English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs (the mitten read aloud .txt) 📕

the door is carried, because Mr. Vinegar, or his equivalent, has been told to “mind the door,” or he acts on the principle “he that is master of the door is master of the house.” In other stories he makes the foolish exchanges to the entire satisfaction of his wife. (Cf. Cosquin, i. 156-7.)

 

VII. NIX NOUGHT NOTHING.

Source.—From a Scotch tale, “Nicht Nought Nothing,” collected by Mr. Andrew Lang in Morayshire, published by him first in Revue Celtique, t. iii; then in his Custom and Myth, p. 89; and again in Folk-Lore, Sept. 1890. I have changed the name so as to retain the �quivoque of the giant’s reply to the King. I have also inserted the incidents of the flight, the usual ones in tales of this type, and expanded the conclusion, which is very curtailed and confused in the original. The usual ending of tales of this class contains the “sale of bed” incident, for which see Child, i. 391.

Parallels.—Mr. Lang, in the essay “A Far-travelled Tale” in which he gives the story, mentions several variants of it, including the classical myth of Jason and Medea. A fuller study in Cosquin, l.c., ii. 12-28. For the finger ladder, see K�hler, in Orient and Occident, ii. III.

 

VIII. JACK HANNAFORD.

Source.—Henderson’s Folk-Lore of Northern Counties (first edition), p. 319. Communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

Parallels.—“Pilgrims from Paradise” are enumerated in Clouston’s Book of Noodles, pp. 205, 214-8. See also Cosquin, l.c., i. 239.

 

IX. BINNORIE.

Source.—From the ballad of the “Twa Sisters o’ Binnorie.” I have used the longer version in Roberts’s Legendary Ballads, with one or two touches from Mr. Allingham’s shorter and more powerful variant in The Ballad Book. A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness.

Parallels.—The story is clearly that of Grimm’s “Singing Bone” (No. 28), where one brother slays the other and buries him under a bush. Years after a shepherd passing by finds a bone under the bush, and, blowing through this, hears the bone denounce the murderer. For numerous variants in Ballads and Folk Tales, see Prof. Child’s English and Scotch Ballads (ed. 1886), i. 125, 493; iii. 499.

 

X. MOUSE AND MOUSER.

Source.—From memory by Mrs. E. Burne-Jones.

Parallels.—A fragment is given in Halliwell, 43; Chambers’s Popular Rhymes has a Scotch version, “The Cattie sits in the Kilnring spinning” (p. 53). The surprise at the end, similar to that in Perrault’s “Red Riding Hood,” is a frequent device in English folk tales. (_Cf. infra_, Nos. xii., xxiv., xxix., xxxiii., xli.)

 

XI. CAP O’ RUSHES.

Source.—Discovered by Mr. E. Clodd, in “Suffolk Notes and Queries” of the Ipswich Journal, published by Mr. Lang in Longinan’s Magazine, vol. xiii, also in Folk-Lore, Sept.

1890.

 

Parallels.—The beginning recalls “King Lear.” For “loving like salt,” see the parallels collected by Cosquin, i. 288. The whole story is a version of the numerous class of Cinderella stories, the particular variety being the Catskin sub-species analogous to Perrault’s Peau d’Ane. “Catskin” was told by Mr. Burchell to the young Primroses in “The Vicar of Wakefield,’” and has been elaborately studied by the late H. C. Coote, in Folk-Lore Record, iii. 1-25. It is only now extant in ballad form, of which “Cap o’ Rushes” may be regarded as a prose version.

 

XII. TEENY-TINY.

Source.—Halliwell, 148.

 

XIII. JACK AND THE BEANSTALK.

Source.—I tell this as it was told me in Australia, somewhere about the year 1860.

