One of the more recent television series to utilize folk tales as a vehicle for the plotline is the ABC series Once Upon a Time that first aired in 2011. It brings in a variety of fairytale and folktale characters in an interesting story where fantasy characters are somehow transported into the real world and how the interact with normal society. Its main characters are often from more recent fairy tales, such as the ones that the Disney corporation has remade, but there are some more obscure and odd characters of folk tales that do find their way into some episodes.

Another interesting reference I wanted to touch on here was the character of Little Red Riding Hood as she appears in the series. In season 2 episode seven, the show exposes an interesting element of Red Riding Hood that is vastly different from the original folk tale. The original story presents Red Riding Hood as an innocent girl that is hunted by a malicious wolf. Yet, in the episode, Ruby, she has become the wolf. The series has the character actually a shape-shifting werewolf. In the episode, the townspeople find her in wolf form hiding from their wrath. She is almost killed for killing a man before she is saved by other townspeople and it is revealed that one of the town’s leaders killed the man and framed Ruby to try to make it look like a wolf.

Overall, this episode is interesting because it makes the character of the folk tale into the very creature that hunted her. It may be a signal that the wolf did eventually get Little Red Riding Hood at the end of the tale, even though he does not in most versions. It is an interesting interjection that combines innocence with power, making Red Riding Hood a more distinctive character than simply a little, innocent girl without any more depth to her character.

Source: “Child of the Moon.” Once Upon A Time. ABC. 2011.

For the last entry, I wanted to use a performance of a folktale that was close to me. This is a story my grandmother used to tell me when I was young. I do not know where it is written in a book or collection of short stories, as she used to tell be it verbally, memorized by heart. She used to tell my siblings, cousins, and I this story when we were staying over at her house for babysitting. It was a story she would often tell us around the time she was putting us to bed. I am going to recount her performance of the story from my memory for this collection.

In an ancient city in Iran, an old wood cutter and his daughter lived a humble life. The daughter, however, asked her father to get some extra dates to make cakes one day. So, the woodcutter went out again late, but could not find any dates. He came home and was disappointed, telling a man he met on the road. But the man explained that Friday nights are Holy nights (Shabbat) and that God would help the man if he helped others. However, he failed to heed the man’s advice. During the meantime, his daughter was chosen by the princess to be her hand maiden. Eventually, the princess claimed the daughter had stolen a necklace and soldiers came to look for her. Instead, the arrested the father who cursed himself for not doing charity on Friday nights like the man had told him to do. While in jail, the woodcutter was sad and lonely. He stopped a beggar boy and gave him some of the food that the jailer had given him. The boy was grateful, as he had not eaten that day. It was this little bit of charity that turned the woodcutter’s fate around because the next day the princess went back to the lake she swam in and found her necklace!

I remember my grandmother would always enunciate the ending part of the story that demonstrated how charity helps provide for others to be kind to you. In many ways, she was trying to install the importance of the Sabbath as well with the emphasis on Friday night being holy. Her voice was soft throughout the whole story until that ending bit where the necklace was found, and the woodcutter was freed. Interestingly, the moral is very similar to a few of the folktales added in this collection about how the energy one puts out into the world comes back to you, especially in the form of good works.