Lore - Legends 54: Fairytale

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Humans have spent a very long time collecting and sharing specific tales. But just because the most popular ones are bright and cheerful doesn’t mean the rest are without shadows. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas and GennaRose Nethercott. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands, at Quince.com/LORE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Warby Parker: Visit one of over 270 stores to find your next pair of glasses, or go to WarbyParker.com/LORE to try on any pair virtually! Avocado Green Mattress: Shop now at AvocadoMattress.com, and save up to 10% on certified organic mattresses. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Once upon a time, there was a peasant. And one day the peasant was working on his farm when he saw a heap of burning coals in the middle of the field. As he approached, he was astonished to see a tiny black devil sitting on the fiery stones. For some reason, instead of running away, the peasant decided to ask a rather odd question. Are you sitting upon a treasure? And the devil replied, yes, on a treasure which contains more gold and silver than you have ever seen in your life.

Feeling much braver than he probably should have, the peasant told Satan that since this was his field, then all the treasure in it belonged to him. The devil, who was sick and tired of having all the gold and silver in the world, told him that he could have it, as long as the man gave him half of everything that grew in the field.

Half of his crops for the greatest treasure on earth? Well, that was just fine with the peasant. But in the interest of dividing the crops as evenly as possible, he proposed that the devil could take everything that grew above the ground and he could keep everything that grew below. This sounded like a fair deal to the devil, and so once they were in agreement, he disappeared and the peasant started planting his field. Many months later, the devil returned at harvest time, ready to take his half of the crop that grew above the ground. But to his dismay, he arrived to an empty field. The peasant had kept

everything because he had planted turnips. And so the peasant who outsmarted the devil lived happily ever after with his treasure, and the devil got nothing. Now believe it or not, this story is a grim fairy tale. That's right, Cinderella and Snow White aren't the only fairy tales out there. The Grimm Brothers collected hundreds of them, and while some have been immortalized in popular culture, most of them have been forgotten. But forgotten fairy tales go far beyond the Grimm Brothers, because despite their modern reputation, those two weren't the only story chroniclers out there. There were so many more

stories than they ever had opportunity to record, hundreds, thousands even. Every village in the world had their own, and there was no way that they could all be put to paper. Thankfully, though, a few people tried. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore Legends. LOR LEGENDS What exactly is a fairy tale? Well, if you asked someone on the street, they would probably describe them as fantasy tales for children. And to be fair, that's the box that we've put them in.

After all, we've built an entire cartoon empire off of Grimm's tales, and you're more likely to find a reference to Hansel and Gretel in a kid's book than in an adult novel. But fairy tales were never meant to just be for children, because they're so much more than silly little stories with magic sprinkled in. Fairy tales float somewhere between fantasy and folklore. In a fairy tale, a peasant can become a princess, a goose can lay a golden egg, a farmer can trick the devil, and can even get away with it. There are no rules in a fairy tale. Anything can happen for any reason. When you enter a fairy tale, you enter a realm with no barriers. They're not meant to make sense,

they are simply meant to take you on a journey. Sometimes these stories convey a moral lesson, or they presented information in a new and memorable way, but oftentimes their only purpose was pure entertainment. That might sound frivolous, but the importance of fun for fun's sake can't be overstated, especially for the masses of early modern Europe who had very few options for entertainment available to them. There were no screens, no radios, books were rare outside of the wealthy, educated households. If it wasn't a holiday and no public dances were being held,

then storytelling was one of your only options. If you were able to pull a moral message out of a fairy tale, then good for you. But if you didn't, then at least you had some fun. Folklorist Angela Carter says that no fairy tale is a unique one-off, meaning that no one sat down, put pen to paper, and wrote a fantastical story, and then just published it.

Instead, the creation of this specific genre resembles a giant game of telephone. Centuries ago, someone told a story around a campfire or beside a child's bed or during a particularly boring household chore. And then, as people grew up, they continued to tell that story, adding their own embellishments along the way. And so organically and almost exclusively through word of mouth, fairy tales spread through entire regions, with each person contributing their own unique spin and cultural perspective.

It was a group effort that spanned generations. These fairy tales were created at a time when the majority of the European population was illiterate. So, they were almost always told orally, and rarely if ever written down. Fairy tales weren't recorded until people like the Grimm Brothers started to collect them. But the Grimm Brothers weren't the only ones who thought that they needed to be saved. In 2012, the British newspaper, The Guardian,

announced that 500 new fairy tales had just been discovered in the German city of Regensburg. The article was actually a bit misleading. The fairy tales had really been discovered in 2010, but it took two years for the news to reach the broader English-speaking world. Once it did, though, the folklorists went wild. It had been years since anything resembling a new fairy tale had emerged, and now there were hundreds. These stories had all been collected in the mid-19th century by the historian Franz Zevar von Schoenvert. Franz was born in 1810 and grew up in the Bavarian town of Amberg.

