part0000

Illustrations

Following Page 374

Peig Sayers of Ireland

Zsuzsanna Palko of Hungary

A group of Israeli narrators with the collector

Yefet Shvili, a Yemenite Israeli, with his water pipe

Yefet Shvili and his family

Meir Ezra, an Israeli from Iraqi Kurdistan

Asia, a Herati in Afghanistan

Meriam, a Herati, with a group in Afghanistan

Mrs. Tsune Watanabe of Niigata, Japan

Wadamkong Kwin and his wife in a Rawang village, Burma

Saddani Pagayaw, a Manuvu in Mindanao, the Philippines

Timoto Bobongi, a Lau, in Kwalo'ai Malaita, British Solomons

Macheme Sonis of Tol Island, Truk Atoll

Nongenile Masithatu Zenani, a Xhosa, in the Transkei, Republic of South Africa

Asilita Philisiwe Khumalo, a Zulu, in kwaZulu, Republic of South Africa

Andre Yadji, a Gbaya in Cameroun, shown in a sequence of pictures while narrating

James Ola, a Yoruba in Nigeria, shown in a sequence of pictures while narrating

Adolphe Duguay and his wife in New Brunswick, Canada

Joseph Bouliane in Saguenay, Quebec, Canada

Florent Lemay in Sainte-Croix, Quebec, Canada

Mrs. Daniel Poirier on Prince Edward Island, Canada

Laureano Mozombite, a Yagua, in Peruvian Amazon

Sehora Juana Berroa Pinto and her four children in Arequipa, Peru

Jaime Rodriguez Huillca in Arequipa, Peru

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Acknowledgments

The following permissions to reprint published materials are herein gratefully acknowledged:

'"Origin of the Enmity between Dog and Leopard," "Trapper, Gath-erer-of-Honey, and Cultivator," and "How Nturo Rejected Mpaca" from Daniel P. Biebuyck and Kahombo Mateene, Anthologie de la lit-terature orale nyanga, © 1970 by Academie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, Brussels, pp. 87-93, 173-75, 187-89. The French texts given there have been translated especially for this volume by Brunhilde Biebuyck.

"Paree at the Carnivalle" from R. M. Dorson, "Dialect Stories of the Upper Peninsula," © 1948 by The American Folklore Society. Reprinted from the Journal of American Folklore, vol. 61, no. 240, pp. 121-23, by permission of The Society.

"The Myth of Fuusai" from Elli Kongas Maranda, "Five Interpretations of a Melanesian Myth," © 1973 by The American Folklore Society. Reprinted from the Journal of American Folklore vol. 86, no. 339, pp. 4-7, by permission of, and by arrangement with. The Society.

Selection from R. M. Dorson, "Tales of a Greek-American Family on Tape," reprinted from Fabula, vol. 1 (1957), nos. 1-2, pp. 121-22, by permission of the editor, Kurt Ranke.

Introduction to R. M. Dorson, "Polish Wonder Tales of Joe Woods," and text of "The Two Brothers," © 1949 by The California Folklore Society. Reprinted from Western Folklore, vol. 8, no. 1 (January 1949), pp. 25-28, 50-52.

Xlll

xiv Acknowledgments

"The Mass of Saint Joseph," "Santa Catalina," and "The Unbeliever and the Skull" from Aurelio M. Espinosa, Cuentos populares espanoles, published in Madrid by Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Scientifi-cas, Instituto "Antonio de Nebrija" de FiloFogi'a, vol. I, nos. 74, 78, 79, pp. 135-36, 138-39, 140-41, by permission of Manuel Espinosa. The Spanish texts have been translated especially for this volume by Merle E. Simmons.

The story of the witranalwe, reprinted from Hawks of the Sun: Ma-puche Morality and Its Ritual Attributes by L. C. Faron, pp. 72-73, by permission of and arrangement with the University of Pittsburgh Press.

"The Origin of Maui," "The Theft of Fire," "Snaring of the Sun," and "Earth-Fishing" from Katharine Luomala, "A Dynamic in Oceanic Maui Myths," reprinted from Tabula, vol. 4 (1961), nos. 1-2, pp. 155-58, by permission of the editor, Kurt Ranke.

Also I wish to thank my faithful research assistant Inta Carpenter for valuable aid in assembling and indexing the manuscript, and the skilled collectors and talented narrators who have made the volume possible.

