In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Aschenputtel, Cinderella’s father asks his daughter and step-daughters what kind of gift they would like from the fair. The step-sisters request “beautiful dresses,” “pearls,” and “jewels,” but Cinderella asks for “the first twig” that brushes against her father’s hat on his way home. Her father returns with a hazel twig which she plants on her mother’s grave, watering it with her tears until it grows into a tree. The birds that build their nests in the tree help Cinderella with her chores, and eventually, they gift her the dresses and shoes she needs to attend the Prince’s ball.
A twig may seem like a strange request, but it turns out to be the very thing that rescues Cinderella from a life of drudgery, and the fact that the Grimms specify the twig comes from a hazel tree may help their readers unlock the deeper meanings of the fairy tale. Hazel trees have long been associated with wisdom. Their pliancy makes them excellent walking sticks, and forked hazel twigs are cherished by diviners who use them to locate water. The nuts produced by the tree can be sweetened with chocolate to create delicacies, and even the leaves, which are the first to appear in spring and the last to fall in autumn, hold sacred meaning. Several communities across Europe have planted hazel trees at their borders as a form of protection, using the trees’ magical properties to ward off evil spirits.
Cinderella’s hazel twig digs its roots deep into the dark earth, and, when the girl is ready to stop mourning her mother and return to a world beyond the hearth, it spreads its green leaves across the sky to throw silver and gold down on her. Cinderella knows that a simple hazel twig is far more valuable than jewels or dresses because a twig holds the transformative magic of spring deep within it.
In my area of the world, March is a month of impending transformation. The landscape is still dull and leafless and the clouds are still gray and cold, but the scent of warm, bright days to come is in the air. March is a month when we should all take a cue from Cinderella, letting the tears of our compassion water the world while we wait for spring’s arrival. Soon the barren twigs which scratch the skies will burst into beautiful bloom, their buds and berries outshining the most precious pearls in the kingdom’s coffers, their trailing leaves more beautiful than gowns of green and gold.
The Brothers Grimm find the happily-ever-after of their Cinderella story in the protagonist’s humble request for a hazel twig. In reminding us that we are all a part of nature’s cycles, and in teaching us to remain patient and compassionate, Cinderella and her hazel twig promise us that the grief and loneliness of winter will always transform into the joys of spring.
Kelly Jarvis is the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her work has also been featured in A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard, Blue Heron Review, Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, Mermaids Monthly, The Chamber Magazine, The Magic of Us, and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. Her first novella, Selkie Moon, comes out in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/