Now, in the “English” versions there is practical unanimity in the concluding portions of the tale. Magic dresses—Meeting-place (Church)—Flight—Lost Shoe—Shoe Marriage-test—Mutilated foot—False Bride—Bird witness—Happy Marriage, follow one another with exemplary regularity in all four (six) versions.[2] The introductory incidents vary somewhat. Chambers has evidently a maimed version of the introduction of Catskin (see No. lxxxiii.). The remaining three enable us, however, to restore with some confidence the Ur-Cinderella in English somewhat as follows: Helpful animal given by dying mother—Ill-treated heroine—Menial heroine—cornucopia—Spy on heroine—Slaying by helpful animal—Tasks—Revivified bones. I have attempted in my version to reconstruct the “English” Cinderella according to these formulæ. It will be observed that the helpful animal is helpful in two ways (a) in helping the heroine to perform tasks; (b) in providing her with magic dresses. It is the same with the Grimms’ Aschenputtel and other Continental variants.
Turning to the Celtic variants, these divide into two sets. Campbell’s and Macleod’s versions are practically at one with the English formula, the latter with an important variation which will concern us later. But the other two, Curtin’s and Sinclair’s, one collected in Ireland and the other in Scotland, both continue the formula with the conclusion of the Sea Maiden tale (on which see the Notes of my Celtic Fairy Tales, No. xvii.). This is a specifically Celtic formula, and would seem therefore to claim Cinderella for the Celts. But the welding of the Sea Maiden ending on to the Cinderella formula is clearly a later and inartistic junction, and implies rather imperfect assimilation of the Cinderella formula. To determine the question of origin we must turn to the purer type given by the other two Celtic versions.
Campbell’s tale can clearly lay no claim to represent the original type of Cinderella. The golden shoes are a gift of the hero to the heroine which destroys the whole point of the Shoe marriage test, and cannot have been in the original, wherever it originated. Mr. Macleod’s version, however, contains an incident which seems to bring us nearer to the original form than any version contained in Miss Cox’s book. Throughout the variants it will be observed what an important function is played by the helpful animal. This in some of the versions is left as a legacy by the heroine’s dying mother. But in Mr. Macleod’s version the helpful animal, a sheep, is the heroine’s mother herself! This is indeed an archaic touch, which seems to hark back to primitive times and totemistic beliefs. And more important still, it is a touch which vitalises the other variants in which the helpful animal is rather dragged in by the horns. Mr. Nutt’s lucky find at the last moment seems to throw more light on the origin of the tale than almost the whole of the remaining collection.
But does this find necessarily prove an original Celtic origin for Cinderella? Scarcely. It remains to be proved that this introductory part of the story with helpful animal was necessarily part of the original. Having regard to the feudal character underlying the whole conception, it remains possible that the earlier part was ingeniously dovetailed on to the latter from some pre-existing and more archaic tale, perhaps that represented by the Grimms’ One Eyed, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes. The possibility of the introduction of an archaic formula which had become a convention of folk-telling cannot be left out of account.
The “Youngest-best” formula which occurs in Cinderella, and on which Mr. Lang laid much stress in his treatment of the subject in his “Perrault” as a survival of the old tenure of “junior right,” does not throw much light on the subject. Mr. Ralston, in the Nineteenth Century, 1879, was equally unenlightening with his sun-myths.
LXXIV. KING O’ CATS
Source.—I have taken a point here and a point there from the various English versions mentioned in the next section.
I have expanded the names, so as to make a jingle from the Dildrum and Doldrum of Hartland.
Parallels.—Five variants of this quaint legend have been collected in England: (1) Halliwell, Pop. Rhymes, 167, “Molly Dixon”; (2) Choice Notes—Folk-Lore, p. 73, “Colman Grey”; (3) Folk-Lore Journal, ii., 22, “King o’ the Cats”; (4) Folk-Lore—England (Gibbings), “Johnny Reed’s Cat”; (5) Hartland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, p. 13, “Dildrum Doldrum.” Sir F. Palgrave gives a Danish parallel; cf. Halliwell, l.c.
Remarks.—An interesting example of the spread and development of a simple anecdote throughout England. Here again we can scarcely imagine more than a single origin for the tale which is, in its way, as weird and fantastic as E.A. Poe.
LXXV. TAMLANE
Source.—From Scott’s Minstrelsy, with touches from the other variants given by Prof. Child in his Eng. and Scotch Ballads, i., 335-58.
Parallels.—Prof. Child gives no less than nine versions in his masterly edition, l.c., besides another fragment “Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane,” i., 258. He parallels the marriage of Peleus and Thetis in Apollodorus III., xiii., 5, 6, which still persists in modern Greece as a Cretan ballad.
Remarks.—Prof. Child remarks that dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take place, and gives examples, l.c., 338, to which may be added that of Catskin (see Notes infra). He gives as the reason why the Elf-queen would have “ta’en out Tamlane’s two grey eyne,” so that henceforth he should not be able to see the fairies. Was it not rather that he should not henceforth see Burd Janet?—a subtle touch of jealousy. On dwelling in fairyland Mr. Hartland has a monograph in his Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 161-254.
LXXVI. THE STARS IN THE SKY
Source.—Mrs. Balfour’s old nurse, now in New Zealand. The original is in broad Scots, which I have anglicised.
Parallels.—The tradition is widespread that at the foot of the rainbow treasure is to be found; cf. Mr. John Payne’s “Sir Edward’s Questing” in his Songs of Life and Death.
Remarks.—The “sell” at the end is scarcely after the manner of the folk, and various touches throughout indicate a transmission through minds tainted with culture and introspection.
LXXVII. NEWS!
Source.—Bell’s Speaker.
Parallels.—Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, ed. Crane, No. ccv., a servant being asked the news by his master returned from a pilgrimage to Compostella, says the dog is lame, and goes on to explain: “While the dog was running near the mule, the mule kicked him and broke his own halter and ran through the house, scattering the fire with his hoofs, and burning down your house with your wife.” It occurs even earlier in Alfonsi’s Disciplina Clericalis, No. xxx., at beginning of the twelfth century, among the Fabliaux, and in Bebel, Werke, iii., 71, whence probably it was reintroduced into England. See Prof. Crane’s note ad loc.