ATU 510A Cinderella
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The tale in brief
Cinderella: a girl ill-treated by her two stepsisters is helped by her dead mother at her grave, goes to church three times in beautiful clothes and leaves a shoe behind, and is found as the one whose foot fits it.
Summary written for RunoVerse from Antti Aarne’s list of tale types of 1910 and the Finnic texts linked on this page.
Runosong types
Possibly related: the songs of these types match a passage of this tale, often words a character says or sings (as judged by a language model).
- Syöjätär ja tyttö Syöjätär (the Ogress) and the Girl · SKVR · 20 poems
Finnic and Finland-Swedish sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Finnish Rausmaa 1982ff. I, No. 67
Finnish-Swedish Hackman 1917f. I, No. 81
Estonian Aarne 1918
Livonian, Wepsian, Wotian, Karelian, Syrjanian Kecskeméti/Paunonen 1974
Full references:
- Rausmaa 1982ff.: Rausmaa, Pirkko-Liisa (ed.): Suomalaiset kansansadut 1–6. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1982–2000.
- Hackman 1917f.: Hackman, Oskar (ed.): Finlands svenska folkdiktning I A: Sagor. Referatsamling 1–2. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1917–1920. Read online ↗ (National Library of Finland)
- Aarne 1918: Aarne, Antti: Estnische Märchen- und Sagenvarianten. Verzeichnis der zu den Hurt'schen Handschriftensammlungen gehörenden Aufzeichnungen. FF Communications 25. Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918.
- Kecskeméti/Paunonen 1974: Kecskeméti, István; Paunonen, Heikki: Die Märchentypen in den Publikationen der Finnisch-ugrischen Gesellschaft. Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 73 (1974), 205–265.
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: Helpful Birds B450·Tabu: Staying Too Long at Ball C761.3·Clothes Produced by Magic D1050.1·Magic Object Received from Mother D815.1·Magic Object Found on Mother's Grave D842.1·Dead Mother Returns to Aid Persecuted Children E323.2·Glass Shoes F823.2·Slipper Test H36.1·False Bride's Mutilated Feet K1911.3.3.1·Stepdaughter Heroine L55·Prince Sees Maiden at Church and Is Enamored N711.4·Prince Sees Heroine at Ball and Is Enamored N711.6·Fairy as Helper N815·Heroine's Three-Fold Flight from Ball R221·Cruel Stepmother S31
Combines with: ATU 327A Hansel and Gretel·ATU 403 The Black and the White Bride·ATU 408 The Three Oranges·ATU 409 The Girl as Wolf·ATU 431 The House in the Forest·ATU 432 The Prince as Bird·ATU 433B King Lindorm·ATU 450 Little Brother and Little Sister·ATU 480 The Kind and the Unkind Girls (previously The Spinning-Women by the Spring. The Kind and the Unkind Girls)·ATU 510B Peau d'asne (previously The Dress of Gold, of Silver, and of Stars [Cap o' Rushes])·ATU 511 One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes·ATU 511A·ATU 707 The Three Golden Children (previously The Three Golden Sons)·ATU 923 Love Like Salt
Example tales
English example tales of this type in the Trilogy folktale corpus; their texts can be read in the ATU tale-type index.
- Ashey Pelt · Ireland
- Cinderella (Grimm) · Germany (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm)
- Cinderella (Italy) · Italy
Sources
Tale-type number, title, classification, related types and the Finnic sources: Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales (FF Communications 284–286, Helsinki 2004). · Uther 2004, part I (FF Communications 284), free online ↗
Possibly related runosong types: a reading of the song types by a language model (Claude Opus 5.5, 2 November 2026); only links it rated high or medium in confidence are shown.
Motifs and combinations with other tale types: the Trilogy dataset, from Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature and the ATU catalogue.
Example tales: the Trilogy folktale corpus; each tale’s own source is named beside it.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.