Wednesday's Good Reading: “The Earl of Cattenborough” by Joseph Jacobs (in English).

 

Once upon a time there was a miller who had three sons, Charles, Sam, and John.

And every night when the servant went to bed he used to call out: "Good-night, missus; good-night, master; Good-night, Charles, Sam, John."

Now after a time the miller's wife died, and, soon after, the miller, leaving only the mill, the donkey, and the cat. And Charles, as the eldest, took the mill, and Sam took the donkey and went off with it, and John was left with only the cat.

Now how do you think the cat used to help John to live? She used to take a bag with a string around the top and place it with some cheese in the bushes, and when a hare or a partridge would come and try to get the piece of cheese -- snap! Miss Puss would draw the string and there was the hare or partridge for Master Jack to eat.

One day two hares happened to rush into the bag at the same time. So the cat, after giving one to Jack, took the other and went with it to the king's palace. And when she came outside the palace gate she cried out, "Miaou."

The sentry at the gate came to see what was the matter. Miss Puss gave him the hare with a bow and said: "Give this to the king with the compliments of the Earl of Cattenborough."

The king liked jugged hare very much and was glad to get such a fine present.

Shortly after this Miss Puss found a gold coin rolling in the dirt. And she went up to the palace and asked the sentry if he would lend her a corn measure. The sentry asked who wanted it.

And Puss said: "My Master, the Earl of Cattenborough."

So the sentry gave her the corn measure. And a little while afterwards she took it back with the gold coin, which she had found, fixed in a crack in the corn measure.

So the king was told that the Earl of Cattenborough measured his gold in a corn measure. When the king heard this he told the sentry that if such a thing happened again he was to deliver a message asking the Earl to come and stop at the palace.

Some time after the cat caught two partridges, and took one of them to the palace.

And when she called out, "Miaou," and presented it to the sentry, in the name of the Earl of Cattenborough, the sentry told her that the king wished to see the Earl at his palace.

So Puss went back to Jack and said to him: "The king desires to see the Earl of Cattenborough at his palace."

"What is that to do with me?" said Jack.

"Oh, you can be the Earl of Cattenborough if you like. I'll help you."

"But I have no clothes, and they'll soon find out what I am when I talk."

"As for that," said Miss Puss, "I'll get you proper clothes if you do what I tell you; and when you come to the palace I will see that you do not make any mistakes."

So next day she told Jack to take off his clothes and hide them under a big stone and dip himself into the river.

And while he was doing this she went up to the palace gate and said: "Miaou, miaou, miaou!"

And when the sentry came to the gate she said: "My Master, the Earl of Cattenborough, has been robbed of all he possessed, even of his clothes, and he is hiding in the bramble bush by the side of the river. What is to be done? What is to be done?"

The sentry went and told the king. And the king gave orders that a suitable suit of clothes, worthy of an Earl, should be sent to Master Jack, who soon put them on and went to the king's palace accompanied by Puss. When they got there they were introduced into the chamber of the king, who thanked Jack for his kind presents.

Miss Puss stood forward and said: "My Master, the Earl of Cattenborough, desires to state to your Majesty that there is no need of any thanks for such trifles."

The king thought it was very grand of Jack not to speak directly to him, and summoned his lord chamberlain, and from that time onward only spoke through him.

Thus, when they sat down to dinner with the queen and the princess, the king would say to his chamberlain, "Will the Earl of Cattenborough take a potato?"

Whereupon Miss Puss would bow and say: "The Earl of Cattenborough thanks his Majesty and would be glad to partake of a potato."

The king was so much struck by Jack's riches and grandeur, and the princess was so pleased with his good looks and fine dress that it was determined that he should marry the princess.

But the king thought he would try and see if he were really so nobly born and bred as he seemed. So he told his servants to put a mean truckle bed in the room in which Jack was to sleep, knowing that no noble would put up with such a thing.

When Miss Puss saw this bed she at once guessed what was up. And when Jack began to undress to get into bed, she made him stop, and called the attendants to say that he could not sleep in such a bed.