The following contributors wish to indicate special acknowledgments: Hafizullah Baghban

Teachers, including the mullah in my native village and the folklore scholars at Indiana University, for my training; the Afghan male and female narrators and performers for letting me collect their treasures; and Teachers College, Columbia University, and Indiana University for giving me grants to study and do fieldwork.

Daniel P. Biebuyck

Academie royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer (Brussels), publishers of Anthologie de la litterature orale nyanga.

Brunhilde Biebuyck for translating the texts.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

Canada Council and the Folklore Division, National Museum of Canada, who funded the fieldwork.

Deirdre La Pin

Foreign Area Fellowship Program for their grant for dissertation research from January 1972 through June 1974.

Francis Speed, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African

Acknowledgments xv

Studies, University of Ife, for his assistance with the filmstrips which accompany James Ola's narrative.

Luc Lacourciere

The Archives de Folklore, Laval University, Quebec, who are in turn grateful for the valuable financial support of the Killam Foundation, administered under the auspices of the Canada Council.

Katharine Luomala

The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Guggenheim Foundation, National Science Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, University of Hawaii, and Bishop Museum, for support of my Gilbert Islands Research.

Jean MacLaughlin

Foreign Area Fellowship Program, New York (now administered by the Social Science Research Council), who financed the field research in Peru (1971-72).

Merle E. Simmons for reading the translations and making suggestions.

Georgios A. Megas

Research Center for Greek Folklore of the Academy of Athens, for the unpublished material from which some texts have been drawn.

Philip A. Noss

The Foreign Area Fellowship Program, whose grant (1966-68) made possible the original recording and research; and the African Studies Association and American Philosophical Society (1970), whose grants made possible additional work on the tales.

Paul S. Powlison

Laureano Mozombite for his contribution both as narrator and interpreter of the tales he told.

Sean O'Sullivan

The Irish Folklore Commission (now the Irish Folklore Department), University College, Dublin.

Hazel Wrigglesworth

Si Juanitu for narrating the Ilianen Manobo tale "The Seven Young Sky Women"; and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, under whose auspices the tale was collected.

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Introduction

Choosing the World's Folktales Richard M. Dorson

Serving up a selection of folktales from around the world in one volume is a tall order. Many questions at once present themselves to the folklore scholar. How can the compiler fairly represent the geographical and culture areas of the globe? Should he try to do justice to the many forms of traditional narrative? What aesthetic criteria should he employ in culling his choices? How may he balance the requirements of scholarship with the demands of reading entertainment? Where will he find trustworthy sources, faithful to the spoken word? What evidence can he produce that a given tale truly represents the storytelling tradition within a particular country—especially if it enjoys widespread international currency? Or should he better de-emphasize the tale's association with a nation or people and group his choices according to themes, plots, and characters?

These kinds of questions have not deterred anthologists from assembling volumes of the world's folktales. In 1930 F. H. Lee brought together Folk Tales of All Nations, in 1949 Milton Rugoff produced A Harvest of World Folk Tales, in 1953 James R. Foster offered The World's Great Folktales, and in 1968 Stith Thompson chose One Hundred Favorite Folktales. The compendiums vary in their principles of selection and organization, but in common they perpetuate certain stereotypes about the nature of folktales. Equally they slight the oral narrators, who are not even named, select tales from previously published volumes whose contents reveal a high literary gloss, and emphasize readability. They follow the notion of the Grimm brothers that a literary hand should improve the rude oral utterance of the peasant. So Lee complimented one of his sources by saying, "Mr. Parker Fillmore has rendered the somewhat stiff, bald, and monotonous wording of these Finnish tales in captivating language."’ Fairy tales should be charming, delightful, beautiful, touched with an aura of magic and mystery befitting the childlike minds of peasants and savages. They were meant to be read for pleasure by a public far removed from the cultures that bred the tales, and quite uninterested in scholarly analysis. Even Stith Thompson, great scholar of the folktale, reinforced these erroneous conceptions in his own compendium.

