Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding-Hood

Recorded in November 2019. Perrault published his Contes des Fées in 1697. This translation is taken from Lang’s celebrated Blue Fairy Book of 1889. That version, however, is merely a slightly edited and modernized form of Robert Samber’s original translation of 1729, in his work “Tales of Passed Times by Mother Goose,” a fact which is rarely or never mentioned in places which reproduce the text. The name is forgotten today, but his English silently became the foundation for all versions which followed.

The moral of this story, according to Perrault, is as follows:

“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.”