Chapter 4

De riche appauvri Dieu te gard'Et de croquant passé richard!

Finally the gazelle dies of sorrow, and Sultan Darai dreams that he is scratching on his old dustheap. He wakens and finds himself there, as naked and wretched as ever, while his wife is wafted to her father's house at home.

The moral is obvious, and the story is told in a very touching manner, moreover all the world takes the side of the gazelle, and it ismourned with a public funeral.

Here, then, in Zanzibar we have decidedly the most serious and purposeful form ofPuss in Boots. It is worth noting that the animal hero isnotthe Rabbit who is the usual hero in Zanzibar as he is in Uncle Remus's tales. It is also worth noticing that a certain tribe of Southern Arabians do, as a matter of fact, honour all dead gazelles with seven days of public mourning. 'Ibn al-Moghâwir,' says Prof. Robertson-Smith, inKinship in Early Arabia(p. 195), 'speaks of a South Arab tribe called Beni Hârith or Acârib, among whom if a dead gazelle was found, it was solemnly buried, and the whole tribe mourned for it seven days.... The gazelle supplies a name to a clan of the Azd, the Zabyân.' Prof. Robertson-Smith adds (p. 204), 'And so when we find a whole clan mourning over a dead gazelle, we can hardly but conclude that when this habit was first formed, they thought that they were of the gazelle-stock' or Totem kindred.

It is quite possible that all these things are mere coincidences. Certainly we shall not argue, because the most moral form ofPuss in Bootsgives us a gazelle in place of a cat, and because a certain Arab clan mourns gazelles, while the gazelle hero is found in the story of a half-Arab race, that, therefore, the Swahili gazelle story is the original form ofPuss in Boots, and that from Arabia the tale has been carried into Russia, Scandinavia, Italy, India, and France, often leaving its moral behind it, and always exchanging its gazelle for some other beast-hero.

This kind of reasoning is only too common, when the object is to show that India was the birthplace of any widely diffused popular fiction. In India, people argue, this or that tale has a moral. Among Celts and Kamschatkans it hasnomoral. But certain stories did undeniably come from India in literary works, like the stories of Sindibad. Therefore this or that story also came from India, dropping its moral on the way. Did we like this sort of syllogism, we might boldly assert thatPuss inBootswas originally a heroic myth of an Arab tribe with a gazelle for Totem. But we like not this kind of syllogism. The purpose of this study ofPuss in Bootsis to show that, even when a tale has probably been invented but once, in one place, and has thence spread over a great part of the world, the difficulty of finding the original centre is perhaps insuperable. At any time a fresh discovery may be made. Pussmayturn up in some hitherto unread manuscript of an old missionary among Mexicans or Peruvians[66].

[52]George Cruikshank had also turnedHop o' My ThumbandCinderellainto temperance tracts. See Cruikshank'sFairy Library, G. Bell and Sons.

[53]The French version is in M. Charles Deulin'sContes du Roi Gambrinus. The German (Grimm, 64) omits the story of the exchanges, but ends likeJean Gogué. The Zulu is in Dr. Callaway'sInzinganekwane, pp. 38-40.

[54]Wide-awake Stories.A collection of tales told by little children, between sunset and sunrise, in the Punjaub and Kashmir. Steel and Temple, London, 1884, p. 26.

[55]Andree,Die Anthropophagie, 'Überlebsel im Volksglauben.' Leipzig, 1887.

[56]Causeries du Lundi, December 29, 1851.

[57]Schol. ad. Theog.885.

[58]Thorpe'sPalace with Pillars of Gold.

[59]Dasent'sLord Peter.

[60]Piacevoli Notti, xi. 1, Venice, 1562. Crane'sItalian Popular Tales, p. 348.

[61]Pitré, No. 188; Crane, p. 127. Gonzenbach, 65,Conte Piro. In Gonzenbach, the man does not kill the fox, which pretends to be dead, and is bilked of its promised reward, a grand funeral.

[62]Lou Compaire Gatet, 'Father Cat,'Revue des Langues Romanes, iii. 396. See Deulin,Contes de Ma Mère L'Oye, p. 205.

