Rushen Coatie or Rashin-Coatie is a Scottish

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cult ...

collected by

Joseph Jacobs Joseph Jacobs (29 August 1854 – 30 January 1916) was an Australian folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore. Jacobs ...

in his ''More English Fairy Tales''. It is Aarne–Thompson type 510A, the persecuted heroine, as is

Cinderella "Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...

Synopsis

Page 150 illustration in More English Fairy Tales

A queen with a daughter died. On her deathbed, she told her daughter that a red calf would come to her, and she could ask it for help. The king remarried to a widow with three daughters, and the girl's

stepmother A stepmother, stepmum or stepmom is a non-biological female parent married to one's preexisting parent. A stepmother-in-law is a stepmother of one's spouse. Children from her spouse's previous unions are known as her stepchildren. Culture Step ...

and three stepsisters maltreated her, giving her only a coat made of rushes to wear—calling her Rushen Coatie— and gave her too little food. A red calf came to her, and when she asked for food, it told her to pull it from its ears. The stepmother set one of her daughters to spy on Rushen Coatie, and the girl discovered the red calf. The stepmother feigned illness and told the king that she needed the

sweetbread Sweetbread is a culinary name for the thymus (also called throat, gullet, or neck sweetbread) or pancreas (also called stomach, belly or gut sweetbread), typically from calf (french: ris de veau, es, hígado) or lamb (). Sweetbreads have a ri ...

from the red calf. The king had it slaughtered, but the dead calf told Rushen Coatie to bury its body, and she did, except for the shankbone, which she could not find. At Yuletide, the stepmother and stepsisters jeered at her for wanting to go to church and set her to make dinner, but the red calf limped into the kitchen. It gave her clothing to wear and told her a charm to cook the supper. At church, a young prince fell in love with her. She went twice more, and the

third Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (disambiguation) * Third Avenue (disambiguation) * Hi ...

time, the prince set a watch to stop her, but she jumped over it and a shoe made of glass fell to the ground. The prince declared he would marry the woman whose foot the shoe matched, and one of her stepsisters hacked off part of her foot to do it, but the blood gave her away. Then no one had failed to try except Rushen Coatie, so the prince insisted on her trying it, and they married, But soon after it was the end of their marriage.

External links

* {{Cinderella Scottish fairy tales Fictional princesses Scottish folklore Female characters in fairy tales ATU 500-559 Joseph Jacobs

Synopsis

See also

External links