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Comment by dannygarcia | Hacker News Reader

> Folktales were not originally for children.

I learned this the hard way. I purchased a beautifully made "Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales" to read to my then toddler. There are some particularly disturbing stories but I was surprised by how many were flat out nonsensical or silly (like The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear [0]). It's fascinating to read these in their (translated) original form. Not your typical bedtime story.

[0] https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm004.html

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Even the 'sanitized' versions of them haven't aged well and are often pretty silly IMO. Maybe it's just because we tend to see them as morality plays these days and try to infer a lesson, while the originals seem to just have been local stories from various villages. Terrible people do well for themselves, lots of people die to no real gain or purpose, etc.

I recently got this surprise when practicing Japanese by translating a folk tale [0]. Even revenge I was able to understand quickly turned into outright sadism. Maybe it was the morals of another time, maybe the tellers didn't care if all the characters were unlikable.

[0]: http://life.ou.edu/stories/sarukani.html

I think it's an effective and impressive warning, which makes one think about the tale at length. And the warning is that if you piss someone off by being greedy, you might accidentally get much worse punishment than you actually deserve for a small mischief.

The tale wouldn't make nearly as much of an impression if, let's say, the crabs just roughed the monkey up a little bit and then they all made up and lived happily ever after.

Nor would it be a realistic or helpful lesson, because that is not now reality works: sometimes actions have serious consequences.

It kinda makes sense to me. In the end he learned to shudder with his SO (she did a weird trick but is it that weird?)

I must be broken because this is reasonably sensible to me. The boy was too naive and his life too austere to know fear, and thus was able to survive the night (and his other challenges). It wasn't until he knew what it was to have a warm bed, food and a wife that he was able to shudder with fear.

> flat out nonsensical e.g. The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear

That reminded me of GOT... the ending was a disappointment to an otherwise interesting tale.

Wow, what a strange story. Super surreal and dreamlike

seriously what the fuck did I just read

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