“I am an expert swimmer,” the mermaid said. She described the storm, the condition of the ship, and even the clothes the prince had been wearing at the time, to convince him that she really had been at the scene. Eventually the prince believed her.
“Apparently, then, I owe you my life,” he said. “You must be an angel, or a water sprite, or a powerful fairy. If you’ve come for repayment, tell me what you wish.”
“I wish to be your princess,” she said bluntly.
The prince dropped his jaw, as well as a shrimp that he had been lifting to his mouth. “But that’s not possible,” he said. “I’m betrothed to the princess of Estuaria. Our wedding is to take place in three weeks’ time. Ask me something else—anything.”
“I wish nothing else,” said the mermaid.
The prince began to sweat. He had been trained never, under any circumstances, to offend a powerful fairy. “Please be my guest for a while,” he offered, “and perhaps some other course will present itself. My palace is at your disposal. When you have rested and refreshed yourself, we’ll talk again.”
The mermaid was conducted to a sumptuous apartment. Soft rugs caressed her pained feet, and there was a huge four-poster bed and a closet full of richly embroidered dresses. A maid came to help her bathe and arrange her hair. A butler brought platters of fruit and other foods strange to her taste. She ate and took a nap and afterward felt better despite the constant soreness of her feet.
Later a servant came with the prince’s invitation to join him at dinner. She was taken to a private dining hall where she and Aquam were entertained by musicians and dancers while the food was being served. He told her about his forthcoming marriage to the heiress of Estuaria, a necessary political alliance with a more powerful nation. He had never met the princess but had been given to understand that she was intelligent and likeable. “You must realize that we royals can’t always govern our own lives,” he said. “Some think we have nothing to do but pleasure ourselves. That’s not so.”
“I don’t care,” said the mermaid. “You must marry me because you owe me your life.”
The prince was much troubled by this. He answered her evasively and did his best to be a charming dinner companion. After dinner he taught her to play chess. At the end of a pleasant evening by the fire, she went off to her big four-poster bed.
Then the prince hurried to another wing of the palace to visit his mother the queen, whom everyone regarded as a witch because she was so wise. Aquam laid the problem before her, and she soon suggested a solution.
“If the girl is as naive as you say,” the queen told him, “you may arrange a false wedding ceremony and let her believe she has become your princess. In three weeks’ time, you can say you are called away on a journey. Go to Estuaria and celebrate your real nuptials. Then you will have to arrange to spend time with each bride alternately, until a more permanent solution suggests itself.”
“By ‘permanent,’ I hope you don’t mean anything violent,” the prince said. “I’m very much attracted to this girl, or fairy, or whatever she is. Besides, I owe her my life.”
“Don’t worry, son,” said the queen. “These things have a way of sorting themselves out.”
The prince went to bed somewhat reassured. The next day he arranged a private, false wedding ceremony to make the littlest mermaid think she was his princess. They lived together happily, although his bride’s obviously painful foot condition distressed the prince. In less than a week he found himself so deeply in love with her that the idea of his political marriage to the unknown princess of Estuaria grew increasingly repugnant.
Nevertheless, being a dutiful soul, he invented an excuse to travel when the time came, and left his faux princess with many tearful kisses and protestations of undying affection. The mermaid suspected no duplicity because she was blindly, deliriously in love with her prince and was sure he would never deceive her about anything.
When the prince arrived in the capital of Estuaria, the king and queen greeted him nervously. He saw no sign of the princess. After the welcoming ceremonies, he ventured to ask where she was. Her parents blushed and stuttered a bit, and then the king confessed that they didn’t know where she was just at the moment, but they were sure she would be found soon. Somewhat aggrieved, the prince accepted their invitation to stay a few days at the palace while the hunt for the princess went on.
During the next night he was awakened by a hurried, frantic knocking at his window. He arose from bed, opened the casement, and looked out. A small figure was dangling from above on a rope.
“Who are you?” asked Aquam.
“Shh! I’m the princess of Estuaria. Help me in the window.”