[63]Boukoutchi Khan, translated into German by Schiefner.Mémoires de l'Académie de St. Pétersbourg, 1873. With Dr. Köhler's Notes.

[64]Gubernatis.Zoological Mythology, ii. 136. Quoting Afanassieff, iv. 11. Compare a similar snake in Swahili.

[65]Pantschatantra, i. 222.

[66]The work of M. Cosquin's referred to throughout is his valuableContes de Lorraine, Paris, 1886. A crowd ofPuss in Bootsstories are referred to by Dr. Köhler in Gonzenbach'sSicilianische Märchen, ii. 243 (Leipzig, 1870). They are Finnish, Bulgarian, Russian, and South Siberian. The Swahili and Hindu versions appear to have been unknown, in 1870, to Dr. Köhler. In 1883, Mr. Ralston, who takes the Buddhist side, did not know the Indian version (Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1883).

Les Fées.

Toads and Diamonds.

The origin of this little story is so manifestly moral, that there is little need to discuss it. A good younger sister behaves kindly to a poor old woman, who, being a fairy, turns all her words into flowers and diamonds. The wicked elder sister treats the fairy with despite:herwords become toads and serpents, and the younger marries a king's son.

The preference shown to the youngest child is discussed in the note on Cinderella. M. Deulin asks whetherToads and Pearlsis connected with the legend of Latona (Leto) and the peasants whom she changed into frogs, for refusing to allow her to drink[67]. Latona really wished to bathe her children, and the two narratives have probably no connection, though rudeness is punished in both. Nor is there a closer connection with the tales in which tears (like the tears of Wainamoinen in theKalewala) change into pearls. It is an obvious criticism that the elder girl should have met the fairy first; she was not likely to behave so rudely when she knew that politeness would be rewarded. The natural order of events occurs in Grimm'sGolden Goose(64), where the eldest and the second son refuse to let the old man taste their cake and wine. Here, as in a tale brought by M. Deulin from French Flanders, the polite youngest son, by virtue of a Golden Goose, makes a very serious princess laugh, and wins her for his wife. Turning on a similar moral conception Grimm'sMother Holle(24) is infinitely better thanLes Fées. The younger daughter drops her shuttle down a well; she is sent after it, and reaches a land where apples speak and say, 'Shake us, we are all ripe.' She does all she is asked to do, and makes Mother Holle's feather-bed so well that the feathers (snow-flakes) fly about the world. She goes home covered with golden wages, and her elder sister follows her, but not her example. She insults the apples, is lazy at Mother Holle's, and is sent home covered with pitch. Grimm gives many variants. Mlle. L'Heritier amplifies the tale in herBigarrures(1696). The story begins to be more exciting, when it is combined, as commonly happens, with that of the substituted bride. It is odd enough that the Kaffirs have the incident of the good and bad girl, the bad girl laughs at the trees, as in Grimm's she mocks the apples (Theal,Kaffir Folklore, p. 49). This tale (in which there is no miracle of uttering toads or pearls) diverges into that of theSnake Husband, a rudeBeauty and the Beast. The Zulus again have the story of the substituted bride ('Ukcombekcantsini,' Callaway'sNursery Tales of the Zulus, Natal, 1868). The idea recurs in Theal's Kaffir Collection (p. 136); in both cases the substituted bride is a beast. In Scotland the story of theBlack Bull o' Norrowaycontains the incident of the substituted bride. The Kaffirs, inThe Wonderful Horns, have a large part of that story, but without the substituted bride, who, in Europe, occasionally attaches herself as a sequel toToads and Diamonds. This is illustrated especially in Grimm'sThree Dwarfs in the Wood(13), where the good girl's speech is made literally golden. The bad girl, who speaks toads, marries the king's son who loves the good girl. Fragments of verse, in which the good girl tries to warn her husband, resemble those in theBlack Bull o' Norroway. The tale is complicated by the metamorphosis of the true bride (no great change her lover would say) into 'a little duck.' She regains her shape when a sword is swung over her. The bad girl is tortured like Regulus. This isBushy-bridein Dasent'sTales from the Norse.

