I. TOM TIT TOT.

_Source_.--Unearthed by Mr. E. Clodd from the "Suffolk Notes and Queries" of the _Ipswich Journal_, and reprinted by him in a paper on "The Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin" in _Folk-Lore Journal_, vii. 138-43. I have reduced the Suffolk dialect.

_Parallels_.--In Yorkshire this occurs as "Habetrot and Scantlie Mab," in Henderson's _Folk-Lore of Northern Counties_, 221-6; in Devonshire as "Duffy and the Devil" in Hunt's _Romances and Drolls of the West of England_, 239-47; in Scotland two variants are given by Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, under the title "Whuppity Stourie." The "name-guessing wager" is also found in "Peerifool", printed by Mr. Andrew Lang in _Longman's Magazine_, July 1889, also _Folk-Lore_, September, 1890. It is clearly the same as Grimm's "Rumpelstiltskin" (No. 14); for other Continental parallels see Mr. Clodd's article, and Cosquin, _Contes pop. de Lorraine_, i. 269 _seq_.

_Remarks_.--One of the best folk-tales that have ever been collected, far superior to any of the continental variants of this tale with which I am acquainted. Mr. Clodd sees in the class of name- guessing stories, a "survival" of the superstition that to know a man's name gives you power over him, for which reason savages object to tell their names. It may be necessary, I find, to explain to the little ones that Tom Tit can only be referred to as "that," because his name is not known till the end.

II. THE THREE SILLIES.

_Source_.--From _Folk-Lore Journal_, ii. 40-3; to which it was communicated by Miss C. Burne.

_Parallels_.--Prof. Stephens gave a variant from his own memory in _Folk-Lore Record_, iii. 155, as told in Essex at the beginning of the century. Mr. Toulmin Smith gave another version in _The Constitutional_, July 1, 1853, which was translated by his daughter, and contributed to _Mélusine_, t. ii. An Oxfordshire version was given in _Notes and Queries_, April 17, 1852. It occurs also in Ireland, Kennedy, _Fireside Stories_, p. 9. It is Grimm's _Kluge Else_, No. 34, and is spread through the world. Mr. Clouston devotes the seventh chapter of his _Book of Noodles_ to the Quest of the Three Noodles.

III. THE ROSE TREE.

_Source_.--From the first edition of Henderson's _Folk-Lore of Northern Counties_, p. 314, to which it was communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

_Parallels_.--This is better known under the title, "Orange and Lemon," and with the refrain:

"My mother killed me, My father picked my bones, My little sister buried me, Under the marble stones."

I heard this in Australia. Mr. Jones Gives part of it in _Folk Tales of the Magyars_, 418-20, and another version occurs in 4 _Notes and Queries_, vi. 496. Mr. I. Gollancz informs me he remembers a version entitled "Pepper, Salt, and Mustard," with the refrain just given. Abroad it is Grimm's "Juniper Tree" (No. 47), where see further parallels. The German rhyme is sung by Margaret in the mad scene of Goethe's "Faust."

IV. OLD WOMAN AND PIG.

_Source_.--Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes and Tales_, 114.

_Parallels_.--_Cf._ Miss Burne, _Shropshire Folk-Lore_, 529; also No. xxxiv. _infra_ ("Cat and Mouse"). It occurs also in Scotch, with the title "The Wife and her Bush of Berries," Chambers's _Pop. Rhymes_, p. 57. Newell, _Games and Songs of American Children_, gives a game named "Club-fist" (No. 75), founded on this, and in his notes refers to German, Danish, and Spanish variants. (_Cf._ Cosquin, ii. 36 _seq._)

_Remarks_.--One of the class of Accumulative stories, which are well represented in England. (_Cf. infra_, Nos. xvi., xx., xxxiv.)

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, _Cuentos 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,