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Ancient fairy tales frequently have dark and horrifying turns of events. Nowadays, businesses like Disney have sanitised them for a contemporary audience that is obviously thought incapable of handling them, so we constantly see happy endings. This list examines some of the typical conclusions we are accustomed to and describes their horrifying beginnings.... 10... The Pied Piper... In the Pied Piper story, rats have taken over a village. A man arrives wearing pied (a patchwork of colours) and offers to get rid of the pests in the community. The villagers consent to pay the piper a sizable sum of money if he can accomplish it, and he succeeds. All the rats leave the town when he plays music on his pipe. The Pied Piper vows to exterminate all the children in the town after the villagers refuse to pay him when he returns for his money. In the majority of contemporary adaptations, the piper lures the kids to a cave outside of town, and when the locals finally agree to pay, he sends them back. The children are led by the piper to a river in the darker version of the story, where all but one of them drown (the lame boy couldn't follow up). According to some contemporary academics, this fairy tale has pedophilia-related undertones. 9... Little Red Riding Hood... Red Riding Hood is saved by the woodsman who kills the evil wolf in the version of this story that most of us are familiar with. However, the story's original French version, written by Charles Perrault, wasn't quite as charming. When the little girl asks the wolf for directions to her grandmother's house, the wolf gives her false information because she is a well-mannered young lady. Red Riding Hood makes the mistake of following the wolf's advice, and as a result, she is devoured. The narrative ends here. There is only a fat wolf and a dead Red Riding Hood; there is no woodsman or granny. The lesson of this tale is not to listen to unsolicited advice... 8... The Little Mermaid... Perhaps "The enormous whopper! " is a better name for the 1989 Little Mermaid. In the Disney adaptation, Ariel, the mermaid, is transformed into a human so she can wed Eric. Both humans and merpeople attend their beautiful wedding in which they get married. However, the mermaid is devastated in Hans Christian Andersen's original adaptation when she witnesses the Prince wed a princess. When given a knife to kill the prince, she declines and instead dives into the water, where she drowns by turning to foam. The ending was somewhat changed by Hans Christian Andersen to make it more uplifting. She becomes a "daughter of the air" awaiting entrance to paradise in his revised conclusion rather than passing away after being converted to froth. She is still technically dead as a result, in my opinion... 5... Snow White... In the well-known Snow White story, the Queen commands a huntsman to kill Snow White and retrieve her heart as evidence. Instead, the huntsman finds it difficult to carry out his plan and instead returns with a boar's heart. Happily, Disney hasn't substantially harmed this story. They did, however, omit one significant original component: in the original story, the Queen actually requests Snow White's liver and lungs, which are to be eaten that evening for dinner! Additionally, Snow White awakens in the original story by being jostled by the prince's horse as he carries her back to his castle, not by a mystical kiss. I'll let your imagination fill in the details of what the prince planned to do with a deceased girl's body. Oh, in the Grimm version, the Queen is made to dance till she dies in shoes made of red-hot iron... 6... Sleeping Beauty... The charming princess is put to sleep in the original Sleeping Beauty when she prickles her finger on a spindle. She slumbers for 100 years before a prince eventually finds her, awakens her with a kiss. They marry, fall in love, and then--surprise--live happily ever after. Unfortunately, the original story is not as charming (in fact, you have to read this to believe it). In the original, the young woman is put to sleep because of a prophecy rather than a curse. And it isn’t the kiss of a prince which wakes her up: the king, seeing her asleep and rather fancying having a bit, rapes her. After nine months, she gives birth to two children (while she is still asleep). One of the children sucks her finger, which removes the piece of flax that was keeping her asleep. She wakes up to find herself raped and the mother of two kids... 5... Rumpelstiltskin... This fairy tale is a little different from the others because the original author changed it to make it more gory rather than sanitising the original. In the original story, Rumpelstiltskin transforms straw into gold for a young girl who must accomplish the deed or she will perish. He requests her firstborn child in exchange. When the time comes to give the child back, she accepts, but she is unable to. She is informed by Rumpelstiltskin that if she can correctly identify him, he will release her from the agreement. She accurately guesses his name after hearing him sing it while huddled around a fire. Furious, Rumpelstiltskin flees and is never seen again. However, the situation is a little messier in the latest version. Rumpelstiltskin's right foot sinks deeply into the earth as a result of his intense rage. He then rips himself in half by grabbing his left leg. He obviously dies as a result of this... 4... Goldilocks and the Three Bears... In this endearing story, we learn about cute young Goldilocks who discovers the three bears' home. She enters covertly, consumes their meal, occupies their chairs, and eventually passes out on the bed of the smallest bear. She is asleep when the bears arrive at their house. She screams in panic when she awakens and runs out the window. Actually only dating back to 1837, the original story includes two potential iterations. In the first, Goldilocks is discovered by the bears, who then mutilate and devour her. In the second, when the bears wake her up, Goldilocks is actually an old hag who, like the sanitised version, leaps out of a window. The narrative finishes by revealing that she either fell and fractured her neck or was detained for begging and taken to the House of Correction... 3... Hansel and Gretel... In the well-known adaptation of Hansel and Gretel, two young children become lost in the forest and eventually find their way to a witch's evil gingerbread mansion. As the witch gets the kids ready for eating, they wind up becoming slaves for a while. They manage to escape, toss the witch in the fire, and do so. An early French translation of this story, The Lost Children, substituted a devil for the witch. Now the wicked old devil is tricked by the children (in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel), but he works it out and puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on to bleed (that isn’t an error – he really does). The children pretend not to know how to get on the sawhorse, so the devil’s wife demonstrates. While she is lying down, the kids slash her throat and escape... 2... Rapunzel... Over the years, this German fairy tale has drawn a lot of interest (and mockery), and the expression "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair" has become all too well-known. The happy couple in the Grimm version, however, had to go through a lot more hardships than at first seems to be the case, as they weren't reunited until Rapunzel had been banished into the wilderness by the enraged witch while the prince was blinded after falling from the tower and into the thorny brambles below. It was first published in 1600 by an Italian author by the name of Giambattista Basile. Because her mother stole some parsley from a garden, Rapunzel is in this version sold as a newborn to an ogre. She was confined to a tower her entire life and forced to give her first-born kid away. Fans of the Broadway show Into the Woods might recognise this. However, the original true tale that served as the basis for each of these fairy tale adaptations is the darkest of them all. Instead of a wicked witch imprisoning a lovely child in a tower, the captive was the daughter's own father, whose over meddling in her life resulted in her death... 1... Cinderella... In the contemporary version of the Cinderella story, the prince sweeps the lovely Cinderella off her feet while her evil stepsisters marry two lords, and everyone lives happily ever after. The story's beginnings may be traced all the way back to the first century BC, when Rhodopis, not Cinderella, was Strabo's heroine. With the exception of the glass shoes and the pumpkin coach, the tale was remarkably similar to the present one. However, the Grimm brothers added a more sinister twist to the story, trying to deceive the prince. In this version, the evil step-sisters cut off pieces of their own feet to fit them into the glass shoe. Two pigeons that peck out the step-eyes sister's warn the prince about the deceit. While Cinderella gets to lounge around in luxury in the prince's castle, the other two end up living out the rest of their lives as blind beggars.