Fairy tales and fables

I find that there is a dearth of stories from Malaysia in English, or if there are any written they are written by mainly foreign writers with either a jaundiced view of Malaysians in general or not a very accurate one. However what I really feel sad about is the lack of writing about our fables and fairy tales. Granted there are very few, compared to European and English tales, but we do have them. One of my favourites is the story of The False Princess, which is very similar to the story of The Goose Girl which is a German folk tale. In this story, a princess was journeying to India to meet her betrothed. However since her mother who was supposed to accompany her was ill, she was sent overseas with her maid. The princess however was given a beautifully carved mirror to take with her on the journey. The mirror we are told is magical and would be a proof to the Prince that his betrothed is the true one. However during the long journey, the maid found a way to break the mirror and thus the princess was left with no proof as the her identity. Today we hear of so much identity thefts but this in fact is no new. It happened even as long ago as the 16th century when this story took place! The maid pretended to be the princess and later when they arrived at the palace of the prince even told the prince to behead the princess so that she could at last be secure. However without the maid's knowledge, the princess had another magical item with her to identify herself and that was the betrothal ring which she had kept hidden. Of course the ending is a happy one, like all fairy tales and the evil maid was sentenced to death. This story was told me by my grand aunt. There are so many more stories but I've not seen any of these stories in print. Maybe they were a part of the old oral tradition. Certainly when I was young, it was fairly common for us to listen to these folk tales at my grand aunt's knee - so to say. We'd hear them normally at bedtime or at the end of a long day when pleasantly tired, we'd all lie down and wait for my grandmother's younger sister or "Nek Nyah" to start her stories. She'd always start with these words - "Pada masa dulu..." which translated would mean Long ago...
Other stories are " Bawang Putih bawang Merah" which was made into a film by Cathay Kris, Badang the first malay super hero, Tuan Putri Pucuk Kelompang which is a fairy tale about goddesses or a fairy from the sky and many more. maybe one day I'll try to remember them all and write them....