Deer have significant roles in the mythology of various peoples located all over the world, such as object of worship, the incarnation of deities, the object of heroic quests and deeds, or as magical disguise or enchantment/curse for princesses and princes in many folk and fairy tales.

The deer also symbolizes a connection to the supernatural, the Otherworld or to the fairy realm, e.g., being a messenger or an entity's familiarA deer of a doe (female deer) usually appears in fairy tales[2] as the form of a princess who has been enchanted by a malevolent fairy or witch,[3] such as The White Doe (French fairy tale) and The Enchanted Deer (Scottish fairy tale),[4] or a transformation curse a male character falls under (see: Brother and Sister, German fairy tale; The Golden Stag, Romanian fairy tale). Sometimes, it represents a disguise a prince dons to escape or to achieve a goal, e.g., What the Rose did to the Cypress (Persian fairy tale).

A deer also appears as a helper, such as in Italian fairy tale The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird, as a foster mother to the exposed twin children; or in Portuguese folktale The Hind of the Golden Apple, as a talking animal who gifts the hero with the titular golden apple. It also may appear as a disguised adversary (an ogre, a sorcerer), e.g., in The Enchanted Doe (Italian literary fairy tale), or as a malevolent seductress, e.g., in Indian fairy tale The Son of Seven Queens, collected by Joseph Jacobs.[5]

The deer also appears as a character in Animal fables, e.g., The Deer without a Heart (Indian fable) and The Stag at the Pool (attributed to Aesop). Another cervine animal, the stag, appears in an etiological tale from Brazil (Why the Tiger and the Stag hate each othe