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112

Thorpe, Benjamin, Yule-Tide Stories. Popular Tales and Traditions from the Swedish, Danish, and German. pp. 112-126. (From the Swedish district of Smaland.)

"THE LITTLE GOLD SHOE."

[You can read Thorpe's The Little Gold Shoe on SurLaLune.]

ABSTRACT

Ill-treated heroine (by step-mother and step-sister)--Menial heroine, nick-named Cinder-girl -- Task, grain-sorting -- Tear dropt in spring by heroine causes Helpful animal (pike) to appear and tell her of magic tree -- Magic dresses -- Meeting-place (church) -- Three-fold flight--Pitch trap-- Lost shoe-- Rags thrown on to cover magic dress--Shoe marriage test--Mutilated foot--Animal witness (bird)--Heroine hidden in oven--Hero snatches off husk--Happy Marriage--Villain Nemesis.

TABULATION

(1) King and queen had fair daughter; queen died; king married widow with daughter, but was unhappy.-- (2) He died. Stepmother and stepsister, jealous of daughter's beauty, made her kitchen drudge, calling her "Cinder-Girl" -- (3) Foreign prince came wooing, whereat stepmother made her daughter smart to ride in gilded coach to church, and bade Cinder-Girl stay to sweep and cook. Stepsister showed her fine dress, and was angry when Cinder-Girl said she also might go to church, and stepmother scattered peas, bidding her pick them all up.-- (4) Cinder-Girl went to spring for water, and dropped a tear therein, when pike arose and asked why she cried. He told her she would find in oak some fine clothes and a palfrey whereon to ride to church. She was to sit between stepmother and daughter, but to say nothing, and hurry home before them to change clothes.-- (5) All this she did, and her silver dress cast brightness around, so that the prince was smitten and followed her when she left; but she reached home and donned her old clothes.-- (6) Stepmother and daughter were furious at the coming of the stranger to church, and were all bustle to look finer than ever next Sunday.-- (7) Then all happened as before, save that Cinder-Girl had to pick up a scattered bushel of groats, and that she went to church in a habit of purest gold.-- (8) So it was upon the third Sunday, when she had to gather up a spilt bushel of meal, and appeared at church in garments brilliant with gems, while on her head was a crown of gold.-- (9) This time the prince caused tar to be spilt at the church door, and one of her gold shoes stuck in it, but she dared not stay to pick it up; whereon the prince did so. The people followed her so closely that as she reached the oak she could only throw her ragged clothes over the jewelled dress and hurry home, where she feigned to be hard at work.-- (10) The prince gave notice through all the realm that only the woman whom the shoe fitted would he wed.-- (11) But as none could pass that test, he roamed till he came to the palace, when the stepmother shut up Cinder-Girl in the oven, and vainly strove to force her daughter's foot into the shoe by chopping off her heels and clipping her toes.-- (12) As the girl again tried on the shoe a bird sang:

"Chop heel and clip toe!
In the oven is she whom fits the gold shoe."

The prince heard this, and the stepmother sought to put him off; but the bird sang a second and a third time, so that the prince had the oven searched, and Cinder-Girl was brought out.-- (13) Then the shoe was tried and it was as if it had grown to her foot; and the prince, seeing a gleam of gold on her, snatched off her coarse garment, when she stood in dazzling beauty, and became his queen.-- (14) All the guests danced at the wedding, except the stepdaughter whose toes had been cut off by her mother.

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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