As discussed in The Evolution section, tales are edited and adapted over time for varying audiences. The tale is also influence by the author and his/her experiences therefore changing the tone or even plot of the tale at times to coincide with the author’s perspective.
To explore how adaptions work, I read and compared Lang’s East of the Sun and West of the Moon in the Blue Fairy Book to Hallett and Karasek’s version. Lang’s version was from 1914 while the modern day version taught in 2014 to university students is dated 2009. With almost a 100 years in between the books, I assumed there would be at least a slight variation between the two. To my surprise, both versions of the tale appear to be identical.
Lang, 1914.
Collected by Hallett and Karasek, 2009
Author of version above: Asbjornsen and Moe
Though it may be difficult to read, these two different books published almost a century apart, contain the same version of the the tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The font and layout of the tale is slightly different but the content, plot and characters both mirror each other. These tales are identical and represent the power of freezing a folktale or fairy tale in print. Because the tale was permanently recorded, it survived the torment of time and avoided adaptions. The tale could not be misheard or interpreted because it was not told in an oral capacity but a literary one. Arguably if this tale was not frozen in print, the version told today would most certainly be different than Lang’s as it is incredibly difficult, bordering impossible to retell a story the same way every time is it told.
This comparison does not prove that they are not other versions of East of the Sun and West of the Moon froze in print floating around the globe. It just supports the notion of preserving tales in print increases the likelihood it will not be altered in the future.