Part 15

_Remarks._--This remarkable variant raises the question whether Southey did anything more than transform Scrapefoot into his naughty old woman, who in her turn has been transformed by popular tradition into the naughty girl Silver-hair. Mr. Nutt ingeniously suggests that Southey heard the story told of an old vixen, and mistook the rustic name of a female fox for the metaphorical application to women of fox-like temper. Mrs. H.'s version to my mind has all the marks of priority. It is throughout an animal tale, the touch at the end of the shaking the paws and the name Scrapefoot are too _volkstümlich_ to have been conscious variations on Southey's tale. In introducing the story in his _Doctor_, the poet laureate did not claim to do more than repeat a popular tale. I think that there can be little doubt that in Mrs. H.'s version we have now recovered this in its original form. If this is so, we may here have one more incident of the great Northern beast epic of bear and fox, on which Prof. Krohn has written an instructive monograph, _Bär (Wolf.) und Fuchs_ (Helsingfors, 1889).

LXIII. THE PEDLAR OF SWAFFHAM

_Source._--_Diary of Abraham de la Pryme_ (Surtees Soc.) under date 10th November, 1699, but rewritten by Mr. Nutt, who has retained the few characteristic seventeenth century touches of Pryme's dull and colourless narration. There is a somewhat fuller account in Blomefield's _History of Norfolk_, vi., 211-13, from Twysden's _Reminiscences_, ed. Hearne, p. 299, in this there is a double treasure; the first in an iron pot with a Latin inscription, which the pedlar, whose name is John Chapman, does not understand. Inquiring its meaning from a learned friend, he is told--

Under me doth lie Another much richer than I.

He accordingly digs deeper and finds another pot of gold.

_Parallels._--Blomefield refers to Fungerus, _Etymologicum Latino-Græcum_, pp. 1110-11, where the same story is told of a peasant of Dort, in Holland, who was similarly directed to go to Kempen Bridge. Prof. E.B. Cowell, who gives the passage from Fungerus in a special paper on the subject in the _Journal of Philology_, vi., 189-95, points out that the same story occurs in the _Masnávi_ of the Persian port Jalaluddin, whose _floruit_ is 1260 A.D. Here a young spendthrift of Bagdad is warned in a dream to repair to Cairo, with the usual result of being referred back.

_Remarks._--The artificial character of the incident is sufficient to prevent its having occurred in reality or to more than one inventive imagination. It must therefore have been brought to Europe from the East and adapted to local conditions at Dort and Swaffham. Prof. Cowell suggests that it was possibly adapted at the latter place to account for the effigy of the pedlar and his dog.

LXIV. THE OLD WITCH

_Source._--Collected by Mrs. Gomme at Deptford.

_Parallels._--I have a dim memory of hearing a similar tale in Australia in 1860. It is clearly parallel with the Grimms' _Frau Holle_, where the good girl is rewarded and the bad punished in a similar way. Perrault's _Toads and Diamonds_ is of the same _genus_.

LXV. THE THREE WISHES

_Source._--Steinberg's _Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire_, 1851, but entirely rewritten by Mr. Nutt, who has introduced from other variants one touch at the close--viz., the readiness of the wife to allow her husband to remain disfigured.

_Parallels._--Perrault's _Trois Souhaits_ is the same tale, and Mr. Lang has shown in his edition of Perrault (pp. xlii.-li.) how widely spread is the theme throughout the climes and the ages. I do not, however, understand him to grant that they are all derived from one source--that represented in the Indian _Pantschatantra_. In my _Æsop_, i., 140-1, I have pointed out an earlier version in Phædrus where it occurs (as in the prose versions) as the fable of _Mercury and the two Women_, one of whom wishes to see her babe when it has a beard; the other, that everything she touches which she would find useful in her profession, may follow her. The babe becomes bearded, and the other woman raising her hand to wipe her eyes finds her nose following her hand--_dénouement_ on which the scene closes. M. Bédier, as usual, denies the Indian origin, _Les Fabliaux_, pp. 177, _seq._

_Remarks._--I have endeavoured to show, _l.c._, that the Phædrine form is ultimately to be derived from India, and there can be little doubt that all the other variants, which are only variations on one idea, and that an absurdly incongruous one, were derived from India in the last resort. The case is strongest for drolls of this kind.

