Embraced by thorns: the Fairy Tale of Sleeping Beauty, in which a maid is brought back to life. A long time ago there lived a king and...

An Apparition in the Forest In fernyear there lived many bewitched and enchanted women, who meant well by folk and even offered hel...

In fernyear there lived many bewitched and enchanted women, who meant well by folk and even offered help in times of need or disaster. In pa...

Guardian Angel Protects against the Last Fierce Onslaught of Winter Not far from Zwickau in Vogtland parents once sent their young boy into ...

In these fairy tales, some words must never be spoken. In Switzerland a farmhand married Tirli-wirli, the daughter of a gnome. One day sh...

In this fairy tale, silence reflects true virtue. A King once went out hunting in the forest. He was soon so intent on the chase that none ...

The Mythology of the Swan Knight: Don't Ask, Don't Tell In the year 711 the Duchess of Kleve, the only daughter of Beatrix and...

Grimm’s Saga No. 545: Gerhard the Good, Swan Knight King Charlemagne once stood at his castle window and looked down upon the Rhine ...

In February of the year 1605, Duke Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig ruled the land. A mile from Quedlinburg in a place called the Valley, it...

(Illustration, Tomi Ungerer Das Grosse Liederbuch ) A castle beyond the borderlands. There was once a wealthy property owner who had...

According to the Roman poet Juvenal who wrote around 100 AD, the hood or cucullus was a Celtic invention. It was primarily worn by peop...

Remnants of an ancient oven in the woods in Switzerland A widow had two daughters. One was beautiful and industrious, the other ugly...

In the fairy tale The Doomed Prince , we meet a prince whose fate it is to die at a young age. As he grows, he longs to become indepen...

In the puzzling tale of the Doomed Prince   we encounter a prince who never really grows to adulthood. His fate is foretold by the H...

A manuscript dating to approximately 1000 B.C. bears the designation Papyrus Harris 500 , marking it as the property of Mr. Harris at ...

In the Lithuanian fairy tale Godmother Death (full text below), neither man nor god reign supreme. Rather, both characters engage in a lif...

Godmother Death A man and a woman were living in abject poverty when God gave them a gift of a small child. They thought to themselv...

The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain, Duccio du Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1319), Frick Collection (2 versions of the original story p...