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Preface
by Marian Roalfe Cox

The incidents characteristic of the story of "Cinderella" are interchangeable with a large proportion of the incidents of the "Catskin" and "Cap o' Rushes" stories. In arranging the variants belonging to the Cinderella type, I have, after conferring with the Council of the Folk-Lore Society, grouped them, as far as possible, under the three heads: A.--CINDERELLA, B.--CATSKIN, C.--CAP O' RUSHES, according to the characterising features of each. The essential incidents of each group may be seen as follows:

Those given under B. and C. may be regarded as the only differentiating incidents the rest being common to all the stories. A large number of variants, while lacking the incidents which would determine their place under one of the above heads, contain such as are common to all three groups. These stories constitute group D.--INDETERMINATE, which is subdivided to show which stories approximate most to the Cinderella type (Da.), and which to the Catskin type (Db.), the remainder not being referable to any distinct type.

Group E. consists of examples of HERO-TALES¹ containing incidents common to the Cinderella variants.

The following is a list of the common incidents, showing in which group each recurs:

Aid (various). A. B. C. D. E.
Animal Witness. A. B. D.
Countertasks. B. D.
Dead father help. E.
Dead (or transformed) mother help. A. B. D.
Ear cornucopia. A. D. E.
Eating taboo. A. D.
False bride. A. B. D.
Happy marriage. A. B. C. D. E.
Hearth abode. A. D. E.
Help at grave. A. B. D. E.
Helpful animal. A. B. D. E.
Heroine disguise and hero disguise. A. B. C. D. E.
Heroine flight and hero flight. A. B. D. E.
Hiding-box. B. C. D.
Ill-treated heroine and hero. A. D. E.
Lost shoe. A. B. C. D.
Lovesick prince. B. C. D.
Magic dresses. A. B. C. D. E.
Marriage tests. A. B. C. D. E.
Meeting-place. A. B. C. D. E.
Menial heroine and hero. A. B. C. D. E.
Mutilated feet. A. B. D.
Outcast heroine and hero. C. D. E.
Pitch trap. A. B. D.
Recognition by means of shoe or ring. A. B. C. D. E.
Recognition food. B. C. D.
Revivified bones. A. D.
Shoe marriage test. A. B. C. D.
Slaying of helpful animal. A. D. E.
Substituted bride. A. D.
Surprise rencontre. B. C. D.
Tasks. A. B. D. E.
Task-performing animal. A. D. E.
Threefold flight. A. B. C. ID. E.
Token objects. A. B. C. D.
Trophy marriage test. E.
Villain Nemesis. A. B. D. E.

The elaborate story of "The Nymph of the Well" (Volksmärchen der Deutschen, Gotha, 1782) into which Musäus has worked some of the incidents of the popular tales of Cinderella, Dame Holle, and Allerleirauh, is of too literary a character to be included in the present collection. Arndt's very ornate rendering of "Aschenbrödel" (Märchen und Jugenderinnerungen, Berlin, 1818) is omitted for the same reason.

I have presented each story in simplest outline in order to facilitate a general survey. These ABSTRACTS are arranged bibliographically under the several groups, and are numbered consecutively. The TABULATIONS which fill in the details are correspondingly numbered, but are arranged bibliographically irrespective of the grouping.

In transliterating Russian, Slavonic, and other proper names, titles of works, and story-titles, I have followed, under Mr. Naake's advice, the system adopted in the Catalogue of the British Museum Library. For example, the author variously referred to in folk-lore studies, as Vuk, Wuk, or Wouk, will be found under the surname Karajich. Consistently with this plan I have also substituted Athanas'ev for the more usual rendering, Afanasief.

The following scheme exhibits the diffusion of the Cinderella story according to the data afforded by the present collection of variants. Each variant is referred to by number, the group to which it belongs and the collection from which it is taken being also indicated. Certain contiguous countries are here grouped together to avoid their wide severance by a purely alphabetical arrangement.