LXVI. THE BURIED MOON

_Source._--Mrs. Balfour's "Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars" in _Folk-Lore_, ii., somewhat abridged and the dialect removed. The story was derived from a little girl named Bratton, who declared she had heard it from her "grannie." Mrs. Balfour thinks the girl's own weird imagination had much to do with framing the details.

_Remarks._--The tale is noteworthy as being distinctly mythical in character, and yet collected within the last ten years from one of the English peasantry. The conception of the moon as a beneficent being, the natural enemy of the bogles and other dwellers of the dark, is natural enough, but scarcely occurs, so far as I recollect, in other mythological systems. There is, at any rate, nothing analogous in the Grimms' treatment of the moon in their _Teutonic Mythology_, tr. Stallybrass, pp. 701-21.

LXVII. A SON OF ADAM

_Source._--From memory, by Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, as heard by him from his nurse in childhood.

_Parallels._--Jacques de Vitry _Exempla_, ed. Prof. Crane, No. xiii., and references given in notes, p. 139. It occurs in Swift and in modern Italian folk-lore.

_Remarks._--The _Exempla_ were anecdotes, witty and otherwise, used by the monks in their sermons to season their discourse. Often they must have been derived from the folk of the period, and at first sight it might seem that we had found still extant among the folk the story that had been the original of Jacques de Vitry's _Exemplum_. But the theological basis of the story shows clearly that it was originally a monkish invention and came thence among the folk.

LXVIII. THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD

_Source._--Percy, _Reliques_. The ballad form of the story has become such a nursery classic that I had not the heart to "prose" it. As Mr. Allingham remarks, it is the best of the ballads of the pedestrian order.

_Parallels._--The second of R. Yarrington's _Two Lamentable Tragedies_, 1601, has the same plot as the ballad. Several chap-books have been made out of it, some of them enumerated by Halliwell's _Popular Histories_ (Percy Soc.) No. 18. From one of these I am in the fortunate position of giving the names of the _dramatis personæ_ of this domestic tragedy. Androgus was the wicked uncle, Pisaurus his brother who married Eugenia, and their children in the wood were Cassander and little Kate. The ruffians were appropriately named Rawbones and Woudkill. According to a writer in _3 Notes and Queries_, ix., 144, the traditional burial-place of the children is pointed out in Norfolk. The ballad was known before Percy, as it is mentioned in the _Spectator_, Nos. 80 and 179.

_Remarks_.--The only "fairy" touch--but what a touch!--the pall of leaves collected by the robins.

LXIX. THE HOBYAHS

_Source._--_American Folk-Lore Journal_, iii., 173, contributed by Mr. S.V. Proudfit as current in a family deriving from Perth.

_Remarks._--But for the assurance of the tale itself that Hobyahs are no more, Mr. Batten's portraits of them would have convinced me that they were the bogles or spirits of the comma bacillus. Mr. Proudfit remarks that the cry "Look me" was very impressive.

LXX. A POTTLE O' BRAINS

_Source._--Contributed by Mrs. Balfour to _Folk-Lore_, II.

_Parallels._--The fool's wife is clearly related to the Clever Lass of "Gobborn Seer," where see Notes.

_Remarks._--The fool is obviously of the same family as he of the "Coat o' Clay" (No. lix.) if he is not actually identical with him. His adventures might be regarded as a sequel to the former ones. The Noodle family is strongly represented in English folk-tales, which would seem to confirm Carlyle's celebrated statistical remark.

LXXI. THE KING OF ENGLAND

_Source._--Mr. F. Hindes Groome, _In Gypsy Tents_, told him by John Roberts, a Welsh gypsy, with a few slight changes and omission of passages insisting upon the gypsy origin of the three helpful brothers.

_Parallels._--The king and his three sons are familiar figures in European _märchen_. Slavonic parallels are enumerated by Leskien Brugman in their _Lithauische Märchen_, notes on No. 11, p. 542. The Sleeping Beauty is of course found in Perrault.

