The Wise Little Girl is a Russian fairy tale

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 collected by Alexander Afanasyev

Alexander Afanasyev

Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev was a Russian folklorist who recorded and published over 600 Russian folktales and fairytales, by far the largest folktale collection by any one man in the world...

in Narodnye russkie skazki.

This type of tale is the most common European tales to deal with witty exchanges.

Synopsis

Two brothers rode together, a poor one on a mare, a rich one on a gelding. The mare gave birth in the night, and the foal went under the rich brother's cart, so he claimed the cart had given birth to it. The emperor heard of their dispute at law and summoned them to ask them riddles: what were the swiftest, fattest, softest, and loveliest things in the world? The rich man went to his godmother and got answers: her husband's bay mare, a pig that they had been fattening, eider down, and her grandson. The poor man lamented his fate, and his seven-year-old daughter, his only child, heard him and gave him answers: the wind, the earth, the hand (because people always put their hands under their heads when they sleep), and sleep.