Romola Davenport

Berhardina Midderigh-Bokhorst and Smith’s Fine Arts Publishing N.V. – The Hague. Hansel and Gretel (1937). Image credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.

In the story of Hansel and Gretel, a famine drives a father to abandon his children in the woods, where they discover a house made of gingerbread and a cannibal witch. In the Magic Porridge Pot tale, a young girl forced by poverty to search for food in the woods and hedgerows is given a magic pot that produces abundant staple food on command.

These types of stories about hunger and famine abound in the folklore of most European societies, and embody folk memories of food scarcity. However, as the historian John Walter noted, these tropes are curiously absent from English fairy tales. Why? 

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