Some of the common household activities that occur in these stories include cooking, cleaning, sewing, going to market, feeding animals, cutting wood, and raising children. The folk tales are not only filled with these ordinary occurrences of the household but also characterized by many family relationships involving fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and masters and servants. Also the folktales feature many domestic animals and farmyard creatures such as dogs and cats, cows and pigs, and horses and donkeys. However, despite the commonplace, ordinary, prosaic background in these folktales, a world of wonders, riches, and mysteries permeates the domestic kingdom in these stories. Despite its plainness and simplicity the home and family offer a form of treasure that surpasses the wealth of the world.
Wonderful things happen to very ordinary people through the magic of luck and the miracle of love.
In the midst of the household realm of work and routine appear the gift of beauty and the prize of goodness. In the humble, workaday world of chores and daily toil emerge supernatural creatures like elves and fairy godmothers. The magical bird drops down a beautiful dress of gold and silver and slippers embroidered with silk. The ordinary kitchen maid becomes the beautiful maiden that the prince marries. The gold and silver in this story do not signify wealth and fortune but the riches of goodness, beauty, and love that lie hidden in the heart of the simple domestic world.