The Sharp Grey Sheep The Sharp Grey Sheep The Sharp Grey Sheep or The Sharp-Horned Grey Sheep is a Scottish fairy tale collected by John Francis Campbell in "Popular Tales of the West Highlands", listing his informant as John Dewar, labourer, from Glendaruail, Cowal. It is Aarne-Thompson type 510A. See also "Rushen Coatie", a nearly identical Scottish version of the "Cinderella" tale. A king and queen had a daughter, but the queen died and the king married another. The stepmother was cruel to the princess and sent her to watch the sheep while not sending her enough food to survive. A sharp (horned) grey
Fairy tale Jean Chiriac argued for the necessity of the fantastic in these narratives. In terms of aesthetic values, Italo Calvino cited the fairy tale as a prime example of "quickness" in literature, because of the economy and concision of the tales. Originally, stories that would contemporarily be considered fairy tales were not marked out as a separate genre. The German term "Märchen" stems from the old German word "Mär", which means story or tale. The word "Märchen" is the diminutive of the word "Mär", therefore it means a "little story". Together with the common beginning "once upon a time" it means