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

Heroine, youngest, nicknamed Cinderella, despised, but not ill-treated--Hearth abode-- Gifts from father; heroine chooses nut; it contains Magic dresses-- Meeting-place (church)-- Two-fold flight-- Lost shoe-- Shoe marriage test on following Sunday
-- Happy marriage.

TABULATION

(1) Wealthy parents have three daughters; the two elder haughty, and the youngest despised. She stays always by the fire, and is nicknamed Cinderella. Elder sisters, going for a walk, ask if heroine will not accompany them. She declines.-- (2) Father, starting to a distant fair, asks what gifts he shall bring daughters. Eldest chooses a lovely gown; the second, the same. Youngest asks for a nut, and is reproved for greediness, in preferring something to eat to a dress. Father returns with the gifts.-- (3) Next Sunday sisters go in their fine dresses to church, regretting that heroine will not go too. When they have started, heroine opens her nut, gets a grand carriage with horses and coachman, and clothes far more beautiful than her sisters'. She goes to church. All wonder whose the carriage is. She leaves quickly after service. Sisters return, and talk about lovely stranger. Heroine remarks, "She can't be more beautiful than I am," and they wonder at her.-- (4) Next Sunday sisters cannot induce her to go to church with them; but all happens as before. In getting into her carriage, after the service, heroine drops one of her shoes.-- (5) King's son picks it up, unperceived. He will wed whomsoever it fits. Princesses and all try in vain.-- (6) Shoe is to be tried again next Sunday, and heroine goes, all unadorned and smutty, to the test. Shoe fits her alone. All concerned that prince must wed her. She opens her nut, dons her fine clothes, and drives off in her carriage with the prince.

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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