Tea at Trianon: The Earliest Little Red Riding Hood Tale

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 26, 2023

The Earliest Little Red Riding Hood Tale

From Medievalists:

The tale of Little Red Riding Hood has a long history to it – first printed by Charles Perrault in the late 17th century and the Brothers Grimm in the nineteenth. However, the earliest known version of the story actually dates back to the 11th century.

Between the years 1010 and 1026, Egbert, a cleric who taught in the town of Liege wrote a book for the young students in his classroom. The work he created is called The Well-Laden Ship, which retells various proverbs, fables and folktales. It was designed to teach grammatical rules and give moral lessons to the students.

Egbert explains that he wrote the book “not for those who are already perfected to manly strength by careful attentive reading, but for those timid little boys still subject to discipline in school; so that, when their teachers are absent, while that band of youths is babbling to one to one another certain ditties (though none of them to any purpose) in order to sharpen somewhat their meagre talent by practicing and frequently chanting those little verses, at such times they might rather use these.” (Read more.)