There seems to be no reason why the adventure of the good and bad sisters should merge in the formula of the substituted bride, more than in the adventure of the princess accused of bearing bestial children, or in any other. Probably Perrault felt this, and, having made his moral point, was content to do without the sequel.

Les Féesis interesting then, first, as an example of a moral idea illustrated in tales even in South Africa, and, secondly (in its longer and more usual form), as an example of the manner in which any story may glide into any other. All the incidents of popular tales, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, may be shaken into a practically limitless number of combinations.

[67]Antoninus Liberalis, xxxv.

Cendrillon.

Cinderella.

The story of Cinderella (Cendrillon,Cucendron,Cendreusette,Sainte Rosette) is one of the most curious in the history ofMärchen. Here we can distinctly see how the taste and judgment of Perrault altered an old and barbarous detail, and there, perhaps, we find the remains of a very ancient custom.

There are two points inCinderella, and her cousinPeau d'Ane, particularly worth notice. First, there is the process by which the agency of aFairy Godmotherhas been substituted for that of afriendly beast, usually a connection by blood-kindred of the hero or heroine. Secondly, there is the favouritism shown, in many versions, to theyoungest child, and the custom which allots to this child a place by the hearth or in the cinders (Cucendron).

Taking the first incident, the appearance in Perrault of a Fairy Godmother in place of afriendly beast, we may remark that this kind of change is always characteristic of the promotion of a story. Just as Indian 'aboriginal' tribes cashier their beast-ancestors ('Totems') in favour of a human ancestor of a similar name, when they rise in civilisation, so therôleswhich are filled by beasts in savageMärchencome to be assigned to men and women in thecontesof more cultivated people[68]. In Cinderella, however, the friendly beast holds its own more or less in nearly all European versions, except in those actually derived from Perrault. In every shape of the story known to us, the beast is adomesticated animal. Thus it will not be surprising if no native version is found in America, where animals, except dogs, were scarcely domesticated at all before the arrival of Europeans.

In examining the incident of the friendly and protecting beast, it may be well to begin with a remote and barbarous version, that of the Kaffirs. Here, as in other cases, we may find one situation in a familiar story divorced from those which, as a general rule, are in its company. Theorists may argue either that the Kaffirs borrowed from Europeans one or two incidents out of a popular form ofCinderella, or that they happen to make use of an opinion common to most early peoples, the belief, namely, in the superhuman powers of friendly beast-protectors. As to borrowing, Europeans and Kaffirs have been in contact, though not very closely, for two hundred years. No one, however, would explain the Kaffir custom of daubing the body with white clay, in the initiatory rites, as derived from the similar practice of the ancient Greeks[69]. Among the neighbouring Zulus, Dr. Callaway found thatMärchenwere the special property of the most conservative class,—the old women. 'It is not common to meet with a man who is willing to speak of them in any other way than as something which he has some dim recollection of having heard his grandmother relate[70].' Whether the traditional lore of savage grandmothers is likely to have been borrowed from Dutch or English settlers is a question that may be left to the reader.

The tale in which the friendly beast of Europeanfolkloreoccurs among the Kaffirs isThe Wonderful Horns[71]. As among the Santals (an 'aboriginal' hilltribe of India) we have a hero, not a heroine. 'There was once a boy whose mother that bore him was dead, and who wasill-treatedby his other mothers,' the Kaffirs being polygamous. He rode off on an ox given him by his father. The ox fought a bull and won. Food was supplied out of his right horn, and the 'leavings' (as in theBlack Bull o'Norroway) were put into the left horn. In another fight the ox was killed, but his horns continued to be a magical source of supplies. A new mantle and handsome ornaments came out of them, and by virtue of this fairy splendour he won and wedded a very beautiful girl.

Here, it may be said, there is nothing ofCendrillon, except that rich garments, miraculously furnished, help to make a marriage; and that the person thus aided was the victim of a stepmother. No doubt this is not much, but we might sum upCendrillonthus. The victim of a stepmother makes a great marriage by dint of goodly garments supernaturally provided.

