Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo: Fairies (and Frogs, and Fishes, and Trees...) Godmothers

The Fairy Godmother is arguably one of the most important characters in Charles Perrault's Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper. Without her Cinderella couldn't have gone to the ball and would have never met the prince. She'll probably be still stuck with her stepmother and her stepsisters. But despite how relevant she is, to many people would probably be surprised about how in many stories around the globe there's not a Fairy Godmother in the story at all, or the one who helps Cinderella is not a fairy.

We'll start with those versions in which Cinderella's helper is explicitely a fairy. Or in the case of Achille Millien's Cinderella (La Cendrillon), fairies. Millien's Cinderella has to take care of the sheep while she spins the flax. One day while she's spinning her spindle falls and rolls untill it reaches a groot, where Cinderella meets a group of fairies, who invite her to sit with them. Cinderella befriends those fairies, who will help her latter to go to mass when her stepmother doesn't allow her. Another French version with a fairy godmother is Henri Pourrat's Mary-in-the-Ashes, in which he uses her magic not only to help her go to the mass, but also pick from the ashes the peas enchanted by the heroine's stepmother, that multiple everytime she picks one. From Corsica we got a version collected by Geneviève Massignon called Genderella, in which our Cinderella is back here to having just one Fairy Godmother, who gives her a magic walnut, a magic hazelnut and a magic almond, from which she takes the dresses after she recites a specific spell her Gomother teaches her. We see again the magic walnut on the northern Italian version La Sendraroeula, collected by Caterina Pigorini Beri. This time are not fairies the ones who give her the magic walnut, but good witches, alongside a wand with she needs with to strike the walnut, so she can take not only the dresses from it, but also the carriage, the horses and the coachman. Also, this story gives a niece explanation to the "be back before midnight" rule. She needs to return before midnight because everything she takes from the nut will disappear at the exact same hour the witches gave her the nut and the wand, that happens to  be midnight.

The helper is not always explicitely a fairy, being in many versions an ambiguous figure, taking the form of an old lady, that we don't know if she's a fairy on disguise or a good witch. Such is the case in Domenico Comparetti's La Cenerentola, the henwife in Jermiah Curtin's Fair, Brown and Trembling or Francesc Maspons i Labrós La ventafochs. In the Appalachian version Ashpet, collected by Richard Chase, the titular heroine is helped by an old woman who lives in a gorge, that Ashpet had to go one time she needed to borrow some fire. Performing acts of kidness is a good way for the heroine to gain the help she needs, like is the case in the Portuguese tale The Hearth-Cat, collected by Zófimo Consiglieri Pedroso, in which despite the heroine already getting the magic wand that will get her the dresses to go not to a ball but to see the horse ride from the stomach of a friendly cow her stepmother got killed, she also gets magical gifts from three fairies after she cleaned up their house; or the case in the Georgian tale collected by Marjory Wardrop Conkiajgharuna the Little Rag Girl, in which after deworming a devi's head the girl is sent to a spring, with whose waters she must wash her hair when those turn golden. In the Japanese Benizara and Kakezara, collected by Seki Keigo, not only the heroine gets a magic box, that everytime she strikes three times she gets what she needs, but also a way to trick the onis in case that in her way back home she encounters them, so they wouldn't wanna eat her.

Sometimes Cinderella's helper takes a male form, like it's the case with the white dwarf that gives her the magic golden wand in the Swabian tale Aschengrittel collected by Ernst Meier. We can find a less kind example in the Danish Pisk-I-Aske, collected by Evald Tang Kristensen, closer to Rumpelstiltskin than to Perrault's Fairy Godmother. Here the titular character is helped by a mysterious grey man, who offers his help in exchange for the children she'll have in the future. Our heroine only accepts because she doesn't believe she's gonna have any children. Sometimes the male helper is more accidental, not being a magical being, but just the girl's father fulfilling his daughter's odd requests, that normally consists in giving her the first thing that hits him on his way back home, as it's the case with Grimm's version, The Three Sisters and O Popelušce, both collected by Božena Němcová, or The Three Pigeons, collected by Pavol Dobšinský. Sometimes the first branch that hits the father on his way back home turns out ot be the magic wand that the heroine will use to get the dresses and go to the ball, like in Antonio Rodríguez Almodóvar's Estrellita de Oro. Or a magic date tree from where maidens will come out and dressed the heroine, like in Giuseppe Pitrè's Gràttula-Beddàttula. In James Bruyn Andrews' Catarina the titular heroine only asks her father to carry greetings to her aunt, and Catarina's aunt does the rest, sending the nut that contains the dress and the almond that contains the magic slippers. More specific is the heroine in Léon Pineau's La Cendrouse, that directly asks for nuts, in spite of being teased by her sisters because of it.

