reconstructed by a charitable mind. For example, in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales (at least the version I read), there's a mouse and a cat that are friends. The cat and mouse find some delicious food and they hide it somewhere far away from their house. The cat then proceeds to go "visiting relatives" (in reality he is eating up the delicious food) and the mouse is gullible and believes the cat. After a while the mouse discovers the cat ate up all the food and angrily accuses the cat of being deceitful. The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse. The end. I think this is a profound story on not ignoring the fact that the cat is the natural predator and the mouse is the natural prey in the relationship. The mouse has convinced itself that this time will be different. This has relevance for e.g. not dismissing signs of abuse. But it's so easy to read that story and be like, "Well, I guess the point is that gullible people get screwed, so don't be gullible." Or even, "It's a dog-eat-dog world." It's a good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being passive in an abusive relationship.
kristopolous 2y ago
so were they just sitting on the open stacks? Was someone just wandering down the aisle? I can just imagine being a librarian and someone walks up to check the book out ...
dangets 2y ago
I assume this is a good spot to give a shout-out for the Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest podcast - kid-friendly story-telling podcast great for long car rides. The author likes to point out deviations between original stories and later re-tellings. I believe the first 2 seasons are free. * https://pinna.fm/library/kids-shows/pinna-podcasts/grimm-grimmer-grimmest https://pinna.fm/library/kids-shows/pinna-podcasts/grimm-gri...
- smugma 2y ago
  This is an excellent podcast for children (and adults!). It used to be season 1 was available on podcast platforms, seasons 2-4 required a subscription, which I’ve gotten both through Apple and Pinna (different years).
martyvis 2y ago
Why are they the Brothers Grimm and not the Grimm Brothers?
- jszymborski 2y ago
  Just an archaism
- blahedo 2y ago
  The German is "die Brüder Grimm" and early English translations preserved that order, which is unusual but not completely unknown in English; then it stuck.
f_allwein 2y ago
If you’re looking for more Grimm fairy tales, there are some: there was another brother, Ferdinand, apparently the black sheep of the family. He also published fairy tales, but was largely forgotten. Some of his tales were rediscovered and published (in German) in 2020. I read a few and they sound like authentic Grimm. https://www.aufbau-verlage.de/die-andere-bibliothek/der-fremde-ferdinand/978-3-8477-0428-7 https://www.aufbau-verlage.de/die-andere-bibliothek/der-frem...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

431 points by coloneltcb 2y ago

It’s unclear to me from the article if these volumes had never been discovered before or if the editions of these volumes are unique? Meaning are there wholly unique stories that have been discovered?

duxup 2y ago
I wondered the same. They mention the prints are unique and presumably the footnotes they found are ... but I agree, the question of content is surprisingly not mentioned at all.
avidiax 2y ago
I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their seats in anticipation of new source material. The fact that these volumes were "lost" suggests to me that there are "new" tales in these pages.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
  > I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their seats in anticipation Until they find out the new tales are about a story teller that let politics ruin all the good stories.
  - tomoyoirl 2y ago
    Do me a favor. Go back and rewatch Dumbo (1941) and prepare a few thoughts regarding its treatment of hot-button issues like miscegenation (hint: what kind of elephant has big ears?). Then, comment again on Disney’s recent discovery of “politics.”
    - octopoc 2y ago
      Speaking of that, there ought to be a streaming service that uses bittorrent and has only old, public domain movies on it. Like popcorntime, but with only legal stuff on it. Internet archive just isn't the same.
    - bigstrat2003 2y ago
      That is an absurd level of reading things into a work. Unless you have actual primary sources which say that's what they intended, I'm calling bullshit.
      - tomoyoirl 2y ago
        Look, the other elephants start out the stork delivery scene declaring they’re part of “a proud race” and end it gossiping about “what would Mr. Jumbo think?!?” and “Jumbo? More like dumbo…” We also see what happens to certain black men in the world, during “Song of the Roustabouts” (“when other folks have gone to bed / we slave until we’re almost dead,” “boss man hounding / keep on pounding / ‘grab that rope you hairy ape’”) Afterwards we see the cruel and arbitrary nature of those who mock the poor kid, contrasted to the universal experience of family (“Baby mine don’t you cry”). Eventually the kid ends up with a bunch of (black) crows, including one Mr. “Jim Crow,” who make fun of him, before his buddy from Brooklyn calls them out on how people make fun of them for being different too, and they feel real bad; after finding friendship there, he earns social acceptance for his athletic feats (flight) and later through participation in the armed forces (“Dum-bombers for victory!!” read the newspapers.) You sayin’ that this isn’t about race at all, and the whole storyline is just a coinkydink? Ha! Tell me another one. Disney’s been at this stuff for longer than your parents have been alive.
      - DavidPiper 2y ago
        For a good introduction to the problematic social and political content of many Disney films - Dumbo definitely included - I highly recommend Lindsay Ellis' video "Woke Disney" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU1ffHa47YY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU1ffHa47YY
  - bazoom42 2y ago
    Well the Brothers Grimm themselves let politics ruin the good stories, e.g by removing sex and turning evil mothers into evil stepmothers. It is probabaly unavoidable that a retelling of a folktale will reflect the biases of the storyteller. It is just that politics which align with ones own tend to be invisible. Like when having a black stormtrooper is considered political but a white isn’t.
- bazoom42 2y ago
  Disney only adapted a single Grimm tale, Snow White, in 1937. Other Disney fairy tale moves were based on other sources like Charles Perrault (Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty). Grimm also have variants of these tales, but they are significantly different.