EUROPE

ASIA

AFRICA

AMERICA

The following is a chronological list of Cinderella variants:--

It has been suggested that Perrault probably borrowed his Peau d'Ane from Straparola Perrault's stories appeared 1694-7, and twelve editions of the French translation of Straparola had been issued before that date. I have included a still earlier French version (No. 234, p. 206) from the Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis of Jean Bonaventure Des Periers, first published in 1544. In this the folk-tale has assumed the guise of a romance to suit the taste of the Court ladies. Jean Bonaventure Des Periers was born in Bourgogne, in the little town of Arnay-le-Duc, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and was valet de chambre at the Court of Navarre, under François 1er. There is also early mention of a hero-tale of the Cinderella type in the Preface to Rollenhagen's Froschmeuseler, where he refers to the wonderful household story "of the despised and pious Aschenpössel, and his proud and scornful brethren". Georg Rollenhagen was born in 1542, and died in 1609. M. Loys Brueyre, in his Contes populaires de la Grande Bretagne (p. 44), refers--but erroneously, as far as I can find--to a Rashin Coatie story in the Complaynt of Scotland (1548).

In compiling this collection of variants the difficulty has not been in tracing resemblances, but rather in determining what degree of family likeness or relationship shall constitute eligibility. Numerous "as the sand and dust" are the stories which have received their share of a family heritage. A particular folk-tale incident may recur in an endless number of permutations and combinations with other sets of incidents, and hopeless is the task of comprehending a series whose term is infinity. Thus some authorities have noted, as belonging to the Cinderella type, certain stories which I have not included, though I have endeavoured to refer to them all in the Notes. The collection by no means aims at being exhaustive; nevertheless, I fear I may be guilty of important omissions. I have searched a number of published collections of folk-tales with negative result,² and there are several works, to which, as they are not to be had in the British Museum Library, I have been unable to gain access.³ So considerable is the amount of material selected for me by those kind contributors from distant parts, who have interested themselves in the subject, that I do not doubt that tile number of variants would be rapidly multi plied if further help of this sort were solicited. However, the Council of the Folk-lore Society, at whose invitation I undertook this volume, deemed it advisable to make an arbitrary end of the labour of collecting, which otherwise might be carried on indefinitely.

The fact that isolated incidents in folk-tales may recur in infinitely varied combinations is amply illustrated in several of the Cinderella variants. One type of story may thus be conjoined with another. For example, we are reminded of "Hop o' my Thumb" in the opening of Nos. 8, 32, 56, 111, and 130; of "Toads and Diamonds" in Nos. 5, 8, 21, 89, 118, 229, 237, 239, 240, 241, 245, 247; of "Beauty and the Beast" in Nos. 191, 297; of ''Puss in Boots" in Nos. 11, 39, 71, 121; of ''The Three Spinners" in No. 196; and of "Rumpelstiltskin" in Nos. 40 and 63.

The common incidents are very variously coloured. For instance, in the Moravian story (No. 70), when the prince has started to church with the false bride, the heroine transforms herself into the bird, whose usual part it is to direct attention to the mutilated foot. In the Danish story (No. 60) the bird itself suggests the surgical adaptation of the false foot to the slipper, and not the mother, who, however, urges her daughter to submit to the treatment, with the familiar reminder, "il faut souffrir pour être belle." The shoe in this story has never belonged to the heroine. It is kept in the royal family, and must be worn by anyone aspiring to be queen. In other stories also the prince provides the wedding shoes, not necessarily because the bride is of humble origin.⁴ In the Basque story (No. 256) the step mother befriends the heroine, and contrives her marriage with a king. In the Ligurian story (No. 3) the fairy-godmother doubles tile part with that of the stepmother--an exceptional instance, as far as I know. The fairy-godmother herself figures but rarely;⁵ the stories in which she replaces the helpful animal, like those in which the glass shoe is met with,⁶ are probably imitations of Perrault's version. In the variant from Ostrobothnia (No. 197), in place of the "counter-tasks" usually demanded from the unnatural father, the heroine must provide the gold and silver dresses and the crow's-beak gown, and then her father will release her. Sir Walter Scott said of himself that he "could never repeat a story without giving it a new hat and stick". Similar liberality on the part of the narrator bestows galoshes on the heroine in the Danish story (No. 62), and provides a tobacco-leaf for the wounded feet of the elder sisters in the story from Jutland (No. 61), and is accountable for the German soap and the Indian dress in the Finnish stories (Nos. 106, 109), the Spanish staff which kills the serpent in the South-German story (No. 341), for the "announcement in the newspapers" in the story from Jutland (No. 65), for the merciful saving of the foot at the expense of the toe and heel of the stocking in another story from Jutland (No. 63), for the wax-trap in the Polish story (No. 130), and the honey-trap in the Greek story (No. 17), and for all such embellishments and emendations.