But Cinderella's helper doesn't have to be always an antropomorphic figure. Such was the case with what it's consider one of the first Cinderella stories ever told, Ye Xian, in which the titular heroine got the dress and the shoes to go to the festival after praying to his deceased fish friend's bones. A fish is also the heroine's helper in the Russian tale collected by Afanasiev The Golden Slipper and the Iraqi The Little Red Fish and the Clog of Gold, but unlike Ye Xian's helper in these versions the fish survives. Other aquatic creatures that we see as Cinderella's helpers are a crab, in Filipino version collected by Dean S. Fansler Maria and the Golden Slipper, who unfortunately for him suffers the same fate as Ye Xian's fish, getting killed by the heroine's stepfamily and buried by the heroine, to latter keep helping her from the grave; and a frog in the African folktale The Maiden, the Frog and the Chief's Son, that swallows whole the heroine to latter expel her from his stomach with new clothes. Cows, bulls and calfs are pretty common in folklore too, such is the case with the Scottish Rushen Coatie, the Norwegian Katie Woodencloak or the French The Blue Bull. Birds are also pretty common, with examples like the two pigeons that help Masha in Afanasiev's Chernushka, the titular Three Pigeons in the already mentioned Slovak version collected by Dobšinský, the stork that helps Klêting Kunning in the Javanese story Andé Andé Lumut, or the little bird Verdeli in Vittorio Imbriani's Cinderella. Between the tales with animal helpers it's worth mentioning the tale from Madagascar collected by Gabriel Ferrand The Three Princesses and Andria Mohamona, in which our heroine is helped by a cute endearing little mouse. Even magic inanimate objects can fullfil that role, like the titular Magic Jar in the Egyptian tale collected by Yacoub Artin-Pacha, that will be later included in Joseph Charles Mardrus' translation of One Thousand and One Nights under the titles The Tale of the Anklet.

We already mention a couple of version in which Cinderella's helper is dead, but keep on helping her from the grave. Of course we got the magic tree that magically grow from the mother's grave like in the Spanish tale La fregona, collected by Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa Jr., or the magic hazel tree that grows after Cinderella watered the hazel branch with her own tears like in Grimm's. In the Chinese tale Beauty and Pock Face, collected by Wolfram Eberhard, the heroine Beauty gets the dress and the horse to go to the theatre after she breaks the vessel that contains the bones of a yellow cow, frustrated because her stepmother won't let her go to the teathre with her stepsister and her. Sometimes that decesead helper is the heroine's own mother that was turned into an animal before her death, like in the Serbian Pepelyouga, where the heroine is helped by her mother's buried bones, after she was turned into a cow because her daughter accidentally let her spindle fall on a gorge, or the Finnish The Wonderful Birch, in which the mother is trasformed in a sheep and supplanted by an evil witch, who latter convices the husband to slaughter his own wife without knowing it. The daughter will latter bury her mother's bones, from where the titular magic tree will grow. If you find that disturbing don't worry, because in the Greek Little Saddleslut they didn't bother to turn the mother into a cow or any other animal before killing and eating her, just because she became too old and too much of a burden to the heroine's eldest sisters. The youngest daughter is the only one who doesn't eat her meat and pays tribute to her after her death.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

Snow White is a tale with many iconic elements, but I think we can agree the most iconic, besides the poisoned apple, is the magic mirror the Evil Queen asks who's the fairest of them all. But, like any oher element on a fairy tale, once we start exploring similar tales from different countries and cultures, we discover that the villains asks that question to all kinds of people, animals, objects and even the Sun and the Moon.