InCendrillontherecognition(ἀναγνὠρισις) makes a great part of the interest. There is no ἀναγνὠρισις in the Kaffir legend, which is very short, being either truncated or undeveloped.

Let us now turn to the Santals, a remote and shy non-Aryan hill-tribe of India. Here we find the ἀναγνὠρισις, but in a form not only disappointing but almost cynical[72].

In the Santal story we have the cruel Stepmother, the hero,—not a heroine, but a boy,—the protecting and friendly Cow, the attempt to kill the Cow, the Flight, the great good-fortune of the hero, the Princess who falls in love with a lock of his hair, which is to play the part of Cinderella's glass slipper in the ἀναγνὠρισις, and, finally, a cynically devised accident, by which the beauty of the hair is destroyed, and the hero's chance of pleasing the princess perishes. It will be noticed that the use of a lock of hair floating down a river, to be fallen in love with and help thedénouement, is found, first, in the Egyptianconteof theTwo Brothers, written down in the reign of Ramses II., fourteen hundred years before our era.

In that story, too, the hero has a friendly cow, which warns him when he is in danger of being murdered. But the Egyptian story has no other connection withCendrillon[73]. The device of a floating lock of hair is not uncommon in BengaliMärchen.

From the Santals let us turn to another race, not so remote, but still non-Aryan, the Finns[74]. That the Santals borrowMärchenfrom their Hinduised aboriginal neighbours is not certain, but is perfectly possible and even probable. Though some theorists have denied that races borrow nursery tales from each other, it is certain that Lönnrot, writing to Schiefner in 1855, mentions a Finnish fisher who, meeting Russian and Swedish fishers, 'swopped stories' with them when stormy weather made it impossible to put to sea[75]. No doubt similar borrowings have always been going on when the peasantry on the frontiers met their neighbours, and where Kaffirs have taken Hottentot wives, or Sidonians have carried off Greek children as captives, in fact, all through the national and tribal meetings of the world[76].

The Wonderful Birch(Emmy Schreck, ix.) is a form ofCinderellafrom Russian Carelia. The story has a singularly dramatic and original opening. A man and his wife had but one daughter, and one Sheep. The Sheep wandered away, the woman sought him in the woods, and she met a witchwife. The witchwife turned the woman into the semblance of the Sheep, and herself took the semblance of the woman. She went to the woman's house, where the husband thought he was welcoming his own wife and the sheep that was lost. The new and strange stepmother demanded the death of the Sheep, which was the real mother of the heroine. Warned by the Sheep, a black sheep, the daughter did not taste of her flesh, but gathered and buried the bones and fragments. Thence grew a beautiful birch tree. The man and the witchwife went to court, the witchwife leaving the girl to accomplish impossible tasks. The voice of the dead mother from the grave below the birch bade the girl break a twig from the tree, and therewith accomplish the tasks. Then out of the earth came beautiful raiment (as inPeau d'Ane), and the girl dressed, and went to court. The Prince falls in love with her, and detects her by means of her ring, which takes the part of the slipper. Then comes in the frequent formula of a false bride substituted by the witchwife, a number of trials, and the punishment of the witch.

Here, then, the friendly beast is but the Mother surviving in two shapes, first as a sheep, then as a tree, exactly the idea of the ancient Egyptian story of theTwo Brothers, where Bitiou first becomes a bull, and then a persea tree[77]. In Finnish the Cinderella plot is fully developed. A similar tale, still with the beast in place of the Fairy Godmother, is quoted by Mr. Ralston from the Servian (Vuk Karajich, No. 32). Three maidens were spinning near a cleft in the ground, when an old man warned them not to let their spindles fall into the cleft, or their mother would be changed into a cow. Mara's spindle fell in, and the mother instantly shared the fate of Io. Mara tended the cow that had been her mother lovingly, but the father married again, and the new wife drove Mara to dwell among the cinders (pepel), hence she was calledPepelluga, cinderwench[78]. The cruel Servian stepmother had the cow slain, but not before it had warned Mara to eat none of the kindred flesh[79], and to bury the bones in the ashes of the hearth. From these bones sprang two white doves, which supplied Mara with splendid raiment, and, finally, won for her the hand of the prince, after the usual incidents of the lost slipper, the attempt to substitute the stepmother's ugly daughter, and the warning of the fowls, 'Ki erike, the right maiden is under the trough.'