So they took him into another bedroom, where there was a fine four-poster with a dais, and everything worthy of a noble to sleep upon. Then the king became sure that Jack was a real noble, and married him soon to his daughter the princess.

After the wedding feast was over the king told Jack that he and the queen and the princess would come with him to his castle of Cattenborough, and Jack did not know what to do. But Miss Puss told him it would be all right if he only didn't speak much while on the journey. And that suited Jack very well.

So they all set out in a carriage with four horses, and with the king's life-guards riding around it.

But Miss Puss ran on in front of the carriage, and when she came to a field where men were mowing down the hay she pointed to the life-guards riding along, and said: "Men, if you do not say that this field belongs to the Earl of Cattenborough those soldiers will cut you to pieces with their swords."

So when the carriage came along the king called one of the men to the side of it and said, "Whose is this field?"

And the man said, "It belongs to the Earl of Cattenborough."

And the king turned to his son-in-law and said, "I did not know that you had estates so near us."

And Jack said, "I had forgotten it myself."

And this only confirmed the king in his idea about Jack's great wealth.

A little farther on there was another great field in which men were raking hay. And Miss Puss spoke to them as before. So, when the carriage came up, they also declared that this field belonged to the Earl of Cattenborough. And so it went on through the whole drive.

Then the king said, "Let us now go to your castle."

Then Jack looked at Miss Puss, and she said: "If your Majesty will but wait an hour I will go on before and order the castle to be made ready for you."

With that she jumped away and went to the castle of a great ogre and asked to see him.

When she came into his presence she said: " I have come to give you warning. The king with all his army is coming to the castle and will batter its walls down and kill you if he finds you here."

"What shall I do? What shall I do?" said the ogre.

"Is there no place where you can hide yourself?"

"I am too big to hide," said the ogre, but my mother gave me a powder, and when I take that I can make myself as small as I like."

"Well, why not take it now?" said the cat.

And with that he took the powder and shrunk into a little body no bigger than a mouse. And thereupon Miss Puss jumped upon him and ate him all up, and then went down into the great yard of the castle and told the guards that it now belonged to her Master the Earl of Cattenborough. Then she ordered them to open the gates and let in the king's carriage, which came along just then.

The king was delighted to find what a fine castle his son-in-law possessed, and left his daughter the princess with him at the castle while he drove back to his own palace. And Jack and the princess lived happily in the castle.

But one day Miss Puss felt very ill and lay down as if dead, and the chamberlain of the castle went to Jack and said: "My lord, your cat is dead."

And Jack said: "Well, throw her out on the dunghill."

But Miss Puss, when she heard it, called out: "Had you not better throw me into the mill stream?"

And Jack remembered where he had come from and was frightened that the cat would say. So he ordered the physician of the castle to attend to her, and ever after gave her whatever she wanted.

And when the king died he succeeded him, and that was the end of the Earl of Cattenborough.

 

    Source (books.google.com): Joseph Jacobs Europa's Fairy Book: Restored and Retold (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916), no. 11, pp. 90-97.

    Source (Internet Archive): Joseph Jacobs Europa's Fairy Book: Restored and Retold (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916), no. 11, pp. 90-97.

Tuesday's Serial: “Feelings Regarding the Grandeurs of Saint Joseph” by Jean-Jacques Olier (translated into English by Brandon P. Otto) - the end.

 

§II: How Much Jesus Christ Honored the Great Saint Joseph

The Son of God having rendered Himself visible in taking a human flesh, He visibly conversed and dealt with God His Father, that is, under the person of Saint Joseph, through whom His Father rendered Himself visible to Him.  The most holy Virgin and Saint Joseph, both together, represented one and the same single person, that of God the Father.  They were two sensible representations of God, two images under which He adored the fullness of His Father, be it in His eternal fruitfulness, be it in His temporal Providence, be it in His love for this Son Himself and His Church.  There, he was like the holy oratory of Jesus Christ and the sensible object of all His devotion.  Doubtless, the temple was, for Him, a place of religion, since He saw in that building a dead and material figure of God His Father; but here He saw a living, spiritual, and divine figure, with all His grandeurs and all His perfections: Templo hic major est [Here is something greater than the temple] (Mt 12:6).  He saw in him the secrets of His Father; He heard, through the mouth of that great saint, the very word of His Father, whose sensible organ Saint Joseph was.

