In previous Roundups, I’ve explored Mermaid stories, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White. Last week, I promised to talk about Cinderella in honor of my story in Timeless 2.

Now, if you’re new to this type of post, it’s usually some notes and analysis of different variations of a tale — with the varieties taken from Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, an online archive associated with the University of Pittsburgh.

I actually hadn’t looked at the archive’s page on Cinderella stories before I wrote my story for Timeless 2. After all, Cinderella’s a pretty basic tale, right? Ha! 🙂 The Cinderella page (Type 510a, for folklore nerds) includes twenty-three different stories. Here are some highlights:

  • The first story, “The Cinder Maid,” claims to be a reconstruction of the “original” Cinderella story based on several different variations. I can’t speak to the truth of that, but I did like that there was more than one ball! (It’s always nice to think that maybe, possibly, the princes and princesses might get to know each other a little before they decide to marry . . .)
  • Animal helpers are common in all of the stories, from a bull in “Katie Woodencloak” to ewes to pigeons and even a crab (“Maria and the Golden Slipper”). Even if the animals aren’t playing “fairy godmother,” it’s usually a little birdie (literally) who tells the prince if he’s taken the wrong sister home.
  • Oh yeah . . . speaking of that, there’s a lot of stepsisters cutting off their toes to fit their feet in Cinderella’s slipper. Inevitably, the bloody shoe gives them away.
  • Back to “Katie Woodencloak.” The bull is a much better character than the prince!! I kept hoping he’d turn out to be a suitor under a curse. Spoiler, I was disappointed.
  • Often, the animal helper/magical tree that stands in for the fairy godmother is the spirit of the dead mother. Some of the versions felt more like a ghost story than a fairy tale — especially “The Wonderful Birch.”
  • And on that note, in addition to foot-cutting, there was a surprising amount of cannibalism in the tales. (Okay, maybe only two contained cannibalism, but that’s still a lot, especially for Cinderella retellings!)
  • One of the Irish versions, “Fair, Brown, and Trembling,” threw in a fight between princes for Cinderella’s hand. Because as a story, “Cinderella” definitely needed more swordfights. 😉
  • “Fair, Brown, and Trembling,” along with a few other tales, also added in a sort of “sequel” where even after Cinderella marries the prince, her stepsisters try to get rid of her.
  • There are several Native American versions at the bottom of the list — and two of them, “The Poor Turkey Girl” and “The Turkey Herd,” have a very different message. In both, the turkeys serve as the fairy godmother, making Cinderella beautiful for a dance. But when she stays too long and forgets her turkey friends, they abandon her, and she comes home to find she’s even worse off than when she began.
  • Down at the end of the list is a link to one of my favorite retellings, “The Green Knight.” This isn’t the Arthurian Green Knight, but instead another version of Cinderella — with with a book instead of a ball. My kind of story! 😉

Jeez, I could go on a long time about these stories! Some were very strange. And that’s not including stories I know as “Thousand-Furs” stories, which are very similar to Cinderella stories (in fact they’re type 510b). The only real difference is that instead of an evil stepmother making the daughter work, there’s a crazy king who wants to marry his daughter so she runs off and finds work in another castle. There’s twenty-five of those in a separate page in the archive.

So, on that note, happy reading! 😀