So, let’s talk about Cinderella.
Every child wonders how anyone could possibly wear glass slippers without risking serious injury from the ensuing broken glass. But since before Roman times, people have been telling the story of a downtrodden girl whose distinctive slipper matches another and brings her a royal marriage. Over time and distance, the slippers themselves vary from glass to gold to just plain sandals, and sometimes the prince is already a king and doesn’t meet the girl before falling in love with one of her shoes. But the oppressed girl is a constant, so are the slippers, and so is the marriage.
There is a mundane explanation for the glass slippers. An earlier story talked of fur slippers, luxurious in any era and so much more comfortable, and an old French word for fur was later confused with a modern French word meaning glass.
Now, if we think about the rest of the Cinderella story, a doting father remarrying a pretty but domineering new wife who is bitterly jealous of his daughter, it’s easy to see the father surreptitiously buying his daughter a fine costume for the ball. And when the daughter catches the eye of the prince and the deceit is revealed, then what explanation can they give, but that the costume was magicked up?
But where does the fairy godmother come from? The term itself is an oxymoron, the very existence of fairies at odds with Christian beliefs. So she is probably a stand-in for something else, a wish-granting survivor from an earlier religion.
And I wonder, still, about the prince — why did he pick out this serving girl? What did he think when he found out her deception? Or maybe he knew all along?
As I said, this is an old, old story, its origins lost in the mists of time, but let us suppose that it arose when all Europe was ruled by the Celtic tribes. In a time before kings, the prince would then have been the tanist, the crown prince in today’s terms, not necessarily the son of the current chief but the one chosen to be the next leader.
So who is the fairy godmother? Let’s make believe that’s you.
Picture this — you are a daughter of lost Atlantis, practicing your arts in an age when the rest of mankind is still fumbling about, rediscovering the rudiments of civilization, your skills and knowledge seen as magic by the people around you. The Harvest Festival is fast approaching, when all will sing the ancient songs and dance the ancient dances around the bonfires, the children will make their colorful garlands to toss in the river, and the eligible young men and women will leap the flames and pair off…