By: The Brothers Grimm
This is the first of hopefully many Fairy Tale Fridays, where I go over a fairy tale or fable and discuss what the heck they are actually about.
I will pick a new tale each week, give my own re-telling and then discuss what I think the author was trying to convey from the story.
Of course, I will cover the classics but also go into the depths of fables past to cover the truly bizarre stories that would never be allowed to the made into a children’s movie.
This week I’m going over The Water Sprite, a short passage by the Brothers Grimm.
Synopsis
Two siblings are playing by a well and they fall in because no parents are actually watching or caring for their children in any fairy tale.
Taking full advantage of their predicament, a fairy that hangs out in the well, captures them and carries them away to her home. When they arrive she immediately puts them to work spinning flax and chopping wood
While the unnamed fairy is at church, probably trying to find forgiveness for literally kidnapping two children, the siblings run away. However, they run right past the church and the fairy “espied” them (never knew that was a word but Jacob and Wilhelm said it was).
While the fairy is chasing the children, they beginning throwing items behind them and they magically turned into obstacles Mario Kart style to block her path. The final thing they throw is a mirror, which becomes a mountain that the fairy keeps slipping down. She decides to run back home and grab her axe to break the mirror.
By the time she gets back and breaks the mirror, the children are long gone and she has to go back into the well for some reason.
My Thoughts
What’s up with the well? She has a home. You would think that it would be easier to kidnap someone walking around the woods and not in a random well waiting for someone to maybe fall in.
I’m curious to know how the well works. Why was she in the well? Is she cursed to have to go back to the well if she doesn’t have children to do work for her? Or, is the well just a really opportune place to kidnap in this particular village?
Lessons & Takeaways
The big lesson of this story is to never trust strangers. People don’t have good motives and you should always be suspicious when someone wants to give you something for nothing.
Another takeaway is to have faith in yourself and a higher power. The children don’t know if they can escape the fairy or if the items they throw behind them will slow her down. They have to have blind faith that somehow they will outrun her and that magic will work in their favor.
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