Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Once there was a poor man who couldn’t support his only son any more.

These are not just the sort of thing that fairy tales don’t bother with, and to which it’s silly to expect answers; they are more than that: they are clumsy storytelling. I thought it was possible to deal with them and improve the story.

Now on the day when the princess turned fifteen, it happened that the king and the queen were away,

the tale itself is disgusting. The most repellent aspect is the cowardice of the miller,

And she never had a chance to wash and clean herself, so she always looked dusty and grubby. Because of that, they found a special name for her. ‘What shall we call her – Ashy-face?’ ‘Sootybottom?’ ‘Cinderina?’ ‘Cinderella – that’s it!’

When the prince and his bride walked into the church, the older sister walked on their right and the younger sister on their left, and the doves flew down and pecked out one eye from each of them.

‘The Little Shroud’ is unclassified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther index, and the only tale listed there to exemplify this type is this tale itself, under the title of ‘The Child’s Grave’.

‘And what about you, Cinderella?’ he said.

He sat down and collected his thoughts. They were quite easy to collect, because there weren’t very many of them, and they all concerned the same subject – what a burden his life was.