Parallels.—There is a chap-book version which is very poor; it is given by Mr. E. S. Hartland, English Folk and Fairy Tales (Camelot Series), p. 35, seq. In this, when Jack arrives at the top of the Beanstalk, he is met by a fairy, who gravely informs him that the ogre had stolen all his possessions from Jack’s father. The object of this was to prevent the tale becoming an encouragement to theft! I have had greater confidence in my young friends, and have deleted the fairy who did not exist in the tale as told to me. For the Beanstalk elsewhere, see Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, 293-8. Cosquin has some remarks on magical ascents (i. 14).

 

XIV. THREE LITTLE PIGS.

Source.—Halliwell, p. 16.

Parallels.—The only known parallels are one from Venice, Bernoni, Trad. Pop., punt. iii. p. 65, given in Crane, Italian Popular Tales, p. 267, “The Three Goslings;” and a negro tale in Lippincott’s Magazine, December, 1877, p. 753 (“Tiny Pig”).

Remarks.—As little pigs do not have hair on their chinny chin-chins, I suspect that they were originally kids, who have. This would bring the tale close to the Grimms’ “Wolf and Seven Little Kids,” (No. 5). In Steel and Temple’s “Lambikin” (Wide-awake Stories, p. 71), the Lambikin gets inside a Drumikin, and so nearly escapes the jackal.

 

XV. MASTER AND PUPIL

Source.—Henderson, Folk-Lore of Northern Counties, first edition, p. 343, communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. The rhymes on the open book have been supplied by Mr. Batten, in whose family, if I understand him rightly, they have been long used for raising the–-; something similar occurs in Halliwell, p. 243, as a riddle rhyme. The mystic signs in Greek are a familiar “counting-out rhyme”: these have been studied in a monograph by Mr. H. C. Bolton; he thinks they are “survivals” of incantations. Under the circumstances, it would be perhaps as well if the reader did not read the lines out when alone. One never knows what may happen.

Parallels.—Sorcerers’ pupils seem to be generally selected for their stupidity—in folk-tales. Friar Bacon was defrauded of his labour in producing the Brazen Head in a similar way. In one of the legends about Virgil he summoned a number of demons, who would have torn him to pieces if he had not set them at work (J. S. Tunison, Master Virgil, Cincinnati, 1888, p. 30).

 

XVI. TATTY MOUSE AND TATTY MOUSE.

Source.—Halliwell, p. 115.

Parallels.—This curious droll is extremely widespread; references are given in Cosquin, i. 204 seq., and Crane, Italian Popular Tales, 375-6. As a specimen I may indicate what is implied throughout these notes by such bibliographical references by drawing up a list of the variants of this tale noticed by these two authorities, adding one or two lately printed. Various versions have been discovered in:

ENGLAND: Halliwell, Nursery Rhymes, p. 115.

SCOTLAND: K. Blind, in Arch. Rev. iii. (“Fleakin and Lousikin,” in the Shetlands).

FRANCE: M�lusine, 1877, col. 424; Sebillot, Contes pop. de la Haute Bretagne, No. 55, Litterature orale, p. 232; Magasin picturesque, 1869, p. 82; Cosquin, Contes pop. de Lorraine, Nos. 18 and 74.

ITALY: Pitr�, Novelline popolari siciliane, No. 134 (translated in Crane, Ital. Pop. Tales, p. 257); Imbriani, La novellaja Fiorentina, p. 244; Bernoni, Tradizione popolari veneziane, punt. iii. p. 81; Gianandrea, Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari marchigiane, p.,11; Papanti, Novelline popolari livornesi, p. 19 (“Vezzino e Madonna Salciccia”); Finamore, Trad. pop. abruzzesi, p. 244; Morosi, Studi sui Dialetti Greci della Terra d’Otranto, p. 75; Giamb. Basile, 1884, p. 37.

GERMANY: Grimm, Kinder-und Hausm�rchen, No. 30; Kuhn and Schwarz, Norddeutsche Sagen, No. 16.

NORWAY: Asbjornsen, No. 103 (translated in Sir G. Dasent’s Tales from the Field, p. 30, “Death of Chanticleer”).

