Board Thread:Fanon Discussion/@comment-14800267-20140205232944/@comment-14800267-20140208125456

Folktales were mostly verbal before the Grimms got to them, like many of the myths from the ancient cultures, they changed and evolved depending on the teller, which is why there are so many versions of each. That was the way of the Storyteller, the bard. Each had their own version of popular tales to keep them fresh and interesting. When they became written, they stagnated and were twisted to the vision of two narrow minded men. As mentioned, myths suffered similar treatment, catalogued often by catholic monks, who often misrepresented and changed the tales of the "pagan" gods of other ancient cultures to demean and twist them in the views of the, at the time, modern Christian society and destroy, demean and outcast the last, lingering worshippers of those old ways. (know I don't intend to bash Christianity or Catholisism, it's simply an unfortunate occurance of the people over a thousand years ago. Things were very different back then. There was little to no value of the preservation of history by ANY race or religion.)

So summing up- there are only small fragments and some lingering versions of the older versions of tales. My best friend is a storyteller of the most traditional kind, and has studied them in astounding depth, but there are only a few that survived.

If you can hunt down a version of a late 80's, early 90's show called "The Storyteller" by Jim Henson, it's an amazing look at some of the older versions of tales. It's a kids show, but man, was it twisted. Jim Henson you know as the creator of the Muppets and Seseme street, but he also did darker things, like this show and the Dark Crystal.