Grey Tales

About Grey Tales

Mythology, folklore, legends. We all know and love them. But where did they come from? How did they evolve? How is everything connected. Let's dig in together. This is a journey into the stories that come from the darker days of old.

Publisher

Cris Frickenschmidt

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Oct 2025

Latest episode

16 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

26 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Oct 2026

   Rapunzel Was Pregnant – The Pages the Brothers Grimm Cut (Grimm series part 2/5)

   Nothing added, nothing embellished: that's what the Brothers Grimm promised in the preface to their fairy tales. At the same time, they rewrote their book again and again over nearly half a century and seven editions. In episode 2 of our Grimm series, we lay the versions side by side: how Rapunzel's pregnancy disappeared, how Snow White's mother became a stepmother, why Rumpelstiltskin ends three different ways, and why Cinderella's sisters only lost their eyes in 1819. Plus the big debate: were the Grimms preservers, editors or forgers? 📚 Sources and Further Reading Maria Tatar: The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987 (expanded 2nd edition 2003). → On how violence increased across the editions while sexuality was erased. A very readable entry point. Ruth B. Bottigheimer: Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. → A quantitative analysis of punishment, speech and silence among female and male characters. John M. Ellis: One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. → The controversial argument that the Grimms deliberately misrepresented their sources. Jack Zipes: "Mountains out of Mole Hills, a Fairy Tale." Children's Literature 13 (1985), pp. 215–219. → A critical response to Ellis. Jack Zipes (trans.): The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. → The 1812/1815 texts in English, including the tales later dropped, so you can compare them with the familiar versions yourself. D. L. Ashliman: Rumpelstilzchen von den Brüdern Grimm – a comparison of the 1810, 1812 and 1819 versions. University of Pittsburgh (online). Ashliman's site also offers English translations of several Grimm tales in multiple versions. → The three versions side by side, sentence by sentence. (German texts) Heinz Rölleke (ed.): Die älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder Grimm. Synopse der handschriftlichen Urfassung von 1810 und der Erstdrucke von 1812. Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1975. → The basis for any comparison between the manuscript and the first printed edition. (German) Heinz Rölleke: Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Eine Einführung. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2004. → Overview of the editing style, the stylistic ideal and the relationship between Jacob and Wilhelm. (German) Lothar Bluhm / Heinz Rölleke: "Redensarten des Volks, auf die ich immer horche." Märchen – Sprichwort – Redensart. Stuttgart/Leipzig: Hirzel, 1997 (expanded new edition, Trier: WVT, 2020). → The key study of Wilhelm's insertion of idioms and proverbs. (German) Lothar Bluhm: Märchen als Literatur aus Literatur. Die "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" der Brüder Grimm. Berlin: Metzler, 2023. → Reads the collection as the product of a deliberate literary design. (German) Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbuch zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. → Standard reference on the versions of every single tale. (German)

2. 

   9 Oct 2026

   The Old Woman Who Never Was: Who Really Told the Grimms Their Fairy Tales (Grimm 1/5)

   Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White: ancient German folk tales, passed down by old peasant women at the spinning wheel? Not quite. In the first episode of our five-part Grimm series, we ask who actually told the Brothers Grimm their fairy tales. We follow a manuscript that traveled through a Trappist monastery in Alsace all the way to Geneva, watch Heinz Rölleke bury a star witness who never existed, and look behind the most famous portrait in German fairy-tale history. 📚 Sources and Further Reading Heinz Rölleke (ed.): Die älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder Grimm. Synopse der handschriftlichen Urfassung von 1810 und der Erstdrucke von 1812. Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer, 1975. → The standard edition of the Ölenberg manuscript, setting the 1810 manuscript beside the 1812 first edition. Replaced the older Lefftz edition. Heinz Rölleke: "Die 'stockhessischen' Märchen der 'Alten Marie'. Das Ende eines Mythos um die frühesten KHM-Aufzeichnungen der Brüder Grimm." Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift N.F. 25 (1975), pp. 74–86. → The article that dismantled the "Old Marie" attribution and identified Marie Hassenpflug as the contributor. (German) Heinz Rölleke: Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Eine Einführung. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2004. → Concise overview of how the collection came about, who contributed and how the texts were edited. (German) Joseph Lefftz (ed.): Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Urfassung nach der Originalhandschrift der Abtei Ölenberg im Elsaß. Heidelberg: Winter, 1927. → The first complete edition of the Ölenberg manuscript. Superseded by Rölleke 1975, but important for the history of research. (German) Holger Ehrhardt (ed.): Dorothea Viehmann. Kassel: Euregio, 2012. → Collected volume on Viehmann's life and tales, with contributions by Heinz Rölleke and others, including an essay on French influences in her stories. (German) Holger Ehrhardt: "Ein übersehenes Märchen von Dorothea Viehmann." Fabula 64 (2023), no. 3–4, pp. 243–281. → Argues that "The White Bride and the Black Bride" goes back to Viehmann, based on newly found early manuscripts. (German) University of Kassel: press release on the discovery of 54 previously unknown early Grimm manuscripts, December 2023. → Background on the new manuscript finds. (German) Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbuch zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. → Standard reference on every tale in the collection, its sources and versions. (German) For English-language readers: Jack Zipes' translation of the 1812/1815 first edition, "The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm" (Princeton University Press, 2014), includes the tales later removed, such as Bluebeard and Puss in Boots. The Ölenberg manuscript can be viewed in digitized form at e-codices, the Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland.

