Story Time!

           Sit down, reader, and I'll tell you a story...

            Fairy tales come from an oral tradition—these stories have been told and re-told in different languages and by different people, all putting their own words onto older stories.  So, here is one of my favorites of Grimm’s tales, in my own words—A warning; it is ridiculous.  It makes very little sense.  It is a dumb story.  I really, really love it for no good reason.

The Boy Who Could Not Shudder

            Once upon a time, there lived a small family with only one son, who was considered a little bit dense—and he was, make no mistake about that.  He was also very unhappy, for he had always heard people tell of how this story made them shudder, or how the dark made them shudder, and he had never felt that way which upset him because it sounded like fun, I guess.  He just could not shudder or feel fear.  He whined about it so much to his parents that they eventually told him to go out into the world and learn to shudder so that he would finally shut up about it.

            So he did.  He has many terrifying adventures that he is unfazed by—he sleeps under a hangman’s tree full of dead people, and crawling with demons and then when the dead start to moan and curse him he…asks them to shut up so he can sleep.  When he is captured by bandits, he whines to them about not being able to fear, they decide to try to frighten him by showing off the heads of those they have killed.  He just sighs and tells them it’s no use, tries to leave, and has to fight them all.  Which he does.  I suppose that if you are going to be a whiny moron it is good to be able to fight well.

            He ends up all alone in a tavern full of dead people, bemoaning his sad fate of not being able to fear anything when the last person left alive tells him that there is a nearby castle, haunted by Hell itself.  If he can last a whole night there, the castle will be freed and, it’s said, the hero will marry the princess and become a king.  I suspect the bandit just wanted to get on with dying in peace.

            Well, the idiot basically says “oh fiiine.  At least if I can’t shudder I’ll be doing something useful.”  So he goes to the castle and prepares to spend the night.  The original story spends a great deal of time on the gruesome and fearful events of that night, demons eating the flesh of humans (“no thanks, I’ve got some bread of my own,” says our fearless nincompoop), and playing “ninepins” with human skulls and femurs.  Our hapless hero is very good at ninepins and has a grand old time gambling with demons and winning and never feeling any fear at all, and being grumpy about that fact.  Well, dawn comes, he hasn’t run off or become mad—so the curse is broken and he marries the princess.

            You’d think he would be satisfied, but…no. He spends the first year of his marriage to the princess complaining about how he still never learned to shudder.  One day, after she got fed up with it, she dumps a bucket of cold water on him.

            He exclaims, “Oh! That’s so cold I’m shuddering!”  (Seriously. He really says that.)  And he realizes that he can shudder.

            And then he lives happily ever after.

            Hahahaha.  Seriously, I can make the case that a lot of fairy tales originally had a purpose, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what that one was there for.  There is a pretty good rendition of that one in the Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. 

BTW:  If you have not seen this series DO EEEET.   I mean, you really can't go wrong.  Greek myths! Fairy tales! Muppets!  If you have Netflix, it is available streaming online.  I'll do a full review at some point, but until then, check it out!