This is a collection of five fairy tales told to wizard children, supposedly written by the aforementioned Beedle the Bard, and translated by Hermione Granger, with commentary by Dumbledore after each tale.
The Book Begins with the Story of the Wizard and the Hopping Pot. A Kindly Wizard who created goodwill amongst his human neighbors by healing them with his supposedly enchanted pot of cauldron passes it on to his son, who has a much less sympathetic attitude towards his muggle neighbors, but is forced by the self-same pot to give up his hard attitudes and help the neighbors with their ills and problems.
The second is "The Fountain of Fair Fortune" in which three witches and a magic-less knight learn to solve their problems together, after being drawn into a garden in which lies a fountain with the power to heal their woes. But it is only through helping themselves that they are healed of what is bothering them.
In "The Warlock's Hairy Heart", a warlock uses magic to take out his heart and protect himself from falling in love and making a fool of himself. When he finally realizes he is an object of pity for having no one love him, he sets out to marry a beautiful, wealthy, powerful witch, and does so, but the return of his heart to his body leads to a horrible end for the warlock and the witch he married.
In "Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump", a charlatan misleads a lord into thinking he can merely learn magic by waving a magic wand. But when the lord tells the charlatan that if the lord fails to do magic, the charlatan will be killed, the charlatan blackmails Babbity Rabbity into performing magic so that the Lord can be further decieved. But when the Lord tries to bring back the dead and cannot, the Charlatan blames Babbity Rabbity for the failure of the Lord's magic. The tale ends with Babbity Rabbity outwitting the Lord and the Charlatan and escaping while the Lord must construct a gold statue of her and never persecute magicians again.
The last story is, of course, "The Tale of the Three Brothers" and tells the story of the Deathly Hallows. About two brothers who thought they had outwitted death, but Death outwits them, and one brother who is wiser than the rest and actually *does* manage to outwit death. For a time, anyway.
Most of these tales are very fairytale-like and echo themes in true fairy tales. But the last story seems less fairy-tale like than any of the others, and I think it is because it is so short. While it does echo many "Three Brothers" type tales where two brothers set up a pattern and the third breaks it, in the end, the third brother only gets a long life, where generally in fairy tales, the third brother ends up inheriting a kingdom, finding love, riches and so on. But then, since this tale was made up first, for "The Deathly Hallows" book, it would stand to reason that it was built solely around death, or lack thereof.
The rest of the tales are interesting, as are Dumbledore's takes on them. Of couse, sometimes the commentary is longer than the story itself, it seems, and given that Dumbledore is supposed to have inscribed them on the margins of the story itself, I wonder how he could have done that when the commentary is longer than the story! He had to have been writing in micro-print!
In any case, a respectable book, but the last story still seemed out of place and thin compared to the others.
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