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 Robber Bridegroom (fairy tale) The Robber Bridegroom (fairy tale) "The Robber Bridegroom" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 40. Joseph Jacobs included a variant, "Mr Fox" in "English Fairy Tales", but the original provenance is much older; Shakespeare (circa 1599) alludes to the "Mr. Fox" variant in "Much Ado About Nothing", Act 1, Scene 1: It is Aarne–Thompson type 955, the robber bridegroom. This type is closely related to tales of type 312, such as "Bluebeard", and type 311, such as "How the Devil Married Three Sisters" and "Fitcher's Bird". A miller wished to marry his daughter off,