XVll

XVlll

Introduction

Any attempt today to present a meaningful and representative sampling of the world's folktales to the reading public should reflect the now commonly held views of folklore scholarship. The first great correction that needs to be made concerns the nature of the folktale itself, which should be indicated as a spoken performance, rather than as a literary text. Yet in the eyes of the trade publishers, the public, the revi'wers in the mass newspapers and magazines, the librarians and schoolteachers, and many academics, the folktale is a specimen of written literature, supposedly emanating from an unlettered peasantry but a fixed and smooth-flowing text nonetheless. Because anthologists draw from collections that themselves often draw from previous publications, the printed folktale grows ever farther from an original word-of-mouth delivery. Today's anthologist should seek fresh oral texts, from collectors or from archives, and avoid previously printed and translated tales. Coverage of the world should be determined not by the attempt to blanket the earth's surface but by the availability of trustworthy collectors, even though a handful are scattered over vast continents. Because it is much simpler to go to books on the library shelves, usually out of date and unreliable to begin with, certain tales are anthologized to death—to the death of their traditional character. Joseph Jacobs's rewritten English and Celtic fairy tales, for example, are fair game for the second-hand tale-gatherer, and so are the old nineteenth-century collections from Africa and Asia made by missionaries and colonial administrators.

A second revision should provide for background information on the tales. If professional folklorists still often fail to obtain adequate data on the narrators, the stature of the teller has steadily increased until now he occasionally shares the title page with the collector. Our world anthology should pay some tribute to its tale-tellers. To do this means that space must be allowed for more than just the tales. And somehow the public must be persuaded that a book of folktales should contain information about the stories, that the stories by themselves are virtually worthless and valueless without commentaries.

Indeed, the point can be argued that the comparative note illuminating the pedigree and diaspora of a tale-family possesses greater interest than the individual tale-variant it serves. Of course the folklorist must learn to write his note, and not simply string together hieroglyphics referring in cryptic abbreviations to titles, types, and motifs. A satisfying note can explain customs, values, and beliefs embodied in the tale, perhaps gloss allusions to historical events and personalities, say something about other forms in which the tale is told and the localities where it is most popular, consider reasons for its appeal, and mention literary versions if they exist as well as describe the technique of the narrator. The notes of Linda Degh in Folktales of Hungary, for

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XIX

example, become informative little essays. They light up the legends about the herdsman who, at the close of the nineteenth century when the Hungarian plains were drained, emerged as an independent idolized figure, friend of outlaws, protector of the flocks, trusted minion of the squire, a Jack-of-all-trades, tough fighter and gay dancer, and a practitioner of magic arts.^ In Sean O'Sullivan's Folktales of Ireland a note to "Sean Palmer's Voyage to America with the Fairies" places this account of a countryman's overnight sail from Ireland to New York within a narrative pattern of aerial journeys to foreign countries by a lucky lad whom the fairies befriend. Sean Palmer tells of visiting his rich relatives and old sweetheart in America, and returns next morning all duded up with dollars in his pocket as proof of his trip. By itself the tale, which I heard myself in County Kerry told by Tige Murphy, might seem a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but the note pointing to a cabinet of variants in the archives of the Irish Folklore Commission attests its debt to a traditional formula.'^ Or again in Folktales of China is Wolfram Eberhard's clarifying note to "Chu the Rogue," whose adventures involve him with plague deities, punishments of the ten hells, and creatures serving the king of hell. Without some information on these traditional concepts in Chinese folk religion, the reader could never properly appreciate Chu's rascality in outwitting and escaping from such captors.

A third major corrective for our volume concerns the kinds of folktales offered repeatedly to an apparently receptive public. The one genre that becomes almost synonymous with the folktale is the European magical fiction or Marchen, usually called the fairy tale. Other large genres of folk narrative in the western world, particularly the legend, anecdote, and joke, become the left-out Cinderellas of the popular storybooks, and yet these are predominantly the tales of our times. Folk narrative forms run from the one-line joke to the halfmillion-word romance. If we wish to represent contemporary storytelling, we must downgrade the fairy tale, even though the market for editions of Grimm continues unabated. After visiting the major European folktale archives in preparation for his 1955 revision of the Types of the Folktale, Stith Thompson reported that their largest accessions since the first edition lay in jokes and anecdotes. In compiling Folktales of Norway, Reidar Christiansen devoted over half the contents to legendary traditions of kings, the devil, and water, forest, mountain and household spirits, taken largely from twentieth-century oral sources, but for Marchen he had to turn to the rewritten nineteenth-century stories of Asbjornsen and Moe. England has long been considered virtually barren of wonder tales, and by the same token, of all folktales, but Katharine Briggs demonstrated in Folktales of England —and subsequently in the four volumes of her Dictionary of British

Introduction

Folk-Tales —that legendary and humorous narratives have flourished on English soil. The great Victorian folklorists concentrated too heavily on survivals to pay much attention to modern stories, and to Dr. Briggs's credit she includes contemporary urban legends, shaggy dog stories, and jocular anecdotes that form much of the staple folktale fare in the modern world. But these forms are slow to find their way into the tale anthologies.