He reached out a hand and drew her into his room. She was a small, wiry, knobby girl with a pointed chin, snapping black eyes like a gypsy, and a mop of rather greasy curls. He thought her unattractive. “Are you really the princess?” he asked.
For answer, she held out her hand and showed him the royal signet ring. “I’ve come to ask a favor of you,” she said. “You seem like a decent fellow, but I don’t love you and I never could. I’m in love with a commoner whom my parents will never permit me to marry. So I’m going to run away with him tonight. I don’t want to be a princess anymore anyway. I’ve come just to ask you to go away in peace and don’t think of starting a war or anything against my parents over this. Will you agree?”
The prince was rather taken aback by her abrupt manner, but he thought of his pseudo bride at home, whom he truly loved. He smiled on the knotty little princess.
“Rest easy, Your Highness,” he said. “I don’t think I could love you either. I’ll work it out somehow with your parents. I wish you joy with your commoner. Who is he, anyway?”
“A great magician and healer named Sklepio,” she answered. “Someday you’ll meet him, and you’ll be glad. Thanks for your help and understanding. You’re a good man, Aquam.”
She kissed him on the cheek and sprang up to the window to reach for her rope. As he leaned out to watch, she was drawn up to the roof—by Sklepio, the prince assumed—and disappeared.
The next day he made preparations to return to his home. He assured the king and queen of Estuaria that he bore them no ill will and that he had enjoyed his stay with them. He promised that their two countries would always maintain friendly relations and said he would be happy to come back if the princess should be found. He was fairly certain that she would not be.
The mermaid greeted his homecoming with delight. She was even more delighted when he suggested a second, public, ceremonial wedding to be attended by the whole court and to accompany her official coronation.
During Aquam’s absence, the queen had become better acquainted with the mermaid and had grown quite fond of her. She regretted having advised her son to mislead such a loving and lovable girl, so she was glad to make amends with a genuine wedding. She threw herself into planning the most magnificent ceremony ever seen at court. With her own hands she placed the crown on the head of her new daughter-in-law, then publicly hugged and kissed her.
The mermaid heartily returned the affection of her royal mother-in-law. During the next few years the women became very close. The mermaid’s untimely loss of her own mother was effectively healed by the warm relationship with her mother by marriage.
When the old king died, Prince Aquam became king and assumed the duties of government, with the help of his mother and his wife. The mermaid led a mostly happy life, though she continued to be plagued by chronic pain in her feet. No physician had been able to cure her, though many tried.
Finally, one day, a famous healer named Dr. Sklepio came into Aquam’s kingdom, accompanied by his gypsylike little wife. They visited the palace and met the royal couple. King Aquam and the healer’s wife exchanged a secret glance, and both smiled.
Dr. Sklepio looked at the young queen’s feet. “This is no disease, but an enchantment,” he said. “Perhaps I can reverse it.”
After three days of elab
orate spells, the healer was able to remove most of the pain from the queen’s feet. He prescribed daily exercises, foot baths, and sea swimming to restore full walking strength. In a few months, the mermaid was walking and even running as well as if she had been born with legs.
King Aquam rewarded the healer and his wife with a grant of land and a small castle. The two couples became friends and lived happily ever after.
A year or so later the mermaid bore a baby daughter who would become heir to the throne. The child was born with webbed toes. All the soothsayers hastened to pronounce this an exceptionally good omen for the future ruler of a maritime nation. The little princess grew up strong, intelligent, and pretty. And from her earliest years, she proved to be the best swimmer in all the land.
TWENTY-TWO
This version of the Cinderella story may be traced back to religio-political allegory, satirizing the feudal church and state (Ecclesia and Nobilita), and recalling northern Europe’s indigenous worship of the Goddess Helle, or Holle, or Ella, or Hel. In one of the original German versions, the gift-giving fairy godmother was a sacred tree grown from the grave of the heroine’s mother, obviously a former pilgrimage shrine. The story touches on the uneasy truce between the urban political power of medieval Christianity and the spiritual power of pagan (meaning “rural”) cults of the old Goddess—who was doubly underground when the primal netherworld earth mother survived to become a heretical secret, and her worship went underground.