_Remarks._--The tale is scarcely a good example for Mr. Hindes Groome's contention (in _Transactions Folk-Lore Congress_) for the diffusion of all folk-tales by means of gypsies as _colporteurs_. This is merely a matter of evidence, and of evidence there is singularly little, though it is indeed curious that one of Campbell's best equipped informants should turn out to be a gypsy. Even this fact, however, is not too well substantiated.

LXXII. KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT

_Source._--"Prosed" from the well-known ballad in Percy. I have changed the first query: What am I worth? Answer: Twenty-nine pence--one less, I ween, than the Lord. This would have sounded somewhat bold in prose.

_Parallels._--Vincent of Beauvais has the story, but the English version comes from the German Joe Miller, Pauli's _Schimpf und Ernst_, No. lv., p. 46, ed. Oesterley, where see his notes. The question I have omitted exists there, and cannot have "independently arisen." Pauli was a fifteenth century worthy or unworthy.

_Remarks._--Riddles were once on a time serious things to meddle with, as witness Samson and the Sphynx, and other instances duly noted with his customary erudition by Prof. Child in his comments on the ballad, _English and Scotch Ballads_, i, 403-14.

LXXIII. RUSHEN COATIE

_Source._--I have concocted this English, or rather Scotch, Cinderella from the various versions given in Miss Cox's remarkable collection of 345 variants of _Cinderella_ (Folk-Lore Society, 1892); see _Parallels_ for an enumeration of those occurring in the British Isles. I have used Nos. 1-3, 8-10. I give my composite the title "Rushen Coatie," to differentiate it from any of the Scotch variants, and for the purposes of a folk-lore experiment. If this book becomes generally used among English-speaking peoples, it may possibly re-introduce this and other tales among the folk. We should be able to trace this re-introduction by the variation in titles. I have done the same with "Nix Nought Nothing," "Molly Whuppie," and "Johnny Gloke."

_Parallels._--Miss Cox's volume gives no less than 113 variants of the pure type of Cinderella--her type A. "Cinderella, or the Fortunate Marriage of a Despised Scullery-maid by Aid of an _Animal_ God-mother through the Test of a Slipper"--such might be the explanatory title of a chap-book dealing with the pure type of Cinderella. This is represented in Miss Cox's book, so far as the British Isles are concerned, by no less than seven variants, as follows: (1) Dr. Blind, in _Archæological Review_, iii., 24-7, "Ashpitell" (from neighbourhood of Glasgow). (2) A. Lang, in _Revue Celtique_, t. iii., reprinted in _Folk-Lore_, September, 1890, "Rashin Coatie" (from Morayshire). (3) Mr. Gregor, in _Folk-Lore Journal_, ii., 72-4 (from Aberdeenshire), "The Red Calf"--all these in Lowland Scots. (4) Campbell, _Popular Tales_, No. xliii., ii., 286 _seq._, "The Sharp Grey Sheep." (5) Mr. Sinclair, in _Celtic Mag._, xiii., 454-65, "Snow-white Maiden." (6) Mr. Macleod's variant communicated through Mr. Nutt to Miss Cox's volume, p. 533; and (7) Curtin, _Myths of Ireland_, pp. 78-92. "Fair, Brown, and Trembling"--these four in Gaelic, the last in Erse. To these I would add (8, 9) Chambers's two versions in _Pop. Rhymes of Scotland_, pp. 66-8, "Rashie Coat," though Miss Cox assimilates them to Type B. Catskin; and (10) a variant of Dr. Blind's version, unknown to Miss Cox, but given in 7 _Notes and Queries_, x., 463 (Dumbartonshire). Mr. Clouston has remarks on the raven as omen-bird in his notes to Mrs. Saxby's _Birds of Omen in Shetland_ (privately printed, 1893).

ENGLISH VARIANTS OF CINDERELLA

GREGOR. LANG. CHAMBERS, I. and II. BLIND.

Ill-treated Calf given by _Heroine dislikes_ Ill-treated heroine dying mother. _husband._ heroine (by parents). (by step-mother).

Helpful Ill-treated _Henwife aid._ Menial heroine. animal heroine (by (red calf). stepmother and sisters).

