This story is one of the most interesting in the study of the popular diffusion of tales, and I therefore give it here though I have given an excellent version from Temple and Steel in Indian Fairy Tales, ix., "The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal," and have there discussed the original form. Its interest, from the point of view of diffusion, lies in the fact that it occurs in India, both early (see Benfey, i., 117) and late (Temple, 12, Frere, 14), in Greece, both classical (Æsopic fable of the serpent in the bosom) and modern (Hahn, 87, Schmidt, p. 3), and in the earliest mediæval collection of popular tales by Petrus Alfonsi (Disciplina clericalis, vii.), as well as in the Reynard cycle. Besides these quasi-literary sources ranging over more than two thousand years, there are innumerable folk-versions collected in the last century and ranging from Burmah (Semeaton, The Karens, 128) to America (Harris, Uncle Remus, 86). These are all enumerated by Professor Krohn in an elaborate dissertation, "Mann und Fuchs" (Helsingfors, 1891). In essentials the trick by which the fisherman gets the djin inside the bottle again, in the first story within the frame of the Arabian Nights (adapted so admirably by Mr. Anstey in his Brass Bottle), is practically the same device. Richard I. is said, by Matthew Paris (ed. Luard, ii., 413-16), to have told the nobles of England, after his return from captivity in the East, a similar apologue proving the innate ingratitude of man. This is derived from the Karma Jataka, which was possibly the ultimate source of the whole series of tales.

Amid all these hundred variants there is one common idea, that of the ingratitude of a rescued animal (crocodile, snake, tiger, etc.), which is thwarted by its being placed back in the situation from which it was rescued. In some cases the bystander who restores equilibrium is alone; in most instances there are three of them; the first two having suffered from man's ingratitude see no reason for interfering. This is the "common form" which I have adopted in my version. In India the sufferer from ingratitude is sometimes a tree (a mulberry tree, in Indian Fairy Tales), but the European versions prefer horses or dogs.

Now it is obvious that such an artificial apologue on man's ingratitude could not have been invented twice for that particular purpose; and thus the hundred different versions (to which Dr. Bolte could probably add another century) must all, in the last resort, have emanated from a single source. When and where that original was concocted is one of the most interesting problems of folk-tale diffusion; the moralizing tendency of the tale, the animistic note underlying it, all point to India, where we find it in the Bidpai literature before the Christian era and current among the folk at the present day. The case for Indian origin is strongest for drolls of this kind.

I may add that the ingratitude of the man towards the fox at the end is not so universal a tail piece to the story as the rest of it, and is ultimately derived from the Reynard cycle, in which I have also introduced it (see "Bruin and Reynard").

But it occurs in many of the variants and comes in so appropriately that I thought it desirable to add it also here. The substitution of a dog for something else desired also occurs in the story of the Hobyahs in More English Fairy Tales, where Mr. Batten's released dog is so fierce (p. 125) that it drives one of the Hobyahs over on to the next page belonging to altogether another story.

XXI. JOHN THE TRUE

I have followed Bolte's formula "Anmerkungen" 45, keeping however as far as possible to the alternatives nearest to Basile, iv., 9, and where that fails making use of the Grimms' "Faithful John," No. 6, one of their best told tales. The story is popular in Italy where Crane, 344, refers to six other versions. It is also found in Greece (Hahn 29), and Roumania (Schott, p. 144), and indeed throughout the east of Europe. Traces of it in British Isles are but slight.

In India, however, there are a number of very close parallels (Day, 17-52; Knowles, 421-41; Frere, 98; and Somadeva; edit. Tawney, i., 519, ii., 251, which contains the similar story of Vivara the True); Benfey, i., 417, draws attention to other Oriental traits in the story and aptly compares the half-marble figure of the King of the Black Islands in the Arabian Nights. The probabilities of an Indian origin for this formula are rendered greater by the early age of the Pantschatantra and Somadeva parallels.

On the other hand the sacrifice of the children for the faithful servant has its closest parallel in the old French romance of Amis and Amilun, where Amis smears Amilun with the blood of his child to cure him of leprosy. The analogy is so close as almost to force the assumption of derivation. Koehler accordingly in his Aufsaetze, 1894, pp. 24-35, regards the tale as a development of the Indian story influenced by the romance of Amis.

XXII. JOHNNIE AND GRIZZLE

I have followed Bolte's formula s. v. Hansel and Gretel, 15, i., 115, though with some misgivings. Very few of his variants have his section F, which he divides into three variants: F 1. Ducks or angels carry the children over the stream. F 2. Or they throw out obstacles to pursuit. F 3. Or the witch drinks up the stream and bursts. F 2 is obviously "contaminated" by the similar incident in the Master Maid, and the existence of such alternatives indicates, to my mind, an absence of a consistent tradition as to the ending of the story, which obviously ended with the baking of the witch in the oven. I have combined, in my ending F 1 and F 2, the former from the Grimms' "Hansel and Gretel"; I have also adapted their title, with a reminiscence of Sir James Barrie.

