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Fairy Tales to Enchant You…
Welcome to our huge fairy tales library!
Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, Little Red Riding Hood, and stories of Cinderella… Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen… Arabian Nights, Aesop’s Fables, Greek myths and Norse legends…
Browse our most popular fairy tales collections
Famous Fairy Tales
Little Red Riding Hood is going to enjoy some delicious food with her Grandma… but meets big slobbery Oscar on the way!
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A picky Prince must marry – what happens when a mechanic Princess arrives at his door?
The story of beautiful Snow White, the seven dwarfs and the evil Queen.
A mother goat leaves her seven kids at home alone… are they smart enough to outwit a visiting wolf ?
A shoemaker and his wife have magical assistance from some elves every evening when they go to bed. But do the elves need…
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Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales
A Prince called Desire seeks a bride in warmer lands.
This marvellous musician has a strange way of making friends and keeping them!
Three Dwarfs meet a poor girl who shares the last of her bread with them.
A younger brother is a wise dwarf who teaches his brothers kind things.
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The story of beautiful Snow White, the seven dwarfs and the evil Queen.
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Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales
A butterfly takes his time in deciding which flower he should marry.
A beautiful story of a much loved Grandmother who dies, by Hans Christian Andersen.
A snow man falls in love with a hot stove…
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A Prince offers a Princess gifts that she refuses.
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English Fairy Tales
A witty wife helps her husband solve his problems in all sorts of sticky situations!
A Prince steals a magical ring from a fairy queen in order to defeat a wicked dragon.
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A young man wants to marry a silly girl… but must find three sillier people first!
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French Fairy Tales
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Russian Fairy Tales
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Read Our Complete Fairy Tale Library !
Fantasta Fairy - Wagner N.P. A fantasy story.
A fairy tale about a fantasy fairy coming to every person. Nobody knows when and where it will appear. On a dark evening, meeting Fantasta, you can be frightened by strange figures in the distance. On a cloudy autumn day, Fantasta is a little thoughtful and gloomy.
I remember her from the time I began to remember myself, but who can say when and where for the first time she was born - the Fantasta fairy?
She is everywhere and nowhere! She appears from the water, from the forest, from the air, from a small spark that flashes for a moment, in the dark darkness of an autumn evening, from a great fire, from which the glow rises high in the sky; from a cold trickle, a brisk, icy spring, from a stormy wave of a wide, mighty sea.
She appears suddenly, uninvited, unexpected, and disappears like a shadow. She appears like an evening mist over a sleeping river, and flies away at the first light of day's work.
She increases everything and reduces everything, but she herself has no boundaries. It contains everything that has ever existed, and everything that will never exist. It has a whole, vast, boundless world, and this whole world turns into nothing at the first word, at the first movement of a cold mind. But without it, reason cannot create anything, without it the world is empty and cold, without it there is no life and beauty, that life, elusive, impalpable, which is stored only in its breath. A poet, an artist, a musician, a scientist come to her, to her key of living water, which lives and moves the whole world.
On a quiet, clear, warm evening, when you are lying in a meadow and all around you are an endless network of meadow grasses and blades of grass - with heads, spikelets and hats of flowers, peer into their endless play, and you will feel their life and secrets. They rise in a crowd of fantastic images, they go off into the boundless darkening distance of a quiet evening - and from this foggy distance they look at you, nod their heads at you, beckon with their leaves; and the evening fog, quietly stealing, covers them with its indefinite outlines.
Look closely - they grow in this mysterious fog. These are no longer grasses, not flowers, no, these are strange trees of ugly, unprecedented forms. They stand in front of you like huge giants, and look at you mysterious, terrible, formidable, they look into your conscience, into your soul, like the commanding forces of all the quiet summer night, all the majestic, mighty nature. You make a slight movement of your head and ... the whole mysterious world has flown away, the Fantasta fairy has gone away, and you are again in the midst of a quiet, clear summer evening ...
Look at the pale, greenish sky on an autumn day. Curly clouds rush before you in a flock - like endless crowds of dumb people. Here is one gray-haired giant crawling higher, higher - into the dark azure of the sky; his mantle spread wide and reaching for him; one piece of it was torn off, melted, and sank into the greenish sea. Here is a whole host, like the waves of the sea, on which a dazzlingly bright ray of the sun has fallen.
