oh god so many. Do you count Oscar Wilde's fairytales and the like, or Karel Capek's, or just the traditional ones? Oscar Wilde's The Fisherman and His Soul, best one ever. Regular ones.... I like sleeping beauty, the ice queen.... cinderella. The frog prince.

i don't know that oscar wilde one. gotta check it out

do. it's really lovely. and lots of tee-shirtable imagery too!!

Alice in wonderland.

My fav is an old folktale (can't remember the name) about a poor man who catches a fish, but the fish offers him anything he wants in exchange for freedom. So the man asks his wife what he should wish for and she gets greedier and greedier until the magic fish takes everything away. I'll have to look it up.

There's one that I love about a kid who's sent by himself to join a monastery, and he stops at a house to rest and finds it empty, though it appears from outside as if someone is home. He settles down for the night and feeling lonely paints some pictures of cats on the paper walls. During the night he hears some terrible screams and when daylight enters he sees loads of bloody paw prints leading from the cats on the walls to a load of dead monster rats. I've always remembered that one.

Aesop, I think, told the fable "No more room". Where a big family hated their small shack. SO the wise woman of the village told them to bring all their farm animals into the house--then once they took the animals out they felt like their shack was so roomy. I love that one.:)

I like the one with the drawn cat. What country is that from? Japan has some seriously messed up fairytales.

@garo - that's one cool but messed up story. lol



i love these not so obvious stories, keep them coming :-)