SPAIN: Maspons, Cuentos populars catalans, p. 12; Fernan Caballero, Cuentos y sefra�es populares, p. 3 (“La Hormiguita”).

PORTUGAL: Coelho, Contes popolares portuguezes, No. 1.

ROUMANIA: Kremnitz, Rum�nische M�hrchen, No. 15.

ASIA MINOR: Von Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische M�rchen, No.

56.

 

INDIA: Steel and Temple, Wide-awake Stories, p. 157 (“The Death and Burial of Poor Hen-Sparrow”).

Remarks.—These 25 variants of the same jingle scattered over the world from India to Spain, present the problem of the diffusion of folk-tales in its simplest form. No one is likely to contend with Prof. M�ller and Sir George Cox, that we have here the detritus of archaic Aryan mythology, a parody of a sun-myth. There is little that is savage and archaic to attract the school of Dr. Tylor, beyond the speaking powers of animals and inanimates. Yet even Mr. Lang is not likely to hold that these variants arose by coincidence and independently in the various parts of the world where they have been found. The only solution is that the curious succession of incidents was invented once for all at some definite place and time by some definite entertainer for children, and spread thence through all the Old World. In a few instances we can actually trace the passage- e.g., the Shetland version was certainly brought over from Hamburg. Whether the centre of dispersion was India or not, it is impossible to say, as it might have spread east from Smyrna (Hahn, No. 56). Benfey (_Einleitung zu Pantschatantra_, i. 190-91) suggests that this class of accumulative story may be a sort of parody on the Indian stories, illustrating the moral, “what great events from small occasions rise.” Thus, a drop of honey falls on the ground; a fly goes after it, a bird snaps at the fly, a dog goes for the bird, another dog goes for the first, the masters of the two dogs—who happen to be kings—quarrel and go to war, whole provinces are devastated, and all for a drop of honey! “Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse” also ends in a universal calamity which seems to arise from a cause of no great importance. Benfey’s suggestion is certainly ingenious, but perhaps too ingenious to be true.

 

XVII. JACK AND HIS SNUFFBOX.

Source.-Mr. F. Hindes Groome, In Gipsy Tents, p. 201 seq. I have eliminated a superfluous Gipsy who makes her appearance towards the end of the tale � propos des boltes, but otherwise have left the tale unaltered as one of the few English folk-tales that have been taken down from the mouths of the peasantry: this applies also to i., ii., xi.

Parallels.-There is a magic snuffbox with a friendly power in it in Kennedy’s Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 49. The choice between a small cake with a blessing, &c., is frequent (_cf._ No. xxiii.), but the closest parallel to the whole story, including the mice, is afforded by a tale in Carnoy and Nicolaides’ Traditions populaires de l’Asie Mineure, which is translated as the first tale in Mr. Lang’s Blue Fairy Book. There is much in both that is similar to Aladdin, I beg his pardon, Allah-ed-din.

 

XVIII. THE THREE BEARS.

Source.—_Verbatim et literatim_ from Southey, The Doctor, &c., quarto edition, p. 327.

Parallels.—None, as the story was invented by Southey. There is an Italian translation, I tre Orsi, Turin, 1868, and it would be curious to see if the tale ever acclimatises itself in Italy.

Remarks.—“The Three Bears” is the only example I know of where a tale that can be definitely traced to a specific author has become a folk-tale. Not alone is this so, but the folk has developed the tale in a curious and instructive way, by substituting a pretty little girl with golden locks for the naughty old woman. In Southey’s version there is nothing of Little Silverhair as the heroine: she seems to have been introduced in a metrical version by G. N., much be-praised by Southey. Silverhair seems to have become a favourite, and in Mrs. Valentine’s version of “The Three Bears,” in “The Old, Old Fairy Tales,” the visit to the bear-house is only the preliminary to a long succession of adventures of the pretty little girl, of which there