Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25361971-20141211120443/@comment-24138799-20141224102154

MattPriceTime wrote: The version where the last fairy turns the curse into just a sleeping one is in the Perrault version It is carried over into the Brothers Grimm version as well.

Just for posterity:

It's important to remember that some of these tales were told years before being written down. What you often find today are the versions written down by the likes of those gentlemen. However there were no doubt other variations before and between those writings. So it's hard to be able to say "who" added or took away parts of these stories, and to find out when certain parts changed. But we can look to see what elements are different between the printed versions we have.

If you ever get your chance to browse some older surviving fairy tale collections, you might get lucky and find some of those alternate versions that some of which probably are still out there to be found. I found out, a couple of days ago, that the oldest version of Cinderella dates back to Ancient Egypt. It's a story about a Greek slave girl who is captured and sold to an old, Egyptian man. This man already has some Egyptian slaves, who treat the Greek girl bad and make her do the worst chores. But the girl loves to dance and the old man gives her golden slippers. One day the Pharao gives a party, but the other slaves won't let the Greek girl go. They give her too much chores. But when she's washing some linnen in the river, she accidentally splashes some water on her slippers. She takes them off and leaves them in the sun to dry. But then a hawk (symbol of the god Horus) takes one of the slippers and drops it on the Pharao's lap. The Pharao recognizes the sign of the god and he promises to marry the girl who fits the slipper. He finds the girl and they live happily ever after!

I really like this story so much. And it is fascinating how many different versions there are about these stories. I like this version the most of all the ones I know already, but the Grimm version and especially the Perrault version are very beautiful too...