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77

Moe, Moltke, Unpublished Collection. Christiania. (From Ostre Moland, near Arendal.)

"FJOS-LUBBA"
(Stable-Slut).

ABSTRACT

Ill-treated heroine (by step-mother) --Stable abode--Old woman aid--Magic dresses from treasure-tree--Heroine bidden to drink the milk of a certain black cow, to get good complexion. Singing birds sit on her shoulders--Meeting (church)-- Threefold flight--Lost shoe--Shoe marriage test--Mutilated foot--False bride--Animal witness (bird)--Happy marriage.

TABULATION

(1) Widower with one daughter marries widow with one daughter. Heroine must live in the stable, clothed in rags, and is not allowed to go to church.-- (2) When the others have started heroine takes her comb, goes down to the river, and sits under a large lime-tree combing her hair. A bird begins singing overhead, and whilst Fjos-lubba pauses to listen, an old woman steps out of tree and asks why she looks so mournful. Heroine tells her, and is then invited to follow old woman into tree. Here she gets a red-silk dress and red-silk shoes, and is sent off to church. On leaving she must remember to say, "Light before me, dark behind me!" and then return to tree and say:

"Lime-tree, lime-tree,
Open for me."

When she gets home afterwards she is to drink the milk of the black cow nearest the stable door, for this will give her a fair white skin.-- (3) Next Sunday heroine gets a silver dress, silver shoes, and two silver singing birds to sit on her shoulders -- (4) The third Sunday she gets everything of gold. She loses one gold shoe. Prince goes about trying to find its owner.-- (5) Stepsister, urged by her mother, cuts her heel and toe, but as the prince is driving with her past the lime-tree a little bird sits there singing, "Cut off heel, cut off toe The golden shoe is full of blood." Three times it sings, and then the prince understands, and returns to try the shoe on Fjos-lubba.-- (6) It fits her. She asks prince to wait a moment, runs to the lime tree, and returns in her golden dress.

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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