Collectors of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, guardians of folk stories
A pair of German scholar brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Rigorous philologists by trade, they set out to rescue the vanishing oral folk tales, traveling the countryside to gather and set them down as Children’s and Household Tales — Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, mostly fixed and handed down in the forms we know from here. They let the folk wisdom once passed only by the fireside be set down and preserved with gravity, becoming a shared childhood for all humanity.
The Grimms realized that the tales old people told children were disappearing with each passing generation. So they recorded them one by one, as if rescuing relics. It was this scholars’ resolve that kept Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White from fading with the age, and sent them instead into the dreams of every child in the world.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.