Now the story of Cinderella helps us to find out the meaning of
our Fairy Tales; and takes us back straight to the far-off land
where fairy legends began, and to the people who made them.
Cinderella, and Rhodope, and the Hindu Rajah's daughter, and the
like, are but different forms of the same ancient myth. It is the
story of the Sun and the Dawn. Cinderella, grey and dark, and
dull, is all neglected when she is away from the Sun, obscured by
the envious Clouds her sisters, and by her stepmother the Night.
So she is Aurora, the Dawn, and the fairy Prince is the Morning
Sun, ever pursuing her, to claim her for his bride. This is the
legend as we find it in the ancient Hindu sacred books; and this
explains at once the source and the meaning of the Fairy Tale.

Nor is it in the story of Cinderella alone that we trace the
ancient Hindu legends. There is scarcely a tale of Greek or
Roman mythology, no legend of Teutonic or Celtic or Scandinavian
growth, no great romance of what we call the middle ages, no
fairy story taken down from the lips of ancient folk, and
dressed for us in modern shape and tongue, that we do not find,
in some form or another, in these Eastern poems. The Greek gods
are there--Zeus, the Heaven-Father, and his wife Hera, "and
Phoebus Apollo the Sun-god, and Pallas Athene, who taught men
wisdom and useful arts, and Aphrodite the Queen of Beauty, and
Poseidon the Ruler of the Sea, and Hephaistos the King of the
Fire, who taught men to work in metals."[2] There, too, are
legends which resemble those of Orpheus and Eurydike, of Eros
and Psyche, of Jason and the Golden Fleece, of the labours of
Herakles, of Sigurd and Brynhilt, of Arthur and the Knights of
the Round Table. There, too, in forms which can be traced with
ease, we have the stories of Fairyland--the germs of the