Other forms: folktales
A folktale is a story handed down by ordinary people rather than written by one author. Collect folktales, an old folktale, a folktale from the region.
Folktales have no fixed text: each teller changes them, which is what separates them from literature. They travel enormously well — the same plots appear across continents, and folklorists index them by type. Fairy tale is the best-known kind, and legend, fable and myth are the neighbouring categories. Note folklore, the whole body of traditional belief and custom, and that the Grimms were collectors rather than authors.
1nounfolktaleA story handed down by ordinary people rather than written by one author.
“My grandmother told us an old folktale about a girl who outwitted a wolf.”
folktale is a traditional story.
The word is folk plus tale, coined in the nineteenth century by scholars who also gave us folklore and folk song. Folk was a deliberately plain Germanic choice, chosen over Latin words to signal that the material came from ordinary people.
From folk + tale.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA