Andersen published 156 ‘fairy tales and stories’ by his own count. Only seven of them are manifestly taken from Danish oral tradition. There are a couple of doubtful cases as well and he also used a few legends, but they are of minor importance. Apart from that, inspiration from folktales may be traced also in several other fairy tales by Andersen. To mention but one example: the famous tale of ‘The Little Mermaid’ is his own invention; nevertheless, it contains a number of elements which can be traced to various sources. The plot of the tale is undoubtedly inspired by de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine, and behind that can be glimpsed the doctrine of elementary spirits which goes back to Paracelsus. The notion of a population of sea people, the ‘merfolk’, stems from popular belief; besides, there is inspiration from the ballad of Agnete and the Mermaid, and in the scene where the mute mermaid lives in the king's palace, we are reminded of the folktale of ‘The Mute Queen’. Such reminiscences may be found in many of Andersen's tales.

The number of parallels at the typological level is, however, as low as seven, i.e., three or four per cent of the entire corpus. Three of these tales belong to the category the Germans call Zaubermärchen and the Danes trylleeventyr. In English, they are called wonder tales, mythical tales, fairy tales, tales of magic etc. I shall call them tales of magic so as not to confuse them with Andersen's own tales - the alternative, ‘fairy tale’, is often used about literary products; but I must confess that I am not happy with the term ‘magic’, since the phenomenon in question has very little to do with real magic. But whatever we call them, the three tales in question are: ‘The Travelling-Companion’, ‘The Tinder-Box’ and ‘The Wild Swans’. Those are the ones I shall comment upon. Before going on to do that, I ought to mention the titles of the other four tales: ‘Little Claus and Big Claus’, ‘The Swineherd’, ‘All that Father Does is Right’ and ‘Simple Simon’.