A hundred years ago
It is curious to learn that the "glass slipper" in Cinderella, of which from our youth upwards we never questioned the authenticity, though well aware that no one who was not a protegee of fairies would think of dancing in such an article, was not part of the original story, but has been due to a misunderstanding of a word used in the French version of the tale. The slipper, we have been told by a writer in the Sunday Times, supported by "Littres Dictionary," was originally a slipper trimmed with a particular kind of rare fur, called in French, vair,— the fur of a creature of the weasel kind. But this fur not being known to ordinary French story-tellers, they spoke of apantoufle de verre — a glass slipper — by a sort of unconscious pun. Certainly the new reading is far more creditable to the sagacity of Cinderella's godmother, as a purveyor of comfortable clothes; for whatever magic power the glass slippers might have had of surviving a dance, it is impossible that they could have been comfortable to the feet, and must have resulted in all probability in corns.
Spectator 28 December, 1878
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