Joshua Meyer

Professor Tanja Nusser

GRMN 2041

September 9, 2017

Molly Whuppie

As a young boy, this was one of my favorite fairy tale stories. Molly and her older two sisters

are left in the forest by their parents because they have too many children. The girls stumble upon a

house and are greeted by a woman who offers them shelter and food, but warns that her husband the

giant will be home any minute. While they are eating, the giant returns and the wife protects the

children, asking if they can spend the night. The giant agrees, and lets the girls sleep with his three

girls. He puts a rope around Molly and her sisters' necks, while putting a gold chain around his own

daughters' necks. During the night, clever Molly swaps the gold chain for the rope. Sure enough during

the night, the giant comes and beats his own daughters to death because they are wearing the rope, and

Molly and the three sisters escape (although the version I saw as a child was not so brutal). The sisters

then reach a kingdom, and relay their story to the king. He offers each of the daughters a son to marry,

because conveniently the king also has three sons. The condition, is that each of the daughters returns

and steals something of the giant's: a sword, a purse, and a ring. The two elder sisters are successful,

but Molly gets caught. She is put in a sack, and while the giant is gone, manages to trick the wife into

getting in the sack. When the giant returns, he accidentally beats the wife to death and Molly escapes

with the ring, eventually marrying the third prince.

The version I watched as a child, and my first introduction to this story, came from a Canadian

children's TV series called Mr. Piper. The title of the story was changed to Brave Molly, and was a

much less gruesome and deadly version of the tale. This story resonated with me as a kid, because it

showed Molly standing up to the giant and thinking fast in the face of fear. I was a somewhat fearful

child (afraid of spiders, dark basements, the forest at dark, etc.), and this was a story of a young child in
a bad situation overcoming fear to save her sisters. It contains many stereotypical fairy tale elements:

folkloric characters, royalty/poverty, good vs evil, and reoccurring patterns/numbers. The main evil is a

giant, the protagonist uses her wits to outsmart the evil, there is a king and princes, the daughters are

living in poverty after being abandoned by their parents, and the number three occurs multiple times

(sisters, giant's daughters, princes). There are also many common fairy tale motifs seen in the story:

cleverness/trickster, triumph of the poor, youngest vs oldest (Molly is the youngest yet saves her two

sisters), and the quest the king tasks the sisters with. You can find the episode of this story on YouTube

under Mr Piper Brave Molly.