He was the oracle of Jesus Christ, who made Him know all the wills of His heavenly Father; he was a clock that indicated to Him all the moments marked in the decrees of God; he was before that oratory where, addressing Himself to His Father, He said, Pater noster [Our Father], and where He invoked Him for all the Church.  What a lovable object for Jesus Christ!  What an object of yielding!  What a subject for exercising His loves!  What caresses and what feelings of loving tenderness!  O great saint, how blest you were to furnish so beautiful a matter for the love of Jesus!  O God, what gazes of love, and what yieldings!  Goodness of my Jesus!  How content You were to have someone before Your eyes to satisfy Your loves!  Blest Joseph!  Blest Jesus!  Blest Joseph, by furnishing to Jesus the most just subject for His delights!  Blessed is it, O Jesus, to find in Joseph the object of Your holiest yieldings!  The eyes of Your spirit saw in him a sensible image of His beauty, so much that, in him, all alone, You find Your perfect contentment.

It is doubtless an admirable life, that of God the Father in eternity, loving His Son, and the Son, reciprocally, loving the Holy Spirit.  It was also an admirable life, that of Joseph and of Mary, image of God the Father for Jesus Christ His Son.  How great was their love for Jesus and the love of Jesus for them!  Our Lord saw in one and in the other the presence, the life, the substance, the person, and the perfections of God His Father, and, seeing these beauties, what love, what joy, what consolation!  The holy Virgin and Saint Joseph, seeing, on their part, the person of God in Jesus, with all that He is, Son of God, Word of the Father, the Splendor of His life and the character1 of His substance (cf. Heb 1:3); what reverence, what respect!  What a feast of love!  What profound adoration!  There, there was a heaven, a paradise on earth; there were delights without end in this place of sorrow, abundance of all goods in the bosom of poverty; there was a glory begun even in the vileness, the abjection, and the littleness of their life.

O Jesus, I am not astonished if You remain thirty whole years in that blest house, without leaving Saint Joseph.  I am not astonished if You are inseparable from his person.  His house alone is a paradise for You, and his bosom is, for You, the bosom of Your Father from Whom You are inseparable, and in Whom You take Your eternal delights.  Outside of this house, You find only baleful objects, sinners, those sad causes of Your death; and, in the house of Joseph, which is also that of Mary, You find the most delightful objects of Your joy, the holy sources of Your life.  You never leave that holy place except to go to the temple, and the world mocked Your solitude and this retired life; but it did not know that the temple was a dead figure of the bosom of Your Father, and that Saint Joseph, as His living image, was the place of His delights and of Your repose.

Who, then, could tell the excellence of our saint, the great respect that Our Lord had for him and the strong love that the holy Virgin bore him, Jesus Christ regarding, in him, the eternal Father as His Father, and the most holy Virgin considering, in his person, the same eternal Father as her Spouse.

 