Mr. Lang has said,⁷ "We may conjecture that the ass-skin worn by Peau d'Ane was originally the hide of the beast helpful to her." Such is actually stated to be the case in three only of the variants which I have examined, namely, in two Swedish stories (Nos. 98, 117), and in one Finnish story (No. 109). In almost every version the helpful beast is a domesticated animal,⁸ the most notable exception being in the case of the white bear in the Swedish story (No. 117), who gallantly sacrifices himself that the heroine may don his skin. A white ermine performs the task in another Swedish variant (No. 113), and a wolf is decidedly helpful in a Danish story (No. 290). Fish befriend the heroine in an Annamite (No. 69), a Swedish (No. 112), and in two Italian versions (Nos. 122, 239), and an eel minds the house for her and gives her splendid dresses in the story from Jutland (No. 100), though not, as it afterwards appears, from a purely disinterested motive. The quick-witted mouse in the Slavonic (No. 301), and the toad in the Hungarian story (No. 338), must rather be numbered amongst "grateful beasts".

That Cinderella is the guardian of the hearth is well proven. But she is not invariably the youngest child, especially when she is a stepchild. Mr. Gomme has pointed out⁹ that the Greek Hestia was the eldest child of Kronos and Rhea, and the goddess of the household sanctuary, or rather of the fire burning on the hearth. Among the Ovahereró tribe of South Africa "the eldest unmarried daughter of the chief has charge of the sacred fire, since this must never be allowed to go out". (S. Af. Folk-lore Journal, ii, 66.)

Whether, as in the Catskin stories--which, according to some authorities, are based upon nature-myths connected with the phenomena of day and night, or of the seasons of the year--our heroine be an originally brilliant being reduced to a state of temporary obscurity or eclipse, but eventually restored to her pristine splendour; or whether she be merely the "Cinderella", the lovely-natured, ill-treated member of the family whose loveliness cannot for ever be hidden, or whose worth go unrewarded; in every case

"Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie."

And thus it is that in works of the most diverse character upon legendary subjects, one may for ever be detecting, with dangerous facility, some element of the Cinderella story. For instance, we recognise our heroine under one of her many disguises in the story of Crow, the maiden of mean attire and low estate, who in the end turns out to be Aslaug, a princess, daughter of Sigfred and Brunhild. The first part of her pretty story is given in the Volsunga Saga (c. 43), and, with some abridgment, runs as follows¹⁰:--

When Heimir heard of the death of Sigurd and Brynhild, Aslaug their daughter and Heimir's foster-child was three winters old. Knowing that men would seek to destroy the child and all her race, and that he could not hide her in Hlyndalir, Heimir caused a harp to be made, large enough to enclose her; and, for baking his kingdom and his goods, he journeyed far till he reached Norway. And he put many costly dresses and much gold and precious jewels in the harp, which was so cunningly contrived that it could be taken asunder at pleasure. He gave the child a narcotic leek (vimlaukr) to eat, whose property was such that any one partaking of it could long subsist without other food. And o he journeyed till he reached a little farm called Spangarheide. Here the peasant Aki dwelt with his wife Grima; but there were no other dwellers there. The man was away in the forest in the daytime, but the old woman received Heimir, and kindled a fire for him, and was mighty talkative as he sat and warmed himself, with his harp on the seat beside him. Full many a look she gave at the harp, for a corner of some costly garment was sticking out of it; moreover, she spied a rich gold ring under the rags that the stranger wore. And after he had warmed himself and supped he bade the old woman lead him to where he could sleep through the night. Better would he fare outside than in, she said, because she and her old man are wont to talk a good deal when he comes home. So he took his harp and followed her out to the barn, where he might sleep undisturbed. When the old man returned he scolded his wife for having neglected her duties; and she explained that a man had come, asking for a night's lodging, and she deemed that he carried great riches with him; in truth, she had never seen his like before, so mighty he seemed, though weary. Then she tried to arouse the old man's jealousy, and thus egged him on to slay the stranger. He sharpened his axe, and she led him to where Heimir slept, and loudly snored. She took the harp and ran away, and the peasant dealt him a deadly blow with the axe and rushed forth with the utmost speed. And, at the great cry which Heimir raised, the posts of the barn gave way, and the whole building fell in, for there was a mighty earthquake.

