Puss In Boots: the Original Fairy Tale

Made famous as a side character in the Shrek franchise, Puss in Boots is actually pulled from a French fairy tale!

And since I wrote my own adaptation of this animal hero fairy tale (Puss in Boots) it's time to sarcastically summarize the original story. I made some major changes to this one because the main human character of this story was an absolute drip and I'm going to make sure I point them out in this summary!

Side note:

I also based on my retelling on a stray black + white tuxedo cat my parents adopted. So if you like cute cat photos you can read more about him in this blog post.

Like most of the other fairy tales I’ve adapted, Puss in Boots is an older fairy tale that was passed around orally before writers picked it up. Giovanni Straparola, an Italian author, is credited with the oldest version of Puss In Boots. He included it in a book, Facetious Nights of Straparola, which was published in approximately 1550.

The version we are most familiar with, however, is the French tale told by Charles Perrault who published it in 1697. Puss in Boots is the English title of the story, but other versions were titled ou le Chat Botte, Cagliuso, and Master Cat. (Fun fact, in my book some Arcainian villagers call Puss “the Master Cat!“)

Perrault’s story starts with the three sons of a miller who divide up their father’s inheritance. The oldest son receives the mill, the second son receives the donkey, and the third receives the family cat. The third son does very little to ingratiate himself to the reader, for upon receiving the cat he sits down and cries, bemoaning how pitiful his inheritance is. He verbally resolves to eat his cat and make a muff of its skin before dying.

The cat heard all of this and said, being that he was apparently much smarter than the yokel who inherited him, that if the third son would give him a bag and have shoes made for him, he would hunt and make sure the third son didn’t starve. Instead of being shocked by a talking cat, the third son gives the cat some shoes, even though he doesn’t believe the cat will catch anything of worth.

The cat sets off with his shoes, catches a rabbit, and delivers it to the king’s palace. He speaks directly to the king and tells him that his master, the Master of Carabas–a name he made up at that very moment–sends the rabbit as a gift for his table. The king is delighted and sends the cat on his way with his thanks.

Being that talking cat has great ambition and far-seeing plans, he continues to give gifts of game to the King for about two or three months. It is then that the cat hears the king and his daughter–the most beautiful princess in the land–are going to take a drive. The cat asks his sniveling master to bathe in a pond that is near the path the king and his daughter will drive past. The third son does as he is instructed–and let me assure you that the story takes great pains to point out that the son didn’t question the cat at all–and the cat hides his clothes.

When the king drives past, the cat shouts “Help! Help! My Lord Marquis of Carabas is going to be drowned.” The king looks outside and recognizes the cat, so he stops the coach. The cat explains that while his master was bathing, rogues stole his clothes even though the cat tried to stop them. The king sends a servant to fetch some of his clothes for the third son, which the son puts on. Lo and behold, when dressed as finely as the king, the third son looks incredibly striking! (I find it refreshing that the only real positive character trait Perrault gave the third son–besides being biddable, I suppose–is that he was handsome. For once the female character isn’t the only pretty but stupid dunce!)

The third son looks so handsome that the princess falls in love with him. (Note: I did say she wasn’t the only pretty but stupid dunce.) The king asks the third son/the suddenly titled Marquis of Carabas to join him and his daughter on their drive. The third son agrees.

At this time the cat runs ahead of the coach and instructs various farmers to tell the king the lands belong to the Marquis of Carabas. If they will not say those words, the cat promises to chop them up like mincemeat. (Bonus! In my story, Puss threatens to chop up the children of Kinzig into mincemeat in homage to this famous line.) Either the cat is much more frightening than he sounds, or the peasants are shocked by a cat who has an eloquent grasp of French, so they tell the king exactly as the cat instructed. The third son has enough brains to agree with whatever they say, and he boasts about the productivity of the land.

The cat and coach run along, until they reach a stately castle. The cat, still running ahead, reaches it first. An incredibly rich ogre lives at the castle, and he owns all the lands the cat claimed for his master. The story doesn’t tell us if the ogre is good or evil, it only says that the cat had taken pains before all of this started to learn about the land, the ogre, and the ogre’s unusual ability to shape shift. The cat has a conversation much like the one Gabrielle has with her ogre, and asks the ogre to turn into a lion. The ogre does so, and badly scares the cat. When the ogre returns to his normal shape, the cat challenges him to turn into a tiny animal–like a rat or a mouse. The ogre turns into a mouse, and the cat pounces on him and eats him.

No sooner did the cat finish off the ogre than the king and the handsome-but-still-stupid third son arrive. The king decides to play the part of Goldilocks, and waltzes into the castle without knowing who lives there. The cat runs to greet them and welcomes them to the Marquis of Carabas’s castle. They throw a party, and the king gets toasted. As he continues to drink he notes the size of the Marquis of Carabas’s estates, and observes how smitten his daughter is. He tells the third son “It will be your own fault if you don’t become my son-in-law.” The third son happily agrees, and marries the princess that day. The cat becomes a lord and never again chased after mice, except for his own entertainment.