CHAPTER II

Saint Joseph Considered Through Relation to the Church

§I: Saint Joseph, Patron of supereminent Souls

Saint Joseph, having been chosen by God to be His image towards His only-begotten Son, was not established for any public function in the Church of God, but only to express His purity and His incomparable holiness, which separate Him from every visible creature; because of this, he is the patron of hidden and unknown souls.  The function of Saint Peter for the Church is one thing; the workings of Saint Joseph are another.  Saint Peter is outwardly established for policing, for ruling, for doctrine, and he passes this on to the prelates and ministers of the Church.  Saint Joseph, on the contrary, who is a hidden saint and one without outward functions, is established to inwardly communicate the supereminent life that he receives from the Father and which he later pours onto us through Jesus Christ.  The influence of Saint Joseph is a participation in that of God the Father in His Son, while that of Saint Peter and of the other saints is a participation in the grace of Christ, pouring itself out upon men and distributing itself in its members by measure.  That of Saint Joseph is a participation in the source without rule and without measure, which pours out of God the Father into His Son, and God the Father, Who loves us with the same love with which He loves His only-begotten Son, gives us to draw, to taste, to savor, in Saint Joseph, the grace and the love with which He loves His very Son.  In the other saints, it is by parcel and by measure that He communicates it to us; here, it is without bounds and without measures, because of who Saint Joseph is, and because of what God the Father places in him as into His universal image.  This saint is, in effect, the patron of the supereminent souls raised to the purity and to the holiness of God, to those who are intimately united to Jesus Christ, and to whom he communicates his tenderness for this lovable Savior, as well as to those who are applied to God the Father, Whose figure Saint Joseph is.

This is a hidden saint whom God willed to keep secret during his life, and whose interior occupations He reserved for Himself alone, without sharing them with the outward cares of the Church; a saint whom God revealed at the base of hearts and whose inspiration He Himself inspired in the interior of souls. 

And as Saint Joseph applied himself to God alone during his life, God reserved him for Himself, to reveal Him and to imprint His esteem, cult, and veneration upon him.  As the image of the eternal Father towards Whom every prayer leads, and Who is the end and conclusion of all our religion, Saint Joseph ought to be the universal tabernacle of the Church; this is why the soul united inwardly to Jesus Christ, and which enters into His ways, His feelings, His inclinations, and His dispositions, this soul, as much as it is upon earth, will be filled with love, with respect, with tenderness for Saint Joseph, in imitation of Jesus Christ living upon earth, for such were the inclinations and the dispositions of Jesus Christ: He loved God the Father in Saint Joseph, with tenderness, and adored Him under His living image, where He really dwelled.

It is for us to follow this guidance and to thus go seek our father in this saint.  It is in him that we ought to go see, contemplate, adore all the divine perfections, whose assembly will render us perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48).  We learn, through this saint, how one can resemble God the Father and be perfect upon earth as He is in heaven.  And since, in God the Father, Saint Joseph is the source of all good and of all mercy, it is said of this saint that one asks nothing of him without obtaining it.

§II: Saint Joseph, Patron of Priests

It is in priests, above all, in whom God resides in His fullness and in His pure and virginal fruitfulness, to conduct themselves on the model of the great Saint Joseph, with regard to the children whom they engender for God.  This great saint guided and directed the Child Jesus in the spirit of His Father, His sweetness, His wisdom, His prudence; so we ought to do for all the members of Jesus Christ, who are confided to us and who are other Christs, in such a way that we ought to treat them with the same reverence as Saint Joseph.  Let us be superiors in God, with regard to them, but interiors in our persons, like Saint Joseph, who saw himself infinitely below Jesus Christ, although he was His guide and although he was established over Him, in the name and in the place of the eternal Father.  We have also chosen Saint Joseph as one of the patrons of the seminary, as the saint whom the Lord charged, in heaven, with the express care of priests, according to what He made knows to me through His will.

The most holy Virgin also gave me this great saint as a patron, assuring me that he was among the hidden souls, and sharing these words about him: I have nothing dearer in heaven and on earth after my Son.  Bringing Our Lord to a sick man one day, I inwardly repeated these words that were placed in me in the spirit: Dux Justi fuisti [You were the leader of the just];2 they made me remember that Saint Joseph had been the guide of the Just One, Who is Our Lord; I had to represent him as bearing the Son of God with the same sentiments with which he often bore Him during his life.

 

1 “Character” here is a cognate of the Greek word used in Heb 1:3 (χαρακτὴρ); the Greek word refers to a stamp of impression, like the image stamped on a coin.↩

2 This is from one of the traditional antiphons at Lauds for the Feast of St. Andrew (November 30): They who persecuted the just, You sank them, Lord, into hell, and, on the wood of the Cross, You were the leader of the just.  In both cases, “just” is singular (justum, justi).

You can read the original source here. 

