The wife of a rich man fell sick.
As she felt that her end
was drawing near,
she called her only daughter to her bedside. She said
"Dear
child, be good and pious.
Then the good God will always protect you.
And I
will look down on you from heaven
and be near you."
Thereupon she closed her
eyes and departed.
After the death maiden went out to her mother's grave. She wept there every day. And she remained pious and good.
When winter came, the snow spread a white sheet over the grave.
By the time, the spring sun had drawn it off again, the man had taken another wife.
The new wife had brought with her two daughters, who were beautiful and fair of face, but vile and black of heart.
Now began a bad time for the poor step-child.
"Is the stupid goose to sit in the parlor
with us",
the new mother and step daughters said.
"He who wants to eat bread must earn it.
Out with the
kitchen-wench."
They took her pretty clothes away from her,
put an old gray
bedgown on her,
and gave her wooden shoes.
"Just look at the proud princess,
how decked out she is", they cried, and laughed.
Then they led her into the kitchen.
There she had to do hard work from morning till night. Get up before daybreak. Carry water, light fires, cook and wash.
Besides this, the sisters did her every imaginable injury :
They mocked her.
They emptied her peas and lentils into the ashes, so that she was forced to sit and pick them out again.
In the evening ,when she had worked till, she was weary she had no bed to go to. So she had to sleep by the hearth in the cinders.
And as on that account, she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Cinderella.
It happened, that the father was once going to the fair.
He asked his two step-daughters
what he should bring back for them.
"Beautiful dresses", said one.
"Pearls and jewels", said the second.
"And you, Cinderella", said the father, "What will you
have ?"
"Father break off for me the first branch,
which knocks against
your hat, on your way home."
Cinderella answered
So the father bought beautiful dresses, pearls and jewels for his two step-daughters. On his way home, as he was riding through a green thicket, a hazel twig brushed against him and knocked off his hat.
Then he broke off the branch and took it with him. When he reached home, he gave his step-daughters the things, which they had wished for.
To Cinderella he gave the branch from the hazel-bush. Cinderella thanked him, and went to her mother's grave.
She planted the branch on it. Cinderella wept so much, that the tears fell down on it and watered it.
The branch grew. And it became a handsome tree. Thrice a day Cinderella went and sat beneath it.
She wept and prayed, and a little white bird always came on the tree.
If Cinderella expressed a wish, the bird threw down to her, what she had wished for.