Anon lived in West Africa for a long time. Was friends with a big local family, and invited to go to a big on-the-beach public celebration. During the event, their pre-teen daughter disappeared. The family was frantic, and when the daughter was at long last found, they all yelled/screamed/lectured her severely that the "Mami-Wata" might have taken her away permanently.

Mami-Wata there is said to be a goddess/ruler of the sea, with good and bad elements like the Indian goddess Kali. It struck me how they never said a thing about kidnapping or human traffickers or assorted types of assault, but there are all kinds of scary stories about Mami-Wata.

So about fairytales. There are not very many happy-go-lucky tales to be found. Most of them have some kind of severe situation or hardship involved and bad characters: wicked stepmothers, evil sisters/brothers, wicked witches/kings/queens, and then the murderous secrecy of Bluebeard. It seems to me that these tales teach children about the horrors possible in the world, without pointing fingers directly at any family or person, and it gives them a framework for terrible things that could happen and how it might happen (i.e., being told to keep a secret), without scaring the bejeebers out of them at such an early age.

I don't see any stories like that for children today. It's all been sanitized to remove violence/abuse, "anachronistic beliefs" and "historical racism/antisemitism". I believe we've done a huge disservice to our children by allowing that to happen and not reading them the traditional stuff. You can even throw in the benefit of these tales teaching problem-solving skills, persistence, courage, and moral values like helping the unfortunate and elderly, doing good deeds, etc.

In his interesting forecasts for our future, Clif High sometimes talks about a global return to ancestral cultural traditions, and I hope traditional fairytales and folktales will be part of this.