The Robber Bridegroom, by the Brothers Grimm

4 stars

This little collection of seven tales from the Brothers Grimm – The Master Huntsman, The Robber Bridegroom, The Devil’s Three Golden Hairs, The Six Servants, The Bremen Town Band, Snowwhite, and Lazy Harry – has definitely whet my whistle to read a bigger collection of their work.

The tales I remember from my childhood were occasionally grim, but I don’t remember them being as grisly as this – or as funny. I also seem to remember them having some sort of moral, but I’ll be blowed if I can think of what the morals of Lazy Harry and the Bremen Town Band were.

Taking in greedy, arrogant kings, lucky young men, unlucky princesses, clever animals, proud queens, forbidding forests, foul murderers, cannibalism, the Devil and his grandma, and dense young ladies who won’t listen when you tell them not to open the door to anyone, I can’t help but think that had the Brothers Grimm been around today they’d have probably been frogmarched from the offices of children’s publishers and targeted by a Daily Mail campaign.

As it is, someone needs to get on with adapting these older versions for film. I’d happily throw money at the chance to watch that.