Cinderella's Tree

The Cinderella story, as recollected by the Grimm brothers in 1812, is my own favorite piece of literature. There is an immense amount of scholarship on it (e.g., cinderellaroma2012) but just reading it with a child who hasn't yet been unplugged has to be one of the greatest experiences in life. I read the story a few times every year and find it ever new and exciting each time, even without the kid.

 

The thing that struck me most during last night's reading was the hazel tree bit. You may remember that the hazel tree had a central part in the story.

It happened that the father was once going to the fair, and he asked his two step-daughters what he should bring back for them. "Beautiful dresses," said one, "Pearls and jewels," said the second. "And thou, Cinderella," said he, "what wilt thou have?" "Father, break off for me the first branch which knocks against your hat on your way home." So he bought beautiful dresses, pearls and jewels for his two step-daughters, and on his way home, as he was riding through a green thicket, a hazel twig brushed against him and knocked off his hat. Then he broke off the branch and took it with him. When he reached home he gave his step-daughters the things which they had wished for, and to Cinderella he gave the branch from the hazel-bush. Cinderella thanked him, went to her mother's grave and planted the branch on it, and wept so much that the tears fell down on it and watered it. It grew, however, and became a handsome tree. Thrice a day Cinderella went and sat beneath it, and wept and prayed, and a little white bird always came on the tree, and if Cinderella expressed a wish, the bird threw down to her what she had wished for.

 It takes far more direct acquaintance with hazelnut trees than I have to be able to appreciate the meanings involved. But there is a lot easily available on the Internet that helps. The nuts apparently fall to the ground outside the husks in which they are developed, yielding some kind of maturity imagery and the tree itself is associated with the tree of knowledge. Also, apparently there is something called “brutting” whereby you break certain branches of the hazel tree just above the old growth, not breaking them fully off, and the result is a greater yield from the tree.

The first time I learned of the need for direct acquaintance with the ancient agricultural sources of such symbols was in the Bible with its references to lambs and vines. Lambs in springtime, for example, are just so astonishing that you have actually to see them to believe it.

One last thought from last night's reading of Cinderella: Another great help in getting the meaning of the images in fairy tales besides direct acquaintance with the actual source of the image is experience in dream interpretation. Fairy tales are, after all, as Jung said, the dreams of humanity at large.