Turning from the Gaelic to the Lowland Scotch, we find Rashin Coatie as a name under which either Peau d'Ane or Cendrillon may be narrated. We discovered Cendrillon as Rashin Coatie, in Morayshire[81]. Here a Queen does not become a cow, indeed, but dies, and leaves to her daughter a Red Calf, which aids her, till it is slain by a cruel stepmother.
The dead calfy said
Tak me up, bane by bane And pit me aneth yon grey stane,
and whatever you want, come and seek it frae me, and I will give you it.
The usual adventures of Cinderella ensue, the birds denouncing the False Bride, whose foot is pinched to make it fit the 'beautiful satin slipper' of the heroine.
In most of these versions the heroine is aided by a beast, and even when that beast is dead, it continues helpful, in one case actually coming to life again, like the ox in the South African Märchen[82].
In all these thoroughly popular and traditional tales, the supernatural machinery varies much from that of Perrault, who found Peau d'Ane 'difficile à croire.' But, in all the wilder tales, the machinery is exactly what we note in the myths and actual beliefs of the lower races. They do not shrink from the conception of a mother who becomes a cow (like Io), nor of a cow (as in the case of Heitsi Eibib among the Hottentots), who becomes the mother of human progeny. It is not unlikely that the Scotch mother, in Rashin Coatie, who bequeathes to her daughter a wonder-working calf (a cow in Sicily, Pitré, 41), is a modification of an idea like that of the cannibal Servian variant[83]. Then the Mouton of Madame d'Aulnoy seems like a courtly survival of the Celtic Sharp Grey Sheep mixed with the donnée of Beauty and the Beast[84]. The notion of helpful animals makes all the 'Manitou' element in Red Indian religion, and is common in Australia. The helpful calf, or sheep, bequeathed by the dying mother, reminds one of the equally helpful, but golden Ram, which aids Phrixus and Helle against their stepmother, after the death or deposition of their mother Nephele. This Ram also could speak,—
ἀλλἀ καὶ αὐδὴν
ἀνδρομέην προέηκε κακὸν τέρας [85].
This recalls not only the Celtic Sharp Grey Sheep, but also Madame d'Aulnoy and her princess, 'je vous avoue que je ne suis pas accoutumée à vivre avec les moutons qui parlent.'