quality:corruption, quality:correction, linguistic:paraphrasing
Terminology

Some folklorists prefer to use the German term Märchen or "wonder tale" to refer to the genre rather than fairy tale, a practice given weight by the definition of Thompson in his 1977 edition of The Folktale:

"...a tale of some length involving a succession of motifs or episodes. It moves in an unreal world without definite locality or definite creatures and is filled with the marvellous. In this never-never land, humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses."

The characters and motifs of fairy tales are simple and archetypal: princesses and goose-girls; youngest sons and gallant princes; ogres, giants, dragons, and trolls; wicked stepmothers and false heroes; fairy godmothers and other magical helpers, often talking horses, or foxes, or birds; glass mountains; and prohibitions and breaking of prohibitions.