Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
The noble's daughter was set to do all the drudgery of the house, to attend the kitchen fire, and had naught to sleep on but the heap of cinders raked out in the scullery; and that is why they called her Cinder-Maid. And no one took pity on her and she would go and weep at her mother's grave where she had planted a hazel tree, under which she sat.
But the Prince, hoping to prevent her running away, had ordered the soldiers at the foot of the stair-case to pour out honey on the stairs so that her shoes would stick in it. But Cinder-Maid leaped from stair to stair and got away just in time, calling out as the soldiers tried to follow her: "Mist behind and light before, Guide me to my father's door."
And the sisters cried out, "Cinder-Maid, Cinder-Maid, she could not wear that shoe." But the Prince said, "As she is of noble birth she has a right to try the shoe."
"What shall we wear, mother; what shall we wear?" cried out the two daughters, and they all began talking about which dress should suit the one and what dress should suit the other, but when the father suggested that Cinder-Maid should also have a dress they all cried out: "What, Cinder-Maid going to the King's Ball; why, look at her, she would only disgrace us all."
Now go, child, but there is one thing you must remember, when the clock strikes twelve you must be at home again in this very room. If you are not, all your beautiful things will vanish and you will be left alone just a poor little, ragged cinder-maid." Cinderella promised to remember. She thanked the fairy and drove quickly away.
But she went to her own mother's grave and sat beneath the hazel tree and wept and cried out: "Tree o'mine, O tree o'me, With my tears I've watered thee; Make me a lady fair to see, Dress me as splendid as can be." And with that the little bird on the tree called out to her, "Cinder-Maid, Cinder-Maid, shake the tree, Open the first nut that you see."
It is thus quite easy for a folk teller, who is familiar with other stories, to introduce an analogous set of incidents in the Cinder-Maid formula, just as Rob Roy's son can introduce variations of an air when playing the bagpipes; but the air remains the same throughout.
When Cinder-Maid entered the ball-room she was the loveliest of all the ladies and the Prince, who had been dancing with her step-sisters, would only dance with her. But as it came towards midnight Cinder-Maid remembered what the little bird had told her and slipped away to her carriage. And when the Prince missed her he went to the guards at the Palace door and told them to follow the carriage.
Miss Cox's volume contains all the parallels of the Cinder-Maid formulæ, to which reference has been made above, and she has supplemented these by a few additional ones in Folk-Lore for 1907, pages xviii; 191-6. Fairy god-mother, p. 527 and Talking birds, p. 527-9.
They belong rather to the type of story represented by the Grimm's "One eye, Two eyes, Three eyes"; and I have therefore reserved them for my retelling of this formula. The central incident of the Cinder-Maid formula is clearly the Shoe Marriage Test, up to which everything leads and upon which the mutilation incidents at the end depends.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking