New Fairy Tales! 500 of them.

Once upon a time there was a girl who loved fairy tales, myths, and legends . . .

Oh, that's me!

From happy endings to the not so happy ones, I'm mad about them.

I know I'm not alone in this love.  Almost every year that I've gone to a writing conference with critique groups, there is at least one person working on a retelling of a tale.

So when I saw a teaser on the sidebar of The Guardian's website for this article:  Five Hundred New Fairy Tales Discovered in Germany, I was not only delighted for the benefit of my own reading, but I was eager to share the news.

It tells about Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, an historian in Oberpfalz, a region of Baviaria.  He was a contemporary of the Grimm Brothers and he collected tales in a similar manner.  

The article explains that von Schönwerth made no attempt to clean up or otherwise alter the tales he collected. As a result readers can experience the tales as they came from the teller's mouth rather than a literary version of the original telling.  Among the tales there are versions of commonly known tales, but also many new ones for us all look forward to.

Unfortunately it's not available in English yet, but a translation is in the works.

My summary of this article is really brief, the full article has examples of tales and more historical information about them and von Schönwerth.  Also, if you're up to reading some in German, there is book published (although I'm not sure how available it is in America yet) with selections from this collection - details in the original article.

Just an extra little note for other fairytale lovers:  If you haven't yet tried the TV series "Once Upon a Time", I'd recommend it for sure. It's a fun play on many tales and a good story.

And they all lived happily (or unhappily) ever after . . .