More English Fairy Tales Part 27

XLVI. THE GOLDEN BALL

_Source._--Contributed to the first edition of Henderson's _Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties_, pp. 333-5, by Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

_Parallels._--Mr. Nutt gave a version in _Folk-Lore Journal_, vi., 144.

The man in instalments occurs in "The Strange Visitor" (No. x.x.xii.). The latter part of the tale has been turned into a game for English children, "Mary Brown," given in Miss Plunket's _Merry Games_, but not included in Newell, _Games and Songs of American Children_.

_Remarks._--This story is especially interesting as having given rise to a game. Capture and imprisonment are frequently the gruesome _motif_ of children's games, as in "Prisoner's base." Here it has been used with romantic effect.

XLVII. MY OWN SELF

_Source._--Told to Mrs. Balfour by Mrs. W., a native of North Sunderland, who had seen the cottage and heard the tale from persons who had known the widow and her boy, and had got the story direct from them.

The t.i.tle was "Me A'an Sel'," which I have altered to "My Own Self."

_Parallels._--Notwithstanding Mrs. Balfour's informant, the same tale is widely spread in the North Country. Hugh Miller relates it, in his _Scenes from my Childhood_, as "Ainsel"; it is given in Mr. Hartland's _English Folk and Fairy Tales_; Mr. F.B. Jevons has heard it in the neighbourhood of Durham; while a further version appeared in _Monthly Chronicle of North Country Folk-Lore_. Further parallels abroad are enumerated by Mr. Clouston in his _Book of Noodles_, pp. 184-5, and by the late Prof. Kohler in _Orient und Occident_, ii., 331. The expedient by which Ulysses outwits Polyphemus in the Odyssey by calling himself [Greek: outis] is clearly of the same order.

_Remarks._--The parallel with the Odyssey suggests the possibility that this is the ultimate source of the legend, as other parts of the epic have been adapted to local requirements in Great Britain, as in the "Blinded Giant" (No. lxi.), or "Conall Yellowclaw" (_Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. v.). The fact of Continental parallels disposes of the possibility of its being a merely local legend. The fairies might appear to be in a somewhat novel guise here as something to be afraid of. But this is the usual att.i.tude of the folk towards the "Good People," as indeed their euphemistic name really implies.

XLVIII. THE BLACK BULL OF NORROWAY

_Source._--Chambers's _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, much Anglicised in language, but otherwise unaltered.

_Parallels._--Chambers, _l.c._, gave a variant with the t.i.tle "The Red Bull o' Norroway." Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions_, p. 87, gives a variant with the t.i.tle "The Brown Bear of Norway." Mr. Stewart gave a Leitrim version, in which "Norroway" becomes "Orange," in _Folk-Lore_ for June, 1893, which Miss Peac.o.c.k follows up with a Lincolns.h.i.+re parallel (showing the same corruption of name) in the September number. A reference to the "Black Bull o' Norroway" occurs in Sidney's _Arcadia_, as also in the _Complaynt of Scotland_, 1548. The "sale of bed" incident at the end has been bibliographised by Miss c.o.x in her volume of variants of _Cinderella_, p. 481. It probably existed in one of the versions of _Nix Nought Nothing_ (No. vii.).

_Remarks._--The Black Bull is clearly a Beast who ultimately wins a Beauty. But the tale as is told is clearly not sufficiently motivated.

Miss Peac.o.c.k's version renders it likely that a fuller account may yet be recovered in England.

XLIX. YALLERY BROWN

_Source._--Mrs. Balfour's "Legends of the Lincolns.h.i.+re Fens," in _Folk-Lore_, ii. It was told to Mrs. Balfour by a labourer, who professed to be the hero of the story, and related it in the first person. I have given him a name, and changed the narration into the oblique narration, and toned down the dialect.

_Parallels._--"Tiddy Mun," the hero of another of Mrs. Balfour's legends (_l.c._, p. 151) was "none bigger 'n a three years old bairn," and had no proper name.

_Remarks._--One might almost suspect Mrs. Balfour of being the victim of a piece of invention on the part of her autobiographical informant. But the sc.r.a.p of verse, especially in its original dialect, has such a folkish ring that it is probable he was only adapting a local legend to his own circ.u.mstances.

L. THE THREE FEATHERS

_Source._--Collected by Mrs. Gomme from some hop-pickers near Deptford.

_Parallels._--The beginning is _a la_ Cupid and Psyche, on which Mr.

Lang's monograph in the Carabas series is the cla.s.sic authority. The remainder is an Eastern tale, the peregrinations of which have been studied by Mr. Clouston in his _Pop. Tales and Fictions_, ii., 289, _seq._ _The Wright's Chaste Wife_ is the English _fabliau_ on the subject. M. Bedier, in his recent work on _Les Fabliaux_, pp. 411-13, denies the Eastern origin of the _fabliau_, but in his Indiaphobia M.

Bedier is _capable de tout_. In the Indian version the various messengers are sent by the king to test the chast.i.ty of a peerless wife of whom he has heard. The incident occurs in some versions of the "Battle of the Birds" story (_Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xxiv.), and considering the wide spread of this in the British Isles, it was possibly from this source that it came to Deptford.

LI. SIR GAMMER VANS

_Source._--Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes and Tales._

_Parallels._--There is a Yorks.h.i.+re Lying Tale in Henderson's _Folk-Lore_, first edition, p. 337, a Suffolk one, "Happy Borz'l," in _Suffolk Notes and Queries_, while a similar jingle of inconsequent absurdities, commencing "So he died, and she unluckily married the barber, and a great bear coming up the street popped his head into the window, saying, 'Do you sell any soap'?" is said to have been invented by Charles James Fox to test Sheridan's memory, who repeated it after one hearing. (Others attribute it to Foote.) Similar _Lugenmarchen_ are given by the Grimms, and discussed by them in their Notes, Mrs. Hunt's translation, ii., pp. 424, 435, 442, 450, 452, _cf._ Crane, _Ital. Pop.