The predicament of the farmer must have often really occurred in the Middle Ages when famine was the rule rather than the exception; and the decision to "expose" the children recalls the general practice in ancient Greece and Rome and in Arabia. A touch of comedy, however, is given to this grim beginning of our tale by the house made of cookies and sweetmeats, probably derived from the myth of a Schlarafenland of the Germans and similar imaginations of the Celts (see More Celtic Fairy Tales).

The beginning of the tale occurs early in Basile, v., 8, "Nennillo and Nennila," in which the three kings' children find their way home twice by similar devices, but at the third time scatter peas, which the birds eat up. Perrault has the same beginning in his "Petit Poucet," which has been Englished as "Hop o' my Thumb," who shares some of the adventures of Tom Thumb, as well as of the valiant Tailor. Lang has an interesting but, as usual, inconclusive discussion of the incidents of our tale in his Perrault civ.-cxi., and finds many of the incidents among the Kaffirs, Zulus, and other savage tribes, but scarcely the whole set of incidents from A to F, and that is what we want to find in studying the story. Dr. Bolte finds several instances where the full formula still exists in popular tradition. It is surely easiest to assume that they were once brought together by a folk artist whose bright little tale has spread among various folks, with the alterations suggested by the divergent fancy of the different folk minds.

XXIII. CLEVER LASS

The Clever Lass is of exceptional interest to the student of the Folk-Tale because of its exceptionally wide spread throughout Europe and Asia, and also because it is one of those tales which have been made the basis of the theory of the Eastern origin of all Folk-Tales. Bolte, in his elaborate monograph on the formula ("Anmerkungen," ii., 349-73), enumerates no less than eighty-six variants, twelve in Germany, six in other Teutonic lands, thirteen in Romance countries, no less than thirty-seven in Slavonic dialects, seven in Finnish, Hungarian and Tartar, six in the Semitic tongues, and also five in India, though there the parallelism is only partial. But in the European variants the parallels are so close and the riddles answered by the Clever Lass are in so many cases identical, and the order of incidents is so uniform that none can doubt the practical identity of the story throughout the Western area. There occurs some variation in the opening which, at times, takes the form of the father of the Clever Girl finding a golden mortar and giving it to the King, against the advice of his daughter who foresees that the monarch will demand the accompanying pestle. This seems however to be confined to the Teutonic lands or those in immediate cultural connection with them. The riddles about strongest, richest, most beautiful, form the opening elsewhere, and I have therefore chosen this alternative. The variations, both in questions and answers, are many, as is perhaps natural considering the popularity of the riddle in the folk mind, which would make it easy for a story-teller to make changes.

The King or Prince, in some of the variants, discovers the cleverness of the farmer's daughter on a visit to the farmer, when he elaborately carves and divides a chicken on a method which the Clever Lass discerns. This however does not occur so frequently except in Italy, and I have therefore omitted it. The discovery of the theft by the King's messenger is much more widely spread. (See Crane, 382, and compare "Gobborn Seer," in More English Fairy Tales.)

The Grimms, in their notes, point to a remarkable parallel in the Saga of Aslaug, the daughter of Brunhild and Sigurd. Here the King Ragnar demands that Aslaug should come to him naked yet clothed, eating yet not eating, not alone but without companion. She uses the fish-net as in the Folk-Tale, bites into an onion, and takes her dog along with her. From the last incident some of the Folk-Tales have possibly taken the awkward attitude of limping along with one of her feet on the back of a dog. But the first incident, being dragged along in a fish-net, is so unlikely to occur to anybody's mind without prompting, that one cannot help agreeing with the Grimms that the incident was taken into the Folk-Tale from the Saga, or that both were derived from a common source. On the whole subject of the curious ride, R. Kohler has an elaborate treatment in his Gesammelte Schriften, i., 446-56.

The attraction of the riddle for the folk mind is well known, and before the spread of cards appears to have been one of the chief forms of gambling in which even life was staked, as in the case of Samson or the Sphinx. In the Folk-Tale it often occurs in the form of the Riddle-Bride-Wager, in which a princess is married to him that can guess some elaborate conundrum. The first two of Child's Ballads deal with similar riddles, and his notes are a mine of erudition on the subject: on the Clever Lass herself see his elaborate treatment, English Ballads, i., 485 seq.