Anon, when the old woman broke open the harp she found the maid and the great riches inside. They questioned the child about her race, but she answered never a word. Then Grima said she should be called Kraka (Crow) after her mother, and, because of the child's great beauty, she shaved off her hair and smeared her head with tar, that it should not grow again. And she put a large hat on her, and clothed her meanly. Thus they thought to make her pass for their own child. They gave her all the roughest work to do; and so Aslaug grew up in utter wretchedness. But the old man and his wife thought her dumb, because she never answered them.

What further befell Aslaug is related in the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok (c. 4-8), from which the following abstract is made Ragnar Lodbrok, son of King Sigurd Ring, sails to Norway and lands not far from Spangarheide. He sends his scullions on land to bake some bread, and they come to the farm of Aki and Grima. They ask the old woman to help them, but she says that her hands are too stiff; but her daughter Kraka will soon be in, and will be at their service. Kraka had gone out early to drive the cattle to pasture. But, on seeing the ship coming to land, she had washed herself in spite of the old woman's injunction. (The old woman did not wish her great beauty to be seen, for she was the fairest of maids, and her hair, which reached even to the ground, was like silk.) So, when she returns, Ragnar's men marvel at her beauty, and ask the old woman if she is her daughter. Grima assents to their question. Kraka kneads the bread for them; but during the baking they can only watch the maiden, and so the bread gets burned. Ragnar inquires where they baked the bread, and they tell him, and also confess that they could not attend to their business because of a very lovely girl, of beauty no less rare than that of Thora, his first wife. Ragnar will forgive them if this be true, and he sends messengers to fetch her, if she be indeed so fair, to be his wife. But she must come neither clad nor unclad, neither fed nor unfed, she must not come alone, and yet no one must accompany her.¹¹ The message is delivered to Kraka, and she promises to come on the morrow. So she wraps herself in a fishing-net, letting her long hair fall over it, eats a morsel of leek, takes a dog with her, and sets out to the ship.¹² Ragnar invites her to come aboard; he leads her to his cabin. She will not consent to accompany him on his voyage; but if, on his return, he is of the same mind, then she will fare with him. He offers her Thora's gold embroidered dress, which she declines.¹³ Then she goes home, and Ragnar continues his voyage. On his return the king puts in at the same port, and sends his men for Kraka. She tells the old people that she is going thence, and that she knows that they have slain her foster-father Heimir, wherefore she leaves a curse behind her. Ragnar takes her to his home, and then marries her. After she has borne him many children, Ragnar, journeying to Sweden, becomes acquainted with Ingebiorg, the daughter of King Eystein. His followers urge him to woo her, and to put the peasant's daughter away. Ingebiörg is betrothed to him, and he strictly enjoins his people to say no word about it when they get back. But Kraka hears of it, and speaks thereof to her husband, making believe that three birds have told her; and she now makes known that she is the daughter of Sigurd Fafnirsbane and of Brunhild, and relates how she came to the peasants' homestead.

It is unnecessary to point out the striking parallels which the above narrative presents to the common incidents of the folk- tale. Again, we get the obscure and servile condition of the heroine, a salient element in the Cinderella story, in the Epic Gudrun. Here it is due to the anger of a would-be mother-in- law. The same element occurs in the story of Cupid and Psyche in a form still more closely akin to Cinderella.

