SOURCE: A review of Italian Folktales, in New Republic, Vol. 183, September 27, 1980, pp. 33–4.

In the following favorable review, LeGuin maintains that “one of the innumerable delights of Italian Folktales is its mixture of the deeply familiar with the totally unexpected.”

Prowling among dictionaries, I discovered that the word “fairy” is fata in Italian and that it derives, like the word “fate,” from a Latin verb fari, to speak. Fate is “that which is spoken.” The Fates which presided over human life dwindled away to fairies, fairy godmothers, inhabitants of fairy tales.

The English world “fable,” Italian fiaba or favola, a story, “a narrative or statement not founded on fact” as the Shorter Oxford puts it, descends from the Latin fabula, which derives from that same verb fari, to speak. To speak is to tell tales.

The predestined spindle has pricked her thumb; here lies the Sleeping Beauty in the...