Morwen -- I've always loved fairy and folktales. But it wasn't until I was a freshmen in college, and took a survey course in the genre (going from Grimms at the "oral storytelling" end of the spectrum, to Michael Ende's The Neverending Story at the literary end of the spectrum), and was required to read them closely, and then discuss them in class, that I really realized there was so much meat there to chew on (or beans, if you're vegetarian ;-)). And definitely: combining stories together is a fantastic way to twist a tale. Are you familiar with the musical Into the Woods? That combines four Grimms Tales into a single play. This site has good translations of most of the Grimms' Tales as e-texts (and the translator has included the motif index number for each of them): The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales
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