
The Long Lives of Fairy Tales - mci
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30124-5
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gumby
There's also horizontal "translation" \-- as a child I had a book which was
plainly European fairy tales translated linguistically and culturally into
India (e.g. a princess whose wicked stepmother forced her to separate rice and
sand).

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pavel_lishin
I wonder how many stories suffer "mutations" that break them from their
previous incarnations. The article mentions "The Smith and The Devil", and
speculates that metal-working technology would have been around at the time of
its origin, but I'm not sure if that's any more likely than the profession of
the protagonist changing over time.

At the very least, in Russia there are many tales of Ivan outwitting the
Devil, regardless of his profession. Maybe that's just a horizontal transfer
and the story taking advantage of a previously unoccupied memetic niche...

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krapp
Many of these stories were part of oral traditions before being written down
and "canonized" by certain authors (sometimes to Christianize existing pagan
folklore, as happened with Norse mythology) so mutation seems likely across
generations and local cultures.

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buovjaga
I don't think there is a single folklorist who is convinced by this
phylogenetic speculation. If you know some, I am eager to hear about them.

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QuercusMax
Can you expand on this? What are their alternate explanations?

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buovjaga
I guess you mean alternate proposals for the origin/dating of various tales.

The cell.com article says:

"Fourteen of the 76 tales, including Beauty and the Beast, were assigned a 50%
or greater chance of having been present in the common ancestor of the entire
western branch of the Indo-European languages. This group includes all of the
Celtic, Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, and might have originated
between around 6,800 years ago"

This makes no sense as Beauty and the Beast is known to be literary in origin:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast)

I have been following the work of Finnish folklorist and professor emerita
Satu Apo, who has recently released a 400 page tome on the history of fairy
tales. I have to get my hands on it as it apparently includes a section called
"The rise or belly landing of phylogenetic fairy tale research?".

I can translate some bits from the press release:
[https://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/tiede-ja-
tutkimus/mista-s...](https://www.epressi.com/tiedotteet/tiede-ja-
tutkimus/mista-sadut-tulevat-uutuuskirja-selvittaa-tuttujen-prinsessasatujen-
alkuperan.html)

The oldest known variant of Cinderella is fantasy literature from 9th century
China ("Ye Xian").

Sleeping Beauty comes from Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose (17th century).

Snow White ("Richilde") comes from Johann Musäus's Volksmärchen der Deutschen
(18th century).

~~~
danaris
Beauty and the Beast I'm skeptical about, but have no particular way to
refute.

Sleeping Beauty and Snow White were _compiled_ in those works, not originally
created there. Hell, "Volksmärchen" _means_ "folk fairy tales." The very name
tells you that Musäus didn't claim them as original creations, he was writing
down what people had been telling each other for centuries orally.

~~~
buovjaga
Well, that is the heart of the debate. Folklorists like Satu Apo are pretty
convinced these particular tales are literary creations, not compilations of
oral tradition.

Perrault's Sleeping Beauty was actually a retelling of this literary fairy
tale:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun,_Moon,_and_Talia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun,_Moon,_and_Talia)

~~~
danaris
But if you follow the link to the Wikipedia page for the Pentamerone, the
collection in which Sun, Moon, and Talia appears, you get this:

> The stories in the Pentamerone were collected by Basile and published
> posthumously

It's clear, once again, that while he may have embellished them for
publication, he was not creating them out of whole cloth, but collecting them
from folk tales in his area.

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buovjaga
It is far from clear, which is why I am pointing out that some folklorists
think it does not come from folk tradition.

Regarding Basile, see long argument starting from page 75 in this book:
[http://www.academia.edu/19594654/A_FAIRY_TALE_NEW_HISTORY_Ru...](http://www.academia.edu/19594654/A_FAIRY_TALE_NEW_HISTORY_Ruth_Bottingheimer)

Chapter 4:

The Two Inventors of Fairy Tale Tradition

Giambattista Basile (1634–1636) and Giovan Francesco Straparola (1551, 1553)

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moneil971
Interesting use of Bayesian inference to prove the brothers Grimm were mostly
plagiarists

~~~
gumby
They never pretended to have made up those stories.

If you want a villain, consider Disney who tried (sometimes successfully in
the US) to exert control of the use of fairytales by other parties after
they'd made a film of one.

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goto11
In what way? New adaptions of Snow White or Cinderella are done all the time.

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gumby
Exactly, and to do new adaptations, interpretations etc is wonderful and
perfectly legit.

What Disney has done is sued over trademark claims on Snow White, Beauty and
the Beast etc, trying to claim proprietary ownership of public domain stories,
characters and ideas.

Theese suits were expensive and not always successful so they eventually
decided to stop explicitly mining the past and start developing their own
characters (e.g. mermaid etc).

~~~
goto11
The Little Mermaid is not a Disney creation, it is a story by Hans Christian
Andersen, as is The Snow Queen which Frozen is (very loosely) based on.

You can't trademark a story or idea, but you can trademark a particular
character design. You can make your own Cinderella interpretation as long as
you don't copy the exact art and design made by someone else.

