Who made little red riding hood
What Wide Origins You Have, Little Red Riding Hood!
The wolf walks along with Little Red Riding Hood in this illustration for the folktale.
Photograph by The British Library Board, Getty Images
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It's a story told around the world. Little Red Riding Hood goes to visit her grandmother, only to discover that a wolf has eaten the old lady, dressed in her clothes, and now plans to eat the little girl too.
What happens next depends on which version you hear: Was Little Red Riding Hood devoured? Did a passing huntsman cut her from the wolf's belly? Did she trick the wolf into letting her go outside? In parts of Iran, the child in peril is a boy, because little girls wouldn't wander out on their own. In Africa, the villain could be a fox or a hyena. In East Asia, the predator is more likely to be a big cat.
Where did the original story come from? Scholars have been puzzling over that for years. Jamie Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom, thinks he's found the answer. In a paper published this month in the journal PLOS ONE, he argues that methods used to track the evolution of biological species can be applied to the evolution of folktales. National Geographic spoke with Tehrani about his hunt for the origins of this famous story.
Why did you think that a scientific method might work to determine the evolution of folk tales?
Folktales are like biological species: They literally evolve by descent with modification. They get told and retold with slight alterations, and then that gets passed on to the next generation and gets altered again.
In many ways the problem of reconstructing folklore tradition is very similar to the problem of reconstructing the evolutionary relationship of species. We have little evidence about the evolution of species because the fossil record is so patchy. Similarly, folktales are only very occasionally written down.
We need to use some kind of method for reconstructing that history in the absence of physical evidence.
You used a methodology called phylogenetics. Can you explain what that is?
What you do with phylogenetics is you reconstruct history by inferring the past that's been preserved through inheritance. The descendants of ancestral species will resemble them in certain ways. You can figure out which features of a related group of organisms or folktales could be traced back to a common ancestor.
What are some of the theories about the origins of "Little Red Riding Hood"?
It's been suggested that the tale was an invention of Charles Perrault, who wrote it down in the 17th century. Other people have insisted that "Little Red Riding Hood" has ancient origins. There's an 11th-century poem from Belgium which was recorded by a priest, who says, oh, there's this tale told by the local peasants about a girl wearing a red baptism tunic who wanders off and encounters this wolf.
My results demonstrate that, although most versions that we're familiar with today descended from Perrault's tale, he didn't invent it. My analysis confirmed that the 11th-century poem is indeed an early ancestor of the modern fairy tale.
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Don't some scholars argue that the folktale came from Asia?
It's been suggested that the story may have originated in East Asia and spread westward, and as it spread west, it split into two distinct tales, "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Wolf and the Kids." People have long recognized that there's some kind of relationship between the two stories, but nobody's really been able to demonstrate what the nature of that relationship is. A popular theory is that they're both descended from Chinese tradition, because these Chinese tales have elements of both.
My analysis shows that, in fact, the East Asian versions aren't the source. If the East Asian tales were truly ancestral, we would expect them to resemble the older and ancestral variants of "The Wolf and the Kids" and "Little Red Riding Hood.
" But instead they are more like the modern fairy tale versions. For example, in the East Asian tales we find a version of the famous dialogue between the victim and the villain which goes, "What big eyes you have!" But my reconstructions of the prehistory of the tale suggest that this dialogue evolved relatively recently. This is supported by the fact that it's missing from the 11th-century poem, which is the earliest known variant.
Little Red Riding Hood, also known in some versions of the story as Little Red Cap, encounters the wolf in this turn-of-the-century French trading card.
Photograph by The British Library Board, Getty Images
Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
What is the story of "The Wolf and the Kids"?
A nanny goat leaves her kids at home and tells them not to open the door for anyone. What she doesn't realize is that a wolf is outside the house and overhears her. While she's out, the wolf comes to the door and pretends to be the nanny goat.
When he gets in, he eats the kids all up. At the end of the story, the nanny goat tracks him down, kills him, and cuts open his belly and frees her kids.
What makes stories about predators disguised as beloved relatives so appealing to different cultures around the world?
Ultimately, the predator is metaphorical. The stories are really about how people aren't always who they seem to be, which is a really important lesson in life. Even people that we think we can trust can actually be out to harm us. In fact, it's precisely because we trust them that we are vulnerable to what their harmful intentions might be toward us.
Why do the origins of these stories matter?
We could regard folktales as a marker of human history showing how different societies have interacted with one another and how people have moved around the world.
