Um, actually, many of them are. The Brothers Grimm were basically writing down oral histories. They got messed up and stretched in the telling, to suit the needs of their audiences over time. But check out Linda Carroll's beautifully researched fairy tale histories. She's done Snow White (the real girl became a nun), Beauty and the Beast (the true beasts in that were the nobles that played God with others' lives for fun!), and the Pied Piper (which was the early version of a sleezy timeshare marketer).