SurLaLune Fairy Tales: Marian Roalfe Cox: Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap O' Rushes, abstracted and tabulated

Cinderella:
345 Variants
by Marian
Roalfe Cox

SurLaLune's
Cinderella Area

[You can read Denton's Papalluga on SurLaLune. Also compare to Woislav M. Petrovitch's Pepelyouga available on SurLaLune.]

ABSTRACT

Old man warns girls spinning and cattle-tending against dropping spindle down cliff. Heroine drops hers, transforming mother into cow--ll1-treated heroine (by step-mother)--Task, spinning.--Transformed mother help--Spy on heroine--Slaying of helpful animal--Eating taboo--Revivified bones--Help at grave--Menial heroine, called Papalluga--Task, grain-sorting-- Task performing animals (birds)--Magic dress --Meeting place (church) -- Three-fold flight -- Lost shoe -- Shoe marriage test--Animal witness (cock), reveals heroine under wash trough--Happy marriage.

TABULATION

(1) Old man warns girls spinning and cattle tending against dropping spindle down cliff lest their mother be turned into a cow. Girl goes near cliff's edge, and lets spindle fall.-- (2) Reaching home, finds mother changed into a cow, which she drives to pasture.-- (3) Father then marries widow with daughter.-- (4) Stepmother treated stepdaughter harshly, gave her bag of hemp to spin against stepmother's return home, on pain of death.-- (5) As girl drove cow she wept, when the cow (mother) bade her put hemp in her mouth to chew, and draw it from her ear as thread. This she did. Step mother surprised to find hemp spun, so next day gave girl yet more, which the cow spun as before; and so a third time.-- (6) Stepmother set her daughter to watch how this was done, and then urged her husband to kill cow.-- (7) Stepdaughter told cow, who bade her not eat of flesh, but gather bones and bury them, and then come to her grave in time of need. Step-daughter's name was Mary, but she did dirty work of house, so was called Papalluga.-- (8) Stepmother and daughter went to church, first strewing millet all over house, which Papalluga was to gather up, and cook dinner, against their return, under pain of death. -- (9) Then Papalluga went to cow's grave, where was box of silk clothes and two doves, who bade her put them on and go to church, while they did her work..-- (10) All in church wondered at her, and king's son fell in love with her. She ran home, doffed clothes, and made ready for stepmother. Next Sunday same task was set her, and same things happened, except that her dress was of silver.-- (11) And so on the third Sunday, when king's son resolved to overtake her; but she ran ahead, dropping her right-foot slipper, which he picked up.-- (12) Then he travelled through his kingdom in vain search of the owner, till he came to stepmother's house, and tried it on stepdaughter.-- (13) He was told no other girl was there, when a cock cried, "Cock-a-doodle-do! she is under the wash-trough." There he saw princess in golden dress, but with one slipper. Fitting on the other, he took her to palace and married 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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