English Fairy Tales

by Joseph Jacobs

  V. HOW JACK SOUGHT HIS FORTUNE.

  Source.—American Folk-Lore Journal I, 227-8. I have eliminated a malodorous and un-English skunk.

  Parallels.—Two other versions are given in the Journal l.c. One of these, however, was probably derived from Grimm's "Town Musicians of Bremen" (No. 27). That the others came from across the Atlantic is shown by the fact that it occurs in Ireland (Kennedy, Fictions, pp. 5-10) and Scotland (Campbell, No. 11). For other variants, see R. Köhler in Gonzenbach, Sicil. Märchen, ii. 245.

  VI. MR. VINEGAR.

  Source.—Halliwell, p. 149.

  Parallels.—This is the Hans im Glück of Grimm (No. 83). Cf. too, "Lazy Jack," infra, No. xxvii. Other variants are given by M. Cosquin, Contes pop. de Lorraine, i. 241. On surprising robbers, see preceding tale.

  Remarks.—In some of the variants the door is carried, because Mr. Vinegar, or his equivalent, has been told to "mind the door," or he acts on the principle "he that is master of the door is master of the house." In other stories he makes the foolish exchanges to the entire satisfaction of his wife. (Cf. Cosquin, i. 156-7.)

  VII. NIX NOUGHT NOTHING.

  Source.—From a Scotch tale, "Nicht Nought Nothing," collected by Mr. Andrew Lang in Morayshire, published by him first in Revue Celtique, t. iii; then in his Custom and Myth, p. 89; and again in Folk-Lore, Sept. 1890. I have changed the name so as to retain the équivoque of the giant's reply to the King. I have also inserted the incidents of the flight, the usual ones in tales of this type, and expanded the conclusion, which is very curtailed and confused in the original. The usual ending of tales of this class contains the "sale of bed" incident, for which see Child, i. 391.

  Parallels.—Mr. Lang, in the essay "A Far-travelled Tale" in which he gives the story, mentions several variants of it, including the classical myth of Jason and Medea. A fuller study in Cosquin, l.c., ii. 12-28. For the finger ladder, see Köhler, in Orient and Occident, ii. III.

  VIII. JACK HANNAFORD.

  Source.—Henderson's Folk-Lore of Northern Counties (first edition), p. 319. Communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

  Parallels.—"Pilgrims from Paradise" are enumerated in Clouston's Book of Noodles, pp. 205, 214-8. See also Cosquin, l.c., i. 239.

  IX. BINNORIE.

  Source.—From the ballad of the "Twa Sisters o' Binnorie." I have used the longer version in Roberts's Legendary Ballads, with one or two touches from Mr. Allingham's shorter and more powerful variant in The Ballad Book. A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness.

  Parallels.—The story is clearly that of Grimm's "Singing Bone" (No. 28), where one brother slays the other and buries him under a bush. Years after a shepherd passing by finds a bone under the bush, and, blowing through this, hears the bone denounce the murderer. For numerous variants in Ballads and Folk Tales, see Prof. Child's English and Scotch Ballads (ed. 1886), i. 125, 493; iii. 499.

  X. MOUSE AND MOUSER.

  Source.—From memory by Mrs. E. Burne-Jones.

  Parallels.—A fragment is given in Halliwell, 43; Chambers's Popular Rhymes has a Scotch version, "The Cattie sits in the Kilnring spinning" (p. 53). The surprise at the end, similar to that in Perrault's "Red Riding Hood," is a frequent device in English folk tales. (Cf. infra, Nos. xii., xxiv., xxix., xxxiii., xli.)

  XI. CAP O' RUSHES.

  Source.—Discovered by Mr. E. Clodd, in "Suffolk Notes and Queries" of the Ipswich Journal, published by Mr. Lang in Longinan's Magazine, vol. xiii, also in Folk-Lore, Sept. 1890.

  Parallels.—The beginning recalls "King Lear." For "loving like salt," see the parallels collected by Cosquin, i. 288. The whole story is a version of the numerous class of Cinderella stories, the particular variety being the Catskin sub-species analogous to Perrault's Peau d'Ane. "Catskin" was told by Mr. Burchell to the young Primroses in "The Vicar of Wakefield,'" and has been elaborately studied by the late H. C. Coote, in Folk-Lore Record, iii. 1-25. It is only now extant in ballad form, of which "Cap o' Rushes" may be regarded as a prose version.

  XII. TEENY-TINY.

  Source.—Halliwell, 148.

  XIII. JACK AND THE BEANSTALK.

  Source.—I tell this as it was told me in Australia, somewhere about the year 1860.

