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87

Moe, Moltke, Unpublished Collection. Christiania. (From Bö or Hitterdal, in Thelemarken.)

"SJUKDOTTERA"
(dialect = The Step-Daughter).

ABSTRACT

Ill-treated heroine (by step-mother)---Tasks (grain-sorting from ashes)--Task-performing birds--Help at grave of dead mother--Angel gives Magic dress--Meeting-place (a place called "Vald"). [Narrator remembered no more.]

TABULATION

(1) Widower with one daughter marries again. Stepmother is kind to her own daughter, but abuses heroine.-- (2) One day they are all to go to a place called "Vald", but heroine must stay at home. She cries, and begs to go too. She may go if she can gather up the two quarts of peas which step mother throws in the ashes, and separate the worm-eaten from the sound. Heroine calls to the birds:

"Come, all my little birdies, please,
And help me sort these scattered peas
The worm-eaten eat, but ne'er another;
The best I must have to give my stepmother."

Birds come and quickly perform task.-- (3) Stepmother then throws three quarts of peas into the ashes, and they are gathered and sorted in the same way. Still heroine is not allowed to go.-- (4) She sits on her mother's grave weeping. An angel from heaven brings her a golden dress. She goes after the others; the king sees her and falls in love.

[The narrator remembered no more.]

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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