The Glass Coffin is a German fairy tale

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 collected by the Brothers Grimm

Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...

, tale number 163. Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...

 included it in The Green Fairy Book as The Crystal Coffin.

It is Aarne-Thompson type 410, Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault or Little Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm is a classic fairytale involving a beautiful princess, enchantment, and a handsome prince...

. Another variant is The Young Slave

The Young Slave

The Young Slave is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 work, the Pentamerone.It is Aarne-Thompson type 410, Sleeping Beauty; other variants include The Glass Coffin and Sun, Moon, and Talia.-Synopsis:...

.

Synopsis

A tailor's apprentice became lost in a forest. When night came, he saw a light shining and followed it to a hut. An old man lived there and, after the tailor begged, allowed him to stay for the night. In the morning, the tailor awoke to witness a fight between a great stag and a bull. After the stag won, it bounded up to him and carried him off in its antlers. It set him down before a wall of stone and pushed him against a door in it, which then opened. Inside the door, he was told to stand on a stone, which would bring him good fortune. He did so, and it sank down into a great hall, where the voice directed him to look into a glass chest. The chest contained a beautiful maiden, who asked him to open the chest and free her, and he did so.

The maiden told him her story: She was the daughter of a rich count, and after the death of her parents, she had been raised by her brother. One day, a traveler stayed the night and used magic to get to her in the night, to ask her to marry him. She found the use of magic repellent and rejected his proposal. In revenge the magician then turned her brother into the stag, imprisoned her in the glass chest (coffin), and enchanted all the lands around them.

The tailor and the maiden emerged from the enchanted hall and found that the stag had been transformed back into her brother. The bull he had killed had been the magician. The tailor and the maiden then married.

See also

• The Queen Bee
  The Queen Bee
  The Queen Bee is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 62. It is Aarne-Thompson type 554, the grateful animals.-Synopsis:...
  
  
• The Golden Stag
  The Golden Stag (fairy tale)
  -Synopsis:An old woman told her husband that he had to lose his two children, a son and a daughter, by his first marriage, in the woods. The first time, the boy had been playing in the ashes, and the children came back, but the second time, the old man succeeded in losing them...