>>1469786Maybe you did make it up, maybe you didn't.
There are over 130 well-defined European variations on Cinderella, not to mention the Asian versions or the multiple times it's been rewritten for children's storybooks. There are dozens of Momotaro variations. Some he's a teenager, some he's an adult or unspecified. The most common versions encountered today say he was born of a peach. Older versions often say he was born of an elderly woman past childbearing age who ate a peach and became younger. Her husband ate the peach too so the story does not imply that the peach magically impregnated her, it does imply that the barren couple became fertile, possibly even magically fertile.
Children being born of things other than women isn't a new motif and magical children born to barren couples isn't new either. Bamboo cutter finds daughter inside bamboo, daughter grows up and goes home to moon isn't all that different to fisherman finds daughter inside fish who grows up and goes home to the Palace of the Dragon-King. Speaking of which, I see some has brought up Urashima Taro.
While I haven't found the story you're mentioning, the Bamboo Cutter is at least a thousand years old. It's easy to imagine that a costal region changed bamboo cutter to fisherman and so on. Don't be too eager to ascribe its existence to your imagination when it could have been someone else's imagination, could even be a modern fable.
