Page:Cinderella, Roalfe Cox.djvu/11

 INTRODUCTION.

fulfilment of the Rash Vow of Folk-lore, I offer a few words on Miss Cox's collection of Cinderella stories. On the first view of her learned and elaborate work I was horrified at the sight of these skeletons of the tale. It was as if one had a glimpse into the place where Hop o' my Thumb's Giant kept the bones of his little victims. Dry bones of child-like and charming tales are these, a place of many skulls. But science needs horrors of this kind, it seems, and I have wandered in Miss Cox's collection with admiration of her industry and method, with some despair, too, as to the possibility of ever tracing the Cinderella type to its origin and home. However, a rash vow must be kept, and an Introduction must be written, though "good wine needs no bush", and I conceive that Miss Cox, who knows so much about Cinderella, would do what is needful better than I, who only know a few Cinderellas familiarly and well.

The fundamental idea of Cinderella, I suppose, is this: a person in a mean or obscure position, by means of supernatural assisttance, makes a good marriage. This, of course, is the fundamental idea of Puss in Boots. In the former tale the person is usually a girl, in the latter a man. In both tales the supernatural aid, always in Puss in Boots, often in Cinderella, is given by a beast. Granting the existence of this idea, almost any incidents out of the treasure of popular fancy may be employed to enrich and complicate the plot. Taking Perrault's literary version as the normal type, the incidents are those of the Unkind Stepmother, the Jealous Sisters, the recognition of the heroine by her shoe, and the hostile persons may be forgiven or punished, according to the taste and fancy of the narrator. Now the cruel stepmother, the competitive sisters, arrange themselves round other central ideas of märchen, as round that of the bride who loses her lord by