More English Fairy Tales Part 26

"Then off goes your head," said the king. "But you need not try unless you like."

Well, Jack went back home for a week, and thought over whether he should try and win the princess. At last he made up his mind. "Well," said Jack, "I'll try my vorton; zo now vor the king's daughter, or a headless shepherd!"

And taking his bottle and bag, he trudged to the court. In his way thither, he was obliged to cross a river, and pulling off his shoes and stockings, while he was pa.s.sing over he observed several pretty fish bobbing against his feet; so he caught some and put them into his pocket. When he reached the palace he knocked at the gate loudly with his crook, and having mentioned the object of his visit, he was immediately conducted to the hall where the king's daughter sat ready prepared to see her lovers. He was placed in a luxurious chair, and rich wines and spices were set before him, and all sorts of delicate meats.

Jack, unused to such fare, ate and drank plentifully, so that he was nearly dozing before midnight.

"Oh, shepherd," said the lady, "I have caught you napping!"

"Noa, sweet ally, I was busy a-fees.h.i.+ng."

"A fis.h.i.+ng," said the princess in the utmost astonishment: "Nay, shepherd, there is no fish-pond in the hall."

"No matter vor that, I have been fis.h.i.+ng in my pocket, and have just caught one."

"Oh me!" said she, "let me see it."

The shepherd slyly drew the fish out of his pocket and pretending to have caught it, showed it her, and she declared it was the finest she ever saw.

About half an hour afterwards, she said, "Shepherd, do you think you could get me one more?"

He replied, "Mayhap I may, when I have baited my hook;" and after a little while he brought out another, which was finer than the first, and the princess was so delighted that she gave him leave to go to sleep, and promised to excuse him to her father.

In the morning the princess told the king, to his great astonishment, that Jack must not be beheaded, for he had been fis.h.i.+ng in the hall all night; but when he heard how Jack had caught such beautiful fish out of his pocket, he asked him to catch one in his own.

Jack readily undertook the task, and bidding the king lie down, he pretended to fish in his pocket, having another fish concealed ready in his hand, and giving him a sly p.r.i.c.k with a needle, he held up the fish, and showed it to the king.

His majesty did not much relish the operation, but he a.s.sented to the marvel of it, and the princess and Jack were united the same day, and lived for many years in happiness and prosperity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OYEZ OYEZ OYEZ THE ENGLISH FAIRY TALES ARE NOW CLOSED LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS MUST NOT READ ANY FURTHER]

Notes and References

For some general remarks on the English Folk-Tale and previous collectors, I must refer to the introductory observations added to the Notes and References of _English Fairy Tales_, in the third edition.

With the present instalment the tale of English Fairy Stories that are likely to obtain currency among the young folk is complete. I do not know of more than half-a-dozen "outsiders" that deserve to rank with those included in my two volumes which, for the present, at any rate, must serve as the best subst.i.tute that can be offered for an English Grimm. I do not despair of the future. After what Miss Fison (who, as I have recently learned, was the collector of _Tom t.i.t Tot_ and _Cap o'

Rushes_), Mrs. Balfour, and Mrs. Gomme have done in the way of collecting among the folk, we may still hope for substantial additions to our stock to be garnered by ladies from the less frequented portions of English soil. And from the United States we have every reason to expect a rich harvest to be gathered by Mr. W.W. Newell, who is collecting the English folk-tales that still remain current in New England. If his forthcoming book equals in charm, scholars.h.i.+p, and thoroughness his delightful _Games and Songs of American Children_, the Anglo-American folk-tale will be enriched indeed. A further examination of English nursery rhymes may result in some additions to our stock. I reserve these for separate treatment in which I am especially interested, owing to the relations which I surmise between the folk-tale and the _cante-fable_.

Meanwhile the eighty-seven tales (representing some hundred and twenty variants) in my two volumes must represent the English folk-tale as far as my diligence has been able to preserve it at this end of the nineteenth century. There is every indication that they form but a scanty survival of the whole _corpus_ of such tales which must have existed in this country. Of the seventy European story-radicles which I have enumerated in the Folk-Lore Society's _Handbook_, pp. 117-35, only forty are represented in our collection: I have little doubt that the majority of the remaining thirty or so also existed in these isles, and especially in England. If I had reckoned in the tales current in the English pale of Ireland, as well as those in Lowland Scots, there would have been even less missing. The result of my investigations confirms me in my impression that the scope of the English folk-tale should include all those current among the folk in English, no matter where spoken, in Ireland, the Lowlands, New England, or Australia. Wherever there is community of language, tales can spread, and it is more likely that tales should be preserved in those parts where English is spoken with most of dialect. Just as the Anglo-Irish Pale preserves more of the p.r.o.nunciation of Shakespeare's time, so it is probable that Anglo-Irish stories preserve best those current in Shakespeare's time in English. On the other hand, it is possible that some, nay many, of the Anglo-Irish stories have been imported from the Celtic districts, and are positively folk-translations from the Gaelic. Further research is required to determine which is English and which Celtic among Anglo-Irish folk-tales. Meanwhile my collection must stand for the nucleus of the English folk-tale, and we can at any rate judge of its general spirit and tendencies from the eighty-seven tales now before the reader.

