shall belong to the youngest,' and as far as forty feet round it. After
that the eldest has the first choice, and the others in succession
according to age. The Custumal of Kent of the thirteenth century is the
authority.

These rules of inheritance show, at least (and perhaps at most), a
curious coincidence between the tales which describe the youngest child
as always busy with the hearth, and the custom which bequeaths the
hearth (_astre_) to the youngest child. To _prove_ anything it would be
desirable to show that this rule of Gavel-kind once prevailed in all the
countries where the name of the heroine corresponds in meaning to
_Cendrillon_.

The attention of mythologists has long been fixed on the _slipper_ of
Cinderella. There seems no great mystery in the Prince's proposal to
marry the woman who could wear the tiny _mule_. It corresponds to the
advantages which, when the hero is a man, attend him who can bend the
bow, lift the stone, draw the sword, or the like. In a woman's case it
is beauty, in a man's strength, that is to be tested. Whether the
slipper were of _verre_ or of _vair_ is a matter of no moment. The
slipper is of red satin in Madame d'Aulnoy's _Finette Cendron_, and of
satin in _Rashin Coatie_. The Egyptian king, in Strabo and AElian, merely
concluded that the loser of the slipper must be a pretty woman, because
she certainly had a pretty foot. The test of fitting the owner recurs in
_Peau d'Ane_, where a ring, not a slipper, is the object, as in the
Finnish _Wonderful Birch tree_.

M. de Gubernatis takes a different view of Cinderella's slipper. The
Dawn, it appears, in the Rig Veda is said to leave no footsteps behind
her (_apad_). This naturally identifies her with Cinderella, who not
only leaves footsteps, probably, but one of her slippers. M. de
Gubernatis reasons that _apad_ 'may mean, not only she who has no feet,
but also she who has no footsteps ... or again, she who has no slippers,
the aurora having, as it appears, lost them.... The legend of the lost
slipper ... seems to me to repose entirely upon the double meaning of
the word _apad_, _i.e._ who has no foot, or what is the measure of the
foot, which may be either the footstep or the slipper....' (_Zoolog.
Myth._ i. 31). M. de Gubernatis adds that 'Cinderella, when she loses
the slipper, is overtaken by the prince bridegroom.' The point of the
whole story lies in this, of course, that she is _not_ overtaken. Had
she been overtaken,