In
storytelling, authors often create triplets or structures in three parts. In the rule's simplest form, this is merely
beginning, middle, and end, as expressed in
Aristotle's
Poetics. receives three visits from her wicked stepmother.
Vladimir Propp, in his
Morphology of the Folk Tale, concluded that any of the elements in a folktale could be negated twice so that it would repeat thrice. This is common not only in the Russian tales he studied but throughout
folk tales and
fairy tales: most commonly, perhaps, in that the
youngest son is usually the third, although fairy tales often display the rule of three in the most blatant form. A small sample of the latter includes: •
Rumpelstiltskin spins thrice for the heroine and lets her guess his name thrice over a period of three days. • In "
East of the Sun and West of the Moon", the heroine receives three gifts while searching for her lost husband; when she finds where he is held prisoner, she must use them to thrice bribe her way to the hero (the first two times she was unable to tell her story because he lay in a drugged sleep). • In "
Brother and Sister", Brother is transformed into a deer when he drinks from the third stream that their wicked stepmother enchanted, and when Sister is killed by the same stepmother, she visits her child's room thrice, being caught and restored the third time. • In "
The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird", a woman says she will bear the king three marvelous children; when they reappear, their envious aunts attempt to kill them by sending them on three quests, after the three marvelous things of the title. • In "
The Silent Princess", a prince breaks a peasant woman's pitcher thrice and is cursed; when he finds the title princess, he must persuade her to speak thrice. • In "
The Love for Three Oranges", the hero picks three magical oranges, and only with the third is he able to keep the woman who springs out of it. ==Literature==