He was well-educated, briefly attending the Bavarian Royal Academy of Architecture before transferring and earning his law degree. After graduating, Franz didn't work as a lawyer or as a folklorist. Oddly enough, he actually became the private secretary to the crown prince of Bavaria. He was truly a well-connected member of society's upper echelon. Which is why it was so odd when he started interviewing common men like cooks, cobblers, and farmers. You see, Franz's true passion wasn't his job for the prince.

It was the folklore of Bavaria. Franz was worried that modernization would wipe out local Bavarian culture, so he set out to save it. His solution? To write down every fairy tale, children's rhyme, and local legend that he could. And to get to the tales, Franz had to go straight to their source. And so in the 1850s, he began talking to the working class. At first, people were suspicious of his motives.

In his private writings, he said, and I quote, "'These people can't seem to get it through their heads that a scholar might actually be interested in their stupidities, and they begin to worry that you are just trying to make them look like fools.'" But gradually, he earned their trust. He found his way in by sweet-talking washerwomen, giving them gifts and impressing them with his ability to speak in their regional dialect.

Eventually, the rest of the community started to trust him more, and in 1857, he finally published the first of three volumes of fairy tales. The third and final volume came out in 1859. Unfortunately, it didn't get the reception that he hoped for, and he sold much fewer copies than he expected. So Franz shelved the final 300,000 pages of his work, and they never saw the light of day. Until that is, they were rediscovered, 150 years later.

Franz's Bavarian stories are darker than most of the fairy tales that we're used to. While the Grimm brothers were believed to have polished their tales to make them a bit more kid friendly, Franz's fairy tales are still gritty and raw. They are completely uncensored, so much so that you can practically hear the Bavarian washerwomen laughing over each other as they told him every sordid detail. In short, these stories are pure gold. So today we're going to do something a little different. For the rest of this episode, we're going to explore three of France's fairy tales. And as we walk through each one, I want you to ask yourself a very important question. Is this tale worth remembering? Once upon a time, a prince married a beautiful princess.

At first they were happy together, but as the years wore on, their love grew more strained. It's a tale as old as time, of course. No matter what they did, the princess never became pregnant, and so their grief drove them apart. Eventually, it became clear that they may never have children at all. The prince was devastated, but the princess's heart went in another direction.

She was envious, and it was only a matter of time before that envy devolved into a poisonous bitterness. One day, when the two royals were visiting a nearby village, they stumbled upon a celebration. A large group of peasants were processing to the church, laughing and cheering as they went. The reason for their good mood became evident. A local farmer's triplets were being baptized,

and everyone in the village was attending. Now, the prince found himself smiling at the group of people, albeit sadly, of course. But when he looked at his wife, his smile fell away. She was seething. The prince harbored no great love for his wife, not anymore. And so he poked the bear. He teased her for being so jealous of a peasant. After all, she owned everything in the world, and yet peasants had the one thing that she could never have. At these words, the princess flew into a rage. Storming up the church's steps, she tried to put a stop to the entire baptism, screaming that the triplet's mother must have cheated on her husband to get three babies. Mortified,

the prince dragged her away, but the damage was already done. The prince finally saw the beautiful princess for what she truly was, the most hideous woman in the kingdom. When they returned home, he held up a mirror so that she could see how ugly she had become, and when she looked into the glass, she saw the face of a wolf, a red-eyed creature that bared its teeth, reflecting her own savage soul back at her. As it turned out, though, the princess' breakdown in the village was completely unwarranted, because unbeknownst to her, she was finally pregnant.

She gave birth to seven sons, one each day for seven days in a row. But her heart had been hardened, and she rejected her new children. She demanded that her midwife take them away into the woods and leave them in a wolf den. The midwife did as she was told, but as she was carrying the seven babies through the forest, she crossed paths with the prince, who had been out hunting. He asked what she was doing and she revealed everything to him. Furious, the prince struck her down with his sword, and then he took his children from her lifeless arms and he brought them somewhere safe.

Years went by, and the princess never learned that her children had survived. The prince had no interest in telling her the truth. He simply bided his time, allowing his wife to believe that their sons had been torn apart by a pack of wolves. Eighteen years later, he decided to throw a feast. Every important lord and lady in the kingdom had been invited. The castle's great hall was filled with food, drink, and laughter, but the entire party stuttered to a halt when, in the middle of dinner, seven long-haired men walked through

the front door. As soon as she laid eyes on the seven strangers, the princess began to tremble, but the prince invited them to join the revelries, and he had chairs pulled out for each of them. During the meal, the prince casually asked how he should punish a mother who threw her sons to the wolves. Thinking it was a fun joke, the partygoers began tossing out punishments, laughing and arguing until they decided on the perfect consequence for the crime, dancing to death in red-hot iron shoes.

