When writing fantasy, you have enough traps to fall into. Most of them are of your own making. Don't go out of your way to borrow any more. One of the traps when writing is to concentrate on the main story to the exclusion of everything else. It can make a perfect plot look boring. What you might need is a supporting side story to weave into your yarn.
You could spend hours trying to hit upon a story while racking your brains to mush. You don't have to. The elements of such side stories are already in your brain by the score. We all were brought up with fables and fairytales. There is an inexhaustible source of stories and plots crammed away into that corner of your memory. All you have to do is call them up and find one that fits.
They say: 'The old ones are the best.' This holds true for fables and fairytales, too. They are a comfortable memory of childhood, of parenting, and of grandparents. They have been worked over hundreds of times already, they won't mind you pottering around with them, too. And because the story is at least partly already known to your readers, it gives them a bond into your story for free.
Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm may have pretended to collect stories and write them down as they were told. But they did more. They partly filled them out, reinvented them, or combined them. You are allowed the same freedom. Mix and match; discard what doesn't fit; steal bits and pieces; smash them and put them together backwards. All is allowed when writing fiction, and it will help you out of tight spots when writing fantasy.
One of the main problems with a fantasy world is to draw readers in and make them feel at home. They have to believe in what they read about the place you're creating. The easiest way to do this is to make them feel of having been there before or having met characters before. That is where fables and fairytales come in. They are the bait to hook readers. Recognition of a story or a personage is the first step for them to settle down and get immersed.
The freedom of creation allows you to rewrite whatever you want and adapt the stories and even their morals to the world you have created. You can bend them and even warp them to show the opposite truth of what they were originally written for. As long as you keep some key elements in place, any well-known fable and fairytale will be recognizable to your readers. You can use them to give your characters more depth and personal back-ground or to weave a side plot to enhance your main story.
Watch it, though: Don't mix magics; make sure that the fairytale magic is compatible with the magic you invented for your world. The Brothers Grimm at times messed that up. Other than that, feel free to borrow, steal, and hack. Copying from the great fable tellers and fairytale spinners is not only allowed, it is encouraged.
Further reading
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