Colm O'Regan: Once upon a time... there was violence, cruelty and murder

Do you remember Stories for Eight Year Olds — and its companions, stories for under-fives, five-year-olds, six, going all the way up to the over-10s

Children's books edited by Sara and Stephen Corrin: 'These books are somewhere in your memory if you’re old enough to remember Sunday Night 'Glenroe' Fear.'

Sometimes children need to hear mad old stories. Like this one.

“… and Big Claus took the tether-peg mallet and hit Little Claus’s only horse on the forehead so that it tumbled down quite dead.”

This is the first death in Little Claus and Big Claus which is the first in Stories for Eight Year Olds by Sarah and Stephen Corrin. The cover of this book and its companions — stories for under-fives, five-year-olds, six, going all the way up to the over-10s — are somewhere in your memory if you’re old enough to remember Sunday Night Glenroe Fear.

Big Claus kills Little Claus’s horse because Little Claus annoyed him. By the end, the death toll is five horses, also skinned, one grandmother (natural causes, though she is attacked after death), one old man with a death-wish, and the villain, Big Claus. Three separate people have been swindled out of bushels of coin. The hero Little Claus has done some of the skinning, most of the killing and all the stealing.

I can’t remember Stories For Over 10s but the way it’s shaping up, I fully expect a story about two bungling assassin, one of whom quoting Ezekiel 25.13, two robbers who stop mid-armed-heist to threaten diners “they’ll execute every last *****king one of them”, and a washed up boxer who refuses to throw a fight, double-crosses a crime boss and ends up nearly sharing the fate of The Gimp.

Little Claus and Big Claus is one of Hans Christian Andersen's lesser known fairytales.

People didn’t even like it when it was first published. An anonymous 1836 Danish review said: “No one can reasonably claim that the respect of life among children is encouraged by the reading of episodes such as Big Claus killing his grandmother and Little Claus killing him.”

But the fact it made it into a collection of stories for eight-year-olds published in 1970 at least suggests stories about the willy-nilly biffing of horses on the head with a tether-mallet and their subsequent skinning demonstrates 'ah they were different times' even then.

Colm O'Regan: 'I don’t think such widespread horse-slaughter would pass now, not without significant moralising.' Picture: Nina Val, @nvksocial

I don’t think such widespread horse-slaughter would pass now, not without significant moralising.

The first children’s stories in history were just really lecturing children on good behaviour. The first novel for children is said to be Goody Two-Shoes, possibly written by our own Oliver Goldsmith. It’s a parable about a girl with one shoe who gets a second shoe from a wealthy gentlemen and spends the rest of her life telling everyone she has two shoes. Her reward is to marry a wealthy widower and live happily. The moral seems to be 'Be happy with one shoe, be grateful for two and you will make a better bride'.

The golden era of children's literature is said to be 1850 to 1920. That’s when Alice in Wonderland, Tom Sawyer, Peter Pan, Narnia and others came to light. Children are the heroes. There are evil adults. The lessons are more about not being afraid of adventure rather than grateful for having both feet shod. 

Then there are the tales of boys leaving England to have adventures in the colonies with scary foreigners. So 'golden age' also depends on your point of view.

These days, the choice is infinite — children can learn about the real world or fantasy, they can learn moral lessons or skills in killing zombies but in general Nearly Everyone is a Vampire. 

In future, judging by the chatter among the friend groups I know, the next four decades of books will be about Dress to Impress on Roblox. But that could just be a narrow view.

But wherever it ends up, I think we’ll still need a story about simpler times when men were men and slaughtered each other and their horses in minor local disputes. You’re never too young to learn that.