I think there's a bigger and more interesting question about human imagination. These folktales embody fantasies and experiences and fears.
They're a really good way of reading, through the products of our imagination, what we really care about.
The interview has been edited and condensed.
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Fun facts about the real Little Red Riding Hood
One of the great pleasures of Storytime magazine is that we get the opportunity to dive headfirst into stories and explore their origins.
This is especially true of fairy tales, and Little Red Riding Hood was no exception.
Little Red Riding Hood from Storytime Issue 9, illustrated by Christelle Galloux.
Back in Storytime Issue 9, we featured the most classically recognised version of Little Red Riding Hood. It had wonderful illustrations by Christelle Galloux. (You can still download our adorable Little Red Riding Hood Mask here.) The story is a family favourite and should be in everyone’s fairy tale collection.
But the version that interested me most when researching the original was written in the 1800s. It’s by a French author called Charles Marelles. In his version, the main character’s red riding hood is replaced by a golden one. Not only that, but the hood has a real purpose in the story – other than looking iconic in illustrations. Even better, the main character has a name and a super-cool granny. There’s no male hero to suddenly swoop in and save them at the last minute. I actually think Little Golden Hood is far better and smarter than the ‘original’.
It takes all the best-loved bits – particularly the lines children love to read along with – and improves on the source material.
For these reasons, I was really excited to put Little Golden Hood in our latest issue, Storytime 32. We’re also thrilled with the gorgeous illustrations by Martuka, who previously illustrated Little Mermaid for Storytime Issue 24.
For Little Red Riding Hood lovers, I thought I’d share 5 fun facts I’ve gathered along the way. Enjoy!
Little Golden Hood and the wolf, in Storytime Issue 32, illustrated by Martuka.
5 Fun Facts about Little Red Riding Hood
1. This famous fairy tale existed for hundreds of years and across many cultures before it was recorded as a moral ‘stranger danger’ tale by 17th century French author, Charles Perrault. In his terrifying version, Little Red Riding Hood gets into bed with the wolf before he devours her. She doesn’t escape.
2. The French title of Perrault’s story is Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.
A chaperon started life as a hooded cape, but evolved into an elaborate and fashionable hat crafted from sumptuous materials like velvet or silk and was worn mainly by men. By the time of this story it had fallen out of fashion and, in a painting from roughly the same period, it looks a bit like a nun’s wimple.
3. In earlier versions from rural France and Italy, the tale was called The Story of Grandmother. There was no red hood and the wolf was actually a werewolf. In some versions, he was an ogre. The little girl has to choose between paths of pins or needles to reach her granny’s house and, when she gets there, granny has been eaten. It’s a pretty gruesome tale, but with an interesting ending – the little girl escapes using her own wit.
4. Far Eastern folklore has its own version of Little Red Riding Hood called Grand Aunt Tiger or Tiger Grandma, but folklorists are now convinced that the story has its roots in the West and was around as long ago as the first century.
Folk tale nerds can find out more here.
5. By the time the Brothers Grimm tackled the tale in the 19th century, the red hood had become a cap and the huntsman who saved the day was introduced, cutting open the wolf and freeing his victims with a pair of scissors. As if that wasn’t enough, Little Red Cap fills the wolf’s tummy with heavy rocks to be certain that he dies. Clearly, revenge is best served in a completely over-the-top way!
If you enjoy reading Storytime’s Little Golden Hood, there are many books out there that put a completely new twist on this classic tale and are worth exploring too. For starters, try Alex T. Smith’s witty and wonderful Little Red and the Hungry Lion, sweet and funny Very Little Red Riding Hood by Teresa Heapy and Sue Heap, and the wonderfully graphic Little Red by Bethan Woollvin.
I’d love to hear what you think of our Little Golden Hood version – could it ever replace the ‘original’ or are we just too attached to that iconic red hood? And how do you feel about new twists on classic fairy tales – love or loathe? Let me know on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and even Youtube, where we post sneak previews of our new issues.
Like a good story, we get around!
See you next time for more story ponderings!
The true story of Little Red Riding Hood
The true story of Little Red Riding Hood
© Tatyana Vorontsova
190 years ago, on October 18, 1812, two young scientists, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, put the final point in the book bestseller of German-language literature. The book was called “Children's and Household Tales”, and it was from it that the world became known
“Once upon a time there was a little, sweet girl. And whoever looked at her, everyone liked her, but her grandmother loved her more than anyone and was ready to give her everything. So she once gave her a cap of red velvet, and because this cap suited her very well and she didn’t want to wear any other, they called her Little Red Riding Hood ... ”Who in childhood was not fascinated by this seemingly naive, artless text? Nevertheless, the story of Little Red Riding Hood is not so simple: it is tortuous and intricate, just as human consciousness is tortuous and intricate.