3. 

   2 Oct 2026

   Disney Was Offered Ireland's Folklore Archive, and Took the Leprechaun! (Ireland 2/2)

   Last week we told the old stories. Today we ask who wrote them. The leprechaun probably isn't named after his "little body" at all, but after Roman priests whom Irish monks took for a race of wolf-men. His oldest story is a teaching tale about the law of distraint. In the nineteenth century he wore red, not green. The book that made him famous was lost by its editor and rewritten by his friends, and then translated by the Brothers Grimm. And when Walt Disney was offered Ireland's greatest folklore archive, he chose an American children's book instead. Sources — Jacopo Bisagni, "Leprechaun: a new etymology", Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 64 (2012), pp. 47–84. The core source for this episode. Shows that the oldest manuscript form is lupracán, argues that the "little body" reading is linguistically very hard to sustain, and derives the word from the Luperci, whom Irish scholars, via Augustine, understood as a race of shapeshifters. Also contains the critique of Binchy's eighth-century dating of the Fergus saga. — D. A. Binchy, "The Saga of Fergus mac Léti", Ériu 16 (1952), pp. 33–48. The standard edition of the Fergus saga; source of the traditional etymology and dating. — Neil McLeod, "Fergus mac Léti and the Law", Ériu 61 (2011), pp. 1–28. Shows that the Fergus saga was constructed as a legal teaching tale on distraint. — Simon Rodway, "Mermaids, Leprechauns, and Fomorians: A Middle Irish Account of the Descendants of Cain", Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 59 (2010), pp. 1–17. Edition of the tale of Ambia the siren and Becnait, mother of the leprechauns. — Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, "An Leipreachán san Ainmníocht", Béaloideas 50 (1982), pp. 126–150, and "The Leipreachán and Fairies, Dwarfs and the Household Familiar: A Comparative Study", Béaloideas 52 (1984), pp. 75–150. The foundational folkloristic study, based on more than three hundred manuscripts from the Irish folklore archives; places the leprechaun with dwarfs and household spirits rather than the fairy host. — Maureen Murphy, "Croker, Thomas Crofton", Dictionary of Irish Biography. Source for the lost manuscript, the co-authors, the edition history and the later criticism. — Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology (later edition). Contains Keightley's admission that he invented The Soul Cages from a legend collected by the Brothers Grimm. — Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (trans.), Irische Elfenmärchen, Leipzig 1826. Translation of Croker's collection with the introduction "Über die Elfen". — Frank Kinahan, "Armchair Folklore: Yeats and the Textual Sources of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 83C (1983), pp. 255–267. Traces Yeats's fairy classification back through McAnally to O'Hanlon. — Tony Tracy, "When Disney Met Delargy: 'Darby O'Gill' and the Irish Folklore Commission", Béaloideas 78 (2010), pp. 44–60. The main source for the Killarney chapter. — Diane Negra (ed.), The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture, Durham 2006. Background for reading the modern leprechaun as a descendant of anti-Irish caricature. — General Mills, "The History of Lucky Charms"; Atlas Obscura on Waldo the Wizard. Sources for the launch and temporary replacement of the Lucky Charms mascot. — Dáil Éireann, debate of 11 December 1963. John A. Costello's criticism of Irish tourist advertising. Next episode: the start of our series on the Brothers Grimm.

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