CINDERELLA

Collection Joseph Médard Carrière
Archives de folklore de l'Université Laval
Transcription Donald Deschênes et Marcel Bénéteau


There was once a man who was a widower and he had a
lovely little girl who was very good. The man had fallen in love
with a widow, but she was as evil as could be. She had two girls
who were as evil as she was. But in any case, the man married her.

The man brought his wife home and the two girls started right away
to rule the house. They mistreated the young girl. They took over
her bed and her room. It got so they would make her do all of
the household chores. After she was finished her work, they would
let her sleep in the ash-pit next to the fireplace. Since she was always
full of ashes and cinders, they called her Cinderella.

One fine day, the king was going to throw a big party. He invited all
the young men in the country, and all the young girls, so that his son
the prince might find a girl to marry. It took the two bad sisters several
days to get ready. They kept laughing at Cinderella, telling her she
wasn’t smart enough to go to nice parties like that.

When the night of the party came, the girls got dressed and they made
Cinderella do all the work for them: clean their shoes, fasten their dresses,
fix their hair. Cinderella did all the work without saying a word.
But she was very sad, knowing she couldn’t go herself.

At any rate, after the two evil sisters and their mother got to the party,
Cinderella was all alone at home. She started crying because she couldn’t
have fun like the others. All at once, she decided to go outside for a walk
and a little white woman, a little fairy, appeared to her.

“Cinderella,” she said, “wouldn’t you love to go to the party?”

Cinderella said:
“Yes, but it’s no use thinking about it.”

The little fairy said:
“If you’ll bring me four big rats, four mice and a pumpkin, you’ll go
 to the party.”

So Cinderella went to the rat trap. There were four nice ones in there.
She went to the mouse trap; there were four nice ones there too.
She went out to the field and brought back a pumpkin, the biggest one
she could find. The little fairy touched all that with a little wand she had
in her hand. The rats turned into four beautiful white horses, hitched up
to a beautiful carriage. The mice turned into four beautiful coachmen and
the pumpkin turned into a beautiful carriage. She touched Cinderella with
her wand and she dressed her more beautifully than any princess.
She told Cinderella to come back before the clock struck twelve, that if
she got caught there after midnight, she would turn back into Cinderella
in front of everybody.

So Cinderella was very careful to return before midnight. But as long as
she was at the party, the prince paid attention to no one but her. That
made the evil sisters jealous, seeing that the prince paid no attention
to them. But Cinderella left so fast that the prince didn’t have time to talk
to her as he would have liked. He asked his father to continue the party on
the following night. But when the two evil sisters got home that night,
they started laughing at Cinderella more and more, saying if she could only
have seen the beautiful princess at the prince’s party! They told her the party

would continue the following night and that they would enjoy themselves.

When the following night came, the two evil girls and their mother left to go back
to the party. While Cinderella was alone, the little white woman appeared
to her again. She told her she could go back to the party the same way
as the night before, as long as she promised to come home before midnight.
But Cinderella was so happy, having a good time with the prince, that she forgot
to leave. When she heard the clock strike twelve, she took off running.
When she got to the steps, one of her beautiful crystal shoes came off and
stayed there. She turned back into Cinderella, but she escaped before anybody
could see her. The prince had chased her up to the steps, but she was running
so fast he couldn’t stop her. He picked up the beautiful crystal shoe.
He said to himself:

“I’ll never marry anybody but the girl who fits this shoe perfectly.”

The next day, the prince himself went from door to door. He tried the shoe on
every woman and every girl in every house, from the oldest to the youngest.
When he came to the house of the two evil girls, he first tried the shoe on their
mother. Then he tried it on the two girls. But there was no foot that fit perfectly
into that shoe.

Cinderella was still there in the ashes near the chimney. She didn’t come forward
to try on the shoe. The prince saw that it was just a little cinder-girl in the ashes,
he paid no attention to her. But after he had gone out, he said to himself:

 “I won’t be satisfied. I should have tried the shoe on the cinder-girl, because I had promised
myself I would try it on all the women and all the girls I met.”

Meanwhile, Cinderella was crying to see that he hadn’t tried the shoe on her foot.
The two bad sisters were making fun of Cinderella and telling her:

“See, the prince won’t even try the shoe on your foot. He doesn’t think you’re smart
enough to warrant trying it on!”

As they were saying that, they heard someone knocking at the door. It was the
prince who had come back to the door. He said that he had promised to try the
shoe on every girl he saw and that he couldn’t go on without trying it on the girl
in the cinders. So he asked Cinderella to sit down on a chair. He tried the shoe
on. It fit so well he was astounded. He said to Cinderella:

“Tomorrow you will be my wife.”

As soon as he said that, she was dressed just like she had been at the party.
This made the sisters very jealous, but there was nothing they could do.
Ever since then, the prince has been living happily with his princess Cinderella.

 

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