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 Snowman (fairy tale) The Snowman (fairy tale) "The Snowman" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a snowman who falls in love with a stove. It was published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen as "Sneemanden" on 2 March 1861. Andersen biographer Jackie Wullschlager describes the tale as a lyrical and poignant complement to Andersen's "The Fir-Tree" of December 1844. Wullschlager believes "The Snowman" was the product in part of Andersen’s "pining and discontent over" Harald Scharff, a handsome young dancer at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. According to Wullschlager, the two men entered a relationship in the early 1860s that