Rushen Coatie Rushen Coatie Rushen Coatie or Rashin-Coatie is a Scottish fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in his "More English Fairy Tales". It is Aarne–Thompson type 510A, the persecuted heroine, as is Cinderella. A queen with a daughter died. On her deathbed, she told her daughter that a red calf would come to her, and she could ask it for help. The king remarried, to a widow with three daughters, and the stepmother and stepsisters maltreated her, giving her only a coat made of rushes to wear—calling her Rushen Coatie—and too little food. A red calf came to her, and when
Fairy tale analysis does not lend itself easily to tales that do not involve a quest, and furthermore, the same plot elements are found in non-fairy tale works. As Stith Thompson points out, talking animals and the presence of magic seem to be more common to the fairy tale than fairies themselves. However, the mere presence of animals that talk does not make a tale a fairy tale, especially when the animal is clearly a mask on a human face, as in fables. In his essay "On Fairy-Stories", J. R. R. Tolkien agreed with the exclusion of "fairies" from the definition, defining