How Well Do You Know These Classic Fairy Tales?

The tale now known as “The Frog Prince” dates back to the 13th century. The Brothers Grimm recorded a version in 1812 in which the princess throws the frog against a wall after it insists on sleeping on her pillow. The frog transforms into a prince and the pair fall in love. It was not until the 20th century that the story was changed to have the frog transform in a much more romantic fashion, after being kissed by the princess.

The earliest published version of “The Three Little Pigs” came out in 1853, but it was quite different from the versions we know today. For starters, it was pixies, not pigs, who built the houses of wood, stone, and iron — and it was a fox rather than a wolf who tried to blow them down. More recent versions have the pigs build their houses from straw, sticks, and bricks, only the last of which is able to withstand the wolf’s “huff and puff.”

First published in 1837 by Robert Southey, “The Story of the Three Bears” originally featured an old, impudent woman as the home invader. Fearing that old women were over-represented in fairy-tales, a later author, Joseph Cundall, changed her to a young girl named Silver-Hair. From there, she was upgraded to “Gold” status.

While there are anywhere from 350 to 1,500 variations on the Cinderella story, the first recorded one dates back to the first century BCE. “Rhodopis and Her Little Gilded Sandals” is about a Greek enslaved girl who winds up marrying the king of Egypt. About 1,700 years later, Charles Perrault would pen the most famous version by adding a pumpkin carriage, helpful animals, and turning the slippers to glass.

In 1740, author Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve wrote one of the most extensive and beloved fairy-tales of all time — "Beauty and the Beast." Her original version was filled with enough family backstory and magical subplots to put George R.R. Martin to shame. A few years later, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont would pare down the story to the essential elements enjoyed by children for centuries.

Hoping to drive home the moral that people should not trust “wolves,” no matter how charming they appear to be, the first printed “Little Red Riding Hood” ended with the wolf gobbling up the titular girl. While this proved very popular, later authors softened the tale by adding a huntsman who happens to wander by in time to extract Red and Granny whole from the wolf’s tummy.

Since she had to trade in her voice in exchange for legs, the young mermaid worried about how to woo her prince. To ease her mind, the sea witch threw in exceptional dancing prowess. But in any contract with a sea witch, it pays to read the fine print: Each step the mermaid took would feel like walking on blades.

The Evil Queen, disguised as a peddler, makes three attempts to kill Snow White in the original story, as published by the Brothers Grimm. First, the incognito queen sells Snow a bodice, lacing it so tight she nearly suffocates; then, she trades her a toxic comb. Both times, Snow White is healed by the dwarves, before succumbing to the poisonous apple, as depicted in Disney’s 1938 film.

Desperate to keep the child she bargained away, a commoner-turned-queen tries some very deep cuts to guess the name of the gold-spinning imp who secured her fate. Spindleshanks, Melchior, and Belshazzar are just a few of her failed guesses. Most scholars believe “Rumpelstiltskin” to be a nonsense word, but some link it to “rumpelgeist,” a type of mischievous ghost and a term occasionally used to mean “devil.”

In the 19th century, people took pregnancy cravings seriously. As the fairy-tale goes, a young mother-to-be craved rapunzel (a type of plant with edible leaves, roots, and flowers) after seeing it growing in a witch’s garden. Her husband tried to steal some, got caught by the witch, and bartered his unborn daughter (Rapunzel) for the plants.

Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio” was originally published in 1883 as “Le avventure di Pinocchio: storia di un burattino” in the Italian magazine “Giornale dei bambini” (“Children’s Magazine”). Most of the details of the puppeteer Gepetto and the marionette he creates to be his son are preserved in Disney's 1940 animated film, but the songs are pure Disney magic.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm — better known as the Brothers Grimm — compiled and collected traditional oral folktales from across Germany. They published their first collection, “Kinder- und Hausmärchen,” in 1812, and it was translated into English as “Grimms’ Fairy Tales.” Their meticulous research was hugely influential, and many of our most beloved fairy tales owe their survival to the Grimms’ work.

In the 1697 version of “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” the prince awakening the nameless, slumbering princess is only the halfway point in the story. Afterward, we find out the prince’s mother is an ogre who tries to devour her new daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Disney included a nod to Sleeping Beauty’s children’s names in their 1959 film, by naming their Sleeping Beauty after the Latin word for dawn — "Aurora."

Sinbad the Sailor is a popular character from “One Thousand and One Nights,” a collection of folktales originating in the Middle East and India during the Middle Ages. In the story, Sinbad recounts the adventures he encountered on seven voyages; in each of the seven tales, Sinbad uses his guile to overcome obstacles and return home as a rich man.

In the version of “Snow White” retold by the Brothers Grimm, the dwarves were not given names. A 1912 Broadway play was the first to name them, dubbing them Blick, Flick, Glick, Snick, Plick, Whick, and Quee. Today, most of us know the dwarves by the personas dreamed up by the writers at Disney, who renamed them Doc, Grumpy, Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, and Dopey for the 1938 animated movie.

Jack was the hero of many traditional English folktales, but “Jack and the Beanstalk” is the one for which he is best known. In the story, Jack swaps the family cow for five magic beans. The beans grow into an enormous beanstalk, which Jack climbs only to find a giant guarding some treasure. He steals the treasure and thwarts the giant by cutting down the beanstalk.

In this tale, a pair of sneaky tailors convinces a gullible king that the only people who can't see the invisible “fabric” of his new clothes are those who are bad at their job. No one wants to admit they cannot see the clothes, so everyone pretends the king is wearing a magnificent outfit. Hans Christen Andersen added a child calling out the royal nakedness to the end only after the story had gone to the printer.

Born in humble circumstances and often mocked for his gangly features as a boy, Hans Christian Andersen used his literary talent to climb the social ranks, eventually rubbing elbows with nobility. This rise mirrors the plot of “The Ugly Duckling,” something the author acknowledged. Andersen even titled one of his autobiographies “The Fairy-Tale of My Life.”

The story of Cinderella may date as far back as ancient Greece, but French author Charles Perrault was one of the first to publish our modern version, which he titled “Cendrillon.” The name derives from the French word “cendre,” meaning “ash or cinders,” because the main character has to clean the fireplaces. The Brothers Grimm published the story as “Aschenputtel,” meaning “little ash girl,” and it was the English translation of this version that first used the name Cinderella.

In the story of “The Three Little Pigs,” the title characters refuse to let the wolf in their homes, repeating the refrain, “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.” However, pigs don’t have chin hair, as noted by Joseph Jacobs in his 1890 collection “English Fairy Tales.” Jacobs surmised that the story originated from the brothers Grimm fairy tale “Wolf and Seven Little Kids,” featuring bearded goats instead of pigs.

The story of “Hansel and Gretel” has been sanitized in modern versions, but the original tale, recorded by the Brothers Grimm, had some rather horrifying elements. In it, Hansel and Gretel are abandoned by their parents in a forest and come across a witch’s house made from gingerbread. The witch captures the children and intends to fatten them up so she can eat them, but they push her into an oven and escape.