Grimms' Fairy Tales

Grimms' Fairy Tales offers sixty-two stories from the collection Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first published in 1812, in the English of Edgar Taylor and Marian Edwardes. Gretel shoves a witch into her own oven, a stepmother cooks a boy into stew in The Juniper Tree, and a fisherman's wife wishes herself up to pope. Punishments are brutal, and the humbling of a proud princess in King Grisly-Beard shows its age.

Start with Clever Hans: under nine syllables a sentence, mostly mother and son trading con and mẹ. Tales run from about 300 syllables to about 6,000, typically 2,000, and Snowdrop has the longest sentences. The fisherman and his wife stay ông, bà and tôi even after she is crowned, while he calls the fish ngài. Hansel and Gretel are anh and em; stepmother and witch bark tao and mày. In The Frog-Prince the princess sneers ngươi, and the frog answers with ta and nàng.