The older rural and popular forms of Cinderella, then, are full of machinery not only supernatural, but supernatural in a wild way: women become beasts, mothers are devoured by daughters (a thing that even Zulu fancy boggles at), life of beast or man is a separable thing, capable of continuing in lower forms. Thus we may conjecture that the ass's skin worn by Peau d'Ane was originally the hide of a beast helpful to her, even connected, maybe, with her dead mother, and that the ass, like the cow, the calf, the sheep, and the doves of Märchen, befriended her, and clothed her in wondrous raiment.
For all these antique marvels Perrault, or the comparatively civilised tradition which Perrault followed, substituted, in Peau d'Ane, as in Cendrillon, the Christian conception of a Fairy Godmother. This substitute for more ancient and less speciosa miracula is confined to Perrault's tales, and occurs nowhere in purely traditional Märchen. In these as in the widely diffused ballad of the Re-arisen Mother—
'Twas late in the night and the bairns grat, The Mother below the mouls heard that,—
the idea of a Mother's love surviving her death inspires the legend, and, despite savage details, produces a touching effect (Ralston, Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1879, p. 839).
Another notable point in Cinderella is the preference shown, as usual, to the youngest child. Cinderella, to be sure, is a stepchild, and therefore interesting; but it is no great stretch of conjecture to infer that she may have originally been only the youngest child of the house. The nickname which connects her with the fireside and the ashes is also given, in one form or another, to the youngest son (Sir George Dasent, for some reason, calls him 'Boots') in Scandinavian tales. Cinderella, like the youngest son, is taunted with sitting in the ashes of the hearth. This notion declares itself in the names Cucendron, Aschenpüttel, Ventafochs, Pepelluga, Cernushka[86], all of them titles implying blackness, chiefly from contact with cinders. It has frequently been suggested that the success of the youngest child in fairy tales is a trace of the ideas which prevailed when Jüngsten-Recht, 'Junior-Right' or Borough English, was a prevalent custom of inheritance[87]. The invisible Bridegroom, of the Zulu Märchen, is in hiding under a snake's skin, because he was the youngest, and his jealous brethren meant to kill him, for he would be the heir. It was therefore the purpose of his brethren to slay the young child in the traditional Zulu way, that is, to avoid the shedding of 'kindred blood' by putting a clod of earth in his mouth. Bishop Callaway gives the parallel Hawaian case of Waikelenuiaiku. The Polynesian case of Hatupati is also adduced. In Grimm's Golden Bird the jealousy is provoked, not by the legal rights of the youngest, but by his skill and luck. The idea of fraternal jealousy, with the 'nice opening for a young man,' which it discovered (like Joseph's brethren) in a pit, occurs in Peruvian myth as reported by Cieza de Leon (Chronicles of the Yncas, Second Part). The diffusion of Jüngsten-Recht, or Maineté, the inheritance by the youngest, has been found by Mr. Elton among Ugrians, in Hungary, in Slavonic communities, in Central Asia, on the confines of China, in the mountains of Arracan, in Friesland, in Germany, in Celtic countries. In Scandinavia Liebrecht adduces the Edda, 'der jüngste Sohn Jarl's der erste König ist.' Albericus Trium Fontium mentions Prester John, 'qui cum fratrum suorum minimus esset, omnibus praepositus est.' In Hesiod we meet droit de juveignerie, as he makes Zeus the youngest of the Cronidae, while Homer, making Zeus the eldest, is all for primogeniture (Elton, Origins of English History, ch. viii. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde).
The authorities quoted raise a presumption that Jüngsten-Recht, an old and widely diffused law, might have left a trace on myth and Märchen. If Jüngsten-Recht were yielding place to primogeniture, if the elders were using their natural influence to secure advantages, then the youngest child, still heir by waning custom, would doubtless suffer a good deal of persecution. It may have been in this condition of affairs that the myths of the brilliant triumph of the rightful but despised heir, Cinderella, or Boots, were developed.
On the other hand, it is obvious that the necessities of fiction demand examples of failure in the adventures, to heighten the effect of the final success. Now the failures might have begun with the youngest, and the eldest might be the successful hero. But that would have reversed the natural law by which the eldest goes first out into danger. Moreover, the nursery audience of a conte de nourrice is not prejudiced in favour of the Big but of the Little Brother.
These simple facts of everyday life, rather than some ancient custom of inheritance, may be the cause of the favouritism always shown to the youngest son or daughter. (Compare Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, p. 81. The idea of jealousy of the youngest brother, mixed up with a miscellaneous assortment of motifs of folk tales, occurs in Katha-sarit-sagara, ch. xxxix.)
Against the notion that the successful youngest son or daughter of the contes is a descendant of the youngest child who is heir by droit de juveignerie, it has been urged that the hero, if the heir, would 'not start from the dust-bin and the coal-hole.' But if his heirship were slipping from him, as has been suggested, the ashes of the hearth are just what he would start from. The 'coal-hole,' of course, is a modern innovation. The hearth is the recognised legal position of the youngest child in Gavel-kind. 'Et la mesuage seit autreci entre eux departi, mes le Astre demorra al puné (ou al punée)[88].' In short, 'the Hearth-place shall belong to the youngest,' and as far as forty feet round it. After that the eldest has the first choice, and the others in succession according to age. The Custumal of Kent of the thirteenth century is the authority.
These rules of inheritance show, at least (and perhaps at most), a curious coincidence between the tales which describe the youngest child as always busy with the hearth, and the custom which bequeaths the hearth (astre) to the youngest child. To prove anything it would be desirable to show that this rule of Gavel-kind once prevailed in all the countries where the name of the heroine corresponds in meaning to Cendrillon.