Numberless instances might be adduced in which a hero or heroine must undergo a term of servitude before fulfilling an exalted destiny. Apollo tended the flocks of Admetus, and was doomed to serve Laomedon for a wage. Hercules was for twelve years in the service of Eurystheus, after which he became immortal. M. Loys Brueyre¹ refers to Pérouik l'Idiot (Em. Souvestre), a popular version of the old romance of Perceval, as furnishing the Celtic type of Cendrillon. The hero begins by being stupid to the length of mistaking deer for goats, and finishes by achieving great things. In short, the detached elements of the Cinderella story, as well as of the nearly allied Catskin story, are folk-tale commonplaces, though they are nowhere united into a whole that could account, by literary filiation, for the story as we find it in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The shoe incident, perhaps the most salient feature of Cinderella proper, was probably a story-telling commonplace before it was introduced into the German poem of King Rother, which was written in the early part of the twelfth century. It may be serviceable briefly to summarise the earlier contents of this poem, in order to show in what connection the shoe incident occurs. Rother, King of Rome, is urged to marry. His kinsman, the good hero Lupolt, knows of a rich king's daughter over the Eastern Sea at Constantinople; her father is called Constantine. Surpassing fair is she, but hitherto no man has ever sought her but has lost his life. The king sends Lupolt with a large following to woo the princess for him. They are at first well received by King Constantine; but, when Lupolt makes known his errand, they are all thrown into prison. Presently, King Rother is counselled himself to journey to Constantinople. He sets out, accompanied by the giant Asprian and others from giant-land, Rother assuming the name of Thiderich throughout the expedition. Constantine and his lords are much alarmed to see them arrive; but Thiderich makes believe that he is seeking protection from the powerful King Rother. During their stay at the court, Constantine's daughter, having seen Thiderich and fallen in love with him, sends her attendant, Herlint, to bid him to her apartment. Fearing treachery, he will not go; but he forthwith sets his goldsmith to cast two silver and two gold shoes, and gives two of them to Herlint. Under Asprian's advice, he gives, however, both the shoes for the same foot. The princess obtains possession of the shoes and puts on the gold one; but as the silver shoe will not fit, she again sends Herlint to Thiderich to ask him to give her the fellow-shoe, and to come and see her. He sends the shoe, and, when he presently visits the princess, she welcomes him, and bids him put it on her foot. He sits at her feet, and she places her foot on his knee. Then he bids her confess, as she is a Christian, which of all her wooers has pleased her best. She vows that amongst all the heroes whom she has seen not one is his peer. But, could she have her choice, she would take the brave hero whose messengers are even now in her father's dungeons; otherwise she must ever go unwed. His name is Rother, and he dwells westwards over the sea. Then he makes known to her that her feet are in King Rother's lap.

More simple use is made of the same incident in the middle thirteenth century Thidrekssaga:--

The Wilcini take Oda, the daughter of King Melias, and all her portable property, from the castle, and bring her to their leader, who says to her that, since her father would not give her to King Osangtrix, he will carry her to his master, and so win his goodwill. And he takes a silver shoe, and, placing the king's daughter on his knee, he draws it on her foot. It is neither too large nor too small, but fits as though it were made for her. Removing the silver shoe, he tries one of red gold, which fits even better. Then he makes known that he himself is King Osangtrix.¹⁵

The German custom lays stress on the shoeing of the bride; the Russian saga, on the other hand, points to the customary shoeing of the bridegroom.¹⁶ In 980, Vladimir wooed the daughter of Ragvald, who disdainfully rejected him, saying, "I will not shoe the son of a servant-girl." (Nestor, Schlöz., 5, 198; Mull., 150; Ewers, p. 116.)

According to Prof. de Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, ii, 281 ¹⁷). "Ahalyâ (the evening Aurora) in the ashes is the germ of the story of Cinderella, and of the daughter of the King of Dacia, persecuted by her lover, her father himself." He even considers that the legend of the lost slipper reposes "entirely upon the double meaning of the word apad, i.e., who has no foot, or what is the measure of the foot, which may be either the footstep or the slipper" (op. cit., i, 31). This stretch of the "solar theory" would indeed make of the beautiful story of Cinderella

" . . . a doubtful tale from fairy-land,
Hard for the non-elect to understand."

But as a system of explanation in the present case this theory has been conclusively handled by Mr. Lang in his Introduction to Perrault (p. c). As Mr. Ralston has said, in his interesting study of the story of Cinderella:¹⁸ "There is a vast difference between regarding as a nature-myth in general the germ of the legends from which have sprung the stories of the Cinderella cycle, and identifying with precision the particular atmospheric phenomenon which all its heroes and heroines are supposed to symbolise. And there is an equally wide difference between the reasonableness of seeking for a mythological explanation of a legend when traced back to its oldest known form, and the utter absurdity of attempting to squeeze a mythical meaning out of every incident in a modern nursery tale, which has, perhaps, been either considerably enlarged, or cruelly 'clippit and nippit' by successive generations of rustic repeaters, and has most certainly been greatly modified and dressed by its literary introducers into polite society."