Spy on Heroine disguise _Countertasks._ Helpful animal heroine. (rashin (black sheep). coatie).

Slaying of Hearth abode. _Heroine Ear cornucopia. helpful disguise._ animal threatened.

Heroine Helpful animal. _Heroine Spy on heroine. flight. flight._

Heroine Slaying of Menial heroine. Slaying of disguise helpful animal. helpful animal. (rashin coatie).

Menial Revivified bones. (Fairy) aid. Old woman advice. heroine.

Help at grave. Revivified bones.

Dinner cooked Task performing (by helpful animal. animal).

Magic dresses Magic dresses. Magic dresses. Meeting-place (given by (church). calf).

Meeting-place Meeting-place Meeting-place Dresses (not (church). (church). (church). magic).

Flight. Flight Flight Flight twofold. threefold. threefold.

Lost shoe. Lost shoe. Lost shoe. Lost shoe.

Shoe marriage Shoe marriage Shoe marriage Shoe marriage test. test. test. test.

Mutilated foot Mutilated foot. Mutilated foot. Mutilated foot (housewife's daughter).

Bird witness. False bride. False bride. False bride.

Happy Bird witness. Bird witness. Bird witness marriage. (raven).

House for Happy marriage. Happy marriage. Happy marriage. red calf.

_Remarks._--In going over these various versions, the first and perhaps most striking thing that comes out is the substantial agreement of the variants in each _language_. The English--_i.e._, Scotch, variants go together; the Gaelic ones agree to differ from the English. I can best display this important agreement and difference by the accompanying two tables, which give, in parallel columns, Miss Cox's abstracts of her tabulations, in which each incident is shortly given in technical phraseology. It is practically impossible to use the long tabulations for comparative purposes without some such shorthand.

CELTIC VARIANTS OF CINDERELLA

MACLEOD. CAMPBELL. SINCLAIR. CURTIN.

Heroine, Ill-treated Ill-treated Ill-treated daughter heroine heroine heroine of sheep, (by stepmother). (by stepmother (by elder king's wife. and sisters). sisters).

Menial heroine. Menial heroine. Menial heroine.

Helpful animal. Helpful cantrips. Henwife aid.

Spy on heroine. Spy on heroine. Magic dresses Magic dresses (+ starlings on (honey-bird shoulders). finger and stud).

Eye sleep Eye sleep. Meeting-place Meeting place threefold. (church). (church).

Slaying of Slaying of Flight twofold. Flight threefold. helpful helpful animal animal. mother.

Revivified Revivified Lost shoe. Lost shoe. bones. bones.

Magic dresses. Step-sister Shoe marriage Shoe marriage substitute. test. test.

Golden shoe gift Heroine under Mutilated foot. (from hero). washtub.

Meeting-place Meeting-place Happy marriage. Happy marriage. (feast). (sermon).

Flight threefold. Flight Substituted Substituted bride threefold. bride. (eldest sister).

Lost shoe Lost shoe. Jonah heroine. Jonah heroine. (golden).

Shoe marriage Shoe marriage Three Three test. test. reappearances. reappearances.

Mutilated foot. Mutilated foot. Reunion. Reunion.

False bride. Villain Nemesis.

Bird witness. Bird witness.

Happy marriage. Happy marriage.

Now, in the "English" versions there is practical unanimity in the concluding portions of the tale. _Magic dresses--Meeting-place (Church)--Flight--Lost Shoe--Shoe Marriage-test--Mutilated foot--False Bride--_Bird witness--Happy Marriage_, follow one another with exemplary regularity in all four (six) versions.[2] The introductory incidents vary somewhat. Chambers has evidently a maimed version of the introduction of Catskin (see No. lxxxiii.). The remaining three enable us, however, to restore with some confidence the _Ur-_Cinderella in English somewhat as follows: _Helpful animal given by dying mother--Ill-treated heroine--Menial heroine--cornucopia--Spy on heroine--Slaying by helpful animal--Tasks--Revivified bones_. I have attempted in my version to reconstruct the "English" Cinderella according to these formulæ. It will be observed that the helpful animal is helpful in two ways (a) in helping the heroine to perform tasks; (b) in providing her with magic dresses. It is the same with the Grimms' _Aschenputtel_ and other Continental variants.