  Parallels.—There is a chap-book version which is very poor; it is given by Mr. E. S. Hartland, English Folk and Fairy Tales (Camelot Series), p. 35, seq. In this, when Jack arrives at the top of the Beanstalk, he is met by a fairy, who gravely informs him that the ogre had stolen all his possessions from Jack's father. The object of this was to prevent the tale becoming an encouragement to theft! I have had greater confidence in my young friends, and have deleted the fairy who did not exist in the tale as told to me. For the Beanstalk elsewhere, see Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, 293-8. Cosquin has some remarks on magical ascents (i. 14).

  XIV. THREE LITTLE PIGS.

  Source.—Halliwell, p. 16.

  Parallels.—The only known parallels are one from Venice, Bernoni, Trad. Pop., punt. iii. p. 65, given in Crane, Italian Popular Tales, p. 267, "The Three Goslings;" and a negro tale in Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1877, p. 753 ("Tiny Pig").

  Remarks.—As little pigs do not have hair on their chinny chin- chins, I suspect that they were originally kids, who have. This would bring the tale close to the Grimms' "Wolf and Seven Little Kids," (No. 5). In Steel and Temple's "Lambikin" (Wide-awake Stories, p. 71), the Lambikin gets inside a Drumikin, and so nearly escapes the jackal.

  XV. MASTER AND PUPIL

  Source.—Henderson, Folk-Lore of Northern Counties, first edition, p. 343, communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. The rhymes on the open book have been supplied by Mr. Batten, in whose family, if I understand him rightly, they have been long used for raising the—-; something similar occurs in Halliwell, p. 243, as a riddle rhyme. The mystic signs in Greek are a familiar "counting-out rhyme": these have been studied in a monograph by Mr. H. C. Bolton; he thinks they are "survivals" of incantations. Under the circumstances, it would be perhaps as well if the reader did not read the lines out when alone. One never knows what may happen.

  Parallels.—Sorcerers' pupils seem to be generally selected for their stupidity—in folk-tales. Friar Bacon was defrauded of his labour in producing the Brazen Head in a similar way. In one of the legends about Virgil he summoned a number of demons, who would have torn him to pieces if he had not set them at work (J. S. Tunison, Master Virgil, Cincinnati, 1888, p. 30).

  XVI. TATTY MOUSE AND TATTY MOUSE.

  Source.—Halliwell, p. 115.

  Parallels.—This curious droll is extremely widespread; references are given in Cosquin, i. 204 seq., and Crane, Italian Popular Tales, 375-6. As a specimen I may indicate what is implied throughout these notes by such bibliographical references by drawing up a list of the variants of this tale noticed by these two authorities, adding one or two lately printed. Various versions have been discovered in:

  ENGLAND: Halliwell, Nursery Rhymes, p. 115.

  SCOTLAND: K. Blind, in Arch. Rev. iii. ("Fleakin and Lousikin," in the Shetlands).

  FRANCE: Mélusine, 1877, col. 424; Sebillot, Contes pop. de la Haute Bretagne, No. 55, Litterature orale, p. 232; Magasin picturesque, 1869, p. 82; Cosquin, Contes pop. de Lorraine, Nos. 18 and 74.

  ITALY: Pitrè, Novelline popolari siciliane, No. 134 (translated in Crane, Ital. Pop. Tales, p. 257); Imbriani, La novellaja Fiorentina, p. 244; Bernoni, Tradizione popolari veneziane, punt. iii. p. 81; Gianandrea, Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari marchigiane, p.,11; Papanti, Novelline popolari livornesi, p. 19 ("Vezzino e Madonna Salciccia"); Finamore, Trad. pop. abruzzesi, p. 244; Morosi, Studi sui Dialetti Greci della Terra d'Otranto, p. 75; Giamb. Basile, 1884, p. 37.

  GERMANY: Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, No. 30; Kuhn and Schwarz, Norddeutsche Sagen, No. 16.

  NORWAY: Asbjornsen, No. 103 (translated in Sir G. Dasent's Tales from the Field, p. 30, "Death of Chanticleer").

  SPAIN: Maspons, Cuentos populars catalans, p. 12; Fernan Caballero, Cuent
os y sefrañes populares, p. 3 ("La Hormiguita").

  PORTUGAL: Coelho, Contes popolares portuguezes, No. 1.

  ROUMANIA: Kremnitz, Rumänische Mährchen, No. 15.

  ASIA MINOR: Von Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Märchen, No. 56.

  INDIA: Steel and Temple, Wide-awake Stories, p. 157 ("The Death and Burial of Poor Hen-Sparrow").

