Maria is the title given to a Filipino (Tagalog language) version of Cinderella collected by Fletcher Gardner and published in The Journal of American Folklore, in 1906. The story is related both to the international Cinderella narrative, as well as to the motif of the calumniated wife.Philip, Neil. The Cinderella story. Penguin Books, 1989. p. 113.
The second part of the tale refers to stories where a girl promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's wives plot against the babies and their mother.
Source According to Fletcher Gardner, the tale was collected from an informant named Cornelio, in Mangarin, Mindoro, in 1903. The informant heard the story from a man in Marinduque Island. Accessed October 02, 2022.
Summary In this tale, the Cinderella-like character is named Maria. The girl lives with her father and her mother. One day, his father falls in love with another woman and kills his wife, marrying the other woman and making her Maria's stepmother.
The girl's family life becomes difficult for her, since the stepmother begins to impose hard tasks for her. One day, the stepmother kills Maria's pet pig and gives the girl ten pieces of its refuse, ordering her to wash them in the river. She warns the girl not to lose any piece during the washing, lest Maria is beaten to death as punishment.
Maria takes the pig's pieces and washes them in the river, but one slips away from her. A crocodile offers to bring it back to her. When he turns to dive in the river, the crocodile's tail splashes a bit of water on her forehead and it creates a shining jewel. Maria returns home and, inquired by her stepmother, tells her the incident at the river. The stepmother sends her own daughter to the river with a second pig's refuse, hoping the same fortune will befall her, but the crocodile splashes her with his tail and a bell appears on her head, which she has to hide under a rag.
Feeling humiliated, Maria's stepmother still hates her step-daughter and keeps forcing chores on the girl until her body is filthy and dirty. The stepmother orders Maria to clean herself in the river. A crab offers to wash her back and tells her to eat it and bury its shell in the yard. Maria follows the crab's advice and a lukban (grape fruit) tree sprouts in the yard.
Some time later, Maria's stepmother and her daughter go to church, while they leave Maria to prepare the food for them when they return. After they leave, an old woman appears to Maria and tells her to pluck a fruit from the lukban tree and go to church, while she prepares the food. Maria cracks open a fruit and discovers princess garments and a carriage with eight horses. Maria wears the garments and rides the carriage to church.
At church, Maria catches the king's attention, who sends some guards to inquire about her. When the guards go to see her, Maria her slipped from church, but leaves a shoe at church. She runs back home, takes off the garments and places them back into the lukban fruit, and waits for her step-family to come home.
Back to the king, he finds the shoe and orders a "bando" to seek every available woman and girl in the kingdom and bring them to the palace to try on the shoe. Maria's step-family ties her up inside a sack and leave by the fireplace, then go to the palace. None of the maidens fit the slipper, so the king sends the bando again. The soldiers go to Maria's home, and, alerted by the cooing of a bird, release her from the sack and she tries on the slipper. It fits.
The king marries Maria, despite her step-family's protests, and she goes to live in the palace. After a while, the king departs for war, and leaves his wife Maria in the care of her stepmother and two wise women, with orders to hoist a white flag for good news and a black flag for bad news.
Maria is pregnant with seven boys; her step-mother and the midwives replace the boys for blind puppies, throw the septuplets in the sea in a box and hoist a black flag to warn the king. He returns from war and, seeing the little animals, orders his wife to be punished, first by placing her under the stairs, then locking her up in a hut next to the palace.
As for the boys, they are saved by an enchanter and taken to his cave. The children grow up. One day, a hunter passes by the cave and sees the boys, then reports it back to the old women. Tyring to hide their misdeeds, the women go to the cave and give the boys poisoned maruya. The children eat it and die. The enchanter places the bodies inside a cave, but his oracle's voice tells him to seek the mother of the Sun, who lives in a distant place, beyond seven mountains, for a remedy.
He passes by three places where people ask him the solution for their problems: a tree asks why the bird do not perch on it; why two men are sat on a tree; and why two meager oxen eat rich grass and look emaciated and a black oxen looks fat by eating dust. The enchanter promises them he will bring the answers after visiting the house of the sun (tale type ATU 461, "Three Hairs of the Devil's Beard").Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 156–157. He then enters the house of the Sun, and is greeted by the Sun's mother, who hides him from the Sun after he comes back home. The Sun's mother asks him about the people's questions and gives the enchanter the remedy.
The enchanter goes back to his cave and resurrects the princes, who, after the enchanter's long journey, have become young men. When he and his brother wake up, the youngest of them goes to the tree to fetch a branch of silver and gold. The enchanter melds the metals and makes clothes and equipment (sabres, belts and a horn) for the seven princes.
