Five Hundred New Fairy Tales

Guardian Books tweeted this link today, and I have to say, I'm very excited. Apparently five hundred new fairy tales, locked away for over one hundred and fifty years, have been discovered in an archive in Regensburg, Germany. The collection was gathered by a local historian named Franz Xaver von Schonwerth. (Awesome name, am I right? Whatever happened to four word names?)

The reason this is so exciting is because I love fairy tales. Old ones. Not the disney versions, but the dark, twisted real versions. I once read the German version of Snow White and do you want to know what happened to her wicked stepmother in that one? They made her dance to death on hot coals. Twisted, just as it should be. And now, there are five hundred new ones. FIVE HUNDRED. That's a lot of fairy tales.

I've always wanted to create my own fairy tales, but it's surprisingly difficult. Every time I try they just end up as a new version of an old one. This must be why so many of the old story tellers took drugs. It's probably a lot easier to imagine trolls and dragons when you think they're wandering around your living room. Anyway, I'm getting off topic. (Nothing new there). The point I'm trying to make is that a discovery like this is special. The world needs stories, and when we discover ones that were lost, it's pretty amazing. Not to mention, we can never have enough fairy tales. I don't think there's an English translation of the stories yet, but I encourage you all to read the article. It's pretty neat.