Goldilocks And The Three Beers

 

Goldilocks And The Three Beers

If you haven’t yet heard this sobering story of a word lost in translation, brace yourself. It begins with a Frenchman named Charles Perrault (1628-1703), who founded the genre of fairy tales. Among his works were Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots and The Sleeping Beauty. And, of course, Cinderella. The original title of Cinderella was La Petite Pantoufle de Vair, or The Little Fur Slipper. However, somewhere along the line the sound of “vair” got confused with “verre,” which means glass. We’ve misconstrued a critical part of Perrault’s story ever since, telling our children and grandchildren the nonsensical detail that Cinderella actually wore glass (yes, glass!) slippers. Or maybe just one of them was glass; we can’t be sure that the one she continued to wear as she hobbled away from the Prince was also made of glass.

            We now see this mistake as correct. That leads me to ask, what else might we have got wrong? Take for example the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It’s conceivable that it was originally Goldilocks and the Three Beers. Perhaps she was given the choice of Heineken, Amstel and Miller Lite. Which one she chose isn’t known.

Another beverage-related option might be Goldilocks and the Three Bars, in which she goes on a pub crawl—an unsavory image for young children, so the story got sanitized. Or assuming that as in the Three Bears version, Goldilocks’ choice was indeed animal related, maybe the original was Goldilocks and the Three Boars. We can’t know for sure. Then, there’s the possibility that her encounter was with a trio of exceedingly dull people: Goldilocks and the Three Bores. Again, we can’t know.

            Next time we’ll consider why the original version of Baa Baa Black Sheep may have been Barber Black Sheep.

[300 words]