In dealing with the "unlawful marriage" opening of the Rashie-Coat story, Mr. Ralston writes: "Mythologists say that all stories about such marriages mean nothing more than does the dialogue in the Veda between Yama and his twin-sister Yami, in which 'she (the night) implores her brother (the day) to make her his wife, and he declines her offer, because, as he says, "They have thought it sin that a brother should marry his sister."'¹⁹ But by many eyes these narratives are regarded as ancient traditions which preserve the memory of customs long obsolete and all but forgotten." The Russian story from Athanas'ev (to which I refer on p. 150) of the girl who, pursued by her brother, sinks into the earth, and so escapes, and the similar Polish story from Wojcicki (No. 205, p. 428), find their parallel in genuine savage folk-lore. In a Zulu tale,²⁰ a girl, whose brother is pursuing her with murderous intent, exclaims, "Open, earth I that I may enter, for I am about to die this day"; whereupon "the earth opened, and Untombi-yapansi entered". Her subsequent adventures, also, are akin to those of Cinderella. Originally "her body glistened, for she was like brass", but "she took some black earth and smeared her body with it", and so eclipsed her natural radiance. Eventually, however, she was watched by the chief, who saw her, "dirty, and very black", enter a pool, and emerge from it "with her body glistening like brass", put on garments and ornaments which arose out of the ground, and behave altogether like the brilliant heroine she really was. "There seems to be good reason", says Mr. Ralston, "for looking upon Untombi-yapansi as a Zulu Cinderella. But how far a foreign influence has been exercised upon the Zulu tale it would be difficult to decide."

The "unlawful marriage" opening which characterises the second group of the Cinderella variants has been utilised in the legendary histories of Christian saints, in a number of mediaeval romances, and in the Mysteries based on the same. In the sequence of events to which it leads in romantic and legendary literature, many incidents of the folk-tale are reproduced; but these belong more especially to another class of story, of which, therefore, before examining the legends themselves, I may here give a few examples. The episodes most frequently met with in the romances may be thus briefly enumerated:

1. Flight of daughter from enamoured father.
2. Hands cut off and afterwards miraculously restored.
3. Persecution by mother-in-law (less frequently by stepmother) and fraudulent exchange of letters.
4. Reunion in distant lands of father and daughter, husband and wife.

In the Lithuanian story of the holy Margarita (Leskien und Brugman, Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen, pp. 505-508, No. 46), the stepmother calumniates the heroine to her absent brother, the duke, who at length sends orders for Margarita's arms to be cut off to the elbow, and for her to be turned out into the wilderness. She strays into the garden of a foreign king, whose son marries her. During his absence, she bears a son with a star to the right and left, and moonlight on the back of his head. The wicked stepmother writes to inform the prince that his wife has borne a monster. After receiving a third letter to this effect, he writes word that the child is to be bound to the mother's breast, and that she is to be turned out. Whilst Margarita is stooping to drink at a well, the bandage tears and the child falls into the water. She plunges her stumps in to recover it, and her arms are restored; but she cannot save the child. Presently she returns to the well, and finds the Mother of God holding the child, who is able to talk, and proposes to its mother that they should set out together in search of food. After a time they come to the palace where her brother is. A great feast is being held, and the heroine relates to the duke, the king, her stepmother, and many others assembled on the balcony, the story of the life of Saint Margarita. The duke recognises his lost sister, and the wicked stepmother is burnt to death.

In Gonzenbach's twenty-fourth story, "Von der schönen Wirthstochter" (Sicilianische Märchen, i, 148), the heroine's mother, who keeps an inn, is jealous of her daughter's beauty, and shuts her up. A king, however, catches sight of her, and marries her. During his absence at the war the heroine bears a child, and her mother in-law writes to tell the king. The messenger stops at the mother's inn, and the mother takes the opportunity of ex changing the letter for another, announcing that the queen has borne a monster. The king writes word that his wife and child are to be taken every care of; but again the heroine's mother intercepts the messenger and substitutes a letter containing the order that the queen's hands be cut off, her child bound to her arms, and that she be cast forth. St. Joseph finds her, creates a castle for them to inhabit together, and restores her hands. Some time afterwards, the king, losing his way when out hunting, comes to the castle and asks St. Joseph for a night's lodging. In the morning his wife and child are restored to him.²¹

