h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I suppose the problem I have with the sort of folk stories I can think of is that the men go off adventuring and leave the girls at home doing the housework, or combing their hair.

We need heroines as well as heroes.

I really recommend the Grimms' collection, then. There are lots of adventuring young women in those stories, as I recall. Even Rumpelstiltskin is about an enterprising girl, and not really about the annoying little guy.

My favourite folktale as a small child wasn't about humans. It was The Three Billy-Goats Gruff. I suppose the goats in the story, and the troll, were all male. But I really didn't think about it.

I know what you mean, though - women in Perrault's French tales tend to lack agency and get victimised a lot. The Grimms' seem to be older stories, and the women far more independent on the whole.

Ah, there you go, I just wanted to suggest Allerleirauh. Not sure if it was my favourite but it is one I remember.

After the queen dies the king searches for a new wife who is as beautiful as her. He only finds that in his daughter, who rejects this and tries to buy time by demanding impossible presents: 3 dresses golden like the sun, silver like the moon and shining like the stars as well as a fur coat made from the fur of all animals (or something like that).
Unfortunately the king delivers and the princess ahs to flee. I still remember a scene of her hiding in a hollow tree, I think. She then reaches a different kingdom where she gets a job in the castle kitchens. I can't remember exactly how the story goes but she wears her three dresses to a party and the king dances only with her. After the party she hides things in the king's soup that make him realize the woman he danced with works in his kitchen. Of course she becomes queen.

My dad was studying the Grimms Fairy Tales last year, but unfortunately I haven't yet found his notes - he mentioned that there were some key themes, like numbers, as you say - 3 and 7 being particularly important.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears was my favourite when I was a small child - dad would read it to me at bedtime He tried Three Billy Goats Gruff for a change, but I found that scary, so I didn't want to hear it often - Goldilocks I didn't tire of!

I always thought Goldilocks should be arrested for burglary.

I cheered for those billy goats!

Going back to the Entry, my dad would have loved the Motif-index of Folk Literature! He could definitely see patterns emerging from his Grimm studies

"By 'real' magic I mean the unseen rules of the unconscious that emerge in our collective imaginations" - yes! Magic indeed how certain fairy tales 'speak' to us, so we can hear them over and over as a child and get something out of them each time.

I think Goldilocks does still have meaning for me as an adult - I don't recommend the Bruno Bettelheim book about Freudian analysis of fairy tales, but I did like how his analysis concluded that the Goldilocks story is not 'complete', in the sense of not finishing with 'they all lived happily ever after' - it leaves something to the imagination about what happened next.

Oh, good point from Bettelheim! Yes, it's not a tidy ending.

A lot of our folktales from the Appalachians tend to end up in the air like that. But then, nobody was interested in royal marriages and such.

Not all Fairytales end well. Not even talking about Hans Christian Anderson...
What comes to my mind for instance is Grimm's 'Von einem der auszog das Fürchten zu lernen' (no idea what it's called in English). His wife dies in the end... or is it a good ending because he's finally scared?