First we'll start with the versions that keep the magic mirror. Sometimes the mirror not only tells the (step)mother that she's no longer the most beautiful, but also is able to predict that her own daughter will be able to surpass her when she's still pregnant, like in the case of the Hungarian tale The World's Beautiful Woman, although the heroine's mother decides to spare her life until she's thirteen. Something similar happens in a tale from Mozambique collected by Henri Alexandre Junod, titled The Unnatural Mother and the Girl with a Star on her Forehead. Although here the mirror uses such enigmatic language that the mother of the heroine, who has a crescent moon on her forehead, doesn't realise what her mirror actually told her untill it explains it to her latter, when her daughter, who has a star on her forehead, has already been born. Furious the mother breaks the mirror, and after checking tha most people think that what the mirror told her is truth, decides to kill her own daughter. She latter discovers her daughter is still alive because of a servant boy who had encountered her. In most American versions the mirror is also kept too, like in the Chilean version Blanca Rosa and the Forty Thieves, collected by Yolando Pino Saavedra, in which the mirror didn't belong initially to the stepmother, but to Blanca Rosa herself, because the mirror was a gift of her deceased mother. 

Despite being such an iconic element to the story, sometimes the mirror is not introduced in the story untill much latter, when the heroine has already run away from home and is living with her benefactors. Such it's the case, ironically, with the Russian version titled The Magic Mirror, collected by Alexander N. Afanasiev, in which the mirror and the stepmother are not intriduced in the story untill the heroine, here a merchant's daughter instead of a king's, have run away from home and is living in a castle with two bogatyrs. The reason why the heroine run away from home here it's not her stepmother's jealousy, but her own father wanting her dead after believing the rumors about her the girl's uncle spread as a revenge for humilliating him and thwarting his attempted rape. And before you ask yes, Afanasiev's The Magic Mirror is one of the most disturbing and fucked up versions of Snow White I've ever read. In the cajun version Snow Bella, collected by Calvin Claudel, the stepmother buys the mirror to a peddler, whom latter will sell her the poisoned necklace, comb and apple with she'll try to kill her stepdaughter.

But the stepmother doesn't asks always a mirror who's the fairest. Instead she asks that question to other objects like bowls in the Danish tale The Pretty Girl and the Crystal Bowls, collected by Evald Tang Kristensen.

It's also pretty common for the villains in these kind of stories to ask living creatures, and even people, who's the prettiest. In the Scotthish version Gold Tree and Silver Tree the queen asks a trout; in the Italian Bella Venezia, collected by Antonio De Nino and latter included by Italo Clavino on his collection Italian Folktales, the mother is an innkeeper who asks her customers if they have saw a woman prettier than her, if they say no she only charges them half the prize, but if they say yes she doubles the price; in another Italian version collected by Angelo De Gubernatis, The Cruel Stepmother, people comment how much prettier the stepdaughter Caterina is than the stepmother when they go to mass; in the French version collected by Paul Sébillot The Enchanted Stockings marching soldiers tell the Queen that her daughter is more beautiful than her; in the Turkish The Magic Needle, collected by Ignác Kúnos, the padishah's wife asks her slave, who tells her everyday she's the fairest untill he sees Nar-tanesi the padishah's daughter; and in the Egyptian tale Romana, collected by Howard Schwartz, the same wizard that helped the princess's stepmother seduces the king with an enchanted cake tells her that her stepdaughter is more beautiful that her own daughter Laymuna.

Celestial bodies are also a common substitute for the mirror in many versions. The Sun is consulted in the Swedish tale The Little Gold Bird, the Albanian Marigo of the Forty Dragons collected by Johann Georg von Hahn and the Greek versions Marietta and the Witch, her Stepmother, collected by Henri Carnoy and Jean Nicolaides, and Myrsina collected by Georgios A. Megas, while the Moon fullfils that role in the Italian Giricoccola, in which the Moon also fulfills the dwarves' role in the story latter on; the Armenian Nourie Hadig, the Moroccan The Jealous Mother and the Iraqi Hajir.

There's even sometimes the villain of the story doesn't need someone or something else to tell her that her daughter surpass her beauty, like in the French version La petite Toute-Belle, the second one collected by Paul Sébillot that we mention in this post; The Three Sisters, collected by Christian Schneller; or the Sicilian version Maria, the Wicked Stepmother and the Seven Robbers, collected by Laura Gonzenbach.