Monday's Illustrated Word: "Bride of the Brujo!" by Leo Dorfman (in English)

art by John Celardo - Ripley's Believe It or Not! #22 - Western, October 1970.

 

 

Saturday's Good Reading: “Ashenputtel” by the Brothers Grimm (translated into English by Alice Lucas)

 

The wife of a rich man fell ill, and when she felt that she was nearing her end, she called her only daughter to her bedside, and said:

‘Dear child, continue devout and good, then God will always help you, and I will look down upon you from heaven, and watch over you.’

Thereupon she closed her eyes, and breathed her last.

The maiden went to her mother’s grave every day and wept, and she continued to be devout and good. When the winter came, the snow spread a white covering on the grave, and when the sun of spring had unveiled it again, the husband took another wife. The new wife brought home with her two daughters, who were fair and beautiful to look upon, but base and black at heart.

Then began a sad time for the unfortunate step-child.

‘Is this stupid goose to sit with us in the parlour?’ they said.

‘Whoever wants to eat bread must earn it; go and sit with the kitchenmaid.’

They took away her pretty clothes, and made her put on an old grey frock, and gave her wooden clogs.

‘Just look at the proud Princess, how well she’s dressed,’ they laughed, as they led her to the kitchen. There, the girl was obliged to do hard work from morning till night, to get up at daybreak, carry water, light the fire, cook, and wash. Not content with that, the sisters inflicted on her every vexation they could think of; they made fun of her, and tossed the peas and lentils among the ashes, so that she had to sit down and pick them out again. In the evening, when she was worn out with work, she had no bed to go to, but had to lie on the hearth among the cinders. And because, on account of that, she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Ashenputtel.

It happened one day that the Father had a mind to go to the Fair. So he asked both his step-daughters what he should bring home for them.

‘Fine clothes,’ said one.

‘Pearls and jewels,’ said the other.

‘But you, Ashenputtel?’ said he, ‘what will you have?’

‘Father, break off for me the first twig which brushes against your hat on your way home.’

Well, for his two step-daughters he brought beautiful clothes, pearls and jewels, and on his way home, as he was riding through a green copse, a hazel twig grazed against him and knocked his hat off. Then he broke off the branch and took it with him.

When he got home he gave his step-daughters what they had asked for, and to Ashenputtel he gave the twig from the hazel bush.

Ashenputtel thanked him, and went to her mother’s grave and planted the twig upon it; she wept so much that her tears fell and watered it. And it took root and became a fine tree.

Ashenputtel went to the grave three times every day, wept and prayed, and every time a little white bird came and perched upon the tree, and when she uttered a wish, the little bird threw down to her what she had wished for.

Now it happened that the King proclaimed a festival, which was to last three days, and to which all the beautiful maidens in the country were invited, in order that his son might choose a bride.

When the two step-daughters heard that they were also to be present, they were in high spirits, called Ashenputtel, and said: ‘Brush our hair and clean our shoes, and fasten our buckles, for we are going to the feast at the King’s palace.’

Ashenputtel obeyed, but wept, for she also would gladly have gone to the ball with them, and begged her step-mother to give her leave to go.

‘You, Ashenputtel!’ she said. ‘Why, you are covered with dust and dirt. You go to the festival! Besides you have no clothes or shoes, and yet you want to go to the ball.’

As she, however, went on asking, her Step-mother said:

‘Well, I have thrown a dishful of lentils into the cinders, if you have picked them all out in two hours you shall go with us.’

The girl went through the back door into the garden, and cried, ‘Ye gentle doves, ye turtle doves, and all ye little birds under heaven, come and help me,

 

‘The good into a dish to throw,

The bad into your crops can go.’

 

Then two white doves came in by the kitchen window, and were followed by the turtle doves, and finally all the little birds under heaven flocked in, chirping, and settled down among the ashes. And the doves gave a nod with their little heads, peck, peck, peck; and then the rest began also, peck, peck, peck, and collected all the good beans into the dish. Scarcely had an hour passed before they had finished, and all flown out again.

