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 (Suk) Fairy Tale (Suk) , Op. 16 (Fairy Tale) is an orchestral suite from incidental music composed for Julius Zeyer's mythological drama "Radúz and Mahulena" by Josef Suk in 1897–1898. Zeyer's dramatic poem is a love story, combining classical fairy-tale motifs with mythological references. Suk started to write incidental music in 1897 and soon became very attached to the material. In the end he wrote overtures to each scene, intermezzos, as well as various vocal solos and choruses. The play was first performed on 6 June 1898 at the National Theatre in Prague, under the baton of Adolf Čech. Because of