What modern mother hasn't cringed at the pink and passive fairy tale princesses served up to her impressionable girl? The Disney versions of Snow White and Cinderella, Belle and Rapunzel are heroines of such vapid foolishness one wonders how they survived into the 21st century. The answer is that they are rooted in a tenacious and remarkably unaltered cultural tradition, the fairy tales first published two centuries ago by the Brothers Grimm. The fifty iconic tales in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen collection feature a parade of weak, disobedient heroines whose errors draw down harsh punishment, and an equally noteworthy succession of heroic boys. Numerous studies in recent decades have found the 19th century social world they portray so unremittingly sexist that some leading folklorists warn against reading them to children at all. This is why the discovery of a huge new trove of unedited German fairy tales is nothing short of a revelation. These tales, only of few of which were published in the 1850s, were collected in the Upper Palatinate region of Germany by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, a scholar intent on preserving the rapidly vanishing folk wisdom of his region. What they reveal, in abrupt contrast to the Brothers Grimm, is an equal-opportunity world where the brave and clever children are as likely to be girls as boys, and the vulnerable, exploited youths are not just princesses, but princes. We meet here the male counterpart of the badly behaved princess in the Grimms' Frog King, forced to keep a promise to let a repellent toad into her bed. In Schönwerth's version, he is a boy named Jodl who, equally repelled, must repay the toad's kindness the same way. Snow White's repudiation by a wicked stepmother is countered by Schönwerth's story of King Goldenlocks, who too is initially banished to the forest to be slain by a hunter, who must return with his lungs, finger and heart.

Clever, resourceful girls also make an appearance. The Three Princesses tells the story of sisters enslaved by a witch, the youngest of whom saves an unsuspecting prince in an ingenious way. Grabbing a sword, she magically turns herself into a lake, which the old witch sucks down. The princess slashes her way out of the witch's belly and claims her prince.

Inspired by the Grimms' first publication in 1812, Schönwerth trekked to remote villages and hearths to collect these oral tales. After his book of folk sayings and legends, including a few fairy tales, was published in 1857, Jacob Grimm himself praised the Bavarian's “careful, comprehensive collecting and fine ear.” Indeed, scholars say, what is most striking is their authenticity. These tales are “fresh, unlicked,” says Erika Eichenseer, the folklorist who unearthed them “by heaps,” forgotten among Schönwerth's papers in the Regensburg historical archive. Maria Tatar, a fairy tale expert at Harvard University, concurs. Nearly all collections, especially the Grimms, were edited to reflect the morals of the day, she says. Schönwerth's, by contrast, are “raw, not cooked.”

“He helps us see the degree to which the Grimms were selective in terms of gender, favoring stories about beautiful persecuted heroines and bold heroes,” Ms Tatar says. Ms Eichenseer agrees: “There's hardly any sign of all the pretty little princesses, and not a trace of the scolding lifted finger.”