Then the girl brought the dish to her Step-mother, and was delighted to think that now she would be able to go to the feast with them.

But she said, ‘No, Ashenputtel, you have no clothes, and cannot dance; you will only be laughed at.’

But when she began to cry, the Step-mother said:

‘If you can pick out two whole dishes of lentils from the ashes in an hour, you shall go with us.’

And she thought, ‘She will never be able to do that.’

When her Step-mother had thrown the dishes of lentils

Ashenputtel goes to the ball

among the ashes, the girl went out through the back door, and cried, ‘Ye gentle doves, ye turtle doves, and all ye little birds under heaven, come and help me,

 

‘The good into a dish to throw,

The bad into your crops can go.’

 

Then two white doves came in by the kitchen window, and were followed by the turtle doves, and all the other little birds under heaven, and in less than an hour the whole had been picked up, and they had all flown away.

Then the girl carried the dish to her Step-mother, and was delighted to think that she would now be able to go to the ball.

But she said, ‘It’s not a bit of good. You can’t go with us, for you’ve got no clothes, and you can’t dance. We should be quite ashamed of you.’

Thereupon she turned her back upon her, and hurried off with her two proud daughters.

As soon as every one had left the house, Ashenputtel went out to her mother’s grave under the hazel-tree, and cried:

 

‘Shiver and shake, dear little tree,

Gold and silver shower on me.’

 

Then the bird threw down to her a gold and silver robe, and a pair of slippers embroidered with silk and silver. With all speed she put on the robe and went to the feast. But her step-sisters and their mother did not recognise her, and supposed that she was some foreign Princess, so beautiful did she appear in her golden dress. They never gave a thought to Ashenputtel, but imagined that she was sitting at home in the dirt picking the lentils out of the cinders.

The Prince came up to the stranger, took her by the hand, and danced with her. In fact, he would not dance with any one else, and never left go of her hand. If any one came up to ask her to dance, he said, ‘This is my partner.’

She danced until nightfall, and then wanted to go home; but the Prince said, ‘I will go with you and escort you.’

For he wanted to see to whom the beautiful maiden belonged. But she slipped out of his way and sprang into the pigeon-house.

Then the Prince waited till her Father came, and told him that the unknown maiden had vanished into the pigeon-house.

The old man thought, ‘Could it be Ashenputtel?’ And he had an axe brought to him, so that he might break down the pigeon-house, but there was no one inside.

When they went home, there lay Ashenputtel in her dirty clothes among the cinders, and a dismal oil lamp was burning in the chimney corner. For Ashenputtel had quietly jumped down out of the pigeon-house and ran back to the hazel-tree. There she had taken off her beautiful clothes and laid them on the grave, and the bird had taken them away again. Then she had settled herself among the ashes on the hearth in her old grey frock.

On the second day, when the festival was renewed, and her parents and step-sisters had started forth again, Ashenputtel went to the hazel-tree, and said:

 

‘Shiver and shake, dear little tree,

Gold and silver shower on me.’

 

Then the bird threw down a still more gorgeous robe than on the previous day. And when she appeared at the festival in this robe, every one was astounded by her beauty.

The King’s son had waited till she came, and at once took her hand, and she danced with no one but him. When others came forward and invited her to dance, he said, ‘This is my partner.’

At nightfall she wished to leave; but the Prince went after her, hoping to see into what house she went, but she sprang out into the garden behind the house. There stood a fine big tree on which the most delicious pears hung. She climbed up among the branches as nimbly as a squirrel, and the Prince could not make out what had become of her.

But he waited till her Father came, and then said to him, ‘The unknown maiden has slipped away from me, and I think that she has jumped into the pear-tree.’

The Father thought, ‘Can it be Ashenputtel?’ And he had the axe brought to cut down the tree, but there was no one on it. When they went home and looked into the kitchen, there lay Ashenputtel among the cinders as usual; for she had jumped down on the other side of the tree, taken back the beautiful clothes to the bird on the hazel-tree, and put on her old grey frock.

