Thursday, March 03, 2011

Daily Facts 3

What were cinderellas slippers made from?
Nope, not glass, it's a mistranslation, or rather a mishearing, as the person who wrote our version mistook "vair" for "verre" meaning glass. So what does "Vair" mean? Simple: Squirrel.

That's right. I haven't gone bonkers, it really does mean that.
Squirrel Fur anyway. The Cinderella story has over 300 versions from history, including Chinese ones where the slippers are gold and Scottish ones where they are rushes.

There are plenty of other changes too, like the ugly sisters cutting their toes and bunions off in the original to try and fit the slippers on, or the king making the evil stepmother and daughters dance themselves to death in red hot iron boots.

Gristly...

11 comments:

  1. I would like to hear the last version that you mentioned.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Man I love finding out the real story behind stuff like this.
    Like the original little mermaid is sooooo much better than the disney animated movie.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dude. I'm glad I followed this blog. That's really interesting. I look forward to more from you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. our version has the cutting toes part but the shoes are made out of glass as well

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, thats pretty cool, chineses wispers about the story

    ReplyDelete
  6. "dance themselves to death"? that's crazy!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Now squirrel fur slippers sound really fancy, especially back in the day, when nobody (in the West) cared for poor animals being killed for materials.

    ReplyDelete
  8. That's really cool, I never knew.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yeah but imagine how that would have gone down in the disney movie :P

    ReplyDelete