Fairy tales claimed to be thousands of years old

[Brian G Turner]

Fairy tale origins thousands of years old, researchers say - BBC News

In the 19th Century, authors the Brothers Grimm believed many of the fairy tales they popularised were rooted in a shared cultural history dating back to the birth of the Indo-European language family.

Later thinkers challenged that view, saying some stories were much younger and had been passed into oral tradition having first been written down by writers from the 16th and 17th Centuries.

Durham University anthropologist Dr Jamie Tehrani, who worked with folklorist Sara Graca Da Silva, from the New University of Lisbon, said: "We can come firmly down on the side of Wilhelm Grimm.

"Some of these stories go back much further than the earliest literary record and indeed further back than Classical mythology - some versions of these stories appear in Latin and Greek texts - but our findings suggest they are much older than that."

Dr Tehrani said Jack And The Beanstalk was rooted in a group of stories classified as The Boy Who Stole Ogre's Treasure, and could be traced back to when Eastern and Western Indo-European languages split more than 5,000 years ago.

Analysis showed Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin to be about 4,000 years old.

And a folk tale called The Smith And The Devil, about a blacksmith selling his soul in a pact with the Devil in order to gain supernatural abilities, was estimated to go back 6,000 years to the Bronze Age.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I have to admit, I was a tad disappointed to read this on the BBC this morning, given the hard work done by such pioneers as Bruno Bettelheim and Marina Warner.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

This isn't news.
Many pre-14th C. Irish manuscripts are obviously retelling of older stories. Some are very similar indeed to Greek and ancient Indian Subcontinent Hindi.

I thought this was well accepted now about Grimm's and Andersons' tales.

 

[The Ace]

What was a blacksmith doing in the Bronze Age ?

 

[Vertigo]

What was a blacksmith doing in the Bronze Age ?

The original report I heard on the radio did not refer to a blacksmith but just a smith who could be a worker of any metal. I suspect that was just sloppy journalism.

 

[The Ace]

The original report I heard on the radio did not refer to a blacksmith but just a smith who could be a worker of any metal. I suspect that was just sloppy journalism.

You're probably right, but I've always imagined the tale to be Scottish (he got the ability to see Death, and cure anyone where Death stood at the foot of the bed, and a tool-bag that would only open for him - he got out of the deal by turning the Devil into a fish, trapping him in the bag, and hammering seven shades of sh*t out of it ).

 

[Vertigo]

Yeah but I think that's the whole point there are almost identical stories in so many cultures.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

but I've always imagined the tale to be Scottish

Aye ... weel it's Burns Night soon. My wif has reet acent fur it.

 

[Alex The G and T]

The Hero of a Thousand Faces, all over again.