her researches. The result was a handsome volume of 535 pages, containing 345 brief abstracts of variants of the story. They are gathered from over eighty different countries, ranging from Finland to Zululand and from Japan to Brazil and Chili, and are carefully arranged in three main groups: viz. the type of Cinderella proper, the Catskin type, and the Cap o' Rushes type, with the "indeterminate " variants appended separately.
It would be difficult to overpraise the care and nicety of the classification, the pertinent and business-like character of the notes, and withal, the modest self-effacement shown by the editor; while the short time—under four years—occupied by the compilation speaks volumes for her industry, handicapped as she always was by more or less delicate health. But the hope that the work would reveal the original habitat of the story was not realized. All that could be safely predicated of Cinderella, said Mr. Lang, who contributed an Introduction to the volume, was that it could not have arisen among a naked and shoeless people! But it is impossible to think that so much good work can have been thrown away. The question of spontaneous upgrowth versus concrete transmission has lately been revived in a wider field, and one may safely predict that when it comes to be settled the evidence to be gleaned from Cinderella will be found neither valueless nor unimportant.[1]
Miss Cox was for some time a member of the Folk-Lore Council, and was elected an Honorary Member of the Society in 1904. In 1895 she published (through Mr. Nutt) a study of the principle of Animism, under the title of An Introduction to Folk-Lore. It was luminously written, and attained to a second edition, but Cinderella remained and remains her magnum opus.
Her health and the care of her parents—to whom in their old age she was a devoted nurse, notwithstanding her own delicacy—caused her to be seldom seen among us of late years, but whenever she appeared she was greeted with a special air of respectful welcome, as one whom the Society delighted to honour.
- ↑ Abstracts of a few variants obtained after the volume was published will be found in Folk-Lore, vol. xviii. pp. 191-208 (1907).