That’s the original story!

In this related blog post I take a look at the various themes presented in this story. It is a fascinating topic as Puss in Boots is unlike any other story I’ve adapted because the main character–the third son–doesn’t deserve anything he is given.

And if you'd like to read a fairy tale retelling with a talking cat and his female owner who actually appreciates him, you can check out my standalone story in Kindle Unlimited or in ebook and paperback!

P.S. If you are a cat hater you might want to skip this one as the friendship between the female lead + Puss the cat is a major focus of this series.

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Little Mermaid: the Original Fairy Tale

It's time to talk about the fairy tale heroine with the most famous voice ever, The Little Mermaid!

I've written these sarcastic summaries of well known fairy tales so I can share the research I conducted when writing my fairy tale book series. Which there are a LOT of things I don't like about The Little Mermaid so brace yourself for extra sarcasm! It's also the reason why I changed the main heroine of my version from a mermaid to a selkie and called it The Little Selkie instead.

The Little Mermaid was written by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, and was published in 1837. In comparison to the other fairy tale stories I’ve adapted, it is quite long (but not as long as the Snow Queen).

The original story is about an unnamed mermaid who is the youngest the six daughters of the King of the Seas. The little mermaid has a garden and a marble statue of a young man that she is seriously smitten with. That’s not important to the story, but I feel that it accurately reflects this chicka’s problems. Anyway! The mermaid’s family has a tradition that she and her sisters cannot go above the ocean’s surface until their fifteenth birthday, after-which they can go up whenever they want.

So on the little mermaid’s birthday she finally pops above the water and sees a big ship, which is packed with people celebrating a prince’s sixteenth birthday. She sees him, and falls in love. A storm sets in and destroys the ship. The little mermaid saves the prince—who is unconscious—and hauls him onto a beach the following morning.

This image is of the Little mermaid swimming away as the “Holy Maiden” discovers the prince. I have no idea how she is holy.

The Little Mermaid then makes like a creeper, and spends a lot of time watching the prince at his seaside palace for an undisclosed amount of time before she goes to her grandmother and expresses a desire to be human. The pair get into a deep conversation, because mermaids don’t have souls but they are nearly immortal. Even so, the little mermaid says she wishes she could be a human for one day and die with a soul. The grandmother tells her they are stuck, and she needs to suck it up.

The little mermaid sighs with longing over the prince, of whom she “wishes to place the happiness of [her] life.” So she gathers up her courage and goes to see the sea witch. The witch—while not being truly evil—lives in a pretty gruesome neighborhood filled with sea snakes and skeletons that try to grasp and strangle people. The sea witch offers to give her the body of a human, but every step she takes will make it feel like she’s walking on jagged glass, and the witch in return will get her voice—which happens to be the most beautiful in the whole sea. Also, she won’t gain a human soul—securing salvation—unless the prince falls in love with her, and if he marries another she’ll die.

The little mermaid complains—because she was planning to seduce the prince with her voice—but eventually they strike the bargain. The little mermaid loses her voice but gains a human body. She wakes up on a beach where the prince finds her and takes her to his palace. There the mermaid shows off her beautiful dancing, in spite of the great pain she feels, and successfully enchants everyone, including the prince who calls her “his little founding” and allows her to sleep on a velvet cushion outside his door–because that’s not demeaning.

The prince and the little mermaid become jolly companions who spend all their time together, and the prince tells the little mermaid that he refuses to marry because he fell in love with a girl who saved his life, and he describes her as a holy maiden of a temple. The little mermaid realizes he is not referring to her, but rejoices that she is the one living with him.

The prince’s parents inform him that he will marry the daughter of a neighboring king. The prince goes to this neighboring country to give his refusal when—plot twist!—the king’s daughter is the holy maiden of the temple, and the prince is thrilled to marry her. (This jerk also informs the little mermaid that she will be happy for him because her devotion to him is so great. What a charmer.)

The day of the prince’s wedding arrives, and the little mermaid’s sisters come to her with their hair chopped, and explain that they made a deal with the sea witch—their hair in exchange for a dagger. If the little mermaid kills the prince, she’ll turn back into a mermaid. The little mermaid refuses, and when the sun rises she dissolves into foam. But wait! She hears beautiful songs and sees beautiful creatures! The little mermaid learns that she has been turned into a daughter of air, which means she can do good deeds and procure a soul for herself. Additionally, the length of time for which she is required to do good deeds can be shortened or lengthened by witnessing the behavior of children.

Out of all the fairy tales I’ve researched, the Little Mermaid was one of my least favorites. First of all, the prince she falls for is a selfish prat. He’s not unkind, but he treats her like a child when she is said to be beautiful and only a year younger than him. (Mind you, this is the same girl who initially didn’t understand that breathing was a thing, and he couldn’t live with her in the sea, so perhaps there is something to his actions.)

