Donor (fairy tale) by Giambattista Basile. In the Grimm Brothers' variant of "Cinderella", the protagonist is aided not by her fairy godmother but by her dead mother, as is the heroine of the Finnish variant, "The Wonderful Birch". A great variety of other figures may also take this place. In "Vasilissa the Beautiful", the heroine is aided by a wooden doll that her dying mother had given her; in "Rushen Coatie", by a red calf sent to her by her dead mother, a calf that can continue to aid her after its death; in "Katie Woodencloak" by a mysterious dun bull; in "Tattercoats",
The Witch (fairy tale) she could not force her way through it. They found their father again and he drove the stepmother out of the house. The Witch (fairy tale) "The Witch" is a Russian fairy tale. Andrew Lang included it in "The Yellow Fairy Book". A version of the tale, under the title "The Twins and the Snarling Witch", appears in "A Book of Witches" by Ruth Manning-Sanders. A poor widower with twin children, a girl and a boy, remarried. The stepmother had several more children and mistreated the twins. Finally, she told them she was sending them to her grandmother in the