It moves, floats, grows in front of you in huge masses; and there, like herds of silver lambs. They quietly approach you, grow like the shadows of a magic lantern, darken, approach. No, these are not lambs, these are dark giants: you see their ugly faces. They look at you, swim closer, closer... A slight movement of the head - and everything disappeared, the Fantasta fairy flew away. Before you are only dark clouds and a pale greenish sky.
On a gloomy day, when the waves of the sea break at your feet, sit on a rock on the shore and listen to the music of the sea. Heavenly waves rush over you - huge clouds, and endless mountains with snow-white peaks rise one after another at your feet. Here one rises in the distance. But what is in it, in this whimsical, changeable wave, is it not an image, dear to you? She gets up, she boils. So she waved her snow-white hand and disappeared. You saw it so clearly at the moment when the wave rose to its full height. But then another one rises - it flies straight towards you: transparent, deep, it is full of bliss, stormy strength.
Look into its depth, look into this mysterious light green, aquamarine abyss! What is flashing in it? A host of dark images. They quickly swim closer and closer to you, they spin, jump like flames in hellfire. They grow, they stand in front of you like a whole mountain, blocking the light ... It becomes eerie and cold at the heart ... But in a moment, one moment - and with a terrible noise everything collapsed, everything shattered into foam, into spray, at your feet ... The Fantasta Fairy disappeared ... Before you again boundless sea and eternal waves.
On a bright, clear morning, you are quietly sailing in a boat on a calm sea. The cloudless, dark blue sky turned over in such a welcoming way. Warm, fragrant air pours into your chest with such caress and bliss, and the whole distance is drowned in a silvery fog. Peer into the dark depths of the water, to where a faint sunbeam glided a little in the mysterious haze. What strange, opulent pictures float silently before you! Fantastic meadows, with unseen plants—meadows, blue, green, red.
Among the monstrous roots, monstrous flowers move quietly. Their petals move or stand motionless. You stop the boatman. You intensely, with passionate curiosity, peer into the green abyss. You were swallowed up by a mysterious world - annoying with its mystery ... Before you stand up not plants, not meadows, but whole groves of all kinds of giant trees. You see how among them some wonderful buildings shine dimly - transparent, fantastic. These are the halls of the sea queen. You barely see her, surrounded, like a fog, by a whole swarm of mysterious beauties... The picture becomes clearer, clearer... She emerges from the mysterious abyss to you higher, higher...
- Eccelenza! shouts the boatman, "Echchelenza!" you can get a sunstroke, you will fall, turn the boat over, and we will find ourselves visiting the sea queen.
You wake up, look around. The Fantasta Fairy has flown away... The dark blue sky has overturned above you, and the wonderful distance is all drowned in a silvery mist.
On a dark evening you enter a dense forest. You take a few steps and are stopped by an involuntarily vague feeling of something frightening. You say: "Nonsense, childishness!" - and go forward briskly ... Big trees go along with you from the sides. They swim imperceptibly in the twilight of the night ... There lies ahead something wonderful, ugly. You peer - it's some kind of monster, disheveled, hunchbacked. But it does not move, and even more terrible is its dead immobility. You come closer - the dead monster is just a bunch of brushwood. But the branches and this stump, crooked, clumsy, on which it lies are so strangely scattered. You step back a few steps, and the monster appears again... Here is his head, here are his arms, long arms. They are stretched out on the ground, crawling towards you, grabbing your legs. You jump back in horror; and the monster still lies motionless. You cheerfully and proudly walk past him, you push him with contempt with your foot and go down into the hollow to the swamp.
Whitish steam swirls over him. You peer into the game of this couple. Over there, on the outskirts, he rose higher and quickly slipped into the forest thicket, but, leaving, he looked back at you, flashed his eyes and disappeared ... You saw it so clearly, distinctly that you cannot decide whether it was really the forest king - “in white crown, with a gray beard, ”or just fog over a swamp. You stare at it for a long time - maybe it will flash again. But the clubs are gradually floating, leaving ... The Forest King does not appear. Fairy Fantasta flew away ...
