The Little Mermaid

Did you know the original story of Cinderella involved the evil step-sisters bloodily hacking off parts of their feet to get them into the glass slipper?

Or that another popular fairy tale, the name of which escapes me, involves the main character's head getting lopped off in combat? But then the little forest creatures helpfully and quickly reattach it... but backwards. So they have to take it off again, turn it around, and reattach it. It's all good in the end!

Who wrote this weird stuff anyway? Methinks fairy tales are not for kids.

Take The Little Mermaid, for instance. In the original story, the Little Mermaid doesn't get the prince. And... she dies!

But it's ok, 'cause she gets a soul for her good deeds, and gets to go to heaven. This really isn't a story about a little mermaid's quest for true love at all, but her quest for life after death. And how very highly valuable and precious that is.

Along with lots of stuff to traumatize small children. Imagine little Mary Sue lying awake all night worrying about the mermaids and mer-men that won't go to heaven when they die. Because Mer-people don't have souls.

Mary Sue: Why don't they have souls, Mommy?

Mommy: Because Hans Christian Handersen didn't want them to.

Mary Sue: But why didn't he want them to, Mommy?

...ad infinitum...

Here's what the The Little Mermaid has to say about souls...

"Yes," the old lady said, "they too must die, and their lifetimes are even shorter than ours. We can live to be three hundred years old, but when we perish we turn into mere foam on the sea, and haven't even a grave down here among our dear ones. We have no immortal soul, no life hereafter. We are like the green seaweed - once cut down, it never grows again. Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, long after their bodies have turned to clay. It rises through thin air, up to the shining stars. Just as we rise through the water to see the lands on earth, so men rise up to beautiful places unknown, which we shall never see."

"Why weren't we given an immortal soul?" the little mermaid sadly asked. "I would gladly give up my three hundred years if I could be a human being only for a day, and later share in that heavenly realm."

"You must not think about that," said the old lady. "We fare much more happily and are much better off than the folk up there."

"Then I must also die and float as foam upon the sea, not hearing the music of the waves, and seeing neither the beautiful flowers nor the red sun! Can't I do anything at all to win an immortal soul?"

"No," her grandmother answered, "not unless a human being loved you so much that you meant more to him than his father and mother. If his every thought and his whole heart cleaved to you so that he would let a priest join his right hand to yours and would promise to be faithful here and throughout all eternity, then his soul would dwell in your body, and you would share in the happiness of mankind. He would give you a soul and yet keep his own. But that can never come to pass. The very thing that is your greatest beauty here in the sea - your fish tail - would be considered ugly on land. They have such poor taste that to be thought beautiful there you have to have two awkward props which they call legs."

You can read the whole story in about 15 minutes, if you click here.