The first literary version of this old folk tale was published by Charles Perrault in 1697 in Paris - in the book "Tales of my mother Goose, or Stories and tales of bygone times with teachings", dedicated to the princess of the French royal house. In those days, the story of a girl who went to visit her grandmother and met a wolf on the road was told all over Europe - both in the homes of commoners and in the castles of the nobility. The tale was especially popular in the Tyrol and the foothills of the Alps, where it had been known at least since the 14th century. Actually, it was a lot of stories: in the north of Italy, the granddaughter brought fresh fish to her grandmother, in Switzerland - a head of young cheese, in the south of France - a pie and a pot of butter; in some cases, the wolf was the winner, in others, the girl ... Perrault took one of the options as a basis, dressed up the nameless girl in a “companion” cap of scarlet velvet and bestowed the name - Little Red Riding Hood.
I must say that in France at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, when social differences in clothing were strictly regulated, only aristocrats and middle-class women wore such headdresses. A simple village girl, who easily walked in a velvet cap of a defiant color, and even - contrary to her mother's orders - entered into a conversation with a stranger, obviously understood a lot about herself, which the harsh era of the Enlightenment did not encourage. In the finale, the wolf taught a cruel lesson to all the windy young ladies: he "attacked Little Red Riding Hood and swallowed her."
The gallant author crowned the “cute trifle” (as he called his fairy tale) with a moral:
Little children, not without reason
(And especially girls, beauties and spoiled girls),
Encountering all kinds of men on the way,
No speeches
Otherwise, the wolf might eat them...
The popularity of Perrault's book was amazing, although the 69-year-old author himself, a prominent royal official and member of the French Academy, fearing ridicule, at first did not dare to put his own name on the collection, therefore for the first time, "Tales of Mother Goose" was published signed by the 11-year-old son of the writer - D'Armancourt.
But the “canonization” of the text did not end there. From the pages of a French book, Little Red Riding Hood returned to oral stories, and a hundred years later reappeared in a literary version - in German Kassel. This time, the philologists brothers Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm acted as authors, who saw in fairy tales by no means “trifles”. Grimms perceived folk tales as a necessary link in the unification of the fragmented German principalities-electors, who spoke different dialects, into a single national state. The goal of the Grimms was to collect and voice "living folk poetry", to preserve the authenticity of folk art. They believed that the “German pramith” was contained in fairy tales, and in their book “Children's and Household Tales” they selected only those stories that were popular in the territory of German settlement. Grimm's fairy tales were considered as pantries in which a single memory of the mythological ideas and beliefs of their ancestors was preserved, and they saw their task in revealing the “authenticity”, the true nationality of the plot.
Based on the idea of the unity of the people, the Grimms did not distinguish between written and oral sources, as well as the belonging of authors to different social and cultural strata, believing that in any of the options there is both truth and artificiality. They presented their own version of Little Red Riding Hood, combining oral stories, the fairy tale of Charles Perrault, as well as the verse play “The Life and Death of Little Red Riding Hood”, written in 1800 by the German romantic writer Ludwig Tiek (it was Tiek who introduced the hunter who saves the girl and grandmother from the belly of a wolf).
A feature of the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm is the abundance of details, sometimes seeming nonsense, sometimes everyday life, sometimes just rudeness and cruelty. The girl's grandmother does not live in another village, but in the forest itself. Little Red Riding Hood brings her a piece of cake and a bottle of wine in her apron, and her mother sternly admonishes her: “Go modestly, as you should; don’t turn aside from the road, otherwise you’ll fall and break the bottle, then grandmother won’t get anything.
And when you enter her room, do not forget to say hello to her, and not only to look back and forth in all corners first. The wolf reproachfully tells the girl that she is going, “as if she is in a hurry to go to school”, offers to “have fun in the forest”, and Little Red Riding Hood, succumbing to persuasion, enters the forest thicket and begins to collect flowers. Having eaten the grandmother, the wolf not only lays down in her bed, but first puts on a dress and cap. At the same time, he leaves the door wide open. Having swallowed the girl, the wolf snores so loudly throughout the forest that the hunter passing by the hut thinks if he needs to help the old woman. Seeing the wolf, the hunter takes the scissors and rips open the sleeping belly: “As soon as he made the first incision, he sees that the little red cap is visible inside. He quickly made a second incision, and a girl jumped out of there and screamed:
— Oh, how scared I was! It was so dark in the wolf's belly!