Turning to the Celtic variants, these divide into two sets. Campbell's and Macleod's versions are practically at one with the English formula, the latter with an important variation which will concern us later. But the other two, Curtin's and Sinclair's, one collected in Ireland and the other in Scotland, both continue the formula with the conclusion of the Sea Maiden tale (on which see the Notes of my _Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xvii.). This is a specifically Celtic formula, and would seem therefore to claim Cinderella for the Celts. But the welding of the Sea Maiden ending on to the Cinderella formula is clearly a later and inartistic junction, and implies rather imperfect assimilation of the Cinderella formula. To determine the question of origin we must turn to the purer type given by the other two Celtic versions.

Campbell's tale can clearly lay no claim to represent the original type of Cinderella. The golden shoes are a gift of the hero to the heroine which destroys the whole point of the _Shoe marriage test_, and cannot have been in the original, wherever it originated. Mr. Macleod's version, however, contains an incident which seems to bring us nearer to the original form than any version contained in Miss Cox's book. Throughout the variants it will be observed what an important function is played by the helpful animal. This in some of the versions is left as a legacy by the heroine's dying mother. But in Mr. Macleod's version the helpful animal, a sheep, is the heroine's mother herself! This is indeed an archaic touch, which seems to hark back to primitive times and totemistic beliefs. And more important still, it is a touch which vitalises the other variants in which the helpful animal is rather dragged in by the horns. Mr. Nutt's lucky find at the last moment seems to throw more light on the origin of the tale than almost the whole of the remaining collection.

But does this find necessarily prove an original Celtic origin for Cinderella? Scarcely. It remains to be proved that this introductory part of the story with helpful animal was necessarily part of the original. Having regard to the feudal character underlying the whole conception, it remains possible that the earlier part was ingeniously dovetailed on to the latter from some pre-existing and more archaic tale, perhaps that represented by the Grimms' _One Eyed, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes_. The possibility of the introduction of an archaic formula which had become a convention of folk-telling cannot be left out of account.

The "Youngest-best" formula which occurs in Cinderella, and on which Mr. Lang laid much stress in his treatment of the subject in his "Perrault" as a survival of the old tenure of "junior right," does not throw much light on the subject. Mr. Ralston, in the _Nineteenth Century_, 1879, was equally unenlightening with his sun-myths.

[Footnote 2: Chamber's II. consists entirely and solely of these incidents.]

LXXIV. KING O' CATS

_Source._--I have taken a point here and a point there from the various English versions mentioned in the next section.

I have expanded the names, so as to make a jingle from the Dildrum and Doldrum of Hartland.

_Parallels._--Five variants of this quaint legend have been collected in England: (1) Halliwell, _Pop. Rhymes_, 167, "Molly Dixon"; (2) _Choice Notes--Folk-Lore_, p. 73, "Colman Grey"; (3) _Folk-Lore Journal_, ii., 22, "King o' the Cats"; (4) _Folk-Lore--England_ (Gibbings), "Johnny Reed's Cat"; (5) Hartland and Wilkinson, _Lancashire Legends_, p. 13, "Dildrum Doldrum." Sir F. Palgrave gives a Danish parallel; _cf._ Halliwell, _l.c._

_Remarks._--An interesting example of the spread and development of a simple anecdote throughout England. Here again we can scarcely imagine more than a single origin for the tale which is, in its way, as weird and fantastic as E.A. Poe.

LXXV. TAMLANE

_Source._--From Scott's _Minstrelsy_, with touches from the other variants given by Prof. Child in his _Eng. and Scotch Ballads_, i., 335-58.

_Parallels._--Prof. Child gives no less than nine versions in his masterly edition, _l.c._, besides another fragment "Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane," i., 258. He parallels the marriage of Peleus and Thetis in Apollodorus III., xiii., 5, 6, which still persists in modern Greece as a Cretan ballad.

