Austin Hair wrote:

On 9/17/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

Think about this fairy tale about this girly with a red riding hood.. She may have been eaten by the wolf but it was the wolf that ended up down in the well with a belly full of stones.

The Dutch must tell a different version of this story; the one I grew up with ends with a woodsman laying the wolf open with an ax. (The wolf in our version was also a communist.)

European versions of fairy tales do indeed often vary from their American counterparts. There's a tendency toward more ambiguity and some things get edited to leave out the more unsettling bits. Children's books and Disney versions are particularly responsible for this; more faithful interpretations can be found with a little effort.

--Michael Snow