In a modern Greek variant (Hahn, ii.), the Mother (not in vaccine form) is eaten by her daughters, except the youngest, who refuses the hideous meal. The dead woman magically aids the youngest from her tomb, and the rest follows as usual, the slipper playing its accustomed part.

In Gaelic a persecuted stepdaughter is aided by a Ram. The Ram is killed, his bones are buried by hisprotégée, he comes to life again, but is lame, for his bones were not all collected, and he plays the part of Fairy Godmother[80].

Turning from the Gaelic to the Lowland Scotch, we findRashin Coatieas a name under which eitherPeau d'AneorCendrillonmay be narrated. We discovered Cendrillon asRashin Coatie, in Morayshire[81]. Here a Queen does not become acow, indeed, but dies, and leaves to her daughter aRed Calf, which aids her, till it is slain by a cruel stepmother.

The dead calfy said

Tak me up, bane by baneAnd pit me aneth yon grey stane,

and whatever you want, come and seek it frae me, and I will give you it.

The usual adventures of Cinderella ensue, the birds denouncing the False Bride, whose foot is pinched to make it fit the 'beautiful satin slipper' of the heroine.

In most of these versions the heroine is aided by a beast, and even when that beast is dead, it continues helpful, in one case actually coming to life again, like the ox in the South AfricanMärchen[82].

In all these thoroughly popular and traditional tales, the supernatural machinery varies much from that of Perrault, who foundPeau d'Ane'difficile à croire.' But, in all the wilder tales, the machinery is exactly what we note in the myths and actual beliefs of the lower races.Theydo not shrink from the conception of a mother who becomes a cow (like Io), nor of a cow (as in the case of Heitsi Eibib among the Hottentots), who becomes the mother of human progeny. It is not unlikely that the Scotch mother, inRashin Coatie, who bequeathes to her daughter a wonder-working calf (a cow in Sicily, Pitré, 41), is a modification of an idea like that of the cannibal Servian variant[83]. Then theMoutonof Madame d'Aulnoy seems like a courtly survival of the CelticSharp Grey Sheepmixed with thedonnéeofBeauty and the Beast[84]. The notion of helpful animals makes all the 'Manitou' element in Red Indian religion, and is common in Australia. The helpful calf, or sheep, bequeathed by the dying mother, reminds one of the equally helpful, but golden Ram, which aids Phrixus and Helle against their stepmother, after the death or deposition of their mother Nephele. This Ram also could speak,—

ἀλλἀ καὶ αὐδὴν

ἀνδρομέην προέηκε κακὸν τέρας[85].

This recalls not only the CelticSharp Grey Sheep, but also Madame d'Aulnoy and her princess, 'je vous avoue que je ne suis pas accoutumée à vivre avec les moutons qui parlent.'

The older rural and popular forms ofCinderella, then, are full of machinery not only supernatural, but supernatural in a wild way: women become beasts, mothers are devoured by daughters (a thing that even Zulu fancy boggles at), life of beast or man is a separable thing, capable of continuing in lower forms. Thus we may conjecture that the ass's skin worn byPeau d'Anewas originally the hide of a beast helpful to her, even connected,maybe, with her dead mother, and that the ass, like the cow, the calf, the sheep, and the doves ofMärchen, befriended her, and clothed her in wondrous raiment.

For all these antique marvels Perrault, or the comparatively civilised tradition which Perrault followed, substituted, inPeau d'Ane, as inCendrillon, the Christian conception of a Fairy Godmother. This substitute for more ancient and lessspeciosa miraculais confined to Perrault's tales, and occurs nowhere in purely traditionalMärchen. In these as in the widely diffused ballad of theRe-arisen Mother—

'Twas late in the night and the bairns grat,The Mother below the mouls heard that,—

the idea of a Mother's love surviving her death inspires the legend, and, despite savage details, produces a touching effect (Ralston,Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1879, p. 839).

