Folktales are one of the world's oldest forms of oral and written literature. Because such tales draw upon a number of motifs that tend to recur across both time and space, folklorists began cataloging these recurrences as types well over a century ago, an effort which continues to the present day:
One of the best known of these recurring motifs is Aarne-Thompson-Uther Type 333, known variously as Little Red Riding Hood, Little Red Cap, Little Red Hood, Little Red Hat, etc., depending upon the original source of the folktale. As the Gustave Dore illustration suggests...
...the story is simple but dramatic:
Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood.
One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter."
Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.
As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and talk to a wolf, said to him, "I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother."
"Does she live far off?" said the wolf
"Oh I say," answered Little Red Riding Hood; "it is beyond that mill you see there, at the first house in the village."
"Well," said the wolf, "and I'll go and see her too. I'll go this way and go you that, and we shall see who will be there first...."
Depending upon the source, other types of food, clothing, etc., enter the picture, but the moral is generally the same:
Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.
A moral for a child, or for a young woman approaching sexual maturity?
Barrels of ink have been spilled over Aarne-Thompson-Uther Type 333, which is why this particular folktale has so long been a favorite of book collectors. The tale's ambiguity has attracted an extraordinary range of artistic talent to illustrate it:
George Frederic Watts, the great Victorian Symbolist painter...
Walter Crane, one of Victorian England's greatest illustrators of children's books...
English Golden Age illustrator Millicent Sowerby...
Warwick Goble, better known for his Indian and Japanese-themed art...
And modern illustrators like UK comic artist Neal Evans...
And American pyrographist Tracy Sagalow:
Aside from figuring out whether one wants to collect all known variants and editions of the original tale...
...or maybe only illustrated editions of same...
...most book collectors face the additional question of whether or not they want to collect the many spin-offs to which Aarne-Thompson-Uther Type 333 has given rise:
Decisions, decisions....
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