Grandmother also got out after Little Red Riding Hood, barely alive - she could not catch her breath.
” Then the wolf is punished: his belly is stuffed with large stones. Waking up, he wants to run away, but heavy stones are pulled down, and the wolf falls dead. Each of the winners receives his reward: the hunter takes home the skin taken from the wolf, the grandmother, after eating a cake and drinking wine, gets better, and Little Red Riding Hood learns a life lesson: “From now on, I will never turn off the highway alone without my mother’s permission” . Soon the girl meets another wolf in the forest, and this meeting turns out to be fatal for him: Little Red Riding Hood and Grandmother drown the stupid villain in the trough without anyone's help.
The first publication of "Children's and Household Tales" did not arouse much enthusiasm. The Brothers Grimm's book was seen as a cross between a scientific document and children's fun, the publication was not bought up - readers demanded fabulous romantic short stories. However, after some time, either the authors successfully finalized the material, or the public got used to a strange mixture of archaic oral folk tradition and its literary fixation - the book began to diverge with a bang.
Numerous translations were also not long in coming...
Since then, "Little Red Riding Hood" has become the most popular folk book fairy tale in Europe, and then in the world - always relevant and full of hidden meaning, which many tried to comprehend, sometimes crossing all sorts of boundaries in their conclusions.
So, since the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm came out in the year of the victory over Napoleon, in 1812, and were collected at a time when the lands of the Rhine were under the French heel, some researchers saw the French “intruder” in the wolf, and the suffering German people in Little Red Riding Hood , and in the hunter - the expected disinterested liberator. And a century later, the ideologues of the Third Reich, who declared "Children's and Household Tales" by the Brothers Grimm a sacred book, wrote in all seriousness that Little Red Riding Hood embodies the German people, persecuted by the wolf of Jewry.
The Grimms themselves, deeply religious people, saw in Little Red Riding Hood a single symbol of rebirth - a descent into the darkness and transformation.
A hundred years later, Christian researchers who developed this idea declared Little Red Riding Hood the personification of human passions: vanity, self-interest and hidden lust. In the wolf, these same passions are embodied clearly and definitely. Only freed from the wolf's belly, as if born again, the girl is transformed.
Neo-mythologists, supporters of the so-called “wolf-solar theory”, who also considered themselves followers of the Grimms, argued that the fairy tale reflects the change of natural phenomena: the grandmother living in the forest in a house “under three large oaks” is mother nature, Little Red Riding Hood is the sun , the wolf is winter, and the hunter is the new year. Neo-pagans (there were some) considered the wolf to be the most positive character in the fairy tale. The red color of the girl's headdress seemed to them the embodiment of danger, and the grandmother, living in a dense forest, evoked associations with Baba Yaga and the goddess of death of the ancient Germans (by the way, pies and wine were a common sacrifice for the dead and other representatives of the underworld among all Indo-Europeans).
So the wolf seemed to them to be something like an ancestor hero, who was trying to free the world from death and fell victim in an unequal struggle.
Initially, in the oral tradition of the fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf was not just an animal, but a werewolf (this is where his ability to speak in a human voice and successful attempts to disguise himself as a grandmother come from). The Grimms, like Perrault, did not advertise it, but implied it. At the end of the 20th century, interest in mysticism provoked a number of relevant interpretations of Little Red Riding Hood, among which the most famous interpretation of the British "Oscar" Neil Jordan - he turned this story into a love thriller about werewolves "In the company of wolves".
People of the 19th century saw a pure image in Little Red Riding Hood. A fan of "Children's and Household Tales" Charles Dickens in his "Christmas Stories" shared naive childhood reflections: "I felt that if I could marry Little Red Riding Hood, I would know true happiness.
" And the Grimms themselves, who dreamed of returning to their national roots, generally believed that before the world was asexual, and “people produced children with just one look (as God acts only with a thought)” - only “then they needed kisses for this and, finally, hugs and carnal intercourse." “Teutonic religious neurotics” (so the brothers were dubbed by little-believing psychoanalysts of the 20th century) when preparing fairy tales for publication, they expelled from them all to any extent erotic scenes and expressions, because they believed that “old poetry” was “innocent”.