On the third day, when her parents and sisters had started, Ashenputtel went again to her mother’s grave, and said:

 

‘Shiver and shake, dear little tree,

Gold and silver shower on me.’

 

Then the bird threw down a dress which was so magnificent that no one had ever seen the like before, and the slippers were entirely of gold. When she appeared at the festival in this attire, they were all speechless with astonishment. The Prince danced only with her, and if any one else asked her to dance, he said, ‘This is my partner.’

When night fell and she wanted to leave, the Prince was more desirous than ever to accompany her, but she darted away from him so quickly that he could not keep up with her. But the Prince had used a stratagem, and had caused the steps to be covered with cobbler’s wax. The consequence was, that as the maiden sprang down them, her left slipper remained sticking there. The Prince took it up. It was small and dainty, and entirely made of gold.

The next morning he went with it to Ashenputtel’s Father, and said to him, ‘No other shall become my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits.’

The two sisters were delighted at that, for they both had beautiful feet. The eldest went into the room intending to try on the slipper, and her Mother stood beside her. But her great toe prevented her getting it on, her foot was too long.

Then her Mother handed her a knife, and said, ‘Cut off the toe; when you are Queen you won’t have to walk any more.’

The girl cut off her toe, forced her foot into the slipper, stifled her pain, and went out to the Prince. Then he took her up on his horse as his Bride, and rode away with her.

However, they had to pass the grave on the way, and there sat the two Doves on the hazel-tree, and cried:

 

‘Prithee, look back, prithee, look back,

There’s blood on the track,

The shoe is too small,

At home the true

Bride is waiting thy call.’

 

Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was streaming from it. So he turned his horse round and carried the false Bride back to her home, and said that she was not the right one; the second sister must try the shoe.

Then she went into the room, and succeeded in getting her toes into the shoe, but her heel was too big.

Then her Mother handed her a knife, and said, ‘Cut a bit off your heel; when you are Queen you won’t have to walk any more.’

The maiden cut a bit off her heel, forced her foot into the shoe, stifled her pain, and went out to the Prince.

Then he took her up on his horse as his Bride, and rode off with her.

As they passed the grave, the two Doves were sitting on the hazel-tree, and crying:

 

Prithee, look back, prithee, look back,

There’s blood on the track,

The shoe is too small,

At home the true

Bride is waiting thy call.’

 

He looked down at her foot and saw that it was streaming with blood, and there were deep red spots on her stockings. Then he turned his horse and brought the false Bride back to her home.

‘This is not the right one either,’ he said. ‘Have you no other daughter?’

‘No,’ said the man. ‘There is only a daughter of my late wife’s, a puny, stunted drudge, but she cannot possibly be the Bride.’

The Prince said that she must be sent for.

But the Mother answered, ‘Oh no, she is much too dirty; she mustn’t be seen on any account.’

He was, however, absolutely determined to have his way, and they were obliged to summon Ashenputtel.

When she had washed her hands and face, she went up and curtsied to the Prince, who handed her the golden slipper.

Then she sat down on a bench, pulled off her wooden clog and put on the slipper, which fitted to a nicety.

And when she stood up and the Prince looked into her face, he recognised the beautiful maiden that he had danced with, and cried: ‘This is the true Bride!’

The Stepmother and the two sisters were dismayed and turned white with rage; but he took Ashenputtel on his horse and rode off with her.

As they rode past the hazel-tree the two White Doves cried:

 

‘Prithee, look back, prithee, look back,

No blood’s on the track,

The shoe’s not too small,

You carry the true

Bride home to your hall.’

 

And when they had said this they both came flying down, and settled on Ashenputtel’s shoulders, one on the right, and one on the left, and remained perched there.

When the wedding was going to take place, the two false sisters came and wanted to curry favour with her, and take part in her good fortune. As the bridal party was going to the church, the eldest was on the right side, the youngest on the left, and the Doves picked out one of the eyes of each of them.

Afterwards, when they were coming out of the church, the elder was on the left, the younger on the right, and the Doves picked out the other eye of each of them. And so for their wickedness and falseness they were punished with blindness for the rest of their days.