“Is her house made out of gingerbread?”

“What?”

In hindsight, I can see how my question might have confused Heather.

“In Hansel and Gretel. Is the witch’s house made of gingerbread? Do they eat it?”

“I don’t remember them eating the house.”

The thing about fairy tales is they can start to blur together. We reached no consensus on what exactly set the witch on the young siblings in the woods. I was sure they had stumbled lost onto her edible home and begun eating it. Heather remembered something about Hansel using a chicken bone so the witch would not think he had fattened up enough to eat.

It’s just such a situation that benefits from owning a complete volume of the fairy tales by the brothers Grimm. I dug into the story.

Turns out, we were both right.

And if you think Grimm’s fairy tales are strange in their original form, you’re right about that, too.

Only seven pages long and weird, weird, weird. Maybe you remember this story better than I do. In the interest of full disclosure, these are the things I remembered about Hansel and Gretel before rereading it this week:

1. Kids eating the witch’s house
2. A witch
3. The witch is a bad witch
4. Someone pushes her into an oven

Things I did not remember:

1. The house is not actually gingerbread. That’s some other story, maybe. The house is actually, “built of bread, and roofed with cakes, and the window was of transparent sugar.” Maybe I’m splitting hairs. Sounds kind of like a gingerbread house.
2. This is also the story with the breadcrumbs. You know, leaving a trail to follow home…
3. The kids need to leave a trail in the first place because they overheard a plot to abandon them far out in the forest and Hansel is a problem-solver.
4. The bread crumbs are eaten by birds and the trail disappears.
5. Which is too bad because the first time, the trick worked. That’s right, this happens to Hansel and Gretel TWICE!
6. Their step-mother (isn’t it always the step-mother?) wants to be rid of them because the family is always short on food. The first time, Hansel drops pieces of flint that show up in the moonlight and they follow them home. Step-mom foiled.
7. The witch makes her house of deliciousness to lure young children because that is what she prefers to eat. Even surrounded by all manner of pastries and breads. Grubby children lost in the forest. Creepy. But, as far as tales you tell to keep kids from wandering off into the forest go, I guess it gets the point across.
8. It’s Gretel who pushes the witch into the oven, shuts the door, and has the sense to bar the oven door, as well.
9. By the time the siblings wander back home (having crossed a stream on a duck’s back, by the way), their step-mother is dead and they and their father (much aggrieved at having succumbed to the abandonment plan) live, it would seem, happily ever after. All she wrote, right?
10. The end of the fairy tale is a strange, sing song-y little poem so unrelated to the events of the story as to appear a non sequitur. It’s about catching a mouse and making a big fur cap out of it. Mice were bigger in fairy tale times… Maybe something is lost in translation from the original German.

I think it could prove fruitful to distil the lessons young children might expect to take from such a tale. Consider this my favor to children and their parents.

1. If you live in the forest or expect you might be abandoned in one, keep bits of flint handy and hope for a full moon.
2. Don’t leave a trail of bread. I mean, really, use your head.
3. Ask yourself a question. Have you ever seen a house made completely of bread and treats? No? Never? Probably don’t eat one if you find it then. Certainly don’t go inside when the red-eyed witch invites you to live with her.
4. In summation:
   1. Ducks who help you cross a stream = good.
   2. Witches who fatten you up to eat you = bad.
   3. Step-mothers who abandon you in the forest, (twice) = bad.
   4. Resourcefulness is as good as luck.
   5. Stranger danger.