Part of the explanation for this lag lies in the scholarly as well as the popular conception of the folktale. Frequently the term "folktale" is opposed to the term "legend," to differentiate between a fiction and a happening. In The Folktale Stith Thompson intended to deal with all forms of traditional prose narrative, and this is the sense of the word I have applied to the Folktales of the World series. A joke, if it is told often enough to endure, becomes a folktale, although jokes seem somehow a little disreputable to keep company with Aesop and Grimm. The legend has only recently begun to attract the attention of comparative folklorists. In spite of all the popularity of the Grimms' Marchen, their Sagen have never been translated into English. For the most part legends are too local, too allusive and unstructured, too fragmentary and incomplete, to compete successfully with Marchen for scholarly attention or public acclaim.

How does the collector present in a book for general reading several separate episodes told about a landmark or a notable character? For instance, the brief historical legend of "The Altarpiece in Ringsaker Church" in Folktales of Norway tells first of a God-fearing minister from Ringsaker in Norway who some centuries ago exorcised the Devil from an English princess, whereupon she gave him a splendid altar-piece for his congregation. The scene then shifts to the war of 1567 between the Norwegians and the Swedes, when a Swedish company invaded and looted Ringsaker, used the church as a stall for their horses, and attempted to carry off the altarpiece. One horse alone could not budge the wagon on which the altarpiece was loaded, and finally a team of twelve horses with difficulty pulled it as far as Svein-haug. But a yearling foal easily pulled the wagon and altarpiece back to Ringsaker for the Norwegians.^ The two halves of this tradition could stand apart, in terms of time period and actors, but the teller united them through the link of the magic altarpiece.

Or again, the much longer narrative in Folktales of China entitled "The Bridge of Ch'uan-chou" begins, "There are innumerable tales in Fukien about this bridge, but I will only relate the best known." There follows an intricate account of how in 1025 Ts'ai Hsiang with the help of the Eight Immortals, the monk I-po, and the goddess Kuan Yin built the bridge over the Loyang River. The narrator then turns to a tradition dated seven hundred years later, recounting how Li Wu

Introduction

XXI

participated in a wholly different set of adventures with rogues, deities, and hidden treasure, and rebuilt the bridge/'^ This legend too violates the Aristotelian unities, and so probably disturbs the expectations of readers accustomed to a consecutive story line, but it is true to folk tradition.

A direct case in point is the legend of mountain treasure collected in Arequipa, Peru, and published here for the first time by Jean Mac-Laughlin. The collector considered this one of her most striking and representative narratives. But the tape transcript of the legend, delivered in the conversational manner characteristic of legend telling, would not excite a reader unfamiliar with the unspoken givens of the culture. The Quechua in Peru believe that spirits of the mountains themselves possess and guard the treasure, and hence the treasure quest takes on a very different character from a treasure hunt in the United States. MacLaughlin's explicit cultural explanations form a necessary complement to the legend text proper.

While some kinds of narratives, particularly those of distant cultures, require editorial prefaces to explain their values and allusions, others resist print because of their dependence on verbal effects.

Unknown to the reading public as a folktale genre is the so-called dialect story, especially fertile in the United States because of the mingling of nationality groups. During a field trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan I kept encountering funny tales told by "'dialecticians" at social occasions or by people on the street corner, who mimicked the accents, intonations, and malaproprisms of the dominant ethnic groups in the area, the Finns, French Canadians, Cornish, and Swedes. These stories ranged from brief anecdotes to lengthy recitals, but they all shared the same humorous features, the reproduction of the immigrant's broken English and the description of his mishaps in an alien culture. Investigation proved that these yarns met all the criteria of folktales, for they traveled by word of mouth and existed in numerous oral variants.^’ Other cycles of dialect stories dealing with Jewish, Italian, and Mexican characters circulate in regions of the United States where those population elements congregate. The Pat and Mike jests, which must have developed after the mid-nineteenth-century Irish immigration to America, clearly belong to the same narrative pattern. But dialect stories do not readily lend themselves to print. The collector must endeavor to simulate phonetically the speaker's word-mangling, and a reader unfamiliar with their sounds may find the tales meaningless. Yet to those who have grown up among Old Country people in the New World, hearing and reading the dialect stories is an hilarious experience. Jewish publishing companies in New York and Chicago have issued popular collections of Jewish jokes, demonstrably drawn from oral currency, for their clientele.

