Chapter LXXXIII: Catskin

_Source._--From the chap-book reprinted in Halliwell I have introduced the demand for magic dresses from Chambers's _Rashie Coat_, into which it had clearly been interpolated from some version of Catskin.

_Parallels._--Miss Cox's admirable volume of variants of _Cinderella_ also contains seventy-three variants of _Catskin_, besides thirteen "indeterminate" ones which approximate to that type. Of these eighty-six, five exist in the British Isles, two chap-books given in Halliwell and in Dixon's _Songs of English Peasantry_, two by Campbell, Nos. xiv. and xiv_a_, "The King who Wished to Marry his Daughter," and one by Kennedy's _Fireside Stories_, "The Princess in the Catskins." Goldsmith knew the story by the name of "Catskin," as he refers to it in the _Vicar_. There is a fragment from Cornwall in _Folk-Lore_, i., App. p. 149.

_Remarks._--_Catskin, or the Wandering Gentlewomen_, now exists in English only in two chap-book ballads. But Chambers's first variant of _Rashie Coat_ begins with the Catskin formula in a euphemised form. The full formula may be said to run in abbreviated form--_Death-bed promise--Deceased wife's resemblance marriage test--Unnatural father_ (desiring to marry his own daughter)--_Helpful animal--Counter tasks--Magic dresses--Heroine flight--Heroine disguise--Menial heroine--Meeting-place--Token objects named--Threefold flight--Lovesick prince--Recognition ring--Happy marriage_. Of these the chap-book versions contain scarcely anything of the opening _motifs_. Yet they existed in England, for Miss Isabella Barclay, in a variant which Miss Cox has overlooked (_Folk-Lore_, i., _l.c._), remembers having heard the Unnatural Father incident from a Cornish servant-girl. Campbell's two versions also contain the incident, from which one of them receives its name. One wonders in what form Mr. Burchell knew Catskin, for "he gave the [Primrose] children the Buck of Beverland,[3] with the history of Patient Grissel, the adventures of Catskin and the Fair Rosamond's Bower" (_Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, c. vi.). Pity that "Goldy" did not tell the story himself, as he had probably heard it in Ireland, where Kennedy gives a poor version in his _Fireside Stories_.

Yet, imperfect as the chap-book versions are, they yet retain not a few archaic touches. It is clear from them, at any rate, that the Heroine was at one time transformed into a Cat. For when the basin of water is thrown in her face she "shakes her ears" just as a cat would. Again, before putting on her magic dresses she bathes in a pellucid pool. Now, Professor Child has pointed out in his notes on Tamlane and elsewhere (_English and Scotch Ballads_, i., 338; ii., 505; iii., 505) that dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take place. It is clear, therefore, that Catskin was originally transformed into an animal by the spirit of her mother, also transformed into an animal.

If I understand Mr. Nutt rightly (_Folk-Lore_, iv, 135, _seq._), he is inclined to think, from the evidence of the hero-tales which have the unsavoury _motif_ of the Unnatural Father, that the original home of the story was England, where most of the hero-tales locate the incident. I would merely remark on this that there are only very slight traces of the story in these islands nowadays, while it abounds in Italy, which possesses one almost perfect version of the formula (Miss Cox, No. 142, from Sardinia).

Mr. Newell, on the other hand (_American Folk-Lore Journal_, ii., 160), considers Catskin the earliest of the three types contained in Miss Cox's book, and considers that Cinderella was derived from this as a softening of the original. His chief reason appears to be the earlier appearance of Catskin in Straparola,[4] 1550, a hundred years earlier than Cinderella in Basile, 1636. This appears to be a somewhat insufficient basis for such a conclusion. Nor is there, after all, so close a relation between the two types in their full development as to necessitate the derivation of one from the other.

[Footnote 3: Who knows the Buck of Beverland nowadays?]

[Footnote 4: It is practically in Des Perier's _Récréations_, 1544.]