Of these, thirty-eight are _marchen_ proper, _i.e._, tales with definite plot and evolution; ten are sagas or legends locating romantic stories in definite localities; no less than nineteen are drolls or comic anecdotes; four are c.u.mulative stories: six beast tales; while ten are merely ingenious nonsense tales put together in such a form as to amuse children. The preponderance of the comic element is marked, and it is clear that humour is a characteristic of the English _folk_. The legends are not of a very romantic kind, and the _marchen_ are often humorous in character. So that a certain air of unromance is given by such a collection as that we are here considering. The English folk-muse wears homespun and plods afoot, albeit with a cheerful smile and a steady gaze.

Some of this effect is produced by the manner in which the tales are told. The colloquial manner rarely rises to the dignified, and the essence of the folk-tale manner in English is colloquial. The opening formulae are varied enough, but none of them has much play of fancy.

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was, though it wasn't in my time nor in your time nor in any one else's time," is effective enough for a fairy epoch, and is common, according to Mayhew (_London Labour_.

iii.), among tramps. We have the rhyming formula:

Once upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme, And monkeys chewed tobacco, And hens took snuff to make them tough, And ducks went quack, quack, quack Oh!

on which I have variants not so refined. Some stories start off without any preliminary formula, or with a simple "Well, there was once a ----".

A Scotch formula reported by Mrs. Balfour runs, "Once on a time when a'

muckle folk were wee and a' lees were true," while Mr. Lang gives us "There was a king and a queen as mony ane's been, few have we seen and as few may we see." Endings of stories are even less varied. "So they married and lived happy ever afterwards," comes from folk-tales, not from novels. "All went well that didn't go ill," is a somewhat cynical formula given by Mrs. Balfour, while the Scotch have "they lived happy and died happy, and never drank out of a dry cappie."

In the course of the tale the chief thing to be noticed is the occurrence of rhymes in the prose narrative, tending to give the appearance of a _cante-fable_. I have enumerated those occurring in _English Fairy Tales_ in the notes to _Childe Rowland_ (No. xxi.). In the present volume, rhyme occurs in Nos. xlvi., xlviii., xlix., lviii., lx., lxiii. (see Note), lxiv., lxxiv., lx.x.xi., lx.x.xv., while lv., lxix., lxxiii., lxxvi., lx.x.xiii., lx.x.xiv., are either in verse themselves or derived from verse versions. Altogether one third of our collection gives evidence in favour of the _cante-fable_ theory which I adduced in my notes to _Childe Rowland_. Another point of interest in English folk-narrative is the repet.i.tion of verbs of motion, "So he went along and went along and went along." Still more curious is a frequent change of tense from the English present to the past. "So he gets up and went along." All this helps to give the colloquial and familiar air to the English fairy-tale not to mention the dialectal and archaic words and phrases which occur in them.

But their very familiarity and colloquialism make them remarkably effective with English-speaking little ones. The rhythmical phrases stick in their memories; they can remember the exact phraseology of the English tales much better, I find, than that of the Grimms' tales, or even of the Celtic stories. They certainly have the quality of coming home to English children. Perhaps this may be partly due to the fact that a larger proportion of the tales are of native manufacture. If the researches contained in my Notes are to be trusted only i.-ix., xi., xvii., xxii., xxv., xxvi., xxvii., xliv., l., liv., lv., lviii., lxi., lxii., lxv., lxvii., lxxviii., lx.x.xiv., lx.x.xvii. were imported; nearly all the remaining sixty are home produce, and have their roots in the hearts of the English people which naturally respond to them.

In the following Notes, I have continued my practice of giving (1) _Source_ where I obtained the various tales. (2) _Parallels_, so far as possible, in full for the British Isles, with bibliographical references when they can be found; for occurrences abroad I generally refer to the list of incidents contained in my paper read before the International Folk-Lore Congress of 1891 and republished in the _Transactions_, 1892, pp. 87-98. (3) _Remarks_ where the tale seems to need them. I have mainly been on the search for signs of diffusion rather than of "survivals" of antiquarian interest, though I trust it will be found I have not neglected these.

XLIV. THE PIED PIPER

_Source._--Abraham Elder, _Tales and Legends of the Isle of Wight_ (London, 1839), pp. 157-164. Mr. Nutt, who has abridged and partly rewritten the story from a copy of Elder's book in his possession, has introduced a couple of touches from Browning.

