Part 16

_Parallels._--Miss Cox's admirable volume of variants of _Cinderella_ also contains seventy-three variants of _Catskin_, besides thirteen "indeterminate" ones which approximate to that type. Of these eighty-six, five exist in the British Isles, two chap-books given in Halliwell and in Dixon's _Songs of English Peasantry_, two by Campbell, Nos. xiv. and xiv_a_, "The King who Wished to Marry his Daughter," and one by Kennedy's _Fireside Stories_, "The Princess in the Catskins." Goldsmith knew the story by the name of "Catskin," as he refers to it in the _Vicar_. There is a fragment from Cornwall in _Folk-Lore_, i., App. p. 149.

_Remarks._--_Catskin, or the Wandering Gentlewomen_, now exists in English only in two chap-book ballads. But Chambers's first variant of _Rashie Coat_ begins with the Catskin formula in a euphemised form. The full formula may be said to run in abbreviated form--_Death-bed promise--Deceased wife's resemblance marriage test--Unnatural father_ (desiring to marry his own daughter)--_Helpful animal--Counter tasks--Magic dresses--Heroine flight--Heroine disguise--Menial heroine--Meeting-place--Token objects named--Threefold flight--Lovesick prince--Recognition ring--Happy marriage_. Of these the chap-book versions contain scarcely anything of the opening _motifs_. Yet they existed in England, for Miss Isabella Barclay, in a variant which Miss Cox has overlooked (_Folk-Lore_, i., _l.c._), remembers having heard the Unnatural Father incident from a Cornish servant-girl. Campbell's two versions also contain the incident, from which one of them receives its name. One wonders in what form Mr. Burchell knew Catskin, for "he gave the [Primrose] children the Buck of Beverland,[3] with the history of Patient Grissel, the adventures of Catskin and the Fair Rosamond's Bower" (_Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, c. vi.). Pity that "Goldy" did not tell the story himself, as he had probably heard it in Ireland, where Kennedy gives a poor version in his _Fireside Stories_.

Yet, imperfect as the chap-book versions are, they yet retain not a few archaic touches. It is clear from them, at any rate, that the Heroine was at one time transformed into a Cat. For when the basin of water is thrown in her face she "shakes her ears" just as a cat would. Again, before putting on her magic dresses she bathes in a pellucid pool. Now, Professor Child has pointed out in his notes on Tamlane and elsewhere (_English and Scotch Ballads_, i., 338; ii., 505; iii., 505) that dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take place. It is clear, therefore, that Catskin was originally transformed into an animal by the spirit of her mother, also transformed into an animal.

If I understand Mr. Nutt rightly (_Folk-Lore_, iv, 135, _seq._), he is inclined to think, from the evidence of the hero-tales which have the unsavoury _motif_ of the Unnatural Father, that the original home of the story was England, where most of the hero-tales locate the incident. I would merely remark on this that there are only very slight traces of the story in these islands nowadays, while it abounds in Italy, which possesses one almost perfect version of the formula (Miss Cox, No. 142, from Sardinia).

Mr. Newell, on the other hand (_American Folk-Lore Journal_, ii., 160), considers Catskin the earliest of the three types contained in Miss Cox's book, and considers that Cinderella was derived from this as a softening of the original. His chief reason appears to be the earlier appearance of Catskin in Straparola,[4] 1550, a hundred years earlier than Cinderella in Basile, 1636. This appears to be a somewhat insufficient basis for such a conclusion. Nor is there, after all, so close a relation between the two types in their full development as to necessitate the derivation of one from the other.

[Footnote 3: Who knows the Buck of Beverland nowadays?]

[Footnote 4: It is practically in Des Perier's _Récréations_, 1544.]

LXXXIV. STUPID'S CRIES

_Source._--_Folk-Lore Record_, iii., 152-5, by the veteran Prof. Stephens. I have changed "dog and bitch" of original to "dog and cat," and euphemised the liver and lights.

_Parallels._--Prof. Stephens gives parallels from Denmark. Germany (the Grimms' _Up Riesensohn_) and Ireland (Kennedy, _Fireside Stories_, p. 30).

LXXXV. THE LAMBTON WORM

_Source._--Henderson's _Folk-Lore of Northern Counties_, pp. 287-9, I have rewritten, as the original was rather high falutin'.

_Parallels._--Worms or dragons form the subject of the whole of the eighth chapter of Henderson. "The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh" (No. xxxiii.) also requires the milk of nine kye for its daily rations, and cow's milk is the ordinary provender of such kittle cattle (Grimms' _Teut. Myth._ 687), the mythological explanation being that cows = the clouds and the dragon = the storm. Jephtha vows are also frequent in folk-tales: Miss Cox gives many examples in her _Cinderella_, p. 511.

_Remarks._--Nine generations back from the last of the Lambtons, Henry Lambton, M.P., ob. 1761, reaches Sir John Lambton, Knight of Rhodes, and several instances of violent death occur in the interim. Dragons are possibly survivals into historic times of antedeluvian monsters, or reminiscences of classical legend (Perseus, etc.). Who shall say which is which, as Mr. Lang would observe.

LXXXVI. WISE MEN OF GOTHAM

_Source._--The chap-book contained in Mr. Hazlitt's _Shaksperian Jest Book_, vol. iii. I have selected the incidents and modernised the spelling; otherwise the droll remains as it was told in Elizabethan times.

_Parallels._--Mr. Clouston's _Book of Noodles_ is little else than a series of parallels to our droll. See my List of Incidents under the titles, "One cheese after another," "Hare postman," "Not counting self," "Drowning eels." In most cases Mr. Clouston quotes Eastern analogies.

_Remarks._--All countries have their special crop of fools, Boeotians among the Greeks, the people of Hums among the Persians (how appropriate!), the Schildburgers in Germany, and so on. Gotham is the English representative, and as witticisms call to mind well-known wits, so Gotham has had heaped on its head all the stupidities of the Indo-European world. For there can be little doubt that these drolls have spread from East to West. This "Not counting self" is in the _Gooroo Paramastan_, the cheeses "one after another" in M. Rivière's collection of Kabyle tales, and so on. It is indeed curious how little originality there is among mankind in the matter of stupidity. Even such an inventive genius as the late Mr. Sothern had considerable difficulty in inventing a new "sell."

LXXXVII. PRINCESS OF CANTERBURY

_Source._--I have inserted into the old chap-book version of the _Four Kings of Colchester, Canterbury_, &c., an incident entitled by Halliwell "The Three Questions."

_Parallels._--The "riddle bride wager" is a frequent incident of folk-tales (see my List of Incidents); the sleeping tabu of the latter part is not so common, though it occurs, _e.g._, in the Grimms' _Twelve Princesses_, who wear out their shoes with dancing.