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. Kohler in Gonzenbach, Sicil. Marchen, ii. 245.
Source.–Halliwell, p. 149.
Parallels.–This is the Hans im Gluck 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.)
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 equivoque 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 Kohler, in Orient and Occident, ii. III.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
XIII. JACK AND THE BEANSTALK.
Source.–I tell this as it was told me in Australia, somewhere about the year
