“Once Upon A Time” has become a staple opening phrase in fairy tales
Once Upon A Time – Many fairy tales have this standard opening line and here is the reason why this popular phase has been used over and over again.
Stories, especially fairy tales feature similar storylines, somehow. They are filled with adventures of the antagonist, the life of a princess with a charming prince, the battle against evil and wicked witches, and the true love’s kiss.
Around the globe, stories somehow uses similar phrase with the famous “once upon a time.” Based on the article in Mental Floss, Finnish fairy tales usually starts with “olipa kerran” or “once there was”. In Afrikaans, it is the “eendag lang, lang gelede” or “one day long, long ago”.
Why do fairy tales begin with “once upon a time”?
This phrase did not appear it is full form at once. A similar expression can be read in The Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Juliene (The Life and the Passion of Saint Juliana). This was dated 1225. The story was preceded by two short introductory paragraphs but it basically started with “Wes i thon time, as the redunge telleth” or “In that time, as the legend tells”.
It became a little more familiar during the 14th century. In the poem Sir Ferumbras set during Charlemagne’s rule of France and published around 1380, the phrase Onys y wiste oppon a day popped up. In “The Knight’s Tale” from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, there was a phrase that stated, “ones on a tyme.”
From that, the phrase has become the staple opening line of many fairy tales. It was already widely used in the beginning of stories during the 1500s. The saying was popular enough to be satirized by the end of the century.
The satirical play The Old Wives’ Tale of George Peele in 1595 featured this line, “Once vppon a time there was a King or a Lord, or a Duke that had a faire daughter, the fairest that euer was; as white as snowe, and as redd as bloud.”
This beginning phrase was even solidified when the first English translations of famous fairy tales from Continental Europe was released. In Robert Samber’s 1729 translation of Charles Perrault’s 1695 fairy tale collection, the French phrase il était une fois which literally means “there was one time” was translated into English as “once upon a time.” This goes with other fairy tales from other countries.