90 ASHIEPATTLE: OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 



another patriarchal Mdrchen, in some respects akin to 

 Aschenputtel, can also be traced back to versions in 

 which a king's son lives as kitchen-lad under the stairs. 

 Thus not only is Hans seeks his LucJc the commonest 

 type of Marchen, but even some of the most striking of 

 the nursery tales which tell of the winning of princes by 

 simple maids can be traced back to a matriarchal form. 

 Cinderella, so far from being an argument against the 

 theme of this essay, is seen on further investigation to 

 strongly confirm it. Cinderella is only Hans in disguise, 

 and the change of sex is merely the fashion in story- 

 telling following the change in social institutions. 



If the views expressed in this essay be correct, then 

 we need no longer feel the people and land of our child- 

 hood strange and false. As we read fairy stories to our 

 children, we may study history ourselves. No longer 

 oppressed with the unreal and the baroque, we may see 

 primitive human customs, and the life of primitive man 

 and woman, cropping out in almost every sentence of 

 the nursery tale. Written history tells us little of 

 these things, they must be learnt, so to speak, from the 

 mouths of babes. But there they are in the Mdrchen 

 as invaluable fossils for those who will stoop to pick 

 them up and study them. Back in the far past we can 

 build up the life of our ancestry the little kingdoms y 

 the queen or her daughter as king-maker, the simple life 

 of the royal household, and the humble candidate for the 

 kingship, the priestess with her control of the weather, 

 and her power over youth and maid. In the dimmest 

 distance we see traces of the earlier kindred group- 

 marriage, and in the nearer foreground the beginnings 



