The world we have ended up living in, and the past that we think we understand, are so, so random. They tell you in elementary school that history is a fixed set of dates and names, when really it's far more akin to Dadaist poetry, the kind where you pull random words out of a bag. What survives and becomes significant may appear to be inevitable from our position at this late date, but in reality, it's all a bit of a fluke. (And the whole impression of living at a late date, well, that's another post.)
If things had gone slightly differently, we could have all been referring to, say, movie plots in a totally different way. You know, like that romantic comedy that is totally a Turnip Princess Story.
Five hundred fairy tales have been found in Germany, collected by local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth back in the 1850s. The volume didn't take off like that of his contemporaries, the Grimm brothers, but according to this article, they held him in high regard.
Until these things are all translated, I won't be able to weigh in on whether they were misplaced due to some ineffable quality they lacked or were a victim of some random event of the kind that often happened in the nineteenth century, like maybe an absentminded monk or a public that just wasn't into turnips. According to the Guardian, this should be soon, and I can hardly wait.