The Witcher saga, as with Sapkowski's other works, draws heavily from existing folktales and literature. Below are some examples.
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Cinderella[ | ]
“
Last winter Prince Hrobarik, not being so gracious, tried to hire me to find a beauty who, sick of his vulgar advances, had fled the ball, losing a slipper.
”
— pg(s). 127, The Last Wish (UK edition)
Hansel and Gretel / Baba Yaga[ | ]
“
They told me about a black annis who has its hideout somewhere in these woods, a little house on a chicken-claw tripod.
”
— pg(s). 125, The Last Wish (UK edition)
The Pied Piper of Hamelin[ | ]
“
Do you remember? And the ratcatchers with pipes? Everybody was fighting over their services. But they were finished off by alchemists and their effective poisons and then domesticated ferrets and weasels...
...The ratcatchers... Well, you'd better not copy them, because they, to a man, took to drink and went to the dogs.
”
— pg(s). 161, The Last Wish (UK edition)
Rumpelstiltskin[ | ]
In the short story "A Question of Price":
“
Remember Zivelina, who became the Queen of Metinna with the help of the gnome Rumplestelt, and in return promised him her first-born? Zivelina didn't keep her promise when Rumplestelt came for his reward and, by using magic spells, she forced him to run away. Not long after that, both she and the child died of plague.
”
— pg(s). 140, The Last Wish (UK edition)
The Six Swans[ | ]
In the short story "The Sword of Destiny", we hear that the baron Freixenet once suffered a curse very similar to that in the Grimm fairytale "The Six Swans". Further, Geralt tells of how the tale has changed through retelling to become even more like the original fairytale.
Snow White / The Snow Queen[ | ]
“
Aridea quite often turned to Mirror—
With the usual question, I take it, interrupted Geralt. "Who is the fairest of them all?" I know; all Nehelenia's Mirrors are either polite or broken.
”
— pg(s). 87, The Last Wish (UK edition)
“
Then, four years later I received news form Aridea. She's tracked down the little one, who was living in Mahakam with seven gnomes whom she'd managed to convince it was more profitable to rob merchants on the roads than to pollute their lungs with dust from the mines. She was known as Shrike because she liked to impale the people she caught on a sharp pole while they were still alive. Several times Aridea hired assassins, but none of them returned. Well it then became hard to find anyone to try — Shrike had already become quite famous.
”
— pg(s). 88, The Last Wish (UK edition)
Arthurian legend[ | ]
- Too numerous to list, notably relating to Ciri