Did you know that there are more than 700 Cinderella stories? The theme of the mistreated and underestimated person who rises in the world through true love calls to some deep-seated need in us all, because people never seem to tire of variations on this story.
Many movies testify to our love of the archetype, from Drew Barrymore’s political strong girl Cinderella in Ever After...
to Julia Roberts hooker-with-heart-and-humor Cinderella in Pretty Woman.
Even Shakespeare got into the act and turned the Cinderella story into a tragedy in King Lear.
Because Disney adapted the Charles Perrault’s seventeenth century French version with its court and carriage, ball and glass slippers, this is the one that most children know.
But in the Celtic world and Native American worlds, Cinderella is less about fancy dance balls and much more in keeping with those cultures.
Both among the Ojibwe and the Iroquois nations, there is a version of Cinderella, in which the young sister is badly burned and scarred by fire, her black hair singed and raggedy. The “handsome prince” of the stories is a magical being, powerful, invisible, drawing a sledge with a rope made sometimes of the rainbow, sometimes of the Milky Way. To marry him, the girls of the tribe must be able to see him and his magical harness. This adds a component of spirituality to the stories typical of Native Nations values; see well, tell truly. In the Native versions of the story, it is often the sister of the hero who plays “fairy godmother,” admonishing all the girls to be truthful, rewarding the cinder girl for her true vision-- not with coaches and horsemen, but with a ritual bath or baptism of complete transformation. This is also in keeping with the matriarchal wisdom archetypes of Native Nations.
In an Irish versions of this beloved story, the Cinderella character is a boy. He’s a short fellow (atypical to the Celts, who were generally over six feet tall), with huge feet, able to cover great distances in a bound. His “fairy godfather” is a bull, who gives the boy his own tail as protection and talisman. His many adventures occur in multiples of three, which is the sacred Celtic number. Eventually, the cattle boy slays a dragon, wins a princess and leaves behind a giant boot. The stubborn princess will marry no prince. She’ll have only the cattle boy who owns the boot. -- from: "Sisters in Story"