Cinder-Helle’s use of menstrual blood in her charm is one of the oldest and most durable notions about witches’ magic, dating from that remote prepatriarchal time when women’s moon blood was considered the source of every life, the foundation of all family blood bonds, and the essential medium of spiritual power. Patriarchy regarded it with horror, and its extraordinary taboos perpetuated many absurd superstitions about the capacity of such blood to defy the will of male gods.
The scepter in the shoe is an ancient symbol of sexual intercourse or sacred marriage, dating all the way back to the Eleusinian Mysteries sacred to Demeter in ancient Greece. Its unconscious survival even today may be sought in various kinds of shoe fetishism.
The pumpkin became a splendid golden coach with elegant fittings inside.
Once upon a time, the ancient Underground Goddess was known as queen of the honored dead and ruler of the foremothers. She had many priestesses on earth. Her priestesses established the ethical system, gave advice, kept records, mediated quarrels, prescribed medicines, delivered babies, kept the peace, and performed a thousand other physical and social services that held the world in balance. The people loved them and their Goddess and worshiped their own ancestors as spirits residing in the Goddess’s depths. But then along came armies led by male priests, who converted by the sword. That is, they gave people a choice between accepting their new male god or having their heads sliced off. For most it wasn’t a difficult decision. The king officially abolished the Goddess’s temples, even though many of the priestesses continued her worship in private, out in the open fields and woods, or in the homes of the secretly faithful.
One of these priestesses married a wealthy man and bore a beautiful little daughter. They named her Helle, one of the Underground Goddess’s many names, which referred to the hidden chambers deep in the earth where the Goddess received the dead and recycled them to be born again on earth as new children. Therefore it was a name of great holiness (or hellness). The priestess mother hoped it would bring her daughter lifelong blessings.
Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be the case. The priestess died while Helle was still a child. Her father then married an arrogant, greedy woman named Christiana, who had two grown daughters, Nobilita and Ecclesia. Helle’s stepmother and stepsisters mistreated her, forced her to dress in rags, do all the housework, and wait on them hand and foot. Helle’s father hardly noticed or cared. He was often away from home, traveling on business, and was always preoccupied with his own affairs. He needed to earn a lot of money for his new, highly avaricious family.
Nobilita put on many airs, dressed herself in the best silks, satins, and ermines, and spent her days giving commands. She also carried weapons—whips and daggers—to enforce her commands. Ecclesia eschewed weapons and pretended a pious modesty, but she was just as fond of finery as her sister was, if not more so. She was clever, with a broad streak of sadism, and punished Helle’s “sins” with such imaginative cruelty that the poor girl came to prefer Nobilita’s routine abuse.
As Helle grew into a beautiful young woman, out of jealousy her less-than-beautiful stepsisters oppressed her more than ever. They often rubbed ashes and soot on her face and into her hair to conceal her beauty, so they called her Cinder-Helle. “Your fires are out,” Ecclesia said to her. “Your mother was a witch, your old Goddess is dead, and you’re nothing but a cinder-maid.”
Sometimes, when she had a few minutes to herself, Cinder-Helle went to her mother’s grave and talked to it, pouring out her troubles. A graceful willow tree had grown up from the grave, and when its branches gently rustled in the wind, Cinder-Helle imagined that the mother-spirit was speaking words of comfort to her.
One of the old Goddess’s major harvest festivals honoring the foremothers, Hallow Eve, was still celebrated with a ball at the king’s palace. One year it was a particularly great occasion, because the handsome young Prince Populo announced that he would choose his bride on that evening. She would be crowned Hallow Eve Queen and later would become his real queen.
All the well-to-do maidens coveted invitations to this Hallow Eve ball. Therefore Cinder-Helle’s stepsisters were delighted when a herald brought an invitation to their house. They began at once to plan their festive costumes. Cinder-Helle asked timidly, “But what shall I wear?”
