Original Grimm's Fairy Tale for The Little Mermaid? PLEASE HELP!?

Question

I have a collection of all the original Grimm's Fairy tales but I can't find the little mermaid anywhere in here. Was it originally called something else? If so, what?

Answer 1

Anderson wrote The Little Mermaid.  Beware!  She dies in the original version.  It's not the happy story you may be expecting, but you were looking through Grimm's Fairy Tales, so I'm guessing your expectations for happiness weren't high.

Answer 2

You can find a translation of the original Grimm's fairy tale The Little Mermaid here

http://www.yankeeweb.com/library/storyti...



For The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen

(1836) see

http://hca.gilead.org.il/li_merma.html

Answer 3

Hans Christian Anderson was the author.  His home town put a statue of the Little Mermaid up in his honor!

Answer 4

perhaps try Hans Christian Anderson?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_...

The following might put you on to the track of some older (and often darker) memaid type stories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie

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I wonder if it is a retworking/merging of the mythology surrounding Aphrodite...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite

Answer 5

The Little Mermaid was originally written by Hans Christian Anderson, not the Grimm brothers. He is a Danish writer from the early 1800s.

Answer 6

i have never heard of that being in Grimms but maybe someone else made it. look up dark fairytales + little mermaid. you should find soemthing OR it was never made! good luck. let me know if you find one. I'd liek to read it!

Answer 7

Despite Lightningelementals helpful link, the fact is there is no Grimm's version of the Little Mermaid. (That website she links also catalogues several other non-Grimm tales as being by them, such as the story of Ali Baba which is actually from the Arabian Nights.)

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were German folklorists who collected local folk legends for posterity. They published their various fairytale collections about 20-30 years before the story of the Little Mermaid became known.

Hans Christian Andersen, author of other famous fairytales like Thumbelina and The Snow Queen, wrote The Little Mermaid from his own imagination. It was originally called "Den lille havfrue" in Danish, and printed in 1837.