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180

Melusine (1886), t. iii. Col. 404-5. (From the neighbourhood of Redon [Ille-et-Vilaine].)

"PEAU D'ANE"

ABSTRACT

(NOTE--The beginning of the story is missing.)

Two sisters buy donkey the one in love with king's son wears its skin--Heroine disguise (ass-skin)--Menial heroine (turkey girl)--Heroine discovered by hunting prince. Chaffinch warns her--Lovesick prince--Recognition food, contains heroine's ring--Ring marriage test--Happy marriage.

TABULATION

[The beginning of the story is missing.]

(1) The two sisters, who are splendidly dressed, meet on the road a man leading a donkey, which they persuade him to sell them. The girl who is in love with the king's son dresses in the ass-skin, and takes service at castle so as to he near him.-- (2) She is sent to mind turkeys, and, when she returns in the evening, she will not leave the hearth, but sits throwing grains of salt into the fire. Once prince's mother, finding her thus engaged, asks what is crackling in the fire. "They are lice."-- (3) In the daytime, thinking herself alone in the fields, she doffs ass-skin to admire reflection in the spring, of the robes she has worn underneath. One day the prince, out hunting, happens to see her. A chaffinch in the bush says:

"Ass-skin, Ass-skin, hide thee,
For the prince has spied thee."

Prince goes home, madly in love.-- (4) He feigns illness, and goes to bed. Mother asks what he would like. He says a cake made by Peau d'Ane. "What! that dirty girl?"-- (5) Peau d'Ane makes cake, and slips her ring into it. -- (6) Prince will wed girl whose finger this ring will fit. After Mass on Sunday, all the girls are made to file past castle, and ring is tried on each. It will only fit the last, who is Peau d'Ane.-- (7) Prince marries her.

Cox, Marian Roalfe. Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap O' Rushes, abstracted and tabulated. London: David Nutt for the Folklore Society, 1893.

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