More English Fairy Tales Part 28

If YOU--then where am I, and WHO?

LVI. TATTERCOATS

_Source._--Told to Mrs. Balfour by a little girl named Sally Brown, when she lived in the Cars in Lincolns.h.i.+re. Sally had got it from her mother, who worked for Mrs. Balfour. It was originally told in dialect, which Mrs. Balfour has omitted.

_Parallels._--Miss c.o.x has included "Tattercoats" in her exhaustive collection of parallels of _Cinderella_ (Folk-Lore Society Publications, 1892), No. 274 from the MS. which I had lent her. Miss c.o.x rightly cla.s.ses it as "Indeterminate," and it has only the _Menial Heroine_ and _Happy Marriage_ episodes in common with stories of the Cinderella type.

_Remarks._--_Tattercoats_ is of interest chiefly as being without any "fairy" or supernatural elements, unless the magic pipe can be so considered; it certainly gives the tale a fairy-like element. It is practically a prose variant of _King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid_, and is thus an instance of the folk-novel pure and simple, without any admixture of those unnatural incidents which transform the folk-novel into the serious folk-tale as we are accustomed to have it. Which is the prior, folk-novel or tale, it would be hard to say.

LVII. THE WEE BANNOCK

_Source._--Chambers's _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_. I have attempted an impossibility, I fear, in trying to anglicise, but the fun of the original tempted me. There still remain several technical trade terms requiring elucidation. I owe the following to the kindness of the Rev.

Mr. Todd Martin, of Belfast. _Lawtrod_ = lap board on which the tailor irons; _tow cards_, the comb with which tow is carded; the _clove_, a heavy wooden knife for breaking up the flax. _Heckling_ is combing it with a _heckle_ or wooden comb; _binnings_ are halters for cattle made of _sprit_ or rushes. _Spurtle_ = spoon; _whins_ = gorse.

_Parallels._--This is clearly a variant of _Johnny-cake_ = journey-cake, No. xxviii., where see Notes.

_Remarks._--But here the interest is with the pursuers rather than with the pursued. The subtle characterisation of the various occupations reaches a high level of artistic merit. Mr. Barrie himself could scarcely have succeeded better in a very difficult task.

LVIII. JOHNNY GLOKE

_Source._--Contributed by Mr. W. Gregor to _Folk-Lore Journal_, vii. I have rechristened "Johnny Glaik" for the sake of the rhyme, and anglicised the few Scotticisms.

_Parallels._--This is clearly _The Valiant Tailor_ of the Grimms: "_x_ at a blow" has been bibliographised. (See my List of Incidents in Trans.

Folk-Lore Congress, 1892, _sub voce._)

_Remarks._--How _The Valiant Tailor_ got to Aberdeen one cannot tell, though the resemblance is close enough to suggest a direct "lifting"

from some English version of Grimm's _Goblins_. At the same time it must be remembered that _Jack the Giant Killer_ (see Notes on No. xix.) contains some of the incidents of _The Valiant Tailor_.

LIX. COAT O CLAY

_Source._--Contributed by Mrs. Balfour originally to _Longman's Magazine_, and thence to _Folk-Lore_, Sept., 1890.

_Remarks._--A rustic apologue, which is scarcely more than a prolonged pun on "Coat o' Clay." Mrs. Balfour's telling redeems it from the usual dulness of folk-tales with a moral or a double meaning.

LX. THE THREE COWS

_Source._--Contributed to Henderson, _l.c._, pp. 321-2, by the Rev. S.

Baring-Gould.

_Parallels._--The incident "Bones together" occurs in _Rushen Coatie_ (_infra_, No. lxx.), and has been discussed by the Grimms, i., 399, and by Prof. Kohler, _Or. und Occ._, ii., 680.

LXI. THE BLINDED GIANT

_Source._--Henderson's _Folk-Lore of Northern Counties_. See also _Folk-Lore_.

_Parallels._--Polyphemus in the Odyssey and the Celtic parallels in _Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. v., "Conall Yellowclaw." The same incident occurs in one of Sindbad's voyages.

_Remarks._--Here we have another instance of the localisation of a well-known myth. There can be little doubt that the version is ultimately to be traced back to the Odyssey. The one-eyed giant, the barred door, the escape through the blinded giant's legs in the skin of a slaughtered animal, are a series of incidents that could not have arisen independently and casually. Yet till lately the mill stood to prove if the narrator lied, and every circ.u.mstance of local particularity seemed to vouch for the autochthonous character of the myth. The incident is an instructive one, and I have therefore included it in this volume, though it is little more than an anecdote in its present shape.

LXII. Sc.r.a.pEFOOT

_Source._--Collected by Mr. Batten from Mrs. H., who heard it from her mother over forty years ago.

_Parallels._--It is clearly a variant of Southey's _Three Bears_ (No.

xviii.).

_Remarks._--This remarkable variant raises the question whether Southey did anything more than transform Sc.r.a.pefoot 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 Sc.r.a.pefoot are too _volkstumlich_ 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, _Bar (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, _Etymologic.u.m Latino-Graec.u.m_, 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 pa.s.sage 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 _Masnavi_ 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 Northamptons.h.i.+re_, 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 _aesop_, i., 140-1, I have pointed out an earlier version in Phaedrus 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--_denouement_ on which the scene closes. M. Bedier, as usual, denies the Indian origin, _Les Fabliaux_, pp. 177, _seq._

_Remarks._--I have endeavoured to show, _l.c._, that the Phaedrine 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