Chapter 14

Now, in the "English" versions there is practical unanimity in the concluding portions of the tale. _Magic dresses--Meeting-place (Church)--Flight--Lost Shoe--Shoe Marriage-test--Mutilated foot--False Bride--_Bird witness--Happy Marriage_, follow one another with exemplary regularity in all four (six) versions.[2] The introductory incidents vary somewhat. Chambers has evidently a maimed version of the introduction of Catskin (see No. lxxxiii.). The remaining three enable us, however, to restore with some confidence the _Ur-_Cinderella in English somewhat as follows: _Helpful animal given by dying mother--Ill-treated heroine--Menial heroine--cornucopia--Spy on heroine--Slaying by helpful animal--Tasks--Revivified bones_. I have attempted in my version to reconstruct the "English" Cinderella according to these formulæ. It will be observed that the helpful animal is helpful in two ways (a) in helping the heroine to perform tasks; (b) in providing her with magic dresses. It is the same with the Grimms' _Aschenputtel_ and other Continental variants.

Turning to the Celtic variants, these divide into two sets. Campbell's and Macleod's versions are practically at one with the English formula, the latter with an important variation which will concern us later. But the other two, Curtin's and Sinclair's, one collected in Ireland and the other in Scotland, both continue the formula with the conclusion of the Sea Maiden tale (on which see the Notes of my _Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xvii.). This is a specifically Celtic formula, and would seem therefore to claim Cinderella for the Celts. But the welding of the Sea Maiden ending on to the Cinderella formula is clearly a later and inartistic junction, and implies rather imperfect assimilation of the Cinderella formula. To determine the question of origin we must turn to the purer type given by the other two Celtic versions.

Campbell's tale can clearly lay no claim to represent the original type of Cinderella. The golden shoes are a gift of the hero to the heroine which destroys the whole point of the _Shoe marriage test_, and cannot have been in the original, wherever it originated. Mr. Macleod's version, however, contains an incident which seems to bring us nearer to the original form than any version contained in Miss Cox's book. Throughout the variants it will be observed what an important function is played by the helpful animal. This in some of the versions is left as a legacy by the heroine's dying mother. But in Mr. Macleod's version the helpful animal, a sheep, is the heroine's mother herself! This is indeed an archaic touch, which seems to hark back to primitive times and totemistic beliefs. And more important still, it is a touch which vitalises the other variants in which the helpful animal is rather dragged in by the horns. Mr. Nutt's lucky find at the last moment seems to throw more light on the origin of the tale than almost the whole of the remaining collection.

But does this find necessarily prove an original Celtic origin for Cinderella? Scarcely. It remains to be proved that this introductory part of the story with helpful animal was necessarily part of the original. Having regard to the feudal character underlying the whole conception, it remains possible that the earlier part was ingeniously dovetailed on to the latter from some pre-existing and more archaic tale, perhaps that represented by the Grimms' _One Eyed, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes_. The possibility of the introduction of an archaic formula which had become a convention of folk-telling cannot be left out of account.

The "Youngest-best" formula which occurs in Cinderella, and on which Mr. Lang laid much stress in his treatment of the subject in his "Perrault" as a survival of the old tenure of "junior right," does not throw much light on the subject. Mr. Ralston, in the _Nineteenth Century_, 1879, was equally unenlightening with his sun-myths.

[Footnote 2: Chamber's II. consists entirely and solely of these incidents.]

LXXIV. KING O' CATS

_Source._--I have taken a point here and a point there from the various English versions mentioned in the next section.

I have expanded the names, so as to make a jingle from the Dildrum and Doldrum of Hartland.