bena 2y ago

I hope this is genuine. It’s the kind of low stakes anthropology that I like. Nothing major, nothing to fight over, just “how fucked up were these guys’ stories”

Izkata 2y ago
They didn't write the stories associated with their name, they collected and published existing stories.

egypturnash 2y ago

Well Disney's got some new films in the pipe now I guess.

jareklupinski 2y ago

> A number of their works were considered to be permanently lost following World War 2. However, recent research at the Adam Mickiewicz University Library led to an unexpected discovery — specialists managed to find 27 original volumes with rare prints and unique editions. lots of people mention the advancements and technologies gained from war, but how can we possibly remember what it caused us to lose? it's gone

MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago
In this case they had an idea of how many volumes there were before the war and then how many after.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  Think he is just making general case that it is easier to destroy than create, and during war, a lot is lost.
  - MOARDONGZPLZ 2y ago
    With recent advancements in generative AI that balance is changing quickly.
cafard 2y ago
If you are in Poland it ought to be painfully straightforward to remember the losses it caused.
- michael9423 2y ago
  The volumes of Brothers Grimm fairy tales found here were german. And they were found in Poland, because some of todays Poland was Germany, and most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and heritage, when the Soviets invaded from the east and burned down all the houses and libraries. Millions of Germans fled and died, and with this large amounts of german knowledge has been lost forever. In this case, due to some luck, some works survived. Edit: "some", not "most".

yorwba 2y ago

The article references reporting by Nauka w Polske, which I believe is https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezione-w-poznaniu-ksiazki-z-biblioteki-braci-grimm-daja-wglad-w-ich https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi... which in turn references an article published by the library https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35512 https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... which has an English abstract: The private book collection that belonged to Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm testifies to the sixty-year-long period of the fertile research (and artistic) output of the famous German researchers and founders of the German philology, and in itself is an important subject to study. This book collection, comprising rare prints and unique editions, is more than just a series of items of significant material of bibliophile value. It is particularly valuable primarily as a source of knowledge on the research methods used by the two researchers. In the footnotes and indexes to their publications of fairy tales or folk legends, both Jakob and Wilhelm were very meticulous in providing their written source material, i.e. the sources that they held in their book collection, the items of which had purposefully been acquired by the duo to preserve for subsequent editions of old relics European and German literature. Equally important for the research on the literary output and research activity of the Grimm Brothers is the analysis of hand-written underlining, notes and annotations that the texts were typographically enhanced by during the reading. The volumes from the portion of the working collection of the Brothers Grimm found in the Poznań University Library were long though to had been lost during the WWII, and now can be of significant value in their contribution to the development of modern research on the Brothers’ literary and scientific output. The very fact that they have been found allows us to believe that the book collections at the Library can hold other volumes that belonged to the private book collection of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm still to be discovered. So it's not about books written by the Brothers Grimm, but books which they used in their research.

ikari_pl 2y ago
best part about > Polish science news outlet Nauka w Polske reported is that "Nauka w Polske" is not correct Polish. I hate to be the grammar Nazi everywhere I show up but to prevent copy pasting errors, that should be "Nauka w Polsce". original src: https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezione-w-poznaniu-ksiazki-z-biblioteki-braci-grimm-daja-wglad-w-ich https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi...

senorqa 2y ago

I'm glad all of those works belong to to public domain.

ulrischa 2y ago

Poznań is Posen - a former German area with lot of German literature culture

pkfz 2y ago
Do you mean a former German area during the WW2 occupation of Poland or after the Second Partitioning of Poland at the end of 18th century?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cezary 2y ago
Poznań has been Polish for a millennia, it was a part of Germany from 1793 to 1919. It was majority Polish during that period, with Germans making up at most 40% of the population, or ~65000, when it became a part of Poland again.
- trompetenaccoun 2y ago
  Neither "Germans" nor "Poles" have existed for millennia, the idea of national identity isn't that old. Also going back only 2 millennia, it was Germanic territory, the Burgundians lived in the area before they were displaced by Slavs coming from the east during the Migration Period. So if one were to make the argument that territory belongs to whoever was there first, Germanic peoples would have a better claim on it by that logic. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Empire_125.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Em...
  - cezary 2y ago
    Poles have existed for a millennia, the first Polish state started in 966 AD as the Kingdom of Poland with the adoption of Western Christianity by the first Polish king. Maybe the idea of a nation hadn't been formed yet, but Poland had. The Polish word for Germany is "Niemec" or land of mutes, because they were unintelligible. Why would anyone make that argument? Claiming Poznań as German reeks of irredentism. Germanic != German. Do germans still claim the cities of other Germanic countries and former lands like Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Baltics as German?

thih9 2y ago

Title is inaccurate, including article's title. No volumes of fairy tales were found - only books used for research. Could we update the submission title to: "Portion of Brothers Grimm working library found at University Library, Poznan" and point it to: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35512 https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... ?

