#GRIMMread2019 Challenge Week 4

This week has been crazy. Monday was a school holiday. Tuesday and Thursday turned out to be regular days, abet cold ones. Wednesday and Friday were weather induced non-school days. In case you don’t feel like counting, that’s 3 days without school during a typical school week.
​
To keep with the 3 of things theme, most of this weeks Grimm tales involved the number 3.

​The Three Snake-Leaves

Source: Duke.edu

I was deeply curious about this title having never heard of it before. Rest assured, the snakes make only a brief appearance and are not even menacing. Our tale’s hero uses the leaves brought into his wive’s tomb to heal her and give her a second life.

You’d think someone brought back from an early grave would be grateful for the steadfast love and devotion of her spouse.

​Not that wife.

She up and decides to kill her loving husband while cheating on him with a morally questionable ship’s captain.

The good news, her husband’s servant witnesses the murder and goes to rescue him — taking with him the snake leaves. Our poor hero has new life but now has to deal with the treachery of his wife.
The bad news, well it’s only bad for her. She gets what her actions earned her.
​
In a way, this was a stark difference from plenty of Grimm tales. I was kind of viciously pleased to see an ending where the bad guy got caught and dealt with.

​The Three Spinners

Source: one-elevenbooks.com

Unlike the previous tale, this one stayed relatively happy throughout. A young teenage girl, with a lying mother (why is it always a mother at her wits end in these things?), is given to the queen to spin three rooms of yarn.

Her reward if she succeeds: marriage to the prince.

​Well, the girl is motivated but completely out of her depth because she hasn’t got a clue how to spin yarn.

​From her palace window she sees three ugly sisters walking. She asks them if they will spin the yarn for her. The women agree so long as the girl invites them to the wedding.

A few days later, the girl presents her spun yarn to the queen and is told that the wedding will happen.

Now, in a lot of Grimm tales, you expect a twist here. A tale of sudden greed. A tale of going back on her word. And, radically, that doesn’t happen.
​
The girl invites the three spinning sisters to her wedding, claiming them each as cousins. The prince is rather appalled at their appearance and, once he learns it is a result of spinning, forbids his wife from ever touching a spinning wheel again.

Are you laughing? 

​That girl got her dream come true happy ending and she did it without backstabbing anyone. Awesome!

#GRIMMread2019 Week 5 Tales

Well...I still have to finish Week 4's tales. I'll circle back to this in my next post... The other 2 reads of the week are The 3 Little Men in the Woods and Hansel and Gretel. Guess I’ll deviate and post mid-week to catch up. With 3 days and no school, I’m behind on more than writing and reading.

​If you’d like to read previous posts, the direct links are below:
#GRIMMread2019 Week 1
#GRIMMread2019 Week 2
​#GRIMMread2019 Week 3

Want to see what others thought of #GRIMMread2019 Week 4?