XXll

Introduction

Allied to but distinct from the dialect story is the bilingual narrative, whose tellers and audiences must possess familiarity with two tongues. The dialect story will be told in broken English (or other language) but the bilingual story is told in both English and the second speech, with the narrator shuttling back and forth between his vehicles. In North America the mingling of European mother tongues with American English produces jocular hybrid narratives involving Pennsylvania Dutch, Cajun French, Mexican Spanish, and above all Yiddish sentences, phrases, and expressions. Above all Yiddish, because Yiddish is already a hybrid, and possesses its own irresistibly comic nuances, as Leo Rosten has demonstrated in The Joys of Yiddish. In our volume, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett offers bilingual English-Yiddish tales from the Toronto Jewish community, whose theme as well as expression depart from conventional folktale specimens. The theme is the funny-sad saga of the immigrant newcomer and his trials and misadventures as he enters a new life.

A device employed by oral performers in various tribal societies to heighten and intensify the action, mood, and color of their narratives is the ideophone. As rendered into English, the ideophone appears as a meaningless word, possibly onomatopoeic, yet it is essential to the rhythm and imagery of the original presentation. The Gbaya of Cameroon are adept in the use of ideophones, and Philip Noss takes pains to indicate their presence in the texts he publishes here, and he has effectively explained them elsewhere.^

Our fourth point of redress calls for recognition of the narrator, a recognition now demanded by folklorists but as yet untransmitted to the folktale-reading public. Several tale-tellers who have emerged as personalities in their own right are represented in the Folktales of the World series. Known as the "'queen of Gaelic storytellers," Peig Sayers (1873-1958) lived most of her life on Great Blasket Island off the southwest coast of Ireland, where she was discovered by collectors for the Irish Folklore Commission and scholars of Gaelic. One collector secured 375 tales from her, of which forty were long wonder tales and forty-four songs, which she had learned mainly from her father. "It was a great pity," mused Peig, "that these gadgets and horns and machines weren't there then to take down his speech and conversation. . . ."® But the machines have recorded Peig. A close student of Gaelic, Robin Flower, has written of Peig: ". . . she has so clean and finished a style of speech that you can follow all the nicest articulations of the language on her lips without any effort; she is a natural orator, with so keen a sense of the turn of phrase and the lifting rhythm appropriate to Irish that her words could be written down as they leave her lips, and they would have the effect of literature with no savour of the artificiality of composition."^ Any reader of her dictated reminiscences.

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XXlll

translated and published as An Old Woman's Reflections, will appreciate both the literary quality and the narrative artistry of Peig's spoken words. These reminiscences belong to the province of folk narrative fully as much as do her Marchen, although folklorists have tended to slight such local and family sagas and traditionary incidents. The world of Peig Sayers and the island folk comes clearly into view in the Reflections, a world largely bounded by the sea and confined to the island life, where a quarrel over a hen or the theft of a fish furnish the stuff of fireside talk.

Tiny incidents grow into dramas in Peig's telling, and her tellings take the shape of tales, constructed around the jealous fits of a milkwoman against her lover's wife or the near-swamping of a boat coming in to Blasket with a load of turf. Even in translation from the "sweet, tasty Gaelic," the ring of folk speech and folk metaphor and the abundance of proverbs scattered throughout the quoted conversation convey the flavor of oral narration. The account of a day's pilgrimage to Wethers Well includes a telling to Peig by a local woman in Dingle of the legend behind the well, but this, the only folklore text in her Reflections, arises naturally within the rhythms of a remembered day's outing.

