'In truth we have a little sister who sits in the kitchen and does the
work. She is called Cenorientola, because she is always smutty. We are
sure she never went to a ball, and it would only soil the beautiful
gold slipper to let her put her smutty feet into it.'
'It may be so,' replied the king's servant, 'but we must try,
nevertheless.'
So they fetched her, and the king's servant found that the shoe fitted
her; and they went and told the king all.
The moment the king heard them say Cenorientola he said,--'That is
she! It is the name she gave me.'
So he sent a carriage to fetch her in all haste. The bird meantime
had given her a more beautiful dress than any she had had before,
and priceless jewels, so that when they came to fetch her she looked
quite fit to be a queen. Then the king married her; and though her
sisters had behaved so ill to her she gave them two fine estates,
so that all were content.
[The counterparts to the story are endless. In Grimm's 'Aschenputtel'
(p. 93), the nominal German counterpart, there is a stepmother
as well as two sisters, and the story turns upon the gifts each
daughter craves of the father, an episode which occurs in Roman
versions with different titles. His 'Die drei Männlein im Walde'
('Three Little Men in the Wood') is like it, and the other versions
too, and the episode in it of the good daughter receiving the faculty
of dropping a gold coin from her mouth at every word she utters,
is like a Hungarian story, in which no stepmother figures, but the
evil genius of the story (the Lady-in-Waiting) is plainly called
a witch. In this story it is a princess, from whose footsteps rise
gold pieces, her tears are pearls, and her smiles rosebuds. In one
of the Siddhi Kür Stories which I have translated as 'Sagas from the
far East' (p. 49) is a similar incident, and a Spanish equivalent in
Note 3. A friend of mine met with a very similar legend in a convent
at Quito, concerning a nun called 'the Rose of Quito,' out of whose
grave a rose-tree is said to have sprung and blossomed on the morrow
of her burial. It seems, however, to have an independent origin, as
'the Rose of Quito' died within the last 150 years. In the Tirolean
'Klein-Else,' or 'Aschenpfödl,' to which allusion has already been
made, and which answers to it in name, we have a connexion with the
last group (as in some of the succeeding Roman versions) in the sun,
moon, and star dresses.
Among the Tales of Italian Tirol we find it as Zendrarola, and with
a good deal of variation from any other form I have met. The story
opens with a dying father as in the North Tirolean 'Klein-Else,' but
it is only a rich man, not a warrior-baron, and he has three daughters
instead of one. He bids them choose what gifts he shall bestow on
them before he dies, and the eldest asks for a pair of earrings;
the second for a dress; and the youngest for his magic sword, which
gives whatever the possessor wishes for. The story is singular in this,
that the elder sisters seem to have no spite. The father does not die;
but, notwithstanding his recovery, he has nothing more to do with the
story further than to give an unwilling consent that the youngest
daughter, though his favourite, shall go forth with her sword and
roam the world till she finds a husband. She only takes service in
a large house in a big town, however; but there falls in love with a
melancholy youth, son of a count, who lives opposite. For the sake of
being nearer him, she obtains the place of kitchen-maid in his palace,
and thus acquires her title of Zendrarola in a very different way
from her counterparts in other lands. One day she hears he is going
to a ball, and she makes her wishing-sword give her a dress like
the sky; and the young Count, who has never admired anyone before,
of course falls in love with her. When he comes back, he confides to
his lady mother what has occurred, and Zendrarola, now again dressed
as a dirty drudge, interposes that the fair one he was extolling was
not prettier than herself. He silences her indignantly by giving her
a poke with the shovel, and when she meets him next night in some
beautiful attire, and he asks her where she comes from, she answers
'dalla palettada' (from shovel-blow). The next day the same thing
happens, and he gives her a blow with the tongs, and when he asks
her in the evening what her country is, she answers 'majettada'
(tongs-blow); answering to Frustinaia and Stivalaia in the second
Roman version of 'Maria di Legno.' He gives her a ring, which she
sends up in his broth, as Klein-Else does in the pancake, and so he
recognises and marries her. In one or two of the Roman versions also,
the means of recognition is a ring in place of a slipper.
I do not remember any Cinderella among the Russian Tales, though there
are stepmother stories, which pair off with others of the Roman. For
Scotch versions I must refer the reader to Campbell's 'Highland Tales,'
i. 226, and ii. 292.]