I remember, a long time ago, when I was still a very young cat and my head was working so energetically, as if it had a hundred horsepower steam engine, the Fantasta fairy often came to me, came to me on sleepless nights and flew with me around the world. I remember once, on a dark winter evening, when the blizzard was angry and howling in the chimneys, I was lying on a warm couch. A samovar was brought into the room and placed on the floor.
The steam from it poured out in thick clouds and turned white, lit by the tallow cinder. He smoked and burned out. The flame flickered brightly, flashed brightly, and died out again. I imagined clouds moving quickly over the waves of a dark, swaying sea. I heard the sound of this sea, and a heavy feeling squeezed my chest. It seemed to me that everything perished in this darkness, in this sea, in strong waves of destruction, and we were left alone, alone with the Fairy Fantasta. We swam on these waves of the vast sea. Fairy Fantasta glided, rushed over them on the mighty wings of creativity. The fire of inspiration burned proudly over her beautiful head. The flowers of poetry rained down from her knees, poured into the cold, noisy sea and drowned in it without a trace. She was all the genius of passion, and I floated at her feet - floated in a small cozy basket that was a cradle. In the basket, besides me, there were two more children, two boys, and they contained everything that was left of all mankind.
In them was the end of the past and the beginning of new, future great forces.
One boy, sleepy and lethargic, slept peacefully. Neither the flowers of poetry nor the movements of the cold sea occupied him. The other - lean, with a small curly head, was all movement. There was so much energy in him, so much dear, sweet, that I involuntarily caressed him and whispered to him my best, dearest tales...
It was night all around us. Dark clouds raced violently across the sky and were reflected in the churning sea.
“Look,” said the Fantasta fairy, pointing into the distance with her hand, “look—there, there, on the horizon, where dark images have gathered, there is the future light and life!..
I looked closely and saw nothing. But my little boy has already seen, distinguished and, perhaps, more than the Fantasta fairy herself.
— I see a light, — he said, — an obscure light... Is it the dawn or the glow of a fire? But how good is this light! O! how wonderfully beautiful it is!.
.
And I myself saw this light. Yes! He was amazingly beautiful. And I began to wake up another sleeping boy. He woke up, looked, blinking his sleepy eyes, seeing nothing, looked at the world, at the sea, at the sky, turned around and fell down again and fell asleep.
— Leave it alone, — said the Fantasta fairy. — This is ballast!.. But if there were no this heavy ballast, there would be no movement, and people would not be able to distinguish light from heavy, light from darkness…
“How then,” I said, “there, there, on the horizon, is light visible, and we clearly distinguish it?”
- Yes! because he is surrounded by darkness. And here, where we are sailing, there used to be light for us, and everything ugly seemed beautiful.
I turned around abruptly, I peered into the darkness for a long time and really saw a pale, slightly glimmering light. I looked into the depths of the sea and saw that it was all filled with images of the past, clumsy, ugly, but sweet, dear to the heart, like everything past and dear.
“That's all,” said the Fantasta fairy, “that has completed its circle and gone into the depths, into the abysses of the sea. But if there were no ballast, then there would be no source from which the immeasurable, endless circle of that which goes constantly forward arises and rotates, there would not be this boy either, - and she pointed to the pretty head.
The boy heard our conversation, but he was obviously interested and inspired by the light that shone ahead. He was so afraid that this light would not be blocked by dark, menacing clouds. There was so much brilliance in his eyes, so much faith in his own strength and in the strength of all mankind...
"Deceived or not?" I thought.
Suddenly a terrible blow. I started and jumped up in fright. Fairy Fantasta has disappeared... There is a dark room around me. I sat on a warm couch. The samovar had long since been taken away, and an empty bottle was lying on the floor, which I accidentally knocked over with my paw.
Many, many years have passed since then. I turned gray. Fairy Fantasta comes to me less often. But the picture of a young, young, long-flying dream is still alive and bright in my memory.
A lot of ballast lies around me, but I know that without it there would be no movement, and a lot of movement burns out in the fire of the ardent, wonderfully beautiful dreams of the fairy Fantasta.
They beckon into the distance, to the better, holy, great. They give light and warmth to our poor life and, burning with brilliant sparklers, leave behind not cold ashes, but a hard, stony path for the development of thought and feeling.
