When you read a fairy tale that you enjoy very much, you may imagine that the author of the book made it up. If the book was written in modern times, this may be so. But did you know that long ago people did not invent fairy tales?

The great storytellers used to simply report what they had heard, for the stones had existed for thousands of years. According to some people, many fairy tales are based on a memory of something that really happened. But, of course, one has to look beyond the mere incidents of the stories to find out what it was.