Throw it on to the horns of me,
And go along, cut grass for me!
Once more, when Maria came back with her basket of grass, she found all
her work done, to her great surprise and delight. But her stepmother's
surprise was quite of another order. That Maria should have woven the
cloth, not only without instruction, but even without a loom, proved
clearly enough she must have had some one to help her--a matter which
roused the stepmother's jealousy in the highest degree, and wherein
this help consisted she determined to find out. Accordingly, next day
she gave her a shirt to make up, and then posted herself out of sight
in a corner of the cow-house to see what happened. Thus she overheard
Maria's complaint to her dear little cow, and Vaccarella's reply:--
Throw it on to the horns of me,
And go along, cut grass for me!
She thus also saw, what Maria did not see, that as soon as she had gone
out the cow assumed the form of a woman, and sat down and stitched and
stitched away till the shirt was made, and that in a surprisingly short
space of time. As soon as it was finished, and before Maria came in,
the woman became a cow again.
The cruel stepmother determined that Maria should be deprived of a
friend who enabled her to set all her hard treatment at defiance,
and next morning told her that she was going to kill the cow. Maria
was broken-hearted at the announcement, but she knew it was useless
to remonstrate; so she only used her greatest speed to reach her
'dear little cow,' and warn her of what was going to happen in time
to make her escape.
'There is no need for me to escape,' replied Vaccarella; 'killing will
not hurt me. So dry your tears, and don't be distressed. Only, after
they have killed me, put your hand under my heart, and there you will
find a golden ball. This ball is yours, so take it out, and whenever
you are tired of your present kind of life, you have only to say to
it on some fitting occasion--"Golden ball, golden ball, dress me in
gold and give me a lover," [44] and you shall see what shall happen.'
Vaccarella had no time to say more, for the stepmother arrived just
then with a man who slaughtered the cow at her order.
Under Vaccarella's heart Maria found the promised golden ball,
which she hid away carefully against some fitting occasion for using
it arose.
Not long after there was a novena [45] of a great festival, during
which Maria's stepmother, with all her disposition to overwork her,
durst not keep her from church, lest the neighbours should cry
'Shame!' on her.
Maria accordingly went to church with all the rest of the people,
and when she had made her way through the crowd to a little distance
from her stepmother, she took her golden ball out of her pocket and
whispered to it--'Golden ball, golden ball, dress me in gold and give
me a lover.'
Instantly the golden ball burst gently open and enveloped her,
and she came out of it all radiant with beautiful clothing, like a
princess. Everybody made way for her in her astonishing brightness.
The eyes of the king's son were turned upon her, no less than the eyes
of all the people; and the prayers were no sooner over than he sent
some of his attendants to call her and bring her to him. Before they
could reach her, however, Maria had restored her beautiful raiment
to the golden ball, and, in the sordid attire in which her stepmother
dressed her, she could easily pass through the crowd unperceived.
At home, her stepmother could not forbear talking, like everyone else
in the town, about the maiden in glittering raiment who had appeared in
the midst of the church; but, of course, without the remotest suspicion
that it was Maria herself. But Maria sat still and said nothing.
So it happened each day of the Novena; for, though Maria was not at
all displeased with the appearance and fame of the husband whom her
'dear little cow' seemed to have appointed for her, she did not wish
to be too easy a prize, and thought it but right to make him take
a little trouble to win her. Thus she every day restored all her
bright clothing to the golden ball before the prince's men could
overtake her. Only on the last day of the Novena, when the prince,
fearful lest it might also be the last on which he would have an
opportunity of seeing her, had told them to use extra diligence,
they were so near overtaking her that, in the hurry of the moment,
she dropped a slipper. [46] This the prince's men eagerly seized,
feeling no compunction in wresting it from the mean-looking wench
(so Maria now looked) who disputed possession of it with them, not
in the least imagining that she could be the radiant being of whom
they were in search.
The Novena over, Maria once more returned to her ceaseless toil;
but the stepmother's hatred had grown so great that she determined
to rid herself of her altogether and in the most cruel way.
Down in the cellar there stood a large barrel, [47] which had grown
dirty and mouldy from neglect, and wanted scalding out. 'Get into
the barrel, Maria girl,' she bid her next morning for her task,
'and scrape it and rub it well before we scald it.'
Maria did as she was bid, and the stepmother went away to boil
the water.
