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",
Fairy tale fairy tale motifs, the genres are now regarded as distinct. The fairy tale, told orally, is a sub-class of the folktale. Many writers have written in the form of the fairy tale. These are the literary fairy tales, or "Kunstmärchen". The oldest forms, from "Panchatantra" to the "Pentamerone", show considerable reworking from the oral form. The Brothers Grimm were among the first to try to preserve the features of oral tales. Yet the stories printed under the Grimm name have been considerably reworked to fit the written form. Literary fairy tales and oral fairy tales freely exchanged plots, motifs, and