The document summarizes the fairy tale "Molly Whuppie" that the author enjoyed as a child. It describes the key plot points where Molly and her two sisters are abandoned and taken in by a giant's wife, but must escape when the giant returns. Through her cleverness, Molly is able to swap ropes and save her sisters from the giant. They later complete a quest for a king in return for marrying his sons. The author notes they first encountered this story on the Canadian TV show "Mr. Piper" and appreciated how it showed a young child overcoming fear.
The document summarizes the fairy tale "Molly Whuppie" that the author enjoyed as a child. It describes the key plot points where Molly and her two sisters are abandoned and taken in by a giant's wife, but must escape when the giant returns. Through her cleverness, Molly is able to swap ropes and save her sisters from the giant. They later complete a quest for a king in return for marrying his sons. The author notes they first encountered this story on the Canadian TV show "Mr. Piper" and appreciated how it showed a young child overcoming fear.
The document summarizes the fairy tale "Molly Whuppie" that the author enjoyed as a child. It describes the key plot points where Molly and her two sisters are abandoned and taken in by a giant's wife, but must escape when the giant returns. Through her cleverness, Molly is able to swap ropes and save her sisters from the giant. They later complete a quest for a king in return for marrying his sons. The author notes they first encountered this story on the Canadian TV show "Mr. Piper" and appreciated how it showed a young child overcoming fear.
The document summarizes the fairy tale "Molly Whuppie" that the author enjoyed as a child. It describes the key plot points where Molly and her two sisters are abandoned and taken in by a giant's wife, but must escape when the giant returns. Through her cleverness, Molly is able to swap ropes and save her sisters from the giant. They later complete a quest for a king in return for marrying his sons. The author notes they first encountered this story on the Canadian TV show "Mr. Piper" and appreciated how it showed a young child overcoming fear.
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