_Parallels._--Five variants of this quaint legend have been collected in England: (1) Halliwell, _Pop. Rhymes_, 167, "Molly Dixon"; (2) _Choice Notes--Folk-Lore_, p. 73, "Colman Grey"; (3) _Folk-Lore Journal_, ii., 22, "King o' the Cats"; (4) _Folk-Lore--England_ (Gibbings), "Johnny Reed's Cat"; (5) Hartland and Wilkinson, _Lancashire Legends_, p. 13, "Dildrum Doldrum." Sir F. Palgrave gives a Danish parallel; _cf._ Halliwell, _l.c._

_Remarks._--An interesting example of the spread and development of a simple anecdote throughout England. Here again we can scarcely imagine more than a single origin for the tale which is, in its way, as weird and fantastic as E.A. Poe.

LXXV. TAMLANE

_Source._--From Scott's _Minstrelsy_, with touches from the other variants given by Prof. Child in his _Eng. and Scotch Ballads_, i., 335-58.

_Parallels._--Prof. Child gives no less than nine versions in his masterly edition, _l.c._, besides another fragment "Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane," i., 258. He parallels the marriage of Peleus and Thetis in Apollodorus III., xiii., 5, 6, which still persists in modern Greece as a Cretan ballad.

_Remarks._--Prof. Child remarks that dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take place, and gives examples, _l.c._, 338, to which may be added that of Catskin (see Notes _infra_). He gives as the reason why the Elf-queen would have "ta'en out Tamlane's two grey eyne," so that henceforth he should not be able to see the fairies. Was it not rather that he should not henceforth see Burd Janet?--a subtle touch of jealousy. On dwelling in fairyland Mr. Hartland has a monograph in his _Science of Fairy Tales_, pp. 161-254.

LXXVI. THE STARS IN THE SKY

_Source._--Mrs. Balfour's old nurse, now in New Zealand. The original is in broad Scots, which I have anglicised.

_Parallels._--The tradition is widespread that at the foot of the rainbow treasure is to be found; _cf._ Mr. John Payne's "Sir Edward's Questing" in his _Songs of Life and Death_.

_Remarks._--The "sell" at the end is scarcely after the manner of the folk, and various touches throughout indicate a transmission through minds tainted with culture and introspection.

LXXVII. NEWS!

_Source._--Bell's _Speaker_.

_Parallels._--Jacques de Vitry, _Exempla_, ed. Crane, No. ccv., a servant being asked the news by his master returned from a pilgrimage to Compostella, says the dog is lame, and goes on to explain: "While the dog was running near the mule, the mule kicked him and broke his own halter and ran through the house, scattering the fire with his hoofs, and burning down your house with your wife." It occurs even earlier in Alfonsi's _Disciplina Clericalis_, No. xxx., at beginning of the twelfth century, among the _Fabliaux_, and in Bebel, _Werke_, iii., 71, whence probably it was reintroduced into England. See Prof. Crane's note _ad loc._

_Remarks._--Almost all Alfonsi's _exempla_ are from the East. It is characteristic that the German version finishes up with a loss of honour, the English climax being loss of fortune.

LXXVIII. PUDDOCK, MOUSIE, AND RATTON

_Source._--Kirkpatrick Sharpe's _Ballad Book_, 1824, slightly anglicised.

_Parallels._--Mr. Bullen, in his _Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books_, p. 202, gives a version, "The Marriage of the Frog and the Mouse," from T. Ravenscroft's _Melismata_, 1611. The nursery rhyme of the frog who would a-wooing go is clearly a variant of this, and has thus a sure pedigree of three hundred years; _cf._ "Frog husband" in my List of Incidents, or notes to "The Well of the World's End" (No. xli.).

LXXIX. LITTLE BULL-CALF

_Source._--_Gypsy Lore Journal_, iii., one of a number of tales told "In a Tent" to Mr. John Sampson. I have respelt and euphemised the bladder.

_Parallels._--The Perseus and Andromeda incident is frequent in folk-tales; see my List of Incidents _sub voce_ "Fight with Dragon." "Cheese squeezing," as a test of prowess, is also common, as in "Jack the Giant Killer" and elsewhere (Köhler, _Jahrbuch_, vii., 252).

LXXX. THE WEE WEE MANNIE

_Source._--From Mrs. Balfour's old nurse. I have again anglicised.