“You!” exclaimed Nobilita. “You’ll wear your rags, as usual, and stay home as usual among the cinders. You can’t go to the ball.”
“But the invitation is addressed to all the young ladies of the house,” Cinder-Helle protested.
“You’re not a lady. You’re a servant.”
“I’m as much a lady as you,” Cinder-Helle declared. At this, both sisters set upon her with slaps, pinches, and hair-pullings, finally shoving her out of the room. “Go back to your cinders, witch-spawn!” Ecclesia shrieked. “You can’t go to the ball, and that’s final!”
As the great day approached, the stepmother and stepsisters forced Cinder-Helle to fit and sew their costumes for them. Sitting alone in her garret room, sewing, she often watered the thread with her tears. The sisters berated her if she seemed to do anything better for one of them than for the other. They jealously craved to outshine one another. Each wanted to be crowned Hallow-Eve Queen and to marry Prince Populo. Nobilita insisted that her queenly bearing and pride made her the obvious candidate. Ecclesia claimed that she alone embodied all the virtues, and if the prince failed to choose her, he would be damned.
On the appointed evening, Cinder-Helle’s stepmother and stepsisters entered their turreted coach together and departed for the ball. Left alone, Cinder-Helle sadly made the harvest charm as her mother had taught her, hollowing out a pumpkin shell and putting a candle inside it to represent the glowing orange harvest moon. Then she took the pumpkin as an offering to her mother’s grave. Sitting under the willow tree, she wept as she told her troubles to the mother-spirit.
Then she distinctly heard the voice of the tree speaking to her. “Don’t cry, daughter Helle,” it said. “You shall go to the ball. You are in your moon time, and therefore you have magic. Listen to my directions. Only remember one thing above all: Fairy gifts dissolve at midnight.”
Cinder-Helle nodded and dried her tears, all rapt attention as the voice continued. “Now, take your Hallow Eve pumpkin back home, and blow out the candle. Put into the pumpkin two cobwebs from the barn, two dewdrops from the eaves, a lump of coal from the grate, an earthworm from the garden, a mouse from the trap, and six beetles from under the hearthstone. Then sprinkle them all wit
h your own moon blood, and see what happens.”
Cinder-Helle followed these directions faithfully and was astonished by what transpired. The pumpkin grew and grew and sprouted wheels, axles, doors, and windows, becoming a splendid golden coach with elegant fittings inside. The cobwebs turned into a beautiful ball gown and matching cloak of silver gray silk, lavishly sewn with sparkling rubies that congealed from the drops of blood. The dewdrops turned into well-fitting, dainty crystal slippers, also decorated with rubies. The lump of coal shattered into small bits that strung themselves together and became a necklace of black pearls. The earthworm became a golden bracelet in the form of a serpent with ruby eyes. The candle became a golden tiara glorified by rubies the size of walnuts. The mouse turned into a pompous periwigged coachman in a rich gray velvet jacket with scarlet buckles. The six beetles grew into six magnificent black horses, as well matched as peas in a pod, harnessed to the coach with traces of gold and deerhide set with carnelians and red garnets.
Cinder-Helle was delighted with these transformations. She hastened to remove her rags, wash herself, and dress in her fairy finery. Then the mouse-coachman drove her to the palace, where her entrance created a sensation. When she swept through the ballroom doors all eyes turned in her direction.
Prince Populo gallantly hastened to welcome her and to kiss her hand. He was so smitten with her, in fact, that he would dance with none other for the whole evening. If she sat out a dance, he insisted on sitting with her, talking to her, admiring her jewels, fetching her sherbets with his own hands. He begged her to reveal her name, but she would not. She was too ashamed of her everyday life.
Like many others among the ladies, Nobilita and Ecclesia were enraged at the advent of this beautiful stranger who monopolized the prince’s attention. They watched helplessly, grinding their teeth, as Prince Populo announced that this unknown maiden was his choice for Hallow Eve Queen.
Feminist Fairy Tales Page 18