Other romantic tales with a large realistic element are The Three Bears, The Three Pigs, and The Three Billy-Goats, animal tales which of necessity must be largely realistic, for their foundation is in the facts of the nature, habits, and traits of the animal characters they portray.

V. The Romantic Tale

The romantic tale reflects emotion and it contains adventure and the picturesque; it deals with dreams, distant places, the sea, the sky, and objects of wonder touched with beauty and strangeness.  The purpose of the romantic is to arouse emotion, pity, or the sense of the heroic; and it often exaggerates character and incidents beyond the normal.  The test of the romantic tale as well as of the realistic tale is in the reality it possesses.  This reality it will possess, not only because it is true, but because it is also true to life.  And it is to be remembered that because of the unusual setting in a romantic tale the truth it presents stands out very clearly with much impressiveness. Red Riding Hood is a more impressive tale than The Three Bears.

Cinderella is a good type of the old romantic tale.  It has a never-ending attraction for children just as it has had for all peoples of the world; for this tale has as many as three hundred and forty-five variants, which have been examined by Miss Cox.  In these variants there are many common incidents, such as the hearth abode, the helpful animal, the heroine disguise, the ill-treated heroine, the lost shoe, the love-sick prince, magic dresses, the magic tree, the threefold flight, the false bride, and many others.  But the one incident which claims the tale as a Cinderella tale proper, is the recognition of the heroine by means of her shoe.  In the Greek Rhodope, the slipper is carried off by an eagle and dropped into the lap of the King of Egypt, who seeks and marries the owner.  In the Hindu tale the Rajah’s daughter loses her slipper in the forest where it is found by the Prince.  The interpretation of Cinderella is that the Maiden, the Dawn, is dull and gray away from the brightness of the sun.  The Sisters are the Clouds that shadow the Dawn, and the Stepmother is Night.  The Dawn hurries away from the pursuing Prince, the Sun, who, after a long search, overtakes her in her glorious robes of sunset.

This tale is the Hindu Sodewa Bai, the Zuni Poor Turkey Girl, and the English Rushen Coatie, Cap-o’-Rushes, and Catskin. Catskin, which Mr. Burchell told to the children of the Vicar of Wakefield, is considered by Newell as the oldest of the Cinderella types, appearing in Straparola in 1550, while Cinderella appeared first in Basile in 1637. Catskin, in ballad form as given by Halliwell, was printed in Aldermary Churchyard, England, in 1720; and the form as given by Jacobs well illustrates how the prose tale developed from the old ballad.  The two most common forms of Cinderella are Perrault’s and Grimm’s, either of which is suited to the very little child.  Perrault’s Cinderella shows about twenty distinct differences from the Grimm tale:—­