Nydhal 2y ago
Which is even more interesting since that could pointing to older unknown works.
- thih9 2y ago
  I saw nothing indicating that; is there a source?
egorfine 2y ago
Of course. As a Ukrainian I would never trust a ukrainian news site.

jobs_throwaway 2y ago

I always find discoveries like this so encouraging. There are so many treasures out there to re-discover

Archelaos 2y ago

Here is the original article about the finding, including a complete list of the books: https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35512 https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... (PDF, in Polish)

wnissen 2y ago

Anyone with the slightest bit of interest in the tales should read the recent English translation of the first edition. https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-original-folk-and-fairy-tales-of-the-brothers-grimm-the-complete-first-edition-0691160597 https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-original... or https://archive.org/details/originalfolkfair0000unse https://archive.org/details/originalfolkfair0000unse It's obvious reading the originals that it they were more a collection of tales with no particular moral, some unspeakable brutality, and a ton of hallucinatory weirdness. Why does an anthropomorphic needle go down the road? Heck if I know! The later versions, as explained in the preface of the above book, were sanitized and Christianized for popular consumption.

hodgesrm 2y ago
I think there are morals in Grimms Fairy Tales even in the earliest versions. What is striking to me when I read them is that many of the stories come from people at the bottom level of society and reflected their struggle for survival. These include terrifying consequences for misbehavior and that violating group norms (including those imposed from above) is a big no-no. A lot of the stories feature tricksters who cleverly got around these restrictions. These patterns don't show up clearly in individual stories. But it's pretty strong if you read them from end to end.
- octopoc 2y ago
  Yeah, this is definitely the case IME. It's easy to read these stories and go away thinking "WTF." But it's important to remember that these stories come from oral societies, which means 90% of the communication is lost since it's only written on paper. But that communication can be reconstructed by a charitable mind. For example, in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales (at least the version I read), there's a mouse and a cat that are friends. The cat and mouse find some delicious food and they hide it somewhere far away from their house. The cat then proceeds to go "visiting relatives" (in reality he is eating up the delicious food) and the mouse is gullible and believes the cat. After a while the mouse discovers the cat ate up all the food and angrily accuses the cat of being deceitful. The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse. The end. I think this is a profound story on not ignoring the fact that the cat is the natural predator and the mouse is the natural prey in the relationship. The mouse has convinced itself that this time will be different. This has relevance for e.g. not dismissing signs of abuse. But it's so easy to read that story and be like, "Well, I guess the point is that gullible people get screwed, so don't be gullible." Or even, "It's a dog-eat-dog world." It's a good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being passive in an abusive relationship.

kristopolous 2y ago

so were they just sitting on the open stacks? Was someone just wandering down the aisle? I can just imagine being a librarian and someone walks up to check the book out ...

dangets 2y ago

I assume this is a good spot to give a shout-out for the Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest podcast - kid-friendly story-telling podcast great for long car rides. The author likes to point out deviations between original stories and later re-tellings. I believe the first 2 seasons are free. * https://pinna.fm/library/kids-shows/pinna-podcasts/grimm-grimmer-grimmest https://pinna.fm/library/kids-shows/pinna-podcasts/grimm-gri...

smugma 2y ago
This is an excellent podcast for children (and adults!). It used to be season 1 was available on podcast platforms, seasons 2-4 required a subscription, which I’ve gotten both through Apple and Pinna (different years).

martyvis 2y ago

Why are they the Brothers Grimm and not the Grimm Brothers?

jszymborski 2y ago
Just an archaism
blahedo 2y ago
The German is "die Brüder Grimm" and early English translations preserved that order, which is unusual but not completely unknown in English; then it stuck.

f_allwein 2y ago

If you’re looking for more Grimm fairy tales, there are some: there was another brother, Ferdinand, apparently the black sheep of the family. He also published fairy tales, but was largely forgotten. Some of his tales were rediscovered and published (in German) in 2020. I read a few and they sound like authentic Grimm. https://www.aufbau-verlage.de/die-andere-bibliothek/der-fremde-ferdinand/978-3-8477-0428-7 https://www.aufbau-verlage.de/die-andere-bibliothek/der-frem...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]