Meantime, the prince's men had taken Maria's slipper to him, and he,
delighted to have any token of his fair one, appointed an officer to
go into every house, and proclaim that the maiden whom the slipper
might fit should be his bride. The officer went round from house to
house, trying the slipper on everybody's foot. But it fitted no one,
for it was under a spell.
But the stepmother's own daughter [48] had gone down to the cellar
to help Maria, unbeknown to her mother; and it so happened that,
just as she was inside the barrel and Maria outside, the king's
officer happened to come by that way. He opened the door, [49] and,
seeing a damsel standing within, tried on the sandal without waiting
to ask leave. As the sandal fitted Maria to perfection, the officer
was all impatience to carry her off to the prince, and placed her in
the carriage which was waiting outside, and drove off with her before
anyone had even observed his entrance.
Scarcely had all this passed than the stepmother came back, with her
servants, each carrying a can of boiling water. They placed themselves
in a ring round the barrel, and each emptied her charge into it. As
it was the stepmother's daughter who was inside at the time, instead
of Maria, it was she who got scalded to death in her place.
By-and-by, when the house was quiet, the bad stepmother went to the
barrel, intending to take out the body of Maria and hide it. What was
her dismay when she found, instead of Maria's body, that of her own
daughter! As soon as her distress and grief subsided sufficiently to
enable her to consider what she had to do, the idea suggested itself
to conceal the murder by putting the blame of it on some one else. For
this purpose she took the body of her daughter, and, dressing it in
dry clothes, seated it on the top of the stairs against her husband's
return. [50]
Presently, home he came with his ass-load of wood, and called to her
daughter to come and help him unload it, as usual. But the daughter
continued sitting on the top of the stairs, and moved not. Again and
again he called, louder and louder, but still she moved not; till at
last, irritated beyond all endurance, he hurled one of his logs of wood
at her, which brought the badly-balanced corpse rolling and tumbling
all the way down the stairs, just as the stepmother had designed.
The husband, however, was far from being deceived by the device. He
could see the body presented no appearance of dying from a recent fall.
'Where's Maria?' he asked, as soon as he got up into the room.
'Nobody knows; she has disappeared!' replied the stepmother; nor was
he slow to convince himself she was nowhere in the house.
'This is no place for me to stay in,' said the husband to himself. 'One
child driven away, and one murdered; who can say what may happen next?'
Next morning, therefore, he called to him the little daughter born
to him since his marriage with Maria's stepmother, and went away with
her for good and all. So that bad woman was deprived, as she deserved,
of her husband and all her children in one day.
Just as the father and his daughter were starting to go away, Maria
drove by in a gilded coach with the prince her husband; so he had the
satisfaction, and her stepmother the vexation, of seeing her triumph.
[The introduction of the wonder-working cow in this second version of
the story of Cinderella cannot fail to suggest the idea that it may
find its prototype in Sabala, the heavenly cow of the Ramayana. [51]
I have another Stepmother story, the place of which is here, but it
is too long to give in its entirety. It begins like the last, and the
next, and many others, with a widower, the teacher of whose children,
a boy and girl, insists on marrying him. Soon after, of course,
she turns the children out of doors; the boy is made the slave of
a witch, and comes well at last out of many adventures; it is one
of the nearest approaches to a heroic story that I have met with in
Rome. There are details in it, however, like Filagranata and others,
not actually of the Stepmother group. The girl gets taken into a
Brigand's cave, and goes through adventures which befall the youngest
of three sisters (without a stepmother) in the Italian-Tirolese tale
of 'Le tre Sorelle,' and that, again, is precisely like another Roman
story I have, in many respects different from the present one, called
'The Three Windows.' One of the adventures in the present story is,
that the witch, instead of killing the girl, gives her the appearance
of death, and she is shut up in a box instead of being regularly
buried, and a prince, as he goes by hunting, finds her, and the means
of restoring her, and marries her. This is a very common incident in
another group, and occurs in the 'Siddhi Kür' story which I have given
as 'The Prayer making suddenly Rich,' in 'Sagas from the Far East;' and
in the third version of 'Maria de Legno,' infra, where also the girl is
not even seemingly dead. I cannot forbear subjoining a quaint version
of the story of Joseph, which was told me, embodying the same incident,
though the story of Joseph has usually been identified with the group
in which a younger brother is the hero; by Dr. Dasent, among others,
who gives several examples, under the name of 'Boots.' In the Roman
series this group is represented by 'Scioccolone.']