Bushy Bride and Mother Holle | The Lang Fairy Tales: The Red Fairy Book (1890)

For today's episode of the Lang Fairy Tales, we're proceeding on apace through the Red Fairy Book, and we've got another double bill of stories.

First up is the excellently named Bushy Bride, a Norwegian story which exploits the fairy tale obsession with very, very long noses - and has some very curious features. There is a charming dog called Little Snow, though!

We follow that on with Mother Holle, a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and included in their 1812 collection Kinder und Hausmarchen before the Langs got their hands on it. It includes legends about Mother Holda, or Frau Perchta, a winter spirit who lives in a well and has the power to make it snow - and teach powerful moral lessons too.

They're a surprisingly good pairing to compare and contrast! As ever, we discuss and analyse the stories and apply our Raven Ratings to them.

Launched in 2025 to help us bridge gaps between main series, we began by sharing readings from us of the iconic stories found in the Blue Fairy Book compiled by Andrew Lang. From the Red Fairy Book onwards, we have also spent time digging into the stories, their histories and relationships to tale types, and are engaged in an ongoing mission to celebrate the woman truly behind the 12 coloured fairy books – Andrew’s wife Leonora, whose impact on children’s literature and fantasy fiction cannot be understated.

About Three Ravens 🔮

Three Ravens is a completely independent English myth and folklore podcast where we share stories, celebrate folk culture, and fall backwards through the hedgerows of history.

Hosted by real-life couple Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, and mostly recorded at our home in rural Sussex in southern England, Three Ravens is rated 4.8/5 from over 500 reviews and has grown by word of mouth care of our lovely listener community ‘The Conspiracy of Ravens.’

We release three episodes a week, on Mondays, Thursday and Saturdays, through which we explore folktales, folkways, fairy stories, folk songs, mythology, local heritage, seasonal customs and traditional beliefs.

Our research inspires our retellings of stories from across history and culture, with episodes standing alone but connected together across over 500 chatty, mostly light-hearted, swear-free installments driven by passion, kindness and curiosity.

Now ranked as an all-time Top 5 podcast across several categories by Goodpods, charting in the Spotify, Apple and Rephonic UK Fiction Top 10 across 2024, 2025 and 2026, if you’re interested in ghosts, monsters, regional beliefs, and the things that unite us all, then join us round the campfire and listen in…

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