Re: Our Folk Stories
which story is about the girl crossing the river that can’t swim and has a hole in her bucket and drowns? 
and i think the answer to your question can be found in anything humans utilize as entertainment whereever you’re from…they are ideals and fantasies that allow us to live vicariously through others in things we would never dare do ourselves…think about most movies we watch…none of them are REALLY about us…could you imagine if a camera followed us around all day untouched and uneditied? it would be so boring 
people want to see something new, something exciting, something even forbidden…it’s a way to experience these thigns without actually experiencing them
life is harsh and people seek an escape from them…now we have things like movies and whatnot…but before when we didn’t have that medium, this is how people entertained themselves…and if you look a lot of these stories are similar throughout the world…just change the story up a bit stamp different names and voila!