<P> Some folklorists prefer to use the German term Märchen or "wonder tale" to refer to the genre over fairy tale, a practice given weight by the definition of Thompson in his 1977 (1946) 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 . </P> <P> A fairy tale with a tragic rather than a happy end is called an anti-fairy tale . </P> <P> Although the fairy tale is a distinct genre within the larger category of folktale, the definition that marks a work as a fairy tale is a source of considerable dispute . The term itself comes from the translation of Madame D'Aulnoy's Conte de fées, first used in her collection in 1697 .) Common parlance conflates fairy tales with beast fables and other folktales, and scholars differ on the degree to which the presence of fairies and / or similarly mythical beings (e.g., elves, goblins, trolls, giants, huge monsters) should be taken as a differentiator . Vladimir Propp, in his Morphology of the Folktale, criticized the common distinction between "fairy tales" and "animal tales" on the grounds that many tales contained both fantastic elements and animals . Nevertheless, to select works for his analysis, Propp used all Russian folktales classified as a folklore Aarne - Thompson 300 - 749--in a cataloguing system that made such a distinction--to gain a clear set of tales . His own analysis identified fairy tales by their plot elements, but that in itself has been criticized, as the 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 . </P> <P> Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale...of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful . </P>

Where does the term fairy tale come from