_Source._--From the chap-book reprinted in Halliwell I have introduced
the demand for magic dresses from Chambers's _Rashie Coat_, into which
it had clearly been interpolated from some version of Catskin.
_Parallels._--Miss Cox's admirable volume of variants of _Cinderella_
also contains seventy-three variants of _Catskin_, besides thirteen
"indeterminate" ones which approximate to that type. Of these
eighty-six, five exist in the British Isles, two chap-books given in
Halliwell and in Dixon's _Songs of English Peasantry_, two by Campbell,
Nos. xiv. and xiv_a_, "The King who Wished to Marry his Daughter," and
one by Kennedy's _Fireside Stories_, "The Princess in the Catskins."
Goldsmith knew the story by the name of "Catskin," as he refers to it in
the _Vicar_. There is a fragment from Cornwall in _Folk-Lore_, i., App.
p. 149.
_Remarks._--_Catskin, or the Wandering Gentlewomen_, now exists in
English only in two chap-book ballads. But Chambers's first variant of
_Rashie Coat_ begins with the Catskin formula in a euphemised form. The
full formula may be said to run in abbreviated form--_Death-bed
promise--Deceased wife's resemblance marriage test--Unnatural father_
(desiring to marry his own daughter)--_Helpful animal--Counter
tasks--Magic dresses--Heroine flight--Heroine disguise--Menial
heroine--Meeting-place--Token objects named--Threefold flight--Lovesick
prince--Recognition ring--Happy marriage_. Of these the chap-book
versions contain scarcely anything of the opening _motifs_. Yet they
existed in England, for Miss Isabella Barclay, in a variant which Miss
Cox has overlooked (_Folk-Lore_, i., _l.c._), remembers having heard the
Unnatural Father incident from a Cornish servant-girl. Campbell's two
versions also contain the incident, from which one of them receives its
name. One wonders in what form Mr. Burchell knew Catskin, for "he gave
the [Primrose] children the Buck of Beverland,[3] with the history of
Patient Grissel, the adventures of Catskin and the Fair Rosamond's
Bower" (_Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, c. vi.). Pity that "Goldy" did not
tell the story himself, as he had probably heard it in Ireland, where
Kennedy gives a poor version in his _Fireside Stories_.
Yet, imperfect as the chap-book versions are, they yet retain not a few
archaic touches. It is clear from them, at any rate, that the Heroine
was at one time transformed into a Cat. For when the basin of water is
thrown in her face she "shakes her ears" just as a cat would. Again,
before putting on her magic dresses she bathes in a pellucid pool. Now,
Professor Child has pointed out in his notes on Tamlane and elsewhere
(_English and Scotch Ballads_, i., 338; ii., 505; iii., 505) that
dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take
place. It is clear, therefore, that Catskin was originally transformed
into an animal by the spirit of her mother, also transformed into an
animal.
If I understand Mr. Nutt rightly (_Folk-Lore_, iv, 135, _seq._), he is
inclined to think, from the evidence of the hero-tales which have the
unsavoury _motif_ of the Unnatural Father, that the original home of the
story was England, where most of the hero-tales locate the incident. I
would merely remark on this that there are only very slight traces of
the story in these islands nowadays, while it abounds in Italy, which
possesses one almost perfect version of the formula (Miss Cox, No. 142,
from Sardinia).
Mr. Newell, on the other hand (_American Folk-Lore Journal_, ii., 160),
considers Catskin the earliest of the three types contained in Miss
Cox's book, and considers that Cinderella was derived from this as a
softening of the original. His chief reason appears to be the earlier
appearance of Catskin in Straparola,[4] 1550, a hundred years earlier
than Cinderella in Basile, 1636. This appears to be a somewhat
insufficient basis for such a conclusion. Nor is there, after all, so
close a relation between the two types in their full development as to
necessitate the derivation of one from the other.
[Footnote 3: Who knows the Buck of Beverland nowadays?]
[Footnote 4: It is practically in Des Perier's _Récréations_, 1544.]