Fairy Tale Fix

It's Irish fairy tale month (AKA the best time of the year)! Abbie reads an old Irish folk tale that's sure to bring a happy tear to your eye with The Spinners of Blessings. Then we take a sharp turn with Kelsey's dark Irish folk tale, The Abhartach, thought to be the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

This week on Fairy Tale Fix, the horrors persist but so do we! Because we have to. Kelsey follows up on her promise to deliver some Chinese dragons in The Four Dragons, and then reads a short, truly WTF Chinese fairy tale The Magic Cask. Abbie reads a beautiful Russian tale we've both heard of but knew nothing about–The Princess and the Firebird.

Happy Lunar New Year! Abbie celebrates the onset of the Year of the Horse (her people!) with telling the tale of how the Chinese Zodiac came to be in the first place, followed up with a timeless horse trope here on Fairy Tale Fix with The Girl With The Horse’s Head (another excellent Chinese fairy tale). Kelsey follows up with another great FTF staple involving rich people being in hell: The Fiddler in Hell.

We're back from our winter break to start off 2026 with a couple of fairy tales our wonderful listeners suggested! Kelsey reads the Japanese tale, The Cat's Elopement, and it's as adorable as you'd imagine. Next she regales the Portuguese fairy tale, The Enchanted Maiden, and it's not exactly the story our listener suggested and we're sorry. Abbie cold-reads an absolutely delightful German tale from Schleswig-Holstein that follows an old woman minding her own business before heading to bed called One, Two, Three.

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Come gather around the yule log and listen to some holiday tales: one with a big dose of colonialism (boo) before our favorite sad bisexual Victorian boy (yay!), Hans Christian Andersen brings the mood up for a change. Abbie tells a Mexican Christmas story about the poinsettia, or as we shall call it henceforth, cuetlaxōchitl (kwet-lah-SHO-shee-tl). Kelsey closes out 2025 with HCA's new year's tale, The Twelve Who Came by Mail, followed by The Snail and the Rosebush as a reminder to all of us to keep blooming and pay those who refuse no mind. Happy Holidays and see you next year!