No doubt most of those who post here must have read at least some of Neil's work and, if so, have most likely come across the old fairy-tales and fables that have been long since lost or re-writen to soften their impact on the poor fragalentile minds of todays youthes.

What I'd like to know is if anyone can help point me in the right direction to get hold of some of the old stories, the Pre-Perrault versions of European tales, the old chinese or Japanese myths and fables, Arabian and Indian stories we may not have heard of.

Ideally if you know any fables yourself please post them and share the stories you know.

There's not really such a thing as an unedited fairy tale. As soon as someone tells a story, they set their mark on it, but I think I sort of get what you're going for.

Really, it's hard to go wrong with the 1000 Nights stories. There are some fabulous translations out there and they're as close to the original stories as you're likely to find.

My favourite Native American folklore book is at work, on my desk, and I forget the title. I'll post up an Amazon link here when I can. It's a recording of tales told directly to the editors, or transcribed from old recordings. There's a lot of griping about white folk that made it past the final cut.

I hope someone else can post a link to some good versions of the Japanese and Chinese fables because I haven't found something this Occidental can understand.

Through Neil's recommendation, I got The Classic Faery Tales, by Iona and Peter Opie. It's more essay-like, rather than a mere collection, in that for each story they include they talk about the different versions of it, possible origins, stages of edition... I'd totally recommend it.

Also, you can still get the Grimms's stories as they first published them (I seem to remember that Amazon has at least one of such editions called Grimm's Grimmest). The Grimms edited them themselves each printing, but the first versions are, in theory, as they were told.

And two other recommendations:

Celtic Faery Tales by Joseph Jacobs has some very grim stories -but if you want to chekc this, make sure you get an edition with the full content. Often you get one with only a bunch of the more famous stories, which is a shame.

I once bought one from a cheap thrift bookstore and can't remember the publisher well, although I'm pretty sure it was Senate (paperback edition, coarse paper). It was called simply "Scottish fairy tales" and it has a number of stories that are, in different versions, basically the story of Cinderella, Snow white and Sleeping Beauty, among others, most of them really bloody. (Edited: Removed link, as that wasn't the edition I was talking about.)
I recommend this book VERY strongly.

And finally, one of my favourite books of all time: Afanasiev's folk tales. Afanasiev is the Russian Grimm Brothers (in one person, that is). He collected tales as people told them, and you can read a thousand versions of the same story in different ways in the most thorough editions of his work. Surprisingly, there too you can find "alternative" versions of the most common tales. And, I have to say, Russian folk tales are the saddest, cruelest I've ever read. (Where you can read things like: "..and then the two handsome princes were taken by grief by their sister's death, and they shed bitter tears and said goodbye to each other, and then they held hands and they jumped from the window, and their bodies shattered against the sharp rocks underneath and they died instantly")
Which is why I love them

Look for The Mabinogion, a collection of fairy tales, folk tales and myths dating from the 13th century. They are derived from the Welsh oral tradition, and include the first versions of the Arthur and Merlin stories.