Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl

I read an Georgian version for my Cinderella version called Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl. It basically had the same story line as the conventional Cinderella that we are all very familiar with. The characters are similar as well, with a widowed father who lived with his biological daughter. He takes another wife that already had a daughter of her own, whom she loved dearly. And she comes to view the other daughter as something to hate and wanted to get rid of her. She lavished her own daughter and treated her stepdaughter, Little Rag Girl, miserably and tried to starve her. The fairy godmother from the conventional fairy tales is now instead a talking cow. Although the person in the position as the fairy god mother is different, they both still encompass that aspect of magic that helps to grant Cinderella/Little Rag Girl’s wishes. In this version, there is another pseudo fairy godmother, the old woman devi. Little Rag Girl is very much like Cinderella for she was filled with goodness in her heart. Just in like the Perrault’s version where Cinderella forgives her evil sisters and offers them lodging at the palace and even marries them off to great lords of the courts. Little Rag Girl helps the old woman devi clean her head of the worms- the conduct pleased her so she tells Little Rag Girl to washed her hair and her hands. In doing so, her hair and hands became golden. There is a more religious aspect to Little Rag Girl, as they are going to a church instead of a ball at a palace. But she still drops a golden slipper that becomes the standard and way of choosing a wife. Two very different aspects of this version of Cinderella is that it mentions race- the evil step sister becomes dark and African in ethnicity when she is tricked to washed in the black river and Little Rag Girl is more proactive and takes matters into her own hands by pricking the king with the needle- she didn’t just hide in the corner while her step sister tried on the slipper. She made herself known and went for what she wanted.