Maria is a Cinderella tale told in the Philippines.
It was told to Fletcher Gardner in 1903 and later published in his book "THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLK-LORE. VOL. XIX. - OCTOBER-DECEMBER" in 1906.
Gardner wrote that the tale was told to him by a young  man by the name of Cornelio in Mangarin, Mindoro. Who said that he heard it told by a man from Marinduque Island.  Gardner speculated that the tale came to the Philippines through Spanish conquerors.
He wrote ,"It was said never to have been printed, and in my list of fifty or so printed tales of this kind it is not to be found. I searched the Manila native bookstores very carefully for it, but could get no trace. The story was taken down by my usual method of listening attentively to the tale in Tagalog, and then at once writing it out in English, from memory, and having this story retold, with the translation at hand, to detect inaccuracies. In this way I felt more sure of having the story properly told than if the teller were constantly interrupted for me to copy the translation, as at the time the stories were written I was almost as familiar with spokenTagalog as with English".
Reading "Maria" is Ray Blakney.
Ray Blakney is an award winning Filipino-Entrepreneur and part-time sword fighter.
He and his wife welcomed their son to the world just 8 months ago after  a 6 year long struggle to have children.
Ray grew up being read the Lord of the Rings, The Never Ending Story and the Narnia series as his bed time stories and his love of reading fantasy has not died till this day.
To pay his bills Ray specializes in bootstrapping online businesses.  He currently runs LiveLingua.com (one of the top 3 language schools in the world), Twiducate.com (a social network for K-12 with about 200k registered users) and is currently building PodcastHawk.com ( a software product to help people become guests on podcasts on autopilot).
If you want to contact him, the best way to do so is through the websites above, or his personal website www.rayblakney.com