This cartoon comes from Sandman, #50 (Ramadan).

Who doesn’t love fairy tales? We all have our childhood favorites — mine were Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel. Oh, and Snow White! I would collect images (picture books, View Master slides — remember them?? — the Disney movies) of the characters, especially the witches in each of those tales. The saga of Baba Yaga stories were also great sources of witch-lore as well. But what if you could meet the real Hansel and Gretel? Or Rapunzel? Or the real Sleeping Beauty? Did you ever imagine there was an historical kernel underneath the stories that enchanted and bewitched us as children? Fairy tales are often the sanitized or watered-down version of ancient mythology but they are just as often the slightly embroidered accounts of real events.

Lauren Davis has a great post about real people or incidents that may have given birth to commonly told favorite fairy tales. Read her blog here. The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Fantasy is also a great source of information like this.