Tales_, p. 263.

_Remarks._--The reference to venison warrants, and bows and arrows seems to argue considerable antiquity for this piece of nonsense. The honorific prefix "Sir" may in that case refer to clerkly qualities rather than to knighthood.

LII. TOM HICKATHRIFT

_Source._--From the Chap-book, _c._ 1660, in the Pepysian Library, edited for the Villon Society by Mr. G.L. Gomme. Mr. Nutt, who kindly abridged it for me, writes, "Nothing in the shape of incident has been omitted, and there has been no rewriting beyond a phrase here and there rendered necessary by the process of abridgment. But I have in one case altered the sequence of events putting the fight with the giant last."

_Parallels._--There are similar adventures of giants in Hunt's Cornish _Drolls_. Sir Francis Palgrave (_Quart. Rev._, vol. xxi.), and after him, Mr. Gomme, have drawn attention to certain similarities with the Grettir Saga, but they do not extend beyond general resemblances of great strength. Mr. Gomme, however, adds that the cartwheel "plays a not unimportant part in English folk-lore as a representative of old runic faith" (Villon Soc. edition, p. xv.).

_Remarks._--Mr. Gomme, in his interesting Introduction, points out several indications of considerable antiquity for the legend, various expressions in the Pepysian Chap-book ("in the marsh of the Isle of Ely," "good ground"), indicating that it could trace back to the sixteenth century. On the other hand, there is evidence of local tradition persisting from that time onward till the present day (Weaver, _Funerall Monuments_, 1631, pp. 866-7; Spelman, _Icenia_, 1640, p. 138; Dugdale, _Imbanking_, 1662 (ed. 1772, p. 244); Blomefield, _Norfolk_, 1808, ix., pp. 79, 80). These refer to a sepulchral monument in Tylney churchyard which had figured on a stone coffin an axle-tree and cart-wheel. The name in these versions of the legend is given as Hickifric, and he is there represented as a village Hampden who withstood the tyranny of the local lord of the manor. Mr. Gomme is inclined to believe, I understand him, that there is a certain amount of evidence for Tom Hickathrift being a historic personality round whom some of the Scandinavian mythical exploits have gathered. I must refer to his admirable Introduction for the ingenious line of reasoning on which he bases these conclusions. Under any circ.u.mstances no English child's library of folk-tales can be considered complete that does not present a version of Mr. Hickathrift's exploits.

LIII. THE HEDLEY KOW

_Source._--Told to Mrs. Balfour by Mrs. M. of S. Northumberland. Mrs.

M.'s mother told the tale as having happened to a person she had known when young: she had herself seen the Hedley Kow twice, once as a donkey and once as a wisp of straw. "Kow" must not be confounded with the more prosaic animal with a "C."

_Parallels._--There is a short reference to the Hedley Kow in Henderson, _l.c._, first edition, pp. 234-5. Our story is shortly referred to thus: "He would present himself to some old dame gathering sticks, in the form of a truss of straw, which she would be sure to take up and carry away. Then it would become so heavy that she would have to lay her burden down, on which the straw would become 'quick,' rise upright and shuffle away before her, till at last it vanished from her sight with a laugh and shout." Some of Robin Goodfellow's pranks are similar to those of the Hedley Kow. The old woman's content with the changes is similar to that of "Mr. Vinegar." An ascending scale of changes has been studied by Prof. Crane, _Italian Popular Tales_, p. 373.

LIV. GOBBORN SEER

_Source._--Collected by Mrs. Gomme from an old woman at Deptford. It is to be remarked that "Gobborn Seer" is Irish (Goban Saor = free carpenter), and is the Irish equivalent of Wayland Smith, and occurs in several place names in Ireland.

_Parallels._--The essence of the tale occurs in Kennedy, _l.c._, p. 67, _seq._ Gobborn Seer's daughter was clearly the clever la.s.s who is found in all parts of the Indo-European world. An instance in my _Indian Fairy Tales_, "Why the Fish Laughed" (No. xxiv.). She has been made a special study by Prof. Child, _English and Scotch Ballads_, i., 485, while an elaborate monograph by Prof. Benfey under the t.i.tle "Die Kluge Dirne"

(reprinted in his _Kleine Schriften_, ii., 156, _seq._), formed the occasion for his first presentation of his now well-known hypothesis of the derivation of all folk-tales from India.

_Remarks._--But for the accident of the t.i.tle being preserved there would have been nothing to show that this tale had been imported into England from Ireland, whither it had probably been carried all the way from India.

LV. LAWKAMERCYME

_Source._--Halliwell, _Nursery Rhymes_.

_Parallels._--It is possible that this is an Eastern "sell": it occurs at any rate as the first episode in Fitzgerald's translation of Jami's _Salaman and Absal_. Jami, _ob._ 1492, introduces the story to ill.u.s.trate the perplexities of the problem of individuality in a pantheistic system.

Lest, like the simple Arab in the tale, I grow perplext, O G.o.d! 'twixt ME and THEE, If I--this Spirit that inspires me whence?

If THOU--then what this sensual impotence?

In other words, M. Bourget's _Cruelle Enigme_. The Arab yokel coming to Bagdad is fearful of losing his ident.i.ty, and ties a pumpkin to his leg before going to sleep. His companion transfers it to his own leg. The yokel awaking is perplexed like the pantheist.

If I--the pumpkin why on YOU?