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Excerpt: I realized that maybe fairy tales and I are a perfect match: those Disney endings where the prince and the princess end up blissfully married don�t really happen in the original stories. To make sure kids go home happy, not horrified, Disney usually has to alter the endings. Read on for the original endings to a couple of Disney classics (and some more obscure tales).

8 Fairy Tales and Their Not-So-Happy Endings

Gosh have you brought back memories Lisa.

Despite a great deal of strong opposition, I refused to read my sons the tales of Brothers Grimm when they were small because they had horrified me as a child. Beautifully written they may have been, but unnecessarily cruel and frightening they certainly were, even for my long ago generation of children.

Much later, when seeing some 'sanitised' Disney type versions with the boys, it brought back memories of those sleepless nights.

Children must have been a lot tougher 'way back then' I imagine, otherwise how could the tales have survived, and been popular, throughout the centuries.

Nope, was not a perfect match for these tales, and thank goodness, because the guilt factor about depriving the boys of 'classics' was strong, found later that many parents had had the same experiences and dealt with them the same way.

I was never a fan of Disney and their "happily-ever-after" endings... even as a child I think I was too cynical to buy into that ;-) Now, I think I still love the original Brothers Grimm stories and "real" folktales because they really show that not every little girl is a princess, not all the endings are fair and there's very, very rarely a fairy godmother that comes along and hands you everything you want.

I suppose it's a matter of what you want in a story... but I've always been oddly attracted to the dark and the gritty.

One of the most amazing re-tellings of a fairy tale I've ever read is Neil Gaiman's version of Snow White -- Snow, Glass, Apples. The "wicked" stepmother tells her side of the story -- it's an absolutely brilliant piece.

Debra, I have to admit that I, too, am a fan of the not-so-happy endings of the original Grimm's fairy tales, though I never did read the originals to my children while they were little. Once they were older, I bought a book, Grimm's Grimmest, that contained the original versions of many of their tales. I really want to read the original French version of Hansel and Gretel, but it isn't available online anywhere and a hard copy of the book the tale is in is really expensive. I will have to find Neil Gaiman's version of Snow White. That sounds interesting.

I'm not fond of the Disney versions, but I do like the new Gram's Fairy Tales. I think they are cute. And they aren't meant to be scary at all. I don't think there is any way possible for those tales to make any child have nightmares.

Yes, Francine, I imagine children long, long ago when these tales were written could handle how horrifying and gruesome they were much better than our 'modern' children. Parents probably told them to their children to encourage them to behave and keep them out of danger.

Wow. Awesome work Lisa! I never knew these happy-ever-after stories had such gory beginnings (Cinderella).