Cut from a different cloth is the English workingman W. H. Barrett, narrator of three volumes of personal saga. Tales from the Fens (1963), More Tales from the Fens (1964), local traditions he heard, told, and wrote down, and the autobiography he penned, A Fenman's Story (1965). Born in 1891 in the Fenland country of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk counties, until recently an ingrown marshland region, Barrett absorbed tavern tales from master Fen chroniclers and gives an oral source for each one. Although Barrett has written out his narratives, and Enid Porter, curator of the Folk Museum in Cambridge, has edited them—matters of regret for the folklorist, especially since she does not describe her methods—Katharine Briggs in Folktales of England has tape-recorded four of his recitals. Barrett, who relates no fictions, is a storytelling genius in a vein hitherto ignored or misunderstood by folklorists, local historical traditions and sagas. Some may deal with personal adventures of daily life, such as the journey to London Barrett's dad took as a ten-year-old lad in 1864, suggestive of Peig Sayer's one-day pilgrimage, save that Barrett paints a far different world, peopled by laborers, gypsies, brigands, Cambridge dons, monks, tarts, parsons, witches, one-horse farmers, Norman invaders, French prisoners, and German mercenaries who lived in or came through the fens. Other tales stretch far back in time, to events of the nineteenth, eighteenth, and seventeenth centuries, such as the flight of Charles 1 through the Fens in 1646. Thus in 1904 Barrett heard a history from an old sailor who heard it from his father, born in 1805, who in turn

xxiv Introduction

had heard it from his father born in 1770, a time ""when a chap could be hung for stealing sixpence.Still other tales fall within the conventional rubrics of the folklorist and can be labeled place legends or witch legends, but these too all bear Barrett's stamp in the close details of scene and setting, the wry humor, and the wealth of personal associations. In ""The Gipsy's Curse," which Katharine Briggs recorded directly from Barrett, he reveals only in the‘last sentence that the man on whom the gypsy laid the curse that he and his children would never die in bed, a curse later borne out, was his own father. All Barrett's narrations concern the Fen country and its folk and represent the traditional history of that countryside.

A very different repertoire, though of commensurate artistry, is offered by Mrs. Zsuzsanna Palko, the Szekler narrator recognized as Master of Folklore by the Hungarian government in 1954. Linda Degh not only published seventy-two of her tales in two volumes in the original Hungarian text, but in Folktales and Society examined Mrs. Palko's techniques, sources, style, and morality with the care literary critics reserve for novelists and poets. Here is the Marchen-teller supreme, the peasant woman specializing in complex magic tales. Knowing her over a fourteen-year period, Degh became familiar with her routine and her circle and makes them known to us. This is an unlettered, unworldly woman, startled at seeing a full-length mirror on her first visit to Budapest at seventy-four, a toiler throughout her life, pious and modest, but sensitive to the conditions of the poor. "When she was narrating, her accusing voice was like a whip, her judgment hard and implacable, her justice often without pity, even brutal at times. But Mrs. Palko is no revolutionary; true to the conservative instincts of the Bucovina peasant, she looks to God's will rather than to a people's revolt to right wrongs. At the same time she accepts the peasant's work ethic without complaint. Alongside the suffering but triumphant heroines of her Marchen appear shiftless females in her humorous realistic tales (such as "Lazybones," Mrs. Palko's contribution to Folktales of Hungary), who reap deserved punishment for idleness or vanity. In all her narratives, as Degh demonstrates, Mrs. Palko maintained the detached epic manner and a consistent story-line, no matter how considerably she might expand a text when the mood struck her.

In Willowvale District of the Transkei, thirty miles from the Indian Ocean in South Africa, a Xhosa woman named Nongenile Masithathu Zenani narrates ntsomi —the Xhosa word for traditional tales—with comparable skills. According to Harold Scheub, who met and recorded her tales in 1967-68, tall and regal Mrs. Zenani captures her audiences with subtle facial and bodily expressions and verbal delineation of character. Scheub compares her rendering of a tale episode in which a boy drinks a pregnancy-inducing medicine and grows breasts with ver-

Introduction

XXV

sions from two other Xhosa tellers. Where their tellings each occupy nine lines of print, Mrs. Zenani's text requires fifty-three lines. She introduces a scene in which the boy returns the bottle of medicine to his mother after drinking from it, elaborates on the boy's reactions to the budding breasts, and presents details of the boy's birthing of a baby girl.’“ Mrs. Zenani amplifies the bald statements of the briefer texts into dramatic tableaux. "Sikhuluma," a version told by Mrs. Zenani of the international tale type 313 The Girl as Helper in the Hero's Flight, runs to thirty-two printed pages and exhibits the narrator's gift for dialogue and cultural details.’^

These are some of the narrators who deserve tribute in our volume of the world's folktales. Others too will receive recognition in the following pages.