  Remarks.—These 25 variants of the same jingle scattered over the world from India to Spain, present the problem of the diffusion of folk-tales in its simplest form. No one is likely to contend with Prof. Müller and Sir George Cox, that we have here the detritus of archaic Aryan mythology, a parody of a sun-myth. There is little that is savage and archaic to attract the school of Dr. Tylor, beyond the speaking powers of animals and inanimates. Yet even Mr. Lang is not likely to hold that these variants arose by coincidence and independently in the various parts of the world where they have been found. The only solution is that the curious succession of incidents was invented once for all at some definite place and time by some definite entertainer for children, and spread thence through all the Old World. In a few instances we can actually trace the passage- e.g., the Shetland version was certainly brought over from Hamburg. Whether the centre of dispersion was India or not, it is impossible to say, as it might have spread east from Smyrna (Hahn, No. 56). Benfey (Einleitung zu Pantschatantra, i. 190-91) suggests that this class of accumulative story may be a sort of parody on the Indian stories, illustrating the moral, "what great events from small occasions rise." Thus, a drop of honey falls on the ground; a fly goes after it, a bird snaps at the fly, a dog goes for the bird, another dog goes for the first, the masters of the two dogs—who happen to be kings—quarrel and go to war, whole provinces are devastated, and all for a drop of honey! "Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse" also ends in a universal calamity which seems to arise from a cause of no great importance. Benfey's suggestion is certainly ingenious, but perhaps too ingenious to be true.

  XVII. JACK AND HIS SNUFF-BOX.

  Source.-Mr. F. Hindes Groome, In Gipsy Tents, p. 201 seq. I have eliminated a superfluous Gipsy who makes her appearance towards the end of the tale à propos des boltes, but otherwise have left the tale unaltered as one of the few English folk- tales that have been taken down from the mouths of the peasantry: this applies also to i., ii., xi.

  Parallels.-There is a magic snuff-box with a friendly power in it in Kennedy's Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 49. The choice between a small cake with a blessing, &c., is frequent (cf. No. xxiii.), but the closest parallel to the whole story, including the mice, is afforded by a tale in Carnoy and Nicolaides' Traditions populaires de l'Asie Mineure, which is translated as the first tale in Mr. Lang's Blue Fairy Book. There is much in both that is similar to Aladdin, I beg his pardon, Allah-ed-din.

  XVIII. THE THREE BEARS.

  Source.—Verbatim et literatim from Southey, The Doctor, &c., quarto edition, p. 327.

  Parallels.—None, as the story was invented by Southey. There is an Italian translation, I tre Orsi, Turin, 1868, and it would be curious to see if the tale ever acclimatises itself in Italy.

  Remarks.—"The Three Bears" is the only example I know of where a tale that can be definitely traced to a specific author has become a folk-tale. Not alone is this so, but the folk has developed the tale in a curious and instructive way, by substituting a pretty little girl with golden locks for the naughty old woman. In Southey's version there is nothing of Little Silverhair as the heroine: she seems to have been introduced in a metrical version by G. N., much be-praised by Southey. Silverhair seems to have become a favourite, and in Mrs. Valentine's version of "The Three Bears," in "The Old, Old Fairy Tales," the visit to the bear-house is only the preliminary to a long succession of adventures of the pretty little girl, of which there is no trace in the original (and this in "The Old, Old Fairy Tales." Oh! Mrs. Valentine!). I have, though somewhat reluctantly, cast back to the original form. After all, as Prof. Dowden remarks, Southey's memory is kept alive more by "The Three Bears" than anything else, and the text of such a nursery classic should be retained in all its purity.

  XIX. JACK THE GIANT-KILLER.

  Source.—From two chap-books at the British Museum (London, 1805, Paisley, 1814). I have taken some hints from "Felix Summerly's" (Sir Henry Cole's) version, 1845. From the latter part, I have removed the incident of the Giant dragging the lady along by her hair.

  Parallels.—The chap-book of "Jack the Giant-Killer" is a curious jumble. The second part, as in most chap-books, is a weak and late invention of the enemy, and is not volkstümlich at all. The first part is compounded of a comic and a serious theme. The first is that of the Valiant Tailor (Grimm, No. 20); to this belong the incidents of the fleabite blows (for variants of which see Köhler in Jahrb. rom. eng. Phil., viii. 252), and that of the slit paunch (cf. Cosquin, l.c., ii. 51). The Thankful Dead episode, where the hero is assisted by the soul of a person whom he has caused to be buried, is found as early as the Cento novelle antiche and Straparola, xi. 2. It has been best studied by Köhler in Germania, iii. 199-209 (cf. Cosquin, i. 214-5; ii. 14 and note; and Crane, Ital. Pop. Tales, 350, note 12). It occurs also in the curious play of Peele's The Old Wives' Tale, in which one of the characters is the Ghost of Jack. Practically the same story as this part of Jack the Giant-Killer occurs in Kennedy, Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 32, "Jack the Master and Jack the Servant;" and Kennedy adds (p. 38), "In some versions Jack the Servant is the spirit of the buried man."

