Tag Archives: annotated fairy tale

Hey, guys! Arisia is doing a special hardcover version of my annotated fairy tales (well, the ones that we can obtain copyright on, which, fortunately, is most of them) AND the Toad Words anthology, together in one volume! Pre-order yours today!

Well, gang, it’s late at night, I can’t sleep, and you know what that means! (Been awhile, hasn’t it? Honestly, there are so few that I find that are completely mind-blowingly freakish. I fear we’ve set the bar too high. I mean, you never see otters with multiple heads in most of these. Still, we’ll […]

I’ll be honest with you—I love this one. It’s very short compared to some of the drawn-out sagas we’ve seen and never once devolves into East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which is sort of the go-to fairy tale for dragging things out. So this’ll be a quick little afternoon amusement instead of […]

Would you believe that it was July when I last did one of these? Man. Time flies. Or maybe I just haven’t had insomnia nearly enough. This is a Finnish folktale, sent in by an Alert Reader, who said I had to read it and was so very, very right. It’s from a website called […]

Hey, gang! Time for yet another installment of Ursula Comments On Peculiar Fairy Tales. This time, since they’re both short, we’re doing two versions of Cinderella. One is Greek and one is from Georgia (Not the one with Atlanta.) They both have some very odd moments, but since neither is very long, it’d be a […]

We could probably all use a laugh today, and hopefully y’all aren’t sick of these yet… Big thanks to reader Persephone_Kore for sending a link to this one (and a couple others I still need to check out, too!) This one is short and sweet, and has a nice twist on some of the standard […]

A red-eyed vireo is lurking in the backyard, beating larvae to death on branches. In celebration of yard-bird number #54 (not bad for not being on a body of water!) I give you a bird-themed annotated fairy tale! This one’s from Serbia, bears strong resemblances to the Firebird story from Russia, and while much of […]

Well, gang, it’s the middle of the night, I’ve got insomnia, and that can only mean that it’s time for another Annotated Fairytale! There’s a whole class of stories about hog and hedgehog bridegrooms, some of which are weirder and grimmer than others. The hedgehog ones tend to be variations on a theme, and rather […]

Here we go, yet another one! I admit, however, that this is not so deeply bizarre as the Wonderful Sheep, but it still is…err…wonderful! And has sheep! This is a Russian version of the Cinderella story, and naturally has some bits that would never make the Disney cut, but also a few lines that I […]

Okay, gang, even by my standards this one is seriously out there. It starts at “King Lear” and goes straight to bugfuck crazytown. Along the way we encounter ghosts, talking sheep, and an honest-t0-god rain of lobster-patties. It’s…something. This particular…thingy…was written by Madame d’Aulnoy of France and published in 1697. (d’Aulnoy also gave us rather […]