English Fairy Tales - Jacobs Joseph - Страница 37

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

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

ROUMANIA: Kremnitz, Rumanische Mahrchen, No. 15.

ASIA MINOR: Von Hahn, Griechische und Albanesische Marchen, 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. Muller 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.

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 a 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.

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.

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 volkstumlich 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 Kohler 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 Kohler 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.

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.

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