  The "Fee-fi-fo-fum" formula is common to all English stories of giants and ogres; it also occurs in Peele's play and in King Lear (see note on "Childe Rowland"). Messrs. Jones and Kropf have some remarks on it in their "Magyar Tales," pp. 340-1; so has Mr. Lang in his "Perrault," p. lxiii., where he traces it to the Furies in Aeschylus' Eumenides.

  XX. HENNY-PENNY.

  Source.—I give this as it was told me in Australia in 1860. The fun consists in the avoidance of all pronouns, which results in jaw-breaking sentences almost equal to the celebrated "She stood at the door of the fish-sauce shop, welcoming him in."

  Parallels.—Halliwell, p. 151, has the same with the title "Chicken-Licken." It occurs also in Chambers's Popular Rhymes, p. 59, with the same names of the dramatis personae, as my version. For European parallels, see Crane, Ital. Pop. Tales, 377, and authorities there quoted.

  XXI. CHILDE ROWLAND.

  Source.—Jamieson's Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814, p. 397 seq., who gives it as told by a tailor in his youth, c. 1770. I have Anglicised the Scotticisms, eliminated an unnecessary ox-herd and swine-herd, who lose their heads for directing the Childe, and I have called the Erlkönig's lair the Dark Tower on the strength of the description and of Shakespeare's reference. I have likewise suggested a reason why Burd Ellen fell into his power, chiefly in order to introduce a definition of "widershins." "All the rest is the original horse," even including the erroneous description of the youngest son as the Childe or heir (cf. "Childe Harold" and Childe Wynd, infra, No. xxxiii.), unless this is some "survival" of Junior Right or "Borough English," the archaic custom of letting the heirship pass to the youngest son. I should add that, on the strength of the reference to Merlin, Jamieson calls Childe Rowland's mother, Queen Guinevere, and introduces references to King Arthur and his Court. But as he confesses that these are his own improvements on the tailor's narrative I have eliminated them.

  Parallels.—The search for the Dark Tower is similar to that of the Red Ettin, (cf. Köhler on Gonzenbach, ii. 222). The formula "youngest best," in which the youngest of three brothers succeeds after the others have failed, is one of the most familiar in folk- tales amusingly parodied by Mr. Lang in his Prince Prigio. The taboo against taking food in the underworld occurs in the myth of Proserpine, and is also frequent in folk-tales (Child, i. 322). But the folk-tale parallels to our tale fade into insignificance before its brilliant literary relationships. There can be little doubt that Edgar, in his mad scene in King Lear, is alluding to our tale when he breaks in
to the lines:

  "Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower came...." His word was still: "Fie, foh and fum, I smell the blood of a British man." King Lear, act iii. sc. 4, ad fin.

  ("British" for "English." This is one of the points that settles the date of the play; James I. was declared King of Great Britain, October 1604. I may add that Motherwell in his Minstrelsy, p. xiv. note, testifies that the story was still extant in the nursery at the time he wrote (1828).)

  The latter reference is to the cry of the King of Elfland. That some such story was current in England in Shakespeare's time, is proved by that curious mélange of nursery tales, Peele's The Old Wives' Tale. The main plot of this is the search of two brothers, Calypha and Thelea, for a lost sister, Delia, who has been bespelled by a sorcerer, Sacrapant (the names are taken from the "Orlando Furioso"). They are instructed by an old man (like Merlin in "Childe Rowland") how to rescue their sister, and ultimately succeed. The play has besides this the themes of the Thankful Dead, the Three Heads of the Well (which see), the Life Index, and a transformation, so that it is not to be wondered at if some of the traits of "Childe Rowland" are observed in it.

  But a still closer parallel is afforded by Milton's Comus. Here again we have two brothers in search of a sister, who has got into the power of an enchanter. But besides this, there is the refusal of the heroine to touch the enchanted food, just as Childe Rowland finally refuses. And ultimately the bespelled heroine is liberated by a liquid, which is applied to her lips and finger-tips, just as Childe Rowland's brothers are unspelled. Such a minute resemblance as this cannot be accidental, and it is therefore probable that Milton used the original form of "Childe Rowland," or some variant of it, as heard in his youth, and adapted it to the purposes of the masque at Ludlow Castle, and of his allegory. Certainly no other folk-tale in the world can claim so distinguished an offspring.

  Remarks.—Distinguished as "Childe Rowland" will be henceforth as the origin of Comus, if my affiliation be accepted, it has even more remarkable points of interest, both in form and matter, for the folklorist, unless I am much mistaken. I will therefore touch upon these points, reserving a more detailed examination for another occasion.