And the prince agreed. So he condemned his wife to that very same fate. After she had danced her way to a gruesome death, the prince claimed the seven strangers as his legitimate sons and heirs. Those teenage princes came to be known as the Wolves, and they ruled alongside their father for many years to come. Once upon a time, there was a village populated with the most beautiful girls in the world. But they didn't start out that way. No, they had been transformed

The little village was situated near a large lake every time the girls swam in that clear blue water They emerged looking more and more lovely and if they submerged themselves under the water surface, then their beauty increased even more Eventually they became so remarkably stunning that all their neighbors took notice. As a result, girls from other nearby villages started visiting so that they could swim in the lake as well. And then, as the story spread, people came from even farther afield. Girls traveled from far and wide for a chance at becoming even half as beautiful as the locals.

And the village welcomed its visitors with open arms. After all, there was plenty of lake to go around, but not everyone was able to handle the water. Yes, the local village girls had been swimming for years, so they had mastered the art of holding their breath for the perfect amount of time. But so many of the others who traveled to the village had never swam before, and they didn't know when to come up. In this pursuit of perfect beauty, they often held their breath underwater for too long. The first few drownings were written off as bad luck, but many of the girls who came to the lake were ugly, and this was their only chance to ever get married.

And so more and more girls took the risk, staying submerged under the water, longer than their lungs could stand. And they all died. As the bodies piled up, people grew more wary of the lake. The flow of visitors slowed to a trickle, and then to a crawl. And then finally, no girls came to visit the lake at all. Instead, they were replaced with boys. Suitors from all four corners of the globe traveled there, hoping to secure one of the beautiful villagers' hands in marriage. They came with roses and with sonnets, but most of all with grand promises to cherish and love the girls forever.

Unsurprisingly, the village girls fell in love, and soon enough, they were all engaged. And since so many of their residents were bound for the altar, the villagers decided to host a mass wedding. All the girls and their suitors were married on the very same day, and afterwards, the village threw the biggest celebration anyone had ever seen. It was the perfect happy ending. Until, of course, it wasn't. The very next morning, chaos erupted. Under the soft light of dawn, screams came from every house. One by one, the new wives ran outside, pursued by their new husbands. The men pulled out their hair and pushed them to the ground.

They beat them in the streets, spitting foul curses at them. Then they all ran away, leaving their brides behind, battered, and heartbroken. And if you were to ask the husbands why they had all of a sudden flown into a rage, they would all tell you the exact same thing. There was something wrong with those girls. Each and every one of their bodies was covered in fish scales. Horrified the villagers called for a magistrate. When he arrived, he took one look at the scaly brides and declared that they were unnatural, and thus he condemned them to be burned at the stake.

The villagers, fearful of what they did not understand, simply fell in line. They built a great pyre for all of the girls, stacking it high with wood. And then they lit the flames. Suddenly, a tall wave rose up from the lake. For a brief moment, it towered over the village, only to come crashing down. As a result, the streets were completely flooded, but the nightmare wasn't over. After the wave hit the village, a gigantic head emerged from the lake. The giant man spewed a great arc of water onto the pyre, dousing the flames. Forming an orderly line, the girls of the village walked across this arc of water onto the pyre, dousing the flames. Forming an orderly line, the girls of the village walked across this arc of water as

if it were a bridge. No one could stop them. It was as if they were in a trance. As they approached, the merman unhinged his gigantic jaw. One by one, the girls walked into his open mouth as if they were walking through a gate. And then, once they were all inside, his mouth slammed shut. The beautiful girls were gone. And no one ever swam in the lake again. How do our most beloved stories become beloved?

What is it about Rumpelstiltskin and Snow White that has stayed with us for generations, while by contrast, fairy tales about giant man-eating mermen are completely forgotten? And sure, that particular fairy tale was lost for over 150 years, but many of France's other Bavarian tales were still around. If you recall, he published three whole volumes. So why were we so enamored by the Grimm Brothers' Rapunzel, but not France's Wolf Princes? Well, some scholars argue that it simply boils down to presentation.

The Grimm Brothers edited the stories that they collected. They sanded down the rough moments and softened the most violent blows. They were fairly palatable, other than a few bad spots, like that moment when birds plucked out the eyes of Cinderella's evil stepsisters. But their stories have been accused of being far too altered from their original versions. Scholars have claimed that their fairy tales were so bland that there was no German culture left in them. Others have criticized them for interpreting their male characters as strong and brave

while focusing more on the beauty and virtue of their female characters. By contrast, Franz left everything in his stories. He recorded them just as they were told to him, and even wrote them in their original local Bavarian dialects That meant that sometimes his stories meandered or didn't always make sense even so this raw form of storytelling has made his fairy tales a true piece of history and That's exactly what made Jacob Grimm admire him so much in 1885 Grimm wrote nowhere in the whole of Germany is anyone collecting folklore so accurately,

thoroughly, and with such a sensitive ear. He then went on to tell the King of Bavaria that the only man who could continue his and his brother's work after their deaths was Franz. In the end, Franz Zevar von Schoenberg was the one fairy tale collector that Jacob Grimm truly respected. But the world has only remembered their stories, and we've forgotten Franz's. But maybe, in another century and a half perhaps, Franz will be just as celebrated. Fairy tales are a powerful look into our past. They show us what entertained the folks who came before us, what they valued, and what sort of lessons they deemed necessary to pass on.

