Childhood Memories - Fairy Tales #MonsterMonday

Childhood Memories - Fairy Tales

Welcome to the new year and a slight change of topic for Mondays - from now on Monster Mondays are going to be Monsters, Myths and Magic Mondays - but we'll still call them Monster Mondays for short.

Growing up I was very fond of fairy tales, and I have some treasured memories of reading them and having them read to me. However, as is always the case with memory, lots of bits are missing. I thought it might be fun for us to share our favourite fairy tales from memory and then see how much of what we remember is right.

So, what I'm going to do is:

• tell you everything I recall about the tale that has stuck in my head the most
• then look it up online and tell you the details of the real thing.

Anyone who want to play along can comment using the same format, or even do a post of their own and drop me a link in the comments. I'll add any links to the main post so they are easy to find for other surfers.

My Favourite Fairy Tale

The first thing I have to admit - I have no idea what it is called. Couldn't name the story or the author for the life of me.

What I remember is this:

• there is a princess and through a wish ( I can't remember whose) she ends up with fast growing hair
• every time her hair is cut, it grows twice as fast - which becomes more than problematic
• some bright spark has the idea that maybe if, rather than cutting her hair off, they were to cut her from her hair it would stop the problem
• unfortunately this ends up with the princess growing really fast instead
• eventually they use scales and cut her from her hair when they are exactly equal - this ends with happily ever after

Okay, back in a sec, going to look it up now.

Right, so the fairy tale is actually this one (click to see the full text):

Melisande

or,

Long and Short Division

by E. Nesbit

It is a very good story - every one should read it. I seem to have remembered what I recalled correctly, but the details are much better:

• The princess is cursed to be bald as a child because her parents did not have a christening party for fear of forgetting a fairy, but that annoyed them all.
• When she is old enough her father gives her a wish his fairy godmother gave him.
• Her mother whispers in her ear what to wish for, which is where the hair thing starts to go wrong.
• The fairy godmother suggests advertising for a prince.
• The only competent prince is the one who cuts her from her hair after asking her to marry him for his own merits, rather than as being a reward (I like this bit a lot).
• At one point she grows so big she can pick up the island her kingdom is on, and she does great things while large, but it lonely.
• Scales are the answer and do break the magic. Yay!

Okay, your go - tell me what you remember of your favourite fairy tale, then see if you remembered it correctly.