The Grimm brothers collected folk tales in and around Germany starting at early age, at the turn of the nineteenth century. There are no fairies in any of the tales, neither the proper fae faeries nor the Tinkerbell sort of pixies; the English name came because they do have supernatural elements in the form of giants, dwarfs, witches, humans transformed into animals that can speak, and magical items. The tales in this volume are organized with similar tales near each other.

There are far too many stories to summarize, but they fall in some broad categories that get remixed, as well as some specific plot lines that get joined with other stories. There are a few fables and stories clearly designed for a specific lesson. There are also a few nonsense stories. Along similar lines, there are a some stories of Stupid Hans, who is not the brightest, who bumbles his way to success despite his parents’ predictions; humor seems to be the point of these stories. There are some trickster stories, such as the tailor who kills seven flies at one blow, embroiders a belt saying “seven at one blow”, and takes advantage of giants and kings assuming that he meant seven men, social-engineering his way into succeeding the king. There are quite a few stories that are some variation of a son going off to seek his fortune, and he either frees three, five, or seven animals who promise him favors, or hires the same number of men or giants with fantastic abilities; he uses these favors/servants to accomplish impossible tasks that king sets for marrying his princess (and, in one case, by a princess dead set on not marrying), with death as the penalty for failure.

A few stories are a remix on the theme a man saves a princess, or a woman agrees to sacrificially marry an undesirable man, thereby rescuing him/her from enchantment, after which they promise their love to each other, but the rescuee gives one thing they must not do, which they do, and they disappear; the lover has to find them in some impossible location, receiving three items from the entities they meet on the way. The beloved has forgotten them and is just about to marry someone else, and the lover bribes a night with the beloved from the betrothed with each item, but it is only on the third night that the beloved has not drunk the sleeping draught, is awake, and calls off the wedding. (This is the plot of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”, too.)

Quite a few stories are variations on the youngest sister or youngest son who succeeds where the older siblings fail. If the youngest is a girl, she is industrious, while her favored older sisters are lazy. If the youngest is a boy, he is faithful and/or generous, while his older brothers are selfish. Sometimes the youngest takes notice of an old, ugly, or infirm person, and it this person who has the information necessary to succeed. If the story is about sisters, usually the lazy sisters die a horrid death. Older brothers tend to only die if they are traitorous.

A few of the stories have a unique plot and are not remixed. The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty (also known as Briar Rose) are examples of these. The 12 Dancing Princesses (a discharged soldier meets an old man/woman, from whom he learns that the king is looking for someone to tell him why his 12 princesses are wearing out their shoes every evening, and also from whom he learns not to drink what he is given; he volunteers, with death as his failure condition, fakes drinking the sleeping potion, and follows the princesses as they go through woods of copper, silver, and gold, and then ferried by boat, each by a prince, with whom they dance the nice away. He tells the king, shows the branches he broke off, and marries the eldest daughter as his reward) is another one, although modern versions have altered it slightly (for instance, the daughters are enchanted, whereas in the original they seem to do it on their own). Contrast with the favors and tasks, which is sometimes on its own, and sometimes combined with another plot. I assume the reason the unique ones are not remixed is that they are relatively complex, so that adding something distracts and is hard to remember, while they cannot be pulled apart without destroying the story.

However, there is one that I would expect to be unique that actually gets combined: three brothers go off and find a castle or house in the woods, each day a different brother stays home to prepare the meal, and each day a dwarf comes, asks for a piece of bread, drops it, and beats the brother when he stoops down to pick it up for him. The youngest, however, neither of the brothers having said anything, refuses and instead beats the dwarf, whereupon he tells him that the three (or one) princess(es) are down a well. The youngest naively tells the others, they go to the well, let the youngest down, they haul up the princesses one by one, but he puts a rock in to test them, and they drop the basket thinking it is him and claim to have rescued the princesses themselves. He gets out by means of a magic flute that summons a dwarf, and in some fashion makes it to the king, where the truth is discovered and the brothers are (usually) killed. Perhaps this remixes because, while the first part is coherent, it is not at all clear how he is going to get his reward (apart from the fact that the princesses are not happy about the situation, so when he shows up they do something about it), so you can plug a second plot onto it.

One might ask what the meaning of these stories is, or put another way, why did people tell these stories? The Jordan Peterson approach would say that these are archetypal stories and that their meaning comes from compressing wisdom about living life into a story. There is certainly some truth to this, as frequently a step mother favors her own children rather than one her deceased predecessor, which no doubt happened. Similarly, Rapunzel is clearly about an overprotective mother. Some are clearly essentially excuses for jokes. But frequently it is not clear what meaning (if any) is being compressed. The numerous stories of a son who goes off to seek his fortune (often acquiring magic items which are stolen from him by an innkeeper until he realizes and uses another item to take them back) are not obvious. Perhaps they describe the process of becoming wise to the world, or the ones which have success then loss but the son coming back content with his father are a different sort of process of acquiring wisdom. Perhaps they were not told with any particular meaning in mind, but given the open situation, the teller made the adventures tell of acquiring whichever sort of wisdom he himself valued.

The stories with the princess(es) in a well are decidedly unclear as to a particular meaning, but are they so strange that there must be something. In this case I think the confusion might come because we are no longer an honor culture; we think that marrying a princess is the status, but having done the rescue (thus showing courage and wisdom) would bring the youngest son all the honor, and hence a higher status. This could easily rankle older brothers who are not old enough to have built their own lives, and so they choose betrayal. There are enough princesses to go around, but the issue is that they want the younger brother’s status.

Some meaning is certainly in the values the stories express. Daughters—even princesses—should be industrious and not lazy, since the lazy elder daughters always come to a horrible end. Mothers who mistreat their young stepdaughter do not fare too well, either. One should be kind and generous, as the brothers who withhold kindness or generosity lose their only means of success. One should also respect the old and infirm, who are often the key to solving intractable problems. Faithfulness to parents is valued (one brother who did not ended up with a frog nose). Some brothers are betrayers, forcing the youngest to have supernatural help, but other brothers care deeply about each other, and these pool their strengths to benefit each other and/or their parents. Maybe less direct, but the expectation is clearly that princesses will marry. Some are happy to marry, some are ambivalent (“I may father says it’s good, I’ll do it”), and some throw up intractable obstacles, but all eventually marry. There may also a few portraying “love is difficult”, as it is hard to avoid that interpretation of the stories where the man and women live as lovers, but then break a rule and one of them vanishes, requiring the lover to seek some impossible location from three entities who do not know how to get there, but give them a magical object, which after the fourth takes them there, the lover barters the objects for a night with the beloved, and on the third night. just before the wedding to someone else, the beloved is awake, recognizes them, cancels the wedding and marries their true love.

The brothers were included similar tales next to each other, so this can get repetitive. There is a lot of marrying princesses, which can get a little old if you are single. However, anyone with an interest in stories will appreciate that the Grimm brothers collected such an extensive collection. Anyone with an interest in folk tales should read this collection, as it is the definitive collection, at least of Western tales. (It is also good inspiration for any aspiring storyteller, or storyteller of need, such as a parent.)