Note 46 — Traditions of Dwarf Races in Ireland and in Switzerland [45]

May it not be that Cinderella's glass shoe was really green and derived its name from the Irish word glas, denoting that colour, which is familiar to us in place-names? I make this conjecture with diffidence. I know the usual explanation is that the shoe was made of a kind of fur called in Old French vair, and that a transcriber changed this word into verre. Miss Cox, in her "Cinderella," mentions that she had only found six instances of a glass shoe. As Littré says in the article on vair in his Dictionary, a soulier de verre is absurd. A fur slipper, however, does not appear very suitable for a ball.