I did enjoy that a lot more of the story’s time was spent on setting the stage. The little mermaid is human for only a third of the story. The rest of it describes her home and family life. Also, I liked that the story took place over months—instead of days as most fairy tales. Although it still had Insta-Love since the Little Mermaid fell in love with the prince way back when she saw him on the ship!

If you're interested in reading an adaptation of The Little Mermaid that does not include Insta-Love you can check out my standalone story in Kindle Unlimited or in ebook and paperback!

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Origins and Analyzing Rumpelstiltskin

When I first started researching the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin for my fantasy book, I was surprised to find that it is a tale with many different versions, and is known far across Europe. That might sound stupid of me, but of the three fairy tales I’ve adapted before Rumpel, Cinderella is the only story that can be found in most cultures. Beauty and the Beast is purely of French origins, and Wild Swans is mostly Germanic–although similar stories were told in different parts of Europe. Rumpelstiltskin follows Cinderella’s example and is known world-wide.

In Scotland he was called Whuppity Stoorie; Ireland, Trit-a-Trot; Amsterdam, Ricdin-Ricdon; and Germany, Rumpelstilzskin.

The Grimm brothers are credited with the oldest version of Rumpelstiltskin as they collected it and recorded it in 1812 in Children’s and Household Tales.

However, that’s the oldest version of the traditional Rumpelstiltskin tale–which is where we can trace the roots of the modern tales. There actually are older versions. Francois Rabelais published a book titled Gargantua, Geshichtkitterung in approximately 1580. It contains a story called Rumpele stilt oder der Poppart. I have no idea what that means, but you can see bits of Rumpelstiltskin’s name, so clearly the tale was in circulation long before the Grimm brothers arrived.

Additionally, there is a very similar fairy tale called The Three Spinners, in which three fairy-like women save the miller’s daughter. Instead of asking for her firstborn the final night of spinning, the women ask that the girl invite them to her wedding as her relatives. The girl (who is obviously much smarter than the heroine of Rumpelstiltskin) complies, and the three women show up to the ceremony with hideous deformities. They explain to the king that their deformities are a result of spinning too much. Horrified, the King forbids his new wife from spinning anymore. I really love this version of the story as the women lay the smackdown on the greedy King.

Next, analyzing Rumpelstiltskin! Most scholars focus on the idea that there are multiple villains in the story (the miller, the King, and Rumpelstiltskin) and they philosophize about Rumpelstiltskin’s motivation. Raven’s Shire has a beautiful blog post where she goes over the various motivations that could have driven Rumpelstiltskin, but to summarize her discussion, she states that Rumpelstiltskin was probably internally divided over the situation given that he gives the queen three days to come up with his name, and that he even makes the offer in the first place instead of stealing the child as 99% of fairies would have. Raven guesses that Rumpelstiltskin wanted to raise the child because he knew the child would be important or great–much the way fairies raised Lancelot and Merlin.

While Rumpelstiltskin’s motivation interest me, I used my book to essentially shout what I believe Rumpelstiltskin’s true intent was (love) so instead I’m going to discuss the spinning process.

On the left are flax stalks, center are flax fibers, and right is the resulting thread after it has been spun many times.

As you know spinning straw into gold is an impossible task. However, it was ultra-impossible, because straw cannot be spun into anything. In August I visited the Landis Vally Village & Farm Museum in Lancaster, PA. (It’s a lovely place, I suggest you visit it if you are ever in the area.) One of their buildings housed sewing, quilting, and embroidery crafts, in which they included a lovely display about the process of preparing and spinning flax fibers into a rough thread. It was there that I first learned that cotton, flax, and wool could be spun into thread, but straw cannot be because it lacks the long fibers necessary to form the thread.

This is a spinning wheel from the Landis Valley Museum. The white stuff on the distaff are the flax fibers–what a straw stalk lacks.

So not only was King Crazy demanding some sort of magical transformation from the Miller’s daughter in expecting her to change fibers into a precious metal, but he was also asking for something that isn’t possible from a material goods point of view. He was asking the miller’s daughter to create something out of nothing.

The fact that imp-man could make something out of nothing is remarkable, and it is also why I suspect the price was hiked up so high on the last night. It drove home the point that there is a steep price for shortcuts.

As much as this idea interested me, I was sadly unable to link it up in my telling because I wanted to focus on Stil’s character. However, I do think this is an example of a story that has been misinterpreted in modern society because we lack spinning familiarity which would have been common knowledge back then.

What do you think, Champions? Am I reading too deeply, or was it important that the specific demand was for straw as opposed to flax or wool to be turned into gold?

If you're interested in reading my version, where the male lead is NOT King Crazy, here are the links:

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