_Parallels._--The well-known story of the Pied Piper of Hameln (Hamelin), immortalised by Browning, will at once recur to every reader's mind. Before Browning, it had been told in English in books as well known as Verstegan's _Rest.i.tution of Decayed Intelligence_, 1605; Howell's _Familiar Letters_ (see my edition, p. 357, _n._); and Wanley's _Wonders of the Little World_. Browning is said to have taken it from the last source (Furnivall, _Browning Bibliography_, 158), though there are touches which seem to me to come from Howell (see my note _ad loc._), while it is not impossible he may have come across Elder's book, which was ill.u.s.trated by Cruikshank. The Grimms give the legend in their _Deutsche Sagen_ (ed. 1816, 330-33), and in its native land it has given rise to an elaborate poem _a la_ Scheffel by Julius Wolff, which has in its turn been the occasion of an opera by Victor Nessler. Mrs. Gutch, in an interesting study of the myth in _Folk-Lore_ iii., pp. 227-52, quotes a poem, _The Sea Piece_, published by Dr. Kirkpatrick in 1750, as showing that a similar legend was told of the Cave Hill, Belfast.

Here, as Tradition's h.o.a.ry legend tells, A blinking Piper once with magic Spells And strains beyond a vulgar Bagpipe's sounds Gathered the dancing Country wide around.

When hither as he drew the tripping Rear (Dreadful to think and difficult to swear!) The gaping Mountain yawned from side to side, A hideous Cavern, darksome, deep, and wide; In skipt th' exulting Demon, piping loud, With pa.s.sive joy succeeded by the Crowd.

There firm and instant closed the greedy Womb, Where wide-born Thousands met a common Tomb.

_Remarks._--Mr. Baring-Gould, in his _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_, has explained the Pied Piper as a wind myth. Mrs. Gutch is inclined to think there may be a substratum of fact at the root of the legend, basing her conclusions on a pamphlet of Dr. Meinardus, _Der historische Kern_, which I have not seen. She does not, however, give any well-authenticated historical event at Hameln in the thirteenth century which could have plausibly given rise to the legend, nor can I find any in the _Urkundenbuch_ of Hameln (Luneberg, 1883). The chief question of interest attaching to the English form of the legend as given in 1839 by Elder, is whether it is independent of the German myth. It does not occur in any of the local histories of the Isle of Wight which I have been able to consult of a date previous to Elder's book--_e.g._, J.

Ha.s.sel, _Tour of the Isle of Wight_, 1790. Mr. Sh.o.r.e, in his _History of Hamps.h.i.+re_, 1891, p. 185, refers to the legend, but evidently bases his reference on Elder, and so with all the modern references I have seen.

Now Elder himself quotes Verstegan in his comments on the legend, pp.

168-9 and note, and it is impossible to avoid conjecturing that he adapted Verstegan to the locality. Newtown, when Ha.s.sel visited it in 1790, had only six or seven houses (_l.c._, i., 137-8), though it had the privilege of returning two members to Parliament; it had been a populous town by the name of Franchville before the French invasion of the island of _temp._ Ric. II. It is just possible that there may have been a local legend to account for the depopulation by an exodus of the children. But the expression "pied piper" which Elder used clearly came from Verstegan, and until evidence is shown to the contrary the whole of the legend was adapted from him. It is not without significance that Elder was writing in the days of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, and had possibly no more foundation for the localisation of his stories than Barham.

There still remains the curious parallel from Belfast to which Mrs.

Gutch has drawn attention. Magic pipers are not unknown to English folk-lore, as in the Percy ballad of _The Frere and the Boy_, or in the nursery rhyme of Tom the Piper's son in its more extended form. But beguiling into a mountain is not known elsewhere except at Hameln, which was made widely known in England by Verstegan's and Howell's accounts, so that the Belfast variant is also probably to be traced to the _Rattenfanger_. Here again, as in the case of Beddgellert (_Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xxi.), the Blinded Giant and the Pedlar of Swaffham (_infra_, Nos. lxi., lxiii.), we have an imported legend adapted to local conditions.

XLV. HEREAFTERTHIS

_Source._--Sent me anonymously soon after the appearance of _English Fairy Tales_. From a gloss in the MS. "vitty" = Devonian for "decent," I conclude the tale is current in Devon. I should be obliged if the sender would communicate with me.

_Parallels._--The latter part has a certain similarity with "Jack Hannaford" (No. viii.). Halliwell's story of the miser who kept his money "for luck" (p. 153) is of the same type. Halliwell remarks that the tale throws light on a pa.s.sage in Ben Jonson:

Say we are robbed, If any come to borrow a spoon or so I will not have Good Fortune or G.o.d's Blessing Let in, while I am busy.

The earlier part of the tale has resemblance with "Lazy Jack" (No.

xxvii), the European variants of which are given by M. Cosquin, _Contes de Lorraine_, i., 241. Jan's satisfaction with his wife's blunders is also European (Cosquin, _l.c._, i., 157). On minding the door and dispersing robbers by its aid see "Mr. Vinegar" (No. vi.).

_Remarks._--"Hereafterthis" is thus a _melange_ of droll incidents, yet has characteristic folkish touches ("can you milk-y, bake-y," "when I lived home") which give it much vivacity.