The Appalachian folk tale “Ashpet” is one in a long line of tales worldwide that tells the story of a girl who is mistreated by mean relatives, but who eventually comes into her own. In her 1883 compilation, folklorist Marian Roalfe Cox identified 345 variants of the story, known to most as “Cinderella.” The earliest version of the tale, “Yeh-Hsien,” was published in Tuan Ch’eng-shih’s Yu Yang Tsa Tsu (Miscellany of Forgotten Love) in the ninth century. One of the earliest European versions is Giambattista Basile’s “La Gatta Cenerentola” (“Cat Cinderella”), published in Italy in 1634. The tale was retold as “Cendrillon” by Frenchman Charles Perrault in 1697, and by the brothers Grimm as “Aschenputtel” in 1812. Perrault’s version was the basis for Walt Disney’s animated classic, Cinderella (1949).
Richard Chase collected an Appalachian version of this classic tale, called “Ashpet,” in Wise County, Virginia, and published it in Grandfather Tales (1948). In his version, a woman with two daughters had an indentured servant who did all the hardest work and dressed in rags. She slept by the fireplace, where she got covered with ashes, so they called her “Ashpet.” Ashpet was prettier than the daughters, so they never let her go to church or anywhere else. If anyone came to call on them, they hid Ashpet under a washtub. One day when they were getting ready for church, the fire went out. The mother sent her oldest daughter over the mountain gap to borrow fire from an old witch-woman. The witch wanted the girl to comb her hair, which the daughter refused to do. She left without fire, and when she returned home, the mother sent her second daughter, with the same result. In desperation, the mother finally sent Ashpet, who went in, was very polite, and combed the old woman’s hair.
Richard Chase (1904–1988) collected and published a number of key volumes of European-American folklore, including the widely-read Jack Tales: Folk Tales from the Southern Appalachians (1943). At the height of his career as a compiler and scholar, Chase was regarded as one of the nation’s leading experts in folklore. (Steve Larson/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
The old woman asked if Ashpet was going to meeting, and Ashpet replied she wasn’t allowed to attend. The old woman said she would visit Ashpet after the others had left. Ashpet went back home, did her chores, helped the others to get ready, and sent them on their way. After they left, the witch appeared, used magic to clean up supper, and conjured up a mare, a red dress, and slippers for Ashpet. She warned her to return home immediately after meeting, change back into her old clothes, and hide the new ones. No one in the church recognized Ashpet when she came in, but she caught the eye of the king’s son, and he followed her and began to talk to her. To get rid of him, Ashpet kicked off one of her slippers, told him she had lost it, and sent him back to find it. She then rode home, and he was unable to find her.
The prince went all around the neighborhood to find the owner of the slipper. At Ashpet’s home, after the sisters failed to fit into the slipper, a bird guided him to the washtub, where he found Ashpet hiding. Ashpet and the king’s son rode off, and soon they were married. The mother and her daughters pretended to be kind to Ashpet after the wedding, but one day the daughters offered to take Ashpet swimming, and took her to a swimming hole where an Old Hairy Man lived under the water. They persuaded Ashpet to swim alone, and the Hairy Man captured her and kept her in a cave under the bank for several days. The Hairy Man had thick skin and could not be wounded anywhere except for a mole on his shoulder. When the king’s son and his men found Ashpet in the cave, she urged them to shoot him in the shoulder, which they did. While he was unconscious, Ashpet escaped, and the king’s son arrested the woman and her daughters. He threw them into the same deep pool, where they likely remained with the Hairy Man.
There are a number of North American variants to this tale. Among them are several Native American versions, including “Little Burnt Face,” “The Hidden One,” and “The Rough Face Girl.” “Cinderella’s Slipper,” collected by Emory L. Hamilton in Wise, Virginia, in 1940, does not include a mother, but is about three orphaned sisters. “Chipper,” told by Dianne Hackworth in Mountain Tales, features a role reversal and concerns a working boy named Chipper. A Kentucky version, “Rushiecoat and the King’s Son,” was published in Leonard Roberts’s Nippy and the Yankee Doodle, and Other Authentic Folk Tales from the Southern Mountains (1958). Two modern versions are Joanne Compton’s Ashpet: An Appalachian Tale (1994) and Alan Schroeder’s Smoky Mountain Rose: An Appalachian Cinderella (1997). Compton substitutes a doctor’s son for the king’s son. In Schroeder’s tale, the mother is actually Rose’s stepmother, and instead of going to meeting, they attend a party given by a wealthy man in the neighborhood hoping to find a wife. The witch in this story is depicted as a pig.
Tom Davenport produced a film in 1989 called Ashpet: An American Cinderella, which combined the stories of Ashpet and Cinderella and places them in the era of World War II. He also published this version in a book he wrote with Gary Carden entitled From the Brothers Grimm: A Contemporary Retelling of American Folktales and Classic Stories (1992). R. Rex Stephenson wrote a play entitled Ashpet, based on an unpublished tale originally collected by Richard Chase and James Taylor Adams; the play was first performed in 1998.
Nancy Snell Griffith
See also American Cinderella Tales; Women in Folklore
Further Reading
Davenport, Tom, and Gary Carden. 1992. From the Brothers Grimm: A Contemporary Retelling of American Folktales and Classic Stories. Ft. Atkinson, WI: Highsmith Press.
Rivers, Micheal. 2012. Appalachia Mountain Folklore. Atglen, PA: Schiffer.
Roberts, Leonard. 1958. Nippy and the Yankee Doodle, and Other Authentic Folk Tales from the Southern Mountains. Berea, KY: Council of the Southern Mountains.
Sierra, Judy, ed. 1992. The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series: Cinderella. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.