This week on Myths and Legends, it's the original story of Hansel and Gretel, where we will

learn a trick for cutting your family's grocery bill in half.

Which that's actually a sad joke for the Hansel and Gretel story.

And we'll see that bread walls and cake roofs are in no way up to code.

The creature this time is Crazy Straw Vampire Santa.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 163.

Crumble.

This is a podcast where I tell stories from mythology and folklore.

Some are incredibly popular stories you think you know, but with surprising origins.

Others are stories that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen.

Today's story is one of the incredibly famous ones.

And I did a brief version of it on the member show, but then I had someone recommended

to me and I took a deeper look into the original.

And honestly, I really got into it.

I never realized it, but Hansel and Gretel is set in a very real historical time period.

And while there's some obvious and fun fairy tale ridiculousness, there's a human element

that kind of hooked me.

Of course, today's episode was collected by the Grim Brothers, published in the early

1800s.

As opposed to most fairy tales though, I'm grounding this one pretty solidly in early

14th century Europe.

And we'll start with a woodcutter finding something unexpected in the trees.

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