The format of this work follows the pattern of the Folktales of the World series. In addition to selections from the twelve published volumes, some thirty new countries and culture areas are represented by authentic field-collected texts, many previously unpublished. Since collectors present their supporting data in differing ways, I have not striven for complete uniformity in editing the collection. Collectors, like narrators, have their styles. The materials in folktales Told Around the World result from the joint contributions of sophisticated field-workers and talented oral performers.

Notes

1. F. H. Lee, Folktales of All Nations (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1946), p. 411.

2. Linda Degh, Folktales of Hungary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1965), pp. 335-36.

3. Sean O'Sullivan, Folktales of Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 278-79.

4. Reidar Christiansen, Folktales of Norway (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 18-19.

5. Wolfram Eberhard, Folktales of China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 103-10.

6. Richard M. Dorson, "Dialect Stories of the Upper Peninsula," Journal of American Folklore 61 (1948): 113-50.

7. Philip A. Noss, "Description in Gbaya Literary Art" in African Folklore, ed. R. M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), pp. 75-79.

8. Peig Sayers, An Old Woman's Reflections (London, 1962), p. ix.

9. Ibid., p. X.

10. W. H. Barrett, More Tales from the Fens (London, 1964), p. 66.

11. Linda Degh, Folktales and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), p. 199.

12. Harold Scheub, "The Art of Nongenile Mazithathu Zenani, a Gcaleka Ntsomi Performer" in African Folklore, pp. 118-20.

13. Ibid., pp. 528-61.

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Europe

Ireland

Fionn in Search of His Youth

From Sean O'Sullivan. Folktales of Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 57-60.

Irish Folklore Commission Vol. 984; 227-34. Recorded on Ediphone cylinders about 1930 by Dr. Robin Flower, Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum, from Peig Sayers, then fifty-six, Blasket Islands, Dingle, county Kerry. The present tale and many others recorded by Dr. Flower were transcribed in 1947 by Seosamh O Dalaigh, collector, by which time Peig had left the island and gone to live on the mainland near Dunquin. Peig helped the transcriber to fill in unintelligible gaps in the original recording.

The narrator, Peig Sayers, who died in December 1958 at the age of eighty-five, was one of the most celebrated of Irish storytellers. The Irish Folklore Commission holds in its archives more than 5,000 manuscript papers of hundreds of tales, songs, prayers, proverbs and items of local lore she recorded for them. For more on Peig see the editor's Introduction, pp. xxii-xxiii.

This tale belongs to the mythological cycle of the Fenian warriors, led by Fionn mac Cumhaill, who are believed to have flourished in the third century a.d. Fionn and his men performed mighty deeds of valor against giants, hags, and sorcerers. The discovery that Irish peasants in the twentieth century still related legends about the Fenians or Fionna astonished scholars. This allegorical Fionn legend is represented by 33 orally collected versions in the Irish Folklore Commission and by 8 published versions. For the references see O'Sullivan, p. 263.

Motifs include D1209.6 "Magic thong"; D1355.13 "Love-spot"; D1840 "Magic invulnerability"; D2061.2.1 "Death-giving glance"; F863.1 "Unbreakable chain"; K1886.2 "Mists which lead astray"; T466 "Necrophilism: sexual intercourse with dead human body"; Zlll "Death personified"; and Z126 "Strength personified."

One fine day, Fionn mac Cumhaill and fourteen of his men were hunting on the top of Muisire Mountain. They had spent the whole day since sunrise there but met no game.

Ireland

Late in the evening, Fionn spoke, "" 'Tis as well for us to face for home, men. We're catching nothing, and it will be late when we, hungry and thirsty, reach home."

"Upon my soul. We're hungry and thirsty as it is," said Conan.

They turned on their heels and went down the mountainside, but if they did, they weren't far down when a dark black fog fell on them. They lost their way and didn't know whether to go east or west. Finally they had to sit down where they were.

"I'm afraid, men, that we're astray for the evening," said Fionn. "I never yet liked a fog of this kind."

After they had sat for a while talking and arguing, whatever look Diarmaid gave around, he saw a beautiful nice lime-white house behind them.

"Come along, men, to this house over there," said he. "Maybe we'll get something to eat and drink there."

They all agreed and made their way to the house. When they entered, there was nobody before them but a wizened old man who was lying in a bent position at the edge of the hearth and a sheep which was tied along by the wall. They sat down. The old man raised his head and welcomed Fionn and his men heartily.

"By my soul," said Diarmaid to himself. " 'Tisn't very likely that our thirst or hunger will be eased in this hovel."

After awhile, the old man called loudly to a