Another notable point inCinderellais the preference shown, as usual, to the youngest child. Cinderella, to be sure, is a stepchild, and therefore interesting; but it is no great stretch of conjecture to infer that she may have originally been only the youngest child of the house. The nickname which connects her with the fireside and the ashes is also given, in one form or another, to the youngest son (Sir George Dasent, for some reason, calls him 'Boots') in Scandinavian tales. Cinderella, like the youngest son, is taunted with sitting in the ashes of the hearth. This notion declares itself in the names Cucendron, Aschenpüttel, Ventafochs, Pepelluga, Cernushka[86], all of them titles implying blackness, chiefly from contact with cinders. It has frequently been suggested that the success of the youngest child in fairy tales is a trace of the ideas which prevailed whenJüngsten-Recht, 'Junior-Right' or Borough English, was a prevalent custom of inheritance[87]. The invisible Bridegroom, of the ZuluMärchen, is in hiding under a snake's skin, because he was the youngest, and his jealous brethren meant to kill him, for he would be the heir. It was therefore the purpose of his brethren to slay the young child in the traditional Zulu way, that is, to avoid the shedding of 'kindred blood' by putting a clod of earth in his mouth. Bishop Callaway gives the parallel Hawaian case of Waikelenuiaiku. The Polynesian case of Hatupati is also adduced. In Grimm'sGolden Birdthe jealousy is provoked, not by the legal rights of the youngest, but by his skill and luck. The idea of fraternal jealousy, with the 'nice opening for a young man,' which it discovered (like Joseph's brethren) in a pit, occurs in Peruvian myth as reported by Cieza de Leon (Chronicles of the Yncas, Second Part). The diffusion ofJüngsten-Recht, orMaineté, the inheritance by the youngest, has been found by Mr. Elton among Ugrians, in Hungary, in Slavonic communities, in Central Asia, on the confines of China, in the mountains of Arracan, in Friesland, in Germany, in Celtic countries. In Scandinavia Liebrecht adduces the Edda, 'der jüngste Sohn Jarl's der erste König ist.' Albericus Trium Fontium mentions Prester John, 'qui cum fratrum suorum minimus esset, omnibus praepositus est.' In Hesiod we meetdroit de juveignerie, as he makes Zeus theyoungestof the Cronidae, while Homer, making Zeus the eldest, is all for primogeniture (Elton,Origins of English History, ch. viii. Liebrecht,Zur Volkskunde).

The authorities quoted raise a presumption thatJüngsten-Recht, an old and widely diffused law, might have left a trace on myth andMärchen. IfJüngsten-Rechtwere yielding place to primogeniture, if the elders were using their natural influence to secure advantages, then the youngest child, still heir by waning custom, would doubtless suffer a good deal of persecution. It may have been in this condition of affairs that the myths of the brilliant triumph of the rightful but despised heir, Cinderella, or Boots, were developed.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the necessities of fiction demand examples offailurein the adventures, to heighten the effect of the final success. Now the failures might have begun with the youngest, and the eldest might be the successful hero. But that would have reversed the natural law by which the eldest goes first out into danger. Moreover, the nursery audience of aconte de nourriceis not prejudiced in favour of the Big but of the Little Brother.

These simple facts of everyday life, rather than some ancient custom of inheritance, may be the cause of the favouritism always shown to the youngest son or daughter. (Compare Ralston,Russian Folk Tales, p. 81. The idea of jealousy of the youngest brother, mixed up with a miscellaneous assortment ofmotifsoffolk tales, occurs inKatha-sarit-sagara, ch. xxxix.)