It is perhaps worthy of note that the questions as to the strongest, most beautiful, and richest occur in Plutarch's Symposium, 152 a, and it is a striking coincidence that, in the same treatise, 151 b, occurs another practical riddle, how to drink up the ocean, which occurs in several variants of the Clever Lass. But there is no evidence of any story connection between the two riddles in Plutarch, and one can easily imagine this sort of verbal amusement spreading from the learned to the folk.

The plan by which the Clever Lass becomes reconciled to the King, by carrying off what is dearest to her, is found in the Midrash probably as early as the eighth century. A still more remarkable parallel is that of the True Wives of Weinsberg who, when that town was invested, were allowed by the besiegers to carry off with them whatever they liked best. When the town gate was opened they tottered forth, each of them carrying her husband on her shoulders. But whether the incident ever really occurred, and if it occurred, whether the ruse was suggested by the Folk-Tale, cannot now be ascertained.

Benfey, in an elaborate dissertation, first communicated to "Ausland" in 1859, but now included in his Kleinere Schriften, ii., 156-223, argues for the Eastern origin of the whole cycle, which he traces back to the "Seventy Tales of the Parrot" (Suka Saptati) probably as early as the sixth century. Here the vizier Sakatala of the King Nanda is released from prison in order to determine which of two identical horses is mare and which is foal, and which part of a truncated log is root or branch. Benfey traces this and similar riddlesome difficulties to a good deal of Eastern literature in Tibet, Mongolia and Persia, and Arabia. But he fails to find any very exact parallels in the European area which, at that time, was very little explored. He finds the nearest parallel in Wuk, No. 25, but this is by no means a full variant of the other European tales and may have even been "contaminated" from the East. Benfey notices the Saga parallel but goes so far as even to claim this as being influenced by Eastern stories. Since his time a much closer parallel has been found in Kashmir by Knowles' Folk Tales of Kashmir, pages 484-90, repeated in Indian Fairy Tales, No. xxiv., "Why the Fish Laughed." But the parallelism here extends only to the cleverness of the girl and the ingenuity of her answers to the riddles, not to the actual plot of the story which is so uniform in Europe. Altogether we must reject Benfey's contention, at any rate for this particular story.

XXIV. THUMBKIN

I have followed, for the most part, Bolte's reconstruction, which practically consists of a combination of Grimm, 37 and 45. But in combining the two I have found it necessary to omit sections D and E of Bolte's formula which form the beginning of Grimm, 45, "Thumbkin as Journeyman."

The notion of a baby the size of a doll might be regarded as "universally human"; even the Greeks knew of manikins no bigger than their thumbs and weighing not more than an obolus (Athenæus, xii., 77); there is an epigram of the same subject in the Greek Anthology, ii., 350. But the particular adventures of Thumbkin are so consistently identical throughout Europe, especially with regard to the adventures in the cow's stomach, that it is impossible to consider the stories as independent. Cosquin, 53, has more difficulty than usual in finding real parallels in the Orient. In England, of course, Thumbkin is known as Tom Thumb (see English Fairy Tales). In the days when mythological explanations of folk-tales were popular, Gaston Paris, in a special monograph ("Petit Poucet," Paris 1875) tried to prove that Tom Thumb was a stellar hero because his French name was given to the smallest star in the Great Bear. But it is more likely that the name came from the tale than the tale from the star.

According to Gaston Paris, the chief variants known to him were Teutonic and Slav. Those of the Roumanians, Albanians, and Greeks were derived from the Slavs. He concludes that the French form must have been borrowed from the Germans, and declares that it is not found in Italy or Spain, but Cosquin, ii., gives Basque and Catalan variants, as well as a Portuguese one, and Crane gives a Tuscan variant, 242, with other occurrences in Italy in note 3, p. 372. This only shows the danger of deciding questions of origin on an imperfect induction.

The opening is not found in Grimm; I have taken it from Andrews; for which an excellent parallel is given in Crane, lxxvii., "Little Chick-pea." A similar beginning occurs in Hahn, 56, "Pepper-corn."

XXV. SNOWWHITE

Snowwhite is of special interest to the students of the folk-tale as being obviously a late product combining many motifs from different, more primitive, or at least earlier formulæ. E. Boeklen, in his Schneewitchen Studien, I, Leipzig 1910, suggests influence by Hansel and Gretel; The Seven Ravens; The Sleeping Beauty; The Maiden without Hands; One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes; False Bride, etc.; and Bolte, i., 453, appears to agree with him. Certainly almost every one of the incidents can be paralleled in other sets of folk-tales. The combination "white as snow," "red as blood," "black as ebony," has already been given in the present volume (see p. 173). Bringing back an animal's heart instead of the proposed victim's is common form as early as the Book of Genesis; and the trial of the three beds is familiar to English children in Southey's "Three Bears." It would seem that a story something like "Snowwhite" was known in Shakespeare's time, as there appears to be a reference to it in the main plot of "Cymbeline" (see Germania, ix., 458).

