Cap O’ Rushes

Cap O' Rushes: English folktale from Joseph JacobsSome people liken the beginning of this folktale to Shakespeare’s King Lear. A rich man asks his daughters how much they love him. One answers in a way he does not understand. He mistakenly thinks she doesn’t love him and throws her out of the house. She makes a cloak out of rushes to hide her fine clothes and finds a job cooking and cleaning. That is, of course, until she meets her true love at a ball and turns her bad luck into a ‘happily-ever-after’ ending. Sadly, this sweet-sounding tale may have a more sinister underlying theme.

Our source for the story was a children’s book called English Fairy Tales by folktale collector Joseph Jacobs, first published in 1890. Jacobs’s source was a folktale of the same name which appeared in the ‘Suffolk Notes and Queries’ section of the Ipswich Journal in 1877. This story was contributed by Victorian poet Anna Walter-Thomas (née Fison), who wrote that she heard it from her nurse as a child.

General Comments

There are many ways of classifying folktales. If we look at Cap O’ Rushes’s main story elements we see a woman who is treated badly by her family; a life of hard, boring work; beautiful dresses; dancing at balls; a handsome ‘prince’; and an item that helps the ‘prince’ to find her. These are the elements of what are commonly called “Cinderella Tales”, named after the famous Charles Perrault story. There are hundreds of stories like this around the world, including two other versions featured on our website: Tam and Cam from Vietnam and Donkey Skin, also from Perrault.

Another folktale category that Cap O’ Rushes is said to fall into is that of “Unnatural Love”. It is generally accepted that the father’s demand to hear how much his daughters love him is an indication of incestuous thoughts. One reason that the aspect of incest is not spelt out more clearly in the story may be censorship of the original by Mrs Walter-Thomas’s nurse; another may be that Mrs Walter-Thomas was married to a church minister! The story Donkey Skin referred to above is also said to be included in this category.

Video Version

This is an episode of the award winning Animated Tales of the World TV series which ran on the U.S. HBO network from 2001 to 2003 and later in over 20 other countries. Watch and enjoy!

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