_Remarks._--Prof. Child remarks that dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take place, and gives examples, _l.c._, 338, to which may be added that of Catskin (see Notes _infra_). He gives as the reason why the Elf-queen would have "ta'en out Tamlane's two grey eyne," so that henceforth he should not be able to see the fairies. Was it not rather that he should not henceforth see Burd Janet?--a subtle touch of jealousy. On dwelling in fairyland Mr. Hartland has a monograph in his _Science of Fairy Tales_, pp. 161-254.

LXXVI. THE STARS IN THE SKY

_Source._--Mrs. Balfour's old nurse, now in New Zealand. The original is in broad Scots, which I have anglicised.

_Parallels._--The tradition is widespread that at the foot of the rainbow treasure is to be found; _cf._ Mr. John Payne's "Sir Edward's Questing" in his _Songs of Life and Death_.

_Remarks._--The "sell" at the end is scarcely after the manner of the folk, and various touches throughout indicate a transmission through minds tainted with culture and introspection.

LXXVII. NEWS!

_Source._--Bell's _Speaker_.

_Parallels._--Jacques de Vitry, _Exempla_, ed. Crane, No. ccv., a servant being asked the news by his master returned from a pilgrimage to Compostella, says the dog is lame, and goes on to explain: "While the dog was running near the mule, the mule kicked him and broke his own halter and ran through the house, scattering the fire with his hoofs, and burning down your house with your wife." It occurs even earlier in Alfonsi's _Disciplina Clericalis_, No. xxx., at beginning of the twelfth century, among the _Fabliaux_, and in Bebel, _Werke_, iii., 71, whence probably it was reintroduced into England. See Prof. Crane's note _ad loc._

_Remarks._--Almost all Alfonsi's _exempla_ are from the East. It is characteristic that the German version finishes up with a loss of honour, the English climax being loss of fortune.

LXXVIII. PUDDOCK, MOUSIE, AND RATTON

_Source._--Kirkpatrick Sharpe's _Ballad Book_, 1824, slightly anglicised.

_Parallels._--Mr. Bullen, in his _Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books_, p. 202, gives a version, "The Marriage of the Frog and the Mouse," from T. Ravenscroft's _Melismata_, 1611. The nursery rhyme of the frog who would a-wooing go is clearly a variant of this, and has thus a sure pedigree of three hundred years; _cf._ "Frog husband" in my List of Incidents, or notes to "The Well of the World's End" (No. xli.).

LXXIX. LITTLE BULL-CALF

_Source._--_Gypsy Lore Journal_, iii., one of a number of tales told "In a Tent" to Mr. John Sampson. I have respelt and euphemised the bladder.

_Parallels._--The Perseus and Andromeda incident is frequent in folk-tales; see my List of Incidents _sub voce_ "Fight with Dragon." "Cheese squeezing," as a test of prowess, is also common, as in "Jack the Giant Killer" and elsewhere (Köhler, _Jahrbuch_, vii., 252).

LXXX. THE WEE WEE MANNIE

_Source._--From Mrs. Balfour's old nurse. I have again anglicised.

_Parallels._--This is one of the class of accumulative stories like _The Old Woman and her Pig_ (No. iv.). The class is well represented in these isles.

LXXXI. HABETROT AND SCANTLIE MAB

_Source._--Henderson's _Folk-Lore of Northern Counties_, pp. 258-62 of Folk-Lore Society's edition. I have abridged and to some extent rewritten.

_Parallels._--This in its early part is a parallel to the _Tom Tit Tot_, which see. The latter part is more novel, and is best compared with the Grimms' _Spinners_.

_Remark._--Henderson makes out of Habetrot a goddess of the spinning-wheel, but with very little authority as it seems to me.

LXXXII. OLD MOTHER WIGGLE WAGGLE

_Source._--I have inserted into Halliwell's version one current in Mr. Batten's family, except that I have substituted "Wiggle-Waggle" for "Slipper-Slopper." The two versions supplement one another.

_Remarks._--This is a pure bit of animal satire, which might have come from a rural Jefferies with somewhat more of wit than the native writer.

LXXXIII. CATSKIN

_Source._--From the chap-book reprinted in Halliwell I have introduced the demand for magic dresses from Chambers's _Rashie Coat_, into which it had clearly been interpolated from some version of Catskin.