The form I have given to the formula follows very closely that of the Grimms' 53. It is one of their best stories and occurs widely spread throughout Germany. Whether that implies original composition in Central Europe cannot at present be determined, but it certainly looks that way. I have, however, omitted Bolte's F referring to the punishment of the Queen, which is wanting in the majority of the variants. No editor of a text would under similar circumstances take account of so rare a variant.

LIST OF INCIDENTS

I give in the following list the chief incidents that occur in the preceding tales, using for the most part the nomenclature used in the notes or in the list of incidents attached to my paper on "The Problem of Diffusion" in the Transactions of the International Folk-Lore Congress, 1892, pp. 87-98.

N. B. Incidents in Drolls are placed in italics. In some few cases, the incidents are referred to only in the notes.

Acquisition Task, xii.

Animal Aid, xi., xvii.

Apple Speaking, xviii.

Bean Transformation, xxiv.

Bird Aid, i.

Bird Election, viii.

Bird Prophecy, viii., xxi.

Bird Throwing, x.

Blood Resuscitation, xvi.

Bread Crumb Track, xxii.

Bride Quest, xii.

Captured Bride, xii., xxi.

Casting Sheep's Eyes, xv.

Castle Building Task, xviii.

Cheese Squeezing, x.

Children Sacrifice, xvi.

Cleansing Stable Task, xviii.

Cow's Stomach Refuge, xxiv.

Cure by Fruit, ix.

Descent to Hell, xvii., xviii.

Dogs in Bag, vi., xx.

Door Dropping, xix.

Dragon Slayer, xxi.

Dress Rhyme, i.

Enclosure in Bag, vi.

Envious Sisters, i., vii.

Exchange Series, ii.

Exposed Hero, viii., xxii.

External Soul, iii.

Fairy Godmother, i.

False Bathing, xi.

False Bride, xviii.

False Sale, xxiv.

Feather Dress, vii.

Feet Rhyme, i.

Finger Ladder Task, xviii.

Flea Bite Blows, x.

Flight from Ogre, xviii.

Forbidden Chamber, xii.

Fox in Briar Bush, vi.

Fox in Fish-cart, vi.

Giants Quarrelling, x.

Girl in Bag, ii.

Helpful Animals, i.

Honey Trap, i.

Horse from Stable Theft, xvi.

Horse's Ear Guide, xxiv.

Iced Bear's Tail, vi.

Inside Again, xx.

Jealous Brother-in-law, xvii.

Jealous Mother-in-law, xvii., xxv.

Jephtha Vow, xviii.

Language of Animals, viii.

Life Token, iii., vii.

Lollipop House, xxii.

Lost Shoe, i.

Love at Distance, xxi.

Magic Cudgel, ix.

Magic Dress, i.

Magic Purse, ix.

Magical Weapons, xii.

Menial Hero, xviii.

Menial Heroine, i.

Moon on Forehead, vii.

Mutilated Foot, i.

Nobility Test, xi.

Oblivion Kiss, xviii.

Obstacle Pursuit, xii., xviii., xxii.

Ogre Transformation, xi.

Overheard Boasting, vii.

Paradise Visitor, xix.

Pebble Track, xxii.

Planting Pigs' Tails, xv.

Poisoned Comb, xxv.

Poisoned Cup, xvi.

Poisoned Half-apple, xxv.

Pride before Fall, xiv.

Priest in Bag Ride, xvi.

Prince Rescue, xxv.

Punishment for Curiosity, xvii.

Purse or Life, xvi.

Pursuit Rhyme, i.

Quarrel of Limbs, vi.

Quest Tasks, vii.

Rage Wager, xv.

Recognition Test, xii.

Rescue from Dragon, iii.

Sale of Bed, xviii.

Scissors, iv.

Seven Bens and Seven Glens, xii.

Sight Taboo, xvii.

Sheet off Bed Theft, xvi.

Shoe Marriage Test, i.

Snow-white, Blood-red, xxv.

Speech Taboo, vii.

Stick Finger, xxii.

Substituted Children, vii.

Substituted Heart, vii., xxv.

Supernatural birth, iii.

Swan Maidens, xii.

Thankful Animals, xii., xiii.

Thief Apprentice, xvi.

Three Beds Trial, xxv.

Thumb Bung, xvi.

Thumbkin, xxiv.

Top-off, Half-gone, All-gone, vi.

Transformation by Fruit, ix.

Tree Rhyme, i.

Turned to Stone, iii., xxi.

Ungrateful Animal, xx.

Unicorn Captured, x.

Unseen Bridegroom, xvii.

Visitor from Paradise, xix.

Washing Horses within, xv.

Wolf Caught in Hole, xxiv.

X at a Blow, x.