There is a Greek variant, entitled "La Belle sans Mains" (Legrand, Contes pop. Grecs, pp. 241-256), which story, says Legrand, is a feeble echo of the legend entitled "D'une reine du pays francs dont la toute-puissante Notre-Dame guérit les mains coupées". This legend was inserted by the Cretan monk Agapios in his Auaptwnwv Zwtnpia, a curious book, which is still as popular in Greece as it was two centuries ago. Probably Agapios was acquainted with some Italian imitation of the "Roman de la Manekine", of which he made use.²²

These folk-tale examples will suffice for comparison with such of the legends as have more points of resemblance with stories of this class than with the story of Peau d'Ane.

After collating the several legends which bear upon the adventures of Cinderella in some of the numerous ramifications of the story, I found that M. le Comte de Puymaigre, in his work entitled Folklore (Paris, 1885, pp. 253-277), had made a précis of some of the same material. I am therefore glad to economise further time, having already given much to the subject, by here and there combining his work with my own in the remarks which follow. "La file aux mains coupées" forms the motif of his study in connection with the legends. Only one of the Cinderella variants, namely, the Serbian,²³ contains the incident of cutting off the hand in order to repulse the unnatural father. M. de Puymaigre met with this in the course of translating Victorial; a book of the fifteenth century, by Gutierre Dias de Games, giving the life of Don Pero Niño, to whom Games was alferez. Accompanying Don Pero to France, Games became acquainted with an episode which he considered revealed the cause of the long wars between that country and England. Gaines relates how a certain duke of Guienne, after the death of his wife, fell in love with his own daughter,²⁴ who, rather than that her father should kiss her hands, prevailed on a servant to cut them off. On discovering the mutilation, the enraged duke calls a council to consider what death she shall die. But the punishment which the law ordains for a woman of royal lineage is not death. She is accordingly put to sea alone in a boat, together with all her belongings, including a silver basin containing her hands and the blood. After much weeping and praying she falls asleep. The Virgin appears to her in a dream, and the girl prays her to restore her hands and take her safely to land. The Virgin promises her reward and honour. When the girl wakes, her hands are whole. A soft wind blowing from the French coast drives her boat to the shores of England. The son of the English king, returning with his fleet from Ireland, discovers her, listens to her strange eventful history, and marries her. Finally, when the Duc de Guienne dies, without heir, the English prince goes to Guienne, and claims the duchy for his wife. The French will not give it up, but drive him from the country. The duke had never been reconciled to his daughter, though he had heard of the miracle; and, feeling his end approaching, he had given the duchy to the King of France. This, says Games, was the beginning of the war which has lasted to the present day.²⁵

The above theme, orally transmitted in the folk-tale at the present day, is found in most of the mediaeval literatures of the West, amongst Celts, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans. One of the oldest forms of the saga is that found in the Vitae duorum Offarum, by Matthew Paris.²⁶

In the Vita Offae Primi we read of Offa as the king of the West Angles. One day, when hunting in the forest, he finds a beautiful maiden in royal garb. He questions her, and learns that her father, the king of York, had fallen in love with her, and, because she would not yield to his wishes, had caused her to be conveyed to a remote waste-land, there to be cruelly slain and left to the beasts. But the agents of this doom have spared her life. Offa takes her home with him, entrusts her to the care of certain courtiers, and some years afterwards makes her his wife, and she bears him lovely children. The king of Northumbria, harassed by the Scots and certain of his own subjects, seeks the aid of Offa, at the same time asking for the hand of his daughter, and promising to acknowledge him his sovereign. These terms are sworn on the Gospels. Offa sets off to the North, defeats the Scots, and sends his people the news of the war. The bearer of the letters is waylaid by Offa's son-in-law, who makes him drunk, and, whilst he sleeps, robs him of his letters,²⁷ substituting others which announce that Offa has been vanquished, that he considers his misfortune a judgment of God on account of his sin in having married the forest girl, and that she and her children are accordingly to be conveyed to some desert place, and left to perish. This letter reaches its destination; the magnates dare not disobey; the queen is cast out; moved by her beauty, the executioners spare her, but hack the children in pieces. A hermit finds the queen through hearing the piercing cries which proceed from the corpses; he places the mutilated limbs together, and resuscitates the children through his prayers. When Offa returns he hears with horror of what has been done during his absence. Seeking to solace his grief in hunting, he one day finds in the cave of the hermit the wife and children whom he had believed dead. In his gratitude he vows to found a monastery at the hermit's request. But this promise is only redeemed by Offa II, in the founding of St. Alban's.

