The Wonderful Birch

The Wonderful Birch is a Finnish/Russian fairy tale. A variant on Cinderella, it is Aarne–Thompson folktale type 510A, the persecuted heroine. It makes use of shapeshifting motifs. Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.

A peasant woman meets a witch, who threatens to transform her if she does something; she does not do it, but the witch turns her into a sheep anyway. She assumes the form of the peasant woman and goes home to her husband. After a time, she bears him a daughter. The witch pets and pampers her own daughter, and ill-treats her stepdaughter, the peasant's daughter by his sheep-wife.

The witch-stepmother tells her husband to slaughter the sheep before it runs away. He agrees, but her stepdaughter hears and runs to the sheep, lamenting. Her mother tells her not to eat anything made from her body but bury the bones. She does so, and a birch tree grows on the grave.

The king gives a festival, inviting everyone, and the witch sends off the husband with her younger daughter, throws a potful of barleycorns in the hearth, and tells the older stepdaughter that if she does not pick barley corns from ashes, it will be worse for her. The birch tells her to strike the hearth with one of her branches, which sorts them, and then magically bathes and dresses her. Then it told her to go to the fields and whistle, for a horse, partly gold, partly silver, and the third partly something more precious will appear to take her to the castle. The girl then goes into the festival.

The king's son falls in love with her, and has her sit beside him, but the witch's daughter gnaws bones under the table, and the king's son, thinking she is a dog, gives her such a kick to keep her away that her arm is broken. He has the door latch smeared with tar, and when the stepdaughter leaves, her copper ring is caught in it. When the witch returns home, she tells the stepdaughter that the king's son has fallen in love with her daughter and carries her about, only he had dropped her and broken her arm.

The king holds another festival. The witch tries to keep her stepdaughter busy by throwing hemp-seed on the hearth, but the stepdaughter, with the birch's aid, goes to the festival as before. This time, the king's son breaks the witch's daughter's leg, and has the doorpost smeared with tar, so that her silver circlet is caught.

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