Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/149

 Rh Daughter," which I was only able to communicate to Miss Cox in time for her to print it on the last page but one of her book (p. 535). Here the animal parentage of the heroine, vaguely hinted at in so many versions, is definitely affirmed, nere, too, and here alone to my knowledge, hero and heroine are half-brother and sister. Note, again, that whilst the Cinderella type proper is absent from England, rich, on the contrary, in Catskin forms, an essential feature of which can be traced there so far back, Scotland, which yields us this archaic Cinderella, yields also half-a-dozen other Cinderella variants (p. xxvii).

To sum up. As regards two type-forms of the Cinderella group (the least important of the group, it is true), Britain yields the earliest literary treatment of essential elements; as regards the first type-form, it yields one of the most, if not the most archaic example.

I refrain from any dogmatic induction. May this be imputed to me for righteousness, when it is remembered how many proudly-soaring theories are built upon a far narrower and less solid basis! But I do claim that others should refrain from dogmatising likewise. And if any patriotic soul loves to think of the cinder-wench as starting forth from our land to conquer the world, I cannot deny there are grounds for holding this to be more than a mere pious opinion.

on the contrary, although one of these examples, Perrault's Cendrillon is perhaps the most famous of all literary folk-tales, they have practically not influenced this mass of later variants at all; throughout Europe we still find traces of a far ruder, wilder, more archaic version than that which confronts us in the pages of Bonaventure or Basile, Straparola or Perrault.

Thus we have to account for the non-appearance in any form of the story, as a whole, prior to the sixteenth century (that certain elements appear, and appear abundantly, has been shown, I trust, sufficiently), and also to account for the singular peculiarities of its actual spread throughout Europe.