Fairy Tales & Fables

For this blog post I read a fairy tale and a fable. A fairy tale can easily be described as containing magic and or a magical character such as people, fairy godmothers or other magical beings who come and help in some way or form. A fable is a short story, typically with animals and characters that conveys a moral.

I read Rumpelstiltskin from the book Fearie Tales by Stephen Jones. Rumpelstiltskin is a fairytale that was collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of Children’s and Household Tales. This was one of my favorite stories in elementary school and I still love to read it. It is about a miller who wanted to make himself appear important to the king by telling him that his beautiful daughter could spin straw into gold. The king told the miller to bring her and told her that if she didn’t spin the straw into gold by the morning, that she must die. A little man (magical character) then came into her room and offered to spin the straw into gold in exchange for something. The king once again wanted more and said that if she succeeded then he’d make her his wife. The little man then asked for her first born in exchange to spin more straw into gold and she agreed. The little man then came back once she had a child and he told her that if she figured out his name in three days, she could keep her child. The queen was able to learn his name, Rumpelstiltskin.

I also read The Fox and the Crow from a book of Aesop’s Fables. It is about a crow who is sitting on a tree eating a piece of cheese when then comes a fox and begins to flatter the crow which makes her drop the cheese from her mouth and the fox snatches it up and walks away laughing. Unlike fairy tales, fables teach us a lesson. The moral of this story would be not to believe everything you hear, not everyone has your best interest at heart. The fox wasn’t trying to be nice, he just wanted the piece of cheese the crow had. When comparing fairy tales and fables we notice that fables are much shorter stories than fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin in Fearie Tales did not have any illustrations and The Fox and the Crow did have one black and white drawn illustration. Another difference between fairy tales and fables is that fairy tales have a happy ending while fables do not. One similarity I did notice between fairy tales and fables is that they usually have a problem at the beginning of the story.