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Historic Children’s Fairy Tales That Will Haunt Your Nightmares

Fairy tale image of boy getting thumbs cut off by man with giant scissors
Little Suck-A-Thumb gets his thumb scissored off. Heinrich Hoffman (1845 ed.). Public domain.
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The Revenge of the Fitcher’s Bird

Fairy tale illustration of woman in a bird costume escapes an evil man
Arthur Rackham illustrates the dramatic escape in Fitcher’s Bird (1917). Public domain.

The sister’s eggs are covered in blood, as they dropped them when they saw the basement horrors.  The man saw the bloody eggs as evidence of their disobedience and killed them.  But their sister, who had set her egg down in another room, puts their bodies back together, brings them back to life, and hides them in a gold basket.

She asks the man to bring the basket to her father as a gift, which he does, as her clean egg showed her loyalty and obedience. While he’s gone, she dons a bird costume and escapes the house.  She puts a skull in the window to make it appear she is at the wedding feast.  When the man gathers his friends for the wedding.  The girl, her reanimated sisters, and their father trap them in the house.  They set it on fire and watch as the group burns to death.

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