Fairy. Tales from Vault
Fairy
Friday, May 12, 1944
The fairy I want to talk about is not a simple fairy, such as there are in any magical country. Oh no, she was an amazing fairy - both in appearance and in what she did. But what, you ask, was amazing about it?
The fact that she was not one of those who either do something good here or do something pleasant there—no, she wanted to bring happiness to all people and the whole world.
This amazing fairy was called Helen. Her parents died when she was very young and left her a lot of money. Therefore, from an early age she could do whatever she wanted and buy herself whatever she wanted. Other children, both fairies and elves, would have been terrible whims in her place, but Helen was not like everyone else, and money did not spoil her at all.
When Helen grew up, she still had a lot of money, and she bought herself the most beautiful dresses and ate the most delicious delicacies.
Waking up one morning, but still lying in bed, Helen began to think what to do with all her money. “I still can’t spend it on myself, I won’t take it with me to the grave either, so why shouldn’t I use this money to make other people happy too?” Great idea! And Helen immediately took up its embodiment. She got up, dressed, took out a wicker basket, took money from a large pile, put it in the basket and went out into the street.
“Where to start? she thought.
“Oh, I think I know. The lumberjack's widow will surely be delighted if I visit her. Her husband has recently died, and the poor woman is having a hard time now.”
Singing merrily, Helen crossed the small front garden and knocked on the lumberjack's hut.
— Enter! she heard.
Helen opened the door and stuck her head inside. In a dark room, in the farthest corner, a little old woman was sitting in a rickety armchair, knitting something.
She was very surprised when Helen entered the room and placed a handful of coins on the table. But, like all people, this woman, of course, knew perfectly well that the gifts of elves and fairies should always be accepted and never refused. So she kindly said:
— How nice of you, little one! There are not many people who give just like that, but the inhabitants of a magical land, fortunately, are an exception.
Helen looked at her in surprise:
— What do you mean by that?
— Well, I don't think there are many people who give without wanting to get something in return.
- Is it? But why should I want anything from you? I'm even glad that my basket has become a little lighter.
- Well, that's good, thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Helen said goodbye and moved on. About ten minutes later she went to another house and knocked, although she did not know anyone who lived there. As soon as she opened the door, she immediately realized that they did not need money here: those who lived here are not poor in money - they are poor in happiness.
The hostess greeted Helen, although cordially, but did not brighten up at all, her eyes did not sparkle, she seemed sad.
Helen decided that it would be better to stay here longer. Maybe I can do something to help this woman, she thought. Indeed, as soon as the cute little fairy sat down on one of the pillows, the woman began to tell her about her troubles. She talked about a bad husband and ill-bred children, about everything that upset her. Helen listened, sometimes asked about this and that, and tried to penetrate into all her sorrows.
When at last the woman had finished her story, they both were silent, and then Helen said;
- Dear lady, I myself have never known your misfortunes, I have no experience in such matters, and I do not know at all how I can help, but nevertheless I would like to give advice, which I myself always follow when I feel myself as lonely and sad as you. Go out somehow on a calm, clear morning, go through the forest - you know, the one behind which opens a large moorland. Walk a little further and sit there somewhere right on the ground. Look at the sky, look at the trees - you will feel peace, and any sadness that you could not get rid of will immediately disappear.
- Oh no, dear fairy! Your remedy will help me as little as a sip of intoxicant, which I have already tried more than once.
“Just try once,” Helen insisted. - Alone with nature, I know all sorrows will pass. You will calm down, become cheerful and feel that God has not left you, as you have been thinking for a long time.
- Well, if it pleases you, I will do so.
- Okay, then I'll go ahead and visit you next week at the same time.
Helen went into almost every house, and people were happy about her. At the end of this long day, she returned to her room with an empty basket and a full heart. She saw that she really made good use of her money, much better than if she had bought herself expensive dresses with it.
Now Helen often left the house with a basket in her hand. She wore a yellow flowered dress, a large bow adorned her hair. She came to one, then to another and brought joy to every house.
So a woman who had plenty of money and plenty of grief became much happier. Helen knew her remedy always worked!
During these visits, Helen made many friends and girlfriends, and they were not elves and fairies, but ordinary people. They told her about their lives. Helen learned a lot, and soon she knew how to find a suitable answer to every question.
But with the money she made a mistake in her calculations, and a year later there was no extra money left at all.
