Fairytales - Where do "once upon a time" and "happily ever after" come from?

Question

I am trying to find the origin of these two 'conventions' of fairy-tales as I cannot find any that actually begin or end with these words, particularly "happily ever after". From what I have read, there is very rarely a happily ever after, but rather a gruesome end for those that have done wrong. Can anyone give me a background to these phrases?

Answer 1

its called optimism. happily ever after is for the good guys who defeat the bad guys. i guess once upon a time is for making it like a story that happened, maybe to make it seem slightly more real.

Answer 2

It came from a cult so evil they corrupt the minds of children it came from the cult of Disney  

Answer 3

Its actually Disney that did most of the "happily ever after"

most of the tales actually ended with bad endings to teach children and people about the lessons in life, and what kind of things to avoid etc. etc.

Snow white, sleeping beauty, Cinderella, the little mermaid, they were all supposed to end badly, Disney just thought it would be too morbid and made everything so perky and peachy...

hope i helped

Answer 4

people hoping for the best, can usually ONLY find it in fiction?

Answer 5

Those were terms that were used by the writers know as the Grimm Brothers who wrote most of the fairy tales back in the 19th Century in both German and English. In the book called "The Frog Prince aka Iron Henry written in German back in 1812,the last words in the story were  "Heinrich becomes a man was released and was happy." <~~ This is from the German version of the story when it was translated over to English in 1857 it was changed from Released and was happy, to "lived happily ever after" by the translator when he rewrote the story. And I can only assume this was done with the other Fairy Tales that were translated from German to English?