shown, in many versions, to
the _youngest child_, and the custom which allots to this child a place
by the hearth or in the cinders (_Cucendron_).

Taking the first incident, the appearance in Perrault of a Fairy
Godmother in place of a _friendly beast_, we may remark that this kind
of change is always characteristic of the promotion of a story. Just as
Indian 'aboriginal' tribes cashier their beast-ancestors ('Totems') in
favour of a human ancestor of a similar name, when they rise in
civilisation, so the _roles_ which are filled by beasts in savage
_Maerchen_ come to be assigned to men and women in the _contes_ of more
cultivated people[68]. In Cinderella, however, the friendly beast holds
its own more or less in nearly all European versions, except in those
actually derived from Perrault. In every shape of the story known to us,
the beast is a _domesticated animal_. Thus it will not be surprising if
no native version is found in America, where animals, except dogs, were
scarcely domesticated at all before the arrival of Europeans.

In examining the incident of the friendly and protecting beast, it may
be well to begin with a remote and barbarous version, that of the
Kaffirs. Here, as in other cases, we may find one situation in a
familiar story divorced from those which, as a general rule, are in its
company. Theorists may argue either that the Kaffirs borrowed from
Europeans one or two incidents out of a popular form of _Cinderella_, or
that they happen to make use of an opinion common to most early peoples,
the belief, namely, in the superhuman powers of friendly
beast-protectors. As to borrowing, Europeans and Kaffirs have been in
contact, though not very closely, for two hundred years. No one,
however, would explain the Kaffir custom of daubing the body with white
clay, in the initiatory rites, as derived from the similar practice of
the ancient Greeks[69]. Among the neighbouring Zulus, Dr. Callaway found
that _Maerchen_ were the special property of the most conservative
class,--the old women. 'It is not common to meet with a man who is
willing to speak of them in any other way than as something which he has
some dim recollection of having heard his grandmother relate[70].'
Whether the traditional lore of savage grandmothers is likely to have
been borrowed from Dutch or English settlers is a question that may be
left to the reader.

The tale in which the friendly beast of European folklore occurs among
the Ka