How nice of you to reply, and so commonsensically.

1. Yes, she dances away down the street in all the English renditions, which use the same translation, but in English he only hopes she'd know that he loved her so, he does not make it edxplicit, and her dancing away in delight might be seen as her not understanding his intention. I always hoped as a child that she would come back for another pair, he woul;d state his intention, and that things would turn out well. But in the enchantment is in his fingers only in Englsh, and thus arguably metaphorical and minor; BUT it is explicitly in the shoes themselves in French, as is his stated bargain; ditto her breaking it, her punishment, and her pleading for mercy as a result (though the final horrible results are open here, not explicit as in Andersen). The rejection is there but mild and can be explained away through the plot gaps in English; crystal clear and punished in French and in Andersen. Convincing?

(a) Because of the more explicit enchantment in French, his "littleness" moves from Maerchen third-son hero "slightness" to accrete a more sinister/wizened-up/faerie inflection than in English, helped by the "Elves and the Shoemaker"), so that "elvish" is one of the words just automatically and unselfconsciously used for him in discussion - though not above), and not so mucgh by the seven-at-one-blow brave little tailor but other hunchbacked spiteful tailors in fairy tales (I cannot think of a concrete example, now, so i might be wrong)... Yes?

(b) not in English, but as with the Grimms' stepmother, and as with Andersen, her explicit punishment is clearly "the girl's fault" (cf. Andersen and punishment of female by feet-pain in "The Little Mermaind", but here it is her willed sacrifice for love). So don't we have here a movement from folktale motif )"Snow White"), through folktalish art-tale ("The Red Shoes") to a slightly sanitised art-narrative ballad based on it (the French Little Shoemaker) to a much more sanitised/inexplicit/non-punitive/Oscar-Wilde-like "ache in the heart of unrequited love" form in English (the English Little Shoemaker)? I will bet the Japanese follows the English/American...

2. I note that there is another "Shoemaker" thread in this forum, but not linked to this one, which has the Italian/Spanish-sounding Italian lyrics in full. So this must have come between the French and Englsh versions, tob leave an Italian trace in the Gaylords, just as the French original left a French trace in Petula Clark. But who recorded this Italian/Spanish-sounding translation and when? After I submit this I will copy and paste from that (if I try to go back, I lose what I have written).

3. Was there then a separate Spanish translation?

4. You are probably right that the Gaylords were ethnically Italian, hence the Italian favour they included - this complements my "rusticising" point, I think. Then, P Clark's Frenchified version would be just "poshing up/cosmopolitanising" her rendition, similarly "to show she could"?

I find this all very interesting. Thank you again.

Sanjay Sircar