_Parallels._--This is one of the class of accumulative stories like _The Old Woman and her Pig_ (No. iv.). The class is well represented in these isles.

LXXXI. HABETROT AND SCANTLIE MAB

_Source._--Henderson's _Folk-Lore of Northern Counties_, pp. 258-62 of Folk-Lore Society's edition. I have abridged and to some extent rewritten.

_Parallels._--This in its early part is a parallel to the _Tom Tit Tot_, which see. The latter part is more novel, and is best compared with the Grimms' _Spinners_.

_Remark._--Henderson makes out of Habetrot a goddess of the spinning-wheel, but with very little authority as it seems to me.

LXXXII. OLD MOTHER WIGGLE WAGGLE

_Source._--I have inserted into Halliwell's version one current in Mr. Batten's family, except that I have substituted "Wiggle-Waggle" for "Slipper-Slopper." The two versions supplement one another.

_Remarks._--This is a pure bit of animal satire, which might have come from a rural Jefferies with somewhat more of wit than the native writer.

LXXXIII. CATSKIN

_Source._--From the chap-book reprinted in Halliwell I have introduced the demand for magic dresses from Chambers's _Rashie Coat_, into which it had clearly been interpolated from some version of Catskin.

_Parallels._--Miss Cox's admirable volume of variants of _Cinderella_ also contains seventy-three variants of _Catskin_, besides thirteen "indeterminate" ones which approximate to that type. Of these eighty-six, five exist in the British Isles, two chap-books given in Halliwell and in Dixon's _Songs of English Peasantry_, two by Campbell, Nos. xiv. and xiv_a_, "The King who Wished to Marry his Daughter," and one by Kennedy's _Fireside Stories_, "The Princess in the Catskins." Goldsmith knew the story by the name of "Catskin," as he refers to it in the _Vicar_. There is a fragment from Cornwall in _Folk-Lore_, i., App. p. 149.

_Remarks._--_Catskin, or the Wandering Gentlewomen_, now exists in English only in two chap-book ballads. But Chambers's first variant of _Rashie Coat_ begins with the Catskin formula in a euphemised form. The full formula may be said to run in abbreviated form--_Death-bed promise--Deceased wife's resemblance marriage test--Unnatural father_ (desiring to marry his own daughter)--_Helpful animal--Counter tasks--Magic dresses--Heroine flight--Heroine disguise--Menial heroine--Meeting-place--Token objects named--Threefold flight--Lovesick prince--Recognition ring--Happy marriage_. Of these the chap-book versions contain scarcely anything of the opening _motifs_. Yet they existed in England, for Miss Isabella Barclay, in a variant which Miss Cox has overlooked (_Folk-Lore_, i., _l.c._), remembers having heard the Unnatural Father incident from a Cornish servant-girl. Campbell's two versions also contain the incident, from which one of them receives its name. One wonders in what form Mr. Burchell knew Catskin, for "he gave the [Primrose] children the Buck of Beverland,[3] with the history of Patient Grissel, the adventures of Catskin and the Fair Rosamond's Bower" (_Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, c. vi.). Pity that "Goldy" did not tell the story himself, as he had probably heard it in Ireland, where Kennedy gives a poor version in his _Fireside Stories_.

Yet, imperfect as the chap-book versions are, they yet retain not a few archaic touches. It is clear from them, at any rate, that the Heroine was at one time transformed into a Cat. For when the basin of water is thrown in her face she "shakes her ears" just as a cat would. Again, before putting on her magic dresses she bathes in a pellucid pool. Now, Professor Child has pointed out in his notes on Tamlane and elsewhere (_English and Scotch Ballads_, i., 338; ii., 505; iii., 505) that dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take place. It is clear, therefore, that Catskin was originally transformed into an animal by the spirit of her mother, also transformed into an animal.

If I understand Mr. Nutt rightly (_Folk-Lore_, iv, 135, _seq._), he is inclined to think, from the evidence of the hero-tales which have the unsavoury _motif_ of the Unnatural Father, that the original home of the story was England, where most of the hero-tales locate the incident. I would merely remark on this that there are only very slight traces of the story in these islands nowadays, while it abounds in Italy, which possesses one almost perfect version of the formula (Miss Cox, No. 142, from Sardinia).

