Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Hansel and Gretel: The Rest of the Story
“If you build the candy cottage, the kiddies will come.”
(Frebur Hobson)
I pulled my mother's girlhood copy of the Brothers Grimm off the shelf the other day, and found a version of Hansel and Gretel like one that I've never seen before.
Move over, Disney.
Here's how I remembered it: wicked stepmother, weak father, kids abandoned in the woods.
Candy cottage, wicked witch, caged Hansel.
Gretel plays dumb, pushes witch into stoked oven. H & G, liberated, find their way back home. Stepmother—Elmira Gulch to the witch's WOW, maybe—has meanwhile died.
Happily ever after with weak but loving dad.
The original, though, is much longer and far more interesting.
They use her magic against her, you see.
To start off with, it's not a wicked stepmother who wants to abandon the children in the woods to starve to death, but their mother. That's way scarier.
(One wonders, though. It's scary when mom stops doing everything for you and pushes you toward independence, but isn't it really far worse if she never does?)
The witch's house is made, not of candy, but of bread, and thatched with cake, with barley sugar windowpanes.
In this version, the children manage to escape the witch's clutches and flee into the woods, but first they steal her wand and the pipe that hangs on her wall.
The witch dons her magic boots that run yards with every step and in no time has caught up with them.
Clever Gretel changes Hansel into a pond and herself into a white swan which, try as she might, the witch cannot lure to shore.
After resuming their true shapes, Hansel and Gretel continue to flee. Once again the witch catches them up, but Gretel changes herself into a rose blooming in a hedge of wild briar.
“May I pluck your rose?” asks the witch.
“Pluck away,” says Hansel, but as she reaches into the hedge, he begins to play the magic pipe. Whoever hears this pipe cannot help themselves but dance, and the witch is forced against her will to dance until thorns tear the clothes from her body and she is stuck fast in the hedge. Gretel resumes her true shape, and once again the siblings flee.
One night as they sleep, the witch comes upon them, recovers her stolen property and, wand back in hand, changes Hansel into a fawn. Then, interestingly, she leaves.
Gretel puts her gold necklace (!) around the fawn's neck, and they move into a deserted cottage. Years pass, and—Hansel's transformation aside—they live together very happily.
If you've ever wondered about the names Hansel and Gretel, both are diminutives: little Hans and little Greta, themselves short for Johannes (John) and Margareta (Margaret = “pearl”).
One day they hear the horns of the King and his huntsmen blowing in the forest. Hansel wants to go out and see, but Gretel tries to prevent him.
“Don't worry,” he tells her. “I'll come to the door and say, 'Sister, let me in.' Then you can let me into the cottage, and I'll be safe.”
All day, the king and his huntsmen chase the beautiful fawn with the mysterious golden necklace, but can't catch it.
The same thing happens the next day, but they manage to wound the fawn. A huntsman overhears the fawn say “Sister, let me in” and be admitted to the cottage, and tells the king about it.
The third day goes the same, but this time it is the king himself who stands at the door and calls out “Sister, let me in.”
Gretel is dumbfounded to see the king standing on her doorstep, but the king immediately falls in love with the beautiful maiden and asks her to become his bride and live with him in the castle.
Gretel refuses his troth. “I can live with you in the castle, but I cannot be your bride; I must care for my beloved fawn.”
On the way back to the castle, Gretel tells the king the whole tale. It so happens that the king knows the witch, whom he forces to return Hansel to his true shape.
Gretel marries the king, Hansel becomes his chief minister, and they all live happily etc.
Best of all, the witch lives.
As an image search will readily show, the Candy Witch's Cottage is beloved of cartoonists.
Here's my favorite.
A couple are sitting in their car outside a fast food joint: “Candy Cottage Fast Food.”
“That's odd,” says one to the other. “There's a place to drive in, but no place to drive out.”
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