Once Upon a Time, fairy tales weren't written for children...

In spite of their name, the popular fairy tales usually have very little to do with fairies.

We took the name from the French "contes des fee", and the French literary fairy tales of the 17th century do feature far more fairies than the tales which are best-known today.

The Grimm brothers collected the folk tales of the German people to make up their volume, but fairy tales are more than just folk tales.

The German term for them is "Märchen", a word for which there is no satisfactory English equivalent - it is the diminutive of Mär, a story or a tale, and has come to mean a story of wonder and enchantment, as the fairy tale is