But I think today's tour has made it clear that above all else, they weren't sanitized and safe. So maybe to wrap things up for today, for our final of three stories, we should visit a tale with a happier conclusion. And I have just the one to share. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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Like many young men, he had far too much energy and not nearly enough sense. Restless and brash, he poked and prodded at his mother until one day she exclaimed, I've had it, it's time for you to leave home and find a master, even if it's the devil himself. Jacob had been bothersome, but he had also been a devoted son, and he had never wanted to cause his mother grief. With a proverbial tail between his legs, Jacob left home with one intention, to make his mother proud. And he knew the best way to do intention, to make his mother proud. And he knew the best way to do that was to take his mother's advice. He had to track down an apprenticeship. As he walked, he crossed paths with an old man, who asked what he was doing.

Jacob told him that his mother had demanded that he find work, even if it was with the devil himself. Well, the old man said, then you are quite welcome to come with me. And so Jacob became the apprentice to the devil. His new master took him to an underground cavern. There Jacob was to tend to the fires that were burning under dozens of cauldrons. The only rule was that Jacob was not allowed to open the lids and look inside. But Jacob had far too much curiosity for that, and not nearly enough sense.

So one day, when the devil left the cavern on business, the foolish boy peered inside one of the cauldrons. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. At first, all he could focus on was the great buzzing sound that escaped from under the lid. It sounded like the hum of a large group of people all talking over each other. And that's when he realized that the cauldron was full of damned souls, crying out as they boiled over the fires of hell.

Quickly, Jacob put the lid back on, but that's when he noticed the soul of his grandmother floating through the Satanic stew. His grandmother recognized him just as he had her. With a wail, she asked him how he had ended up there. After he told her his tale, she said to him, You won't be able to stay here much longer. As soon as Satan returns home, he is going to give you your wages and let you go. But don't take more than three coins from him. If you do, he'll break your neck. And his grandmother was right. As soon as the devil came back, he could sense that Jacob had

looked into one of the cauldrons. Of course, he could have damned Jacob to join his grandmother in the soup of souls, but he didn't. He simply sighed, and then he fired Jacob. Ever a fair man, the devil even paid him his final wages. Jacob took no more than three coins, and then once again, he was unemployed. Once Jacob was back on the surface, he came across an old woman asking for alms. His heart went out to her, so he gave her one of his coins. Then he came across an old woman begging for money. His heart went out to her, and he gave her his second coin.

And after that, he met an old beggar man. His heart went out to him as well, and Jacob, who had far too soft a heart and not nearly enough sense, gave him his very last coin. The old man, though, was more than he seemed. He was so grateful to Jacob for giving him the last of his money that he offered to grant him three wishes. Jacob may not have had much sense, but he knew enough to have his wishes ready immediately. He told the old man,

First of all, I'm going to wish to end up in heaven. Then I would like a musket that always hits its target and a fiddle that makes everyone dance to its tune. And his wishes were granted. Jacob's first order of business was to try out his new musket in a shooting contest. The gun didn't miss a single target, and Jacob won every prize. Unfortunately for him, this angered the local sharpshooters, who accused him of cheating with dark magic. And in a roundabout way, they weren't wrong. So he was arrested and put on trial.

Unfortunately, Jacob had far too big of an ego and not enough sense to successfully represent himself in court. The trial was short and messy, and in the end he was sentenced to death. All too soon, the day of Jacob's execution arrived. A great crowd had gathered around the platform, eager to see the Black Magician hang. And lucky for them, they would certainly get a show. After he climbed the ladder to the platform, Jacob made his dying wish. He asked if he could hold his fiddle one last time. And then, once he was holding the enchanted instrument, he began to play. At the sound of the strings, everyone started dancing.

The executioners danced so hard that they fell off the platform. The priest fell to the ground. The spectators spun and clapped like mad, colliding and getting tangled up in each other's limbs. And through it all, Jacob played. He played like his life depended on it. Eventually, the entire town collapsed in exhaustion, and no one could even lift a pinky by the end, let alone dance a jig.

And Jacob, who had finally learned some sense, disappeared. This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jenna Rose Nethercott and Jamie Vargas. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you. There's a paid version of Lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus subscribers get weekly mini-episodes that we call Lore Bytes. It's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the

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