Against the notion that the successful youngest son or daughter of thecontesis a descendant of the youngest child who is heir bydroit de juveignerie, it has been urged that the hero, if the heir, would 'not start from the dust-bin and the coal-hole.' But if his heirship were slipping from him, as has been suggested, the ashes of the hearth are just what hewouldstart from. The 'coal-hole,' of course, is a modern innovation. The hearth is the recognised legal position of the youngest child in Gavel-kind. 'Et la mesuage seit autreci entre eux departi, mes leAstredemorra al puné (ou al punée)[88].' In short, 'the Hearth-place shall belong to the youngest,' and as far as forty feet round it. After that the eldest has the first choice, and the others in succession according to age. The Custumal of Kent of the thirteenth century is the authority.

These rules of inheritance show, at least (and perhaps at most), a curious coincidence between the tales which describe the youngest child as always busy with the hearth, and the custom which bequeaths the hearth (astre) to the youngest child. Toproveanything it would be desirable to show that this rule of Gavel-kind once prevailed in all the countries where the name of the heroine corresponds in meaning toCendrillon.

The attention of mythologists has long been fixed on theslipperof Cinderella. There seems no great mystery in the Prince's proposal to marry the woman who could wear the tinymule. It corresponds to the advantages which, when the hero is a man, attend him who can bend the bow, lift the stone, draw the sword, or the like. In a woman's case it is beauty, in a man's strength, that is to be tested. Whether the slipper were ofverreor ofvairis a matter of no moment. The slipper is of red satin in Madame d'Aulnoy'sFinette Cendron, and of satin inRashin Coatie. The Egyptian king, in Strabo and Ælian, merely concluded that the loser of the slipper must be a pretty woman, because she certainly had a pretty foot. The test of fitting the owner recurs inPeau d'Ane, where a ring, not a slipper, is the object, as in the FinnishWonderful Birch tree.

M. de Gubernatis takes a different view of Cinderella's slipper. The Dawn, it appears, in the Rig Veda is said to leave no footsteps behind her (apad). This naturally identifies her with Cinderella, who not only leaves footsteps, probably, but one of her slippers. M. de Gubernatis reasons thatapad'may mean, not only she who has no feet, but also she who has no footsteps ... or again, she who has no slippers, the aurora having, as it appears, lost them.... The legend of the lost slipper ... seems to me to repose entirely upon the double meaning of the wordapad,i.e.who has no foot, or what is the measure of the foot, which may be either the footstep or the slipper....' (Zoolog. Myth.i. 31). M. de Gubernatis adds that 'Cinderella, when she loses the slipper, is overtaken by the prince bridegroom.' The point of the whole story lies in this, of course, that she isnotovertaken. Had she been overtaken, there would have been no need for the trial with the slipper (op. cit.i. 161). M. de Gubernatis, in this passage, makes the overtaking of Cinderella serve his purpose as proof; on p. 31 he derives part of his proof from the statement (correct this time) that Cinderella isnotovertaken, 'because a chariot bears her away.' Another argument is that the dusky Cinderella is only brilliantly clad 'in the Prince's ball-room, or in church, in candle-light, and near the Prince,—the aurora is beautiful only when the sun is near.' Is the sun the candle-light, and is the Prince also the sun? If a lady is onlybelle à la chandelle, what has the Dawn to do with that?

M. André Lefèvre calls M. de Gubernatis's theoryquelque peu aventureuse(Les Contes de Charles Perrault, p. lxxiv), and this cannot be thought a severe criticism. If we supposed the story to have arisen out of an epithet of Dawn, in Sanskrit, the other incidents of the tale, and their combination into a fairly definite plot, and the wide diffusion of that plot among peoples whose ancestors assuredly never spoke Sanskrit, would all need explanation.

In Perrault'sCinderella, we have not the adventure of the False or Substituted Bride, which usually swells out this and many othercontes, and which, indeed, is apparently brought in by popularconteurs, whenever the tale is a little short. Thus it frequently winds up the story which Perrault gives so briefly asLes Fées. Among the Zulus[89], the Birds of the Thorn country warn the bridegroom that he has the wrong girl,—she is a beast (mbulu) in Zululand. The birds give the warning inRashin Coatie[90], and birds take the same part in Swedish, Russian, German, but a dog plays therôlein Breton (Reinhold Köhler,op. cit.p. 373). In a song of Fauriel'sChansons Romaiquesthe birds warn the girl that she is riding with a corpse. Birds give the warning in Gaelic (Campbell, No. 14).