The more usual incident of the exposure in the boat²⁸ has been reserved for the following story, related of the wife of King Offa II. There lived in the land of the Franks, a maiden of noble rank and of great beauty, but of evil disposition. She was a kinswoman of Charles the Great. On account of some disgraceful offence site was placed, with but scanty provision, in a boat with neither rudder nor sail, and abandoned to the waves. After long voyaging she landed in the kingdom of Offa, and being taken before the king, she related, in her mother tongue, the cause of her banishment. She had been sought in marriage by one of lowly birth, whom she had rejected, not wishing to debase the blood of her race; and it was in consequence of the schemes of this disappointed suitor that she had been exposed. Her name was Drida. King Offa confided the girl to the care of his mother, the Countess Marcella. As soon as she recovered her strength her old wildness returned with her beauty. Offa married her secretly; but, when his parents heard of it, they died of grief. Drida was called, after her marriage, Quendrida, i.e., Regina Drida. She was also called Petronilla.²⁹

The same theme forms the basis of the Roman de la Manekine³⁰ (MS. de la Bibliothèque Royale, No. 7609), written in verse by Philippe de Reimes, a trouvère of the thirteenth century.³¹ It tells how the King of Hungary, left a widower, is urged by his barons to marry again. Having promised the late queen that he would marry only a woman exactly resembling her, he now seeks to wed his daughter Joie. She, horrified at the proposal, cuts off her left band, which falls into the stream flowing beneath the kitchen where she performs the deed. Her father is furious, and condemns her to be burnt alive. A dummy (mannequin--whence the title of the roman) is put in Joie's place, and she is embarked, and lands in Scotland, where the king meets her, falls in love with her, and marries her. (The resemblance with the legend from Victorial ceases at this point, and the subsequent events run parallel with the incidents in that class of folk-tale of which I have given specimens.) During .the absence of her husband, who has gone to take part in a tournament arranged by the King of France, Joie bears a son. The mother-in-law intercepts the letter which should announce the news to the king, and substitutes another, saying that Joie has borne a monster. The king writes that nothing is to be done till his return; his mother exchanges this letter for one ordering the seneschal to burn Joie. Once more she is saved by the substitution of a dummy, and she embarks with her child. The king returns, learns the truth, locks up his mother, and sets out in search of his wife from Phrygia to India Major. After seven years he finds her in Rome, where she had found shelter in the house of a senator. The King of Hungary, overburdened with remorse, is there also, to make public confession in church. Witnessing his repentance, Joie makes herself known. Her hand, which had been swallowed by a sturgeon, is found in the fountain, and, in consequence of the Pope's benediction, it unites again with her arm.

Another version of the Manekine legend is related by Nicholas Trivet³² in his Anglo-Norman Chronicle. The date of this is 1334. Here there is no Catskin opening. The heroine is called Constance, and she is the daughter of the Emperor Tiberius Constantinus.

The Tale of Emare, in the Cotton MS. Caligula A. ii, printed by Ritson in his Ancient English Metrical Romances (London, 1802, vol. ii, pp. 204-247), seems, in all but its bad beginning, to be merely an older version of the Constance story.

The outline of Emare is as follows:--

An Emperor, named Artyus, and his wife Erayne, have a daughter Emare. On the death of Erayne the child is entrusted to a nurse named Abro. One day the Emperor, seeing his daughter clad in a wondrous cloth of gold, that had been presented to him by Sir Tergaunte, King of Sicily, falls in love with and seeks to wed her.³³ He gets a bull from the Pope, but she refuses him, and is in consequence exposed, clad "in the robe of noble blue", in a boat which drifts to Galys. Here she becomes the wife of the king. Her husband joins the King of France in the war against the Saracens, and during his absence