The seven brothers blow on the horn to summon the king, who invites them for a banquet. Following the enchanter's warning, they give the meat on their dish to a dog, and the dog dies. The king replaces the cooks. The seven princes, before they sit again, ask the king to bring the woman locked in the hut to eat with them at the table. The woman, Maria, is brought to the table, and a stream of her breastmilk gushes forth and enters the mouth of the youngest son. The king realizes the seven young men are his sons, and punishes Maria's stepmother and the two midwives. Accessed October 02, 2022.
Analysis Tale type The first part of the tale is a variant of the Cinderella tale,Gardner, Fletcher, and W. W. Newell. "Filipino (Tagalog) Versions of Cinderella". In: The Journal of American Folklore 19, no. 75 (1906): 273. Accessed October 02, 2022. doi:10.2307/534434. which corresponds to tale type ATU 510A, "Cinderella", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. The second part of the tale is classified as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 242–243.
According to German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his 2004 revision of the international index, both tale types (ATU 510A and ATU 707) are "usual combinations" for each other.
Motifs Scholarship points to an old belief connecting breastmilk and "natal blood", as observed in the works of Aristotle and Galen. Thus, the breastmilk motif reinforces the mother's connection to her children.Parkes, Peter. "Fosterage, Kinship, and Legend: When Milk Was Thicker than Blood?". In: Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, no. 3 (2004): 590 and footnote nr. 4. Accessed October 5, 2022. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3879474. Ethnologue and Africanist Sigrid Schmidt relate this motif to Indian variants.Ottino, Paul. "Le thème indo-malgache des enfants abandonnés aux eaux". In: Paul Ottino (ed.). Études sur l'Océan Indien: Les cahiers de l'Université de la Réunion. Saint Denis de la Réunion. 1984. pp. 189–191.Schmidt, Sigrid. "Internationale Märchen in Namibia. Bewahren und anpassen". In: Fabula 62, no. 3-4 (2021): 294-295. https://doi.org/10.1515/fabula-2021-0015
Variants Philippines Maria (variant) Gardner Fletcher published a second Filipino variant of Cinderella, collected in 1903 from a sixty-year-old woman in Pola, Mindoro. In this tale, the heroine is named Maria, daughter of a widowed man. Her father marries a woman with three daughters, and goes on a boating trip with his wife. He shoves her from the boat and she drowns, allowing him to marry another woman of a wicked character. Meanwhile, Maria is forced to do every chore in the house, which dirties her with soot.
One day, when Maria is washing by the river, a female crab appears to her and asks her to bring it home and cook it, but she must bury its shell in the garden. Maria follows the crab's orders, and a lukban tree with three fruits sprout. On a Sunday, the girl cracks open one of the fruits, and finds a dress and a carriage. She freshens herself and goes to church, where the king is in attendance. The king sees her and wishes to talk to her, but, as soon as the priest begins his sermon, she slips away from church, and the king orders the soldiers to follow her. Maria escapes, bu drops one of her slippers behind.
The king orders that every maiden with little feet is to try on the slipper. They finally reach Maria's house, where her stepmother hides her away in a mat and put her above the rafters. The soldiers notice the old mats and prickle it with their swords, causing Maria to cry out. They take Maria out of the mats and present her to the king. Shen tries on the slipper, and goes to live with the king as his queen.
After their marriage, the king has to depart on a royal duty, and in his absence, Maria gives birth to seven princes, who are replaced by seven puppies by her stepmother and exposed in the mountains. When the king returns, he sees the little animals and orders Maria and the puppies to be places in a room outside the palace walls, away from the people's eyes, but with orders to be well cared for.
Back to the children, they survive (Fletcher explained they were cared for by one ina nang arao, which means 'mother of the day' or 'mother of the sun'). They grow up as seven fine young men, and, one day, pass by their mother, suffering the king's punishment, being trapped in that outside room. The king notices their presence in church and invites them for a meal with him. Per their nurse's advice, the boys are to invite the imprisoned woman to dine with them at the same table. The king indulges their request and brings a disgrace Maria out of confinement to at with them. Three youths sit by one side of the queen, and the four on the other. Suddenly, streams of milk gush from her breasts to the mouths of the youths, confirming their blood relation. The king learns of his stepmother-in-law's deception, and punishes her, restoring Maria and his sons to his side. Accessed October 02, 2022.
The Green-Haired Prophetess