Perrault did more than suppress the formula of the False Bride. By an artistic use of his Fairy Godmother he gave Cinderella her excellent reason for leaving the ball, not becausecupit ipsa videri, but in obedience to the fairy dame. He made Cinderella forgive her stepsisters, and get them good marriages, in place of punishing them, as even Psyche does so treacherously in Apuleius, and as the wild justice of folk tales usually determines their doom. An Italian Cinderella breaks her stepmother's neck with the lid of a chest. But Cendrillon 'douce et bonne au début reste jusqu'à la fin douce et bonne' (Deulin,Contes de Ma Mère l'Oye, p. 286). These are examples of Perrault's refined way of treating the old tales. But in his own country there survives a version ofCendrillonin which aBlue Bull, not a Fairy Godmother, helps the heroine. From the ear of the Bull, as from his horn in Kaffir lore, the heroine draws her supplies. She is Jaquette de Bois, and reminds us of Katie Wooden cloak. Her mother is dead, but the Bull is not said to have been the mother in bestial form. (Sébillot,Contes Pop. de la Haute Bretagne, Charpentier, Paris, 1880, p. 15). In these versions the formula ofCendrillonshifts into that ofThe Black Bull o' Norroway.

[68]H. H. Risley,Asiatic Quarterly, Number III. 'Primitive Marriage in Bengal.'

[69]Demosth.De Corona, 313, Harpocration, ἀπομάττειν. Theal,Kaffir Folk Lore, p. 22.

[70]Izinganekwane, p. 1.

[71]Theal, p. 158.

[72]Indian Evangelical Review, Oct. 1886. The collector is Mr. A. Campbell.

[73]Maspero,Contes Egyptiens, p. 4.

[74]Finnische Märchen, übersetzt von Emmy Schreck. Weimar, 1887.

[75]Gustav Meyer,op. cit.p. xix.

[76]Theal,op. cit.p. 3.

[77]Compare the revived Ox. Callaway,Zulu Nursery Tales, p. 230; TheEdda, Mallet, p. 436;South African Folk Lore Journal, March, 1880; Aschenpüttel (The Dove and the Hazel tree), Grimm, 21.

[78]In the Catalan versionVentafochs, fire-lighter, ItalianCenerentola. DeulinContes de Ma Mère l'Oye, pp. 265, 266. In Emmy Schreck the Finnish girl isAschenbrödel, and foul with ashes.

[79]Exophagy.

[80]This is theMoutonof Madame D'Aulnoy, butheis a prodigiously courtly creature, and becomes theBeastwho half dies for love and is revived by a kiss. 'Un joli Mouton, brebis doux, bien caressant, ne laisse pas de plaire, surtout quand on scait qu'il est roi, et que la métamorphose doit finir.' But the heroine came too late, and the gallantMoutonexpired.

[81]Revue Celtique, vol. iii. p. 365.

[82]In the ScandinavianKatie Wooden cloakthe buried bull does all for Katie that the Ram, or Cow, or Calf, or Fairy Godmother does for the other Cinderellas.

[83]Herr Köhler quotes M. Luzel'sChat Noir, a Breton tale, in which a stepmother kills a cow that befriends Yvonne. Within the dead cow were found two golden slippers. Then comes in the formula of the False Bride (Rev. Celtique, 1870, p. 373).

[84]Among the Basutos this happens in 'The Murder of Maciloniane.' Casalis, p. 309: 'The bird was the heart of Maciloniane.'

[85]Apoll. Rhod. i. 256. The story of Athamas is an ingenious medley ofMärchen, including, as will be shown, part ofHop o' my Thumb.

[86]Gubernatis,Zoolog. Myth.ii. 5.

[87]A Zulu tale in Callaway, pp. 64, 65, is proof that this was once the Zulu custom.

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