The Girl Who Married A Ghost

When I was little, I had this massive book of old fairy tales.  One of my favourites; The Girl Who Married A  Ghost,  had two different versions.

In the first version, the girl is a very greedy girl who marries a prince. She's taken then to live with the prince and his people in what turns out to be a small island in the middle of nowhere. Everything is fine at first, then the couple go to bed, the wedding party drunkenly asleep on the floor beside them. When she wakes up, she finds herself surrounded by skeletons and piles of bones. Fleeing, she ends up on the beach with nothing but broken rowboats around her. As the sun goes down, her husband and a few of his brothers come to find her. He's angry because according to him, his bride nearly broke his neck when she ran from the bed and stepped on one of his brothers, breaking his ribs. She is forced to stay with him, sleeping in the day and only being up at night when everyone is normal. Soon, they have a baby and on their visit back to her village to see her family, her mother who is told not to touch the baby's dipper, touches the baby's dipper. To the mother's horror, the baby is only human from the chest up and totally skeleton the rest of him. The bride then has to return to the island with her husband never to see her mother or family again.

The moral being not to be greedy and to look before you leap.

The second version had the girl written as being very plain. Which, is a nicer supposed way of saying ugly. And she's at a ball, where the prince is unhappy with most of the pretty girls. He comes to the plain girl, and while talking to her, is enchanted by her honesty. Picking her, he tells her that if they are to marry, she would be unable to see her family for a full year. She agrees, simply happy to have someone willing to marry her. Here the story is pretty much the same as the other version, she goes to the island and wakes to find herself stranded with the skeletons and broken boats. The prince tells her at nightfall that if they live together for a year, she will help to break a curse. She ends up having a baby, and they decide to visit her family. Again like the other version, she tells her mother not to unwrap the baby from his blankets/dippers. The mother doesn't listen, and when she discovers the skeleton baby, the girl freaks out, informing her mother that she's ruined their chances of  breaking the curse. She then leaves and can never return to her village.

The moral being to have faith, and keep your promises.

I can't remember where the two versions of the stories originated from. But I find it strange that they were as similar as they were, without being completely identical.   This story always to me, seemed like a vampire story, which is one of the main reasons I was drawn to it as a kid.

I was babysitting, and stuck watching Disney cartoons earlier during the week, and it made me think about how sanitary all the fairy tales have become.  Stories that were originally told to keep people from doing harm, from living anything other then an honest and decent life, have become sugary sweet stories put to music.
The Girl Who Married A Ghost, has a lot in common with the traditional Beauty and the Beast story. Which could be another reason I always felt drawn to it.