The 20th century made Little Red Riding Hood a brand and a diagnosis. So, in the 30s, supporters of Freud's student Erich Fromm declared that Little Red Riding Hood is a fully matured girl, and her headdress is a symbol of physiological maturity. The mother's warnings to stay on the road and beware of breaking the bottle are warnings against casual relationships and loss of virginity. The main characters of the tale are three generations of women.
The wolf, embodying the masculine principle, is a “ruthless and treacherous animal”, and the hunter is a conventional image of Little Red Riding Hood's father (which is why he is not among the despised men). In general, the story tells about the triumph of the female half of humanity over the male and returns the reader to the world of matriarchy.
In the 1960s, the era of the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism, researchers began to talk about swallowing as rape, a symbolic description of uncontrollable sexual appetite. At the same time, the girl herself provokes the wolf to active actions: she wears a bright hat, talks to a stranger, has fun in the forest ... At the same time, the wolf turns out to be a transvestite and secretly envies the woman's ability to become pregnant. That is why he swallows his grandmother and granddaughter whole, making an attempt to put living beings in his stomach. At the end of the wolf, stones are killed - symbols of sterility, which is a mockery of the desire to play childbirth .
..
There were not so many of those who remembered that Little Red Riding Hood was a fairy tale for children. They timidly pointed to the educational aspect: an innocent child should beware of life's dangers and obey mother's orders. The initial “innocence” of the story was also indicated by the fact that the wolf did not die when the hunter cut open his stomach in order to free the girl and grandmother.
The story of the second wolf was forgotten in the 20th century, it is not mentioned in all modern editions of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales. In essence, this is a sequel, a story about a completely different girl - more experienced, correct, who learned the lessons of the “previous series”. And Little Red Riding Hood, who has lost her innocent naivete, is not interesting to the world - even if it has comprehended everything and survived all possible revolutions ...
source: Everything for the teacher of literature
Unravel Little Red Riding Hood: who wrote the fairy tale
Absolutely everyone knows the famous tale about Little Red Riding Hood from early childhood.
The instructive story of a little girl, with whom an exciting adventure takes place, intrigues more and more with each page of the book, dragging her into a whirlpool of interesting events.
We all enjoyed reading or listening (performed by mothers and grandmothers) the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood". Who wrote it, however, not everyone knows. It turns out that the true ancestor of the tale is quite difficult to find.
The most popular version: by Charles Perrault
When children and adults hear the question: "Little Red Riding Hood" - who wrote the fairy tale?" - then the well-known Charles Perrault immediately comes to mind. But is it really so?
Charles never referred to himself as a writer of fairy tales. His pen belonged to works sustained in more serious genres. Fairy tales were written by his son Pierre. However, he had an unenviable reputation, and this may have influenced the fact that books were signed with his name father. This was also facilitated by commercial benefits - the works of a more famous author were sold out much faster.
And after all, Charles Perrault was a famous, rich and influential man of his era.0007
Charles Perrault: a short biography of the great storyteller
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So it turns out that Charles Perrault did not write Little Red Riding Hood? Who wrote, of course, it is difficult to answer, but it is impossible to completely deny the authorship of Charles. He also has his own version, which exists to this day. In it, the tale ends tragically. But the world community decided that it would be more acceptable to leave the version of Pierre, with a happy ending.
But in reality...
So who is the real author? "Little Red Riding Hood" was passed from mouth to mouth by many generations of different peoples and is an oral folk art. It's all so unexpected and simple.
The original version of the tale is notable for its cruelty and manifestation of cannibalism. For obvious reasons, such a fairy tale was remade, and Charles Perrault did it for the first time.
A version more acceptable to the child's psyche quickly found its fans and became one of the favorites.
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Of course, Perrault's version also differs from the one known to the Slavic peoples. Turgenev, whose translation of the tale is the most popular, introduced his own corrections, removed some scenes and transformed the tale so that it was most understandable for kids.
Grimm's Fairy Tale
Many authors rewrote "Little Red Riding Hood". Who wrote - unequivocally difficult to answer. One of the versions of the Brothers Grimm is known.
In fact, Grimm's style was somewhat different from what we are used to. In the fairy tales familiar to us, many everyday details and cruel scenes are missing. Murder, violence and other elements that are unacceptable for children, we will not meet in Little Red Riding Hood.