Mr. Newell, on the other hand (_American Folk-Lore Journal_, ii., 160), considers Catskin the earliest of the three types contained in Miss Cox's book, and considers that Cinderella was derived from this as a softening of the original. His chief reason appears to be the earlier appearance of Catskin in Straparola,[4] 1550, a hundred years earlier than Cinderella in Basile, 1636. This appears to be a somewhat insufficient basis for such a conclusion. Nor is there, after all, so close a relation between the two types in their full development as to necessitate the derivation of one from the other.

[Footnote 3: Who knows the Buck of Beverland nowadays?]

[Footnote 4: It is practically in Des Perier's _Récréations_, 1544.]

LXXXIV. STUPID'S CRIES

_Source._--_Folk-Lore Record_, iii., 152-5, by the veteran Prof. Stephens. I have changed "dog and bitch" of original to "dog and cat," and euphemised the liver and lights.

_Parallels._--Prof. Stephens gives parallels from Denmark. Germany (the Grimms' _Up Riesensohn_) and Ireland (Kennedy, _Fireside Stories_, p. 30).

LXXXV. THE LAMBTON WORM

_Source._--Henderson's _Folk-Lore of Northern Counties_, pp. 287-9, I have rewritten, as the original was rather high falutin'.

_Parallels._--Worms or dragons form the subject of the whole of the eighth chapter of Henderson. "The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh" (No. xxxiii.) also requires the milk of nine kye for its daily rations, and cow's milk is the ordinary provender of such kittle cattle (Grimms' _Teut. Myth._ 687), the mythological explanation being that cows = the clouds and the dragon = the storm. Jephtha vows are also frequent in folk-tales: Miss Cox gives many examples in her _Cinderella_, p. 511.

_Remarks._--Nine generations back from the last of the Lambtons, Henry Lambton, M.P., ob. 1761, reaches Sir John Lambton, Knight of Rhodes, and several instances of violent death occur in the interim. Dragons are possibly survivals into historic times of antedeluvian monsters, or reminiscences of classical legend (Perseus, etc.). Who shall say which is which, as Mr. Lang would observe.

LXXXVI. WISE MEN OF GOTHAM

_Source._--The chap-book contained in Mr. Hazlitt's _Shaksperian Jest Book_, vol. iii. I have selected the incidents and modernised the spelling; otherwise the droll remains as it was told in Elizabethan times.

_Parallels._--Mr. Clouston's _Book of Noodles_ is little else than a series of parallels to our droll. See my List of Incidents under the titles, "One cheese after another," "Hare postman," "Not counting self," "Drowning eels." In most cases Mr. Clouston quotes Eastern analogies.

_Remarks._--All countries have their special crop of fools, Boeotians among the Greeks, the people of Hums among the Persians (how appropriate!), the Schildburgers in Germany, and so on. Gotham is the English representative, and as witticisms call to mind well-known wits, so Gotham has had heaped on its head all the stupidities of the Indo-European world. For there can be little doubt that these drolls have spread from East to West. This "Not counting self" is in the _Gooroo Paramastan_, the cheeses "one after another" in M. Rivière's collection of Kabyle tales, and so on. It is indeed curious how little originality there is among mankind in the matter of stupidity. Even such an inventive genius as the late Mr. Sothern had considerable difficulty in inventing a new "sell."

LXXXVII. PRINCESS OF CANTERBURY

_Source._--I have inserted into the old chap-book version of the _Four Kings of Colchester, Canterbury_, &c., an incident entitled by Halliwell "The Three Questions."

_Parallels._--The "riddle bride wager" is a frequent incident of folk-tales (see my List of Incidents); the sleeping tabu of the latter part is not so common, though it occurs, _e.g._, in the Grimms' _Twelve Princesses_, who wear out their shoes with dancing.