The popular story of Hansel and Gretel that we all know sees two children lost in the forest and stumble across a house made out of gingerbread. The house is owned by a witch who catches and enslaves them while she prepares to eat them. They figure a way out and throw the witch in a fire. that might seem pretty violent for a child’s story, but the original French version took the violence to a new level.
In the original tale called The Lost Children, the witch is replaced with a devil. When the children try to escape, in pretty much the same way as the version we know, the devil figures it out and builds a saw horse to put one of the children on to bleed. The children pretend to not know how to get onto the saw horse, so the devil gets his wife to demonstrate it for them. While the devils wife is laying down the children slit her throat and escape. Told you it was violent.
