Red Riding Hood’s First Ending

The story as it is told

A little girl is loved by everyone who looks at her, most of all by her grandmother, who gives her a cap of red velvet that suits her so well she will wear nothing else. One day her mother gives her cake and wine to take to her grandmother, who is ill and weak, and tells her to walk nicely and not run off the path. The grandmother lives out in the wood, half a league from the village, under three large oak-trees.

A wolf meets the girl, asks where she is going, and hears the whole plan. He tempts her to pick flowers and listen to the birds while he runs straight to the house, knocks, swallows the grandmother, puts on her clothes and cap, and lies in her bed with the curtains drawn. The girl, arriving at last, feels uneasy. "What big ears you have," she says, and then eyes, hands and mouth, until the wolf springs out of the bed and eats her too. Then he falls asleep and snores, and a passing huntsman cuts him open with scissors and both come out alive. They fill the wolf's belly with stones, and he cannot run away.

What we can confirm

"Le petit chaperon rouge" is the second tale in Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, avec des Moralitez, printed in Paris by Claude Barbin with the date 1697 on the title page. The book's royal privilege, given at Fontainebleau on October 28, 1696, was registered with the Paris printers' and booksellers' guild on January 11, 1697. Both the privilege and the dedication to "Mademoiselle" carry the name "P. Darmancour", a point the BnF catalogue notes. BnF Essentiels identifies him as Pierre Perrault d'Armancour, Charles Perrault's son, born 1678, and says his part in the book is attested; the father corrected the tales and added the verse morals.

The story runs from page 47 to page 56. The wolf does not dare eat the girl in the woods "à cause de quelques bucherons" (because of some woodcutters nearby). Those woodcutters never come back. At the grandmother's he devours the old woman "en moins de rien" (in no time), since he had not eaten in three days. The girl undresses and gets into bed with him. After the famous exchange, ending "c'est pour te manger" (that's to eat you), "ce méchant loup se jetta sur le petit chaperon rouge, & la mangea" (this wicked wolf threw himself on Little Red Riding Hood and ate her). That is the last line on page 55.

Page 56 is the "Moralité". Young girls, "belles, bien faites & gentilles", do wrong to listen to all sorts of people, and it is no wonder the wolf eats so many. Then the turn: not all wolves are alike. Some are "privez, complaisans & doux" (tame, obliging and sweet) and "suivent les jeunes Demoiselles / Jusque dans les maisons, jusque dans les ruelles" (follow young ladies into their houses, right up to their bedsides). "Mais hélas! qui ne sçait que ces loups doucereux, / De tous les loups sont les plus dangereux" (But alas, who does not know that these smooth-talking wolves are the most dangerous of all).

English readers had the moral early. The 1922 Harrap edition reprints Robert Samber's translation, which Charles Welsh's notes trace to an edition advertised in March 1729, moral included: "these simpering Wolves! Who does not see / Most dangerous of Wolves indeed they be?" At least one American school edition dropped it: the D.C. Heath edition translated by Welsh ends the tale at "ate her all up" and prints no morals.

The rescue came from Germany. The Grimms' 1812 first edition, tale no. 26 "Rothkäppchen", adds a "Jäger" (huntsman) who hears the wolf snoring, decides not to shoot, takes scissors and cuts open its belly. The girl jumps out, the grandmother follows, and they fill the wolf with stones. The Grimms' own note says they had found this tale, apart from their oral source, only in Perrault's "chaperon rouge" and in Ludwig Tieck's adaptation of it.

The facts

• Title page: "Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. Avec des Moralitez. A Paris, chez Claude Barbin... M. DC. XCVII"; table lists "Le petit chaperon rouge. p. 47". French Wikisource transcription of the 1697 first edition (scan on Commons from Gallica bpt6k10545223).
• Privilege: "Donné à Fontainebleau, le 28. Octobre 1696... Il est permis au Sieur P. Darmancour... Régistré sur le Livre de la Communauté des Imprimeurs & Libraires de Paris le 11. Janvier 1697." same.
• BnF catalogue: Paris, C. Barbin, 1697; "La dédicace à Mademoiselle est signée : 'P. Darmancour. Le privilège est au nom du même'"; frontispiece reads "Contes de ma mère Loye". BnF Catalogue général, notice cb31084290g (Réserve copy RES P-Y2-263).
• Pierre Perrault d'Armancour, third son, born 1678; participation "attestée et certaine"; father "corrected" and added the verse "moralités"; a 1695 anonymous manuscript copy of five of the prose tales (acquired by the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1953) is bound with the arms of Élisabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans, niece of Louis XIV and the book's dedicatee. BnF Essentiels, "Les Contes de Perrault".
• 1697 book "signée du nom de son jeune fils de dix-neuf ans"; son died 1700; Perrault died May 16, 1703. BnF Essentiels, "Charles Perrault en 20 dates".
• Text: wolf holds off "à cause de quelques bucherons"; eats grandmother "en moins de rien"; "ce méchant loup se jetta sur le petit chaperon rouge, & la mangea" ends p. 55. 1697 text and page scan (djvu pages 65-66).
• Moralité, p. 56, including "ces loups doucereux, / De tous les loups sont les plus dangereux". same.
• Samber English moral: "these simpering Wolves! Who does not see / Most dangerous of Wolves indeed they be?"; Harrap, London, "First published August 1922", illustrated by Harry Clarke. Gutenberg #29021.
• Welsh's note: earliest English is "Tales of Passed Times... Englished by R.S. Gent."; quotes Lang that "an English version translated by Mr. Samber" was advertised in March 1729. Gutenberg #17208 (D.C. Heath edition, publication year not printed in that text).
• Welsh/Heath text ends Red Riding Hood at "ate her all up" with no moral; no morals in that edition. Gutenberg #17208.
• Grimm 1812 no. 26: "Jäger"; "Da nahm er die Scheere und schnitt ihm den Bauch auf"; stones; note: "nirgends angetroffen, als bei Perrault (chaperon rouge) wonach Tiecks Bearbeitung". German Wikisource, Rothkäppchen (1812), pp. 113-118.

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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