Classic Fairy Tales

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that so and so’s rendition of some well known fairy story is the ‘definitive’ version and that everybody else is wrong. I especially hate it when someone finds a particularly gruesome or vulgar version of a classic story and thinks that that must be the ‘real’ version. Not so fast. Take the famous story of Guinevere and Lancelot. Le Morte d’Arthur is usually considered the definitive version of the story of King Arthur, but that is almost certainly a slander against the historical wife of Arthur. A little research shows that they stole the whole love triangle story from Tristan and Isolde. I’m constantly surprised by how many history lessons I’ve had were dead wrong. (anything you have likely heard in high school about the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, for example). Why should it be any different with the classic fairy story?