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.