Why Cinderella’s Mother Becomes a Cow

Donald Haase has hailed “a concept of textuality that views each tale … as a component in a larger web of texts that are linked to each other in multiple ways and have equal claim to our attention.” In this essay I take up this matter, mutatis mutandis, in the realm of folklore. I argue that folktale variants can be treated as intertexts insofar as they rely on shared meanings. As an example, I ask why in oral folktales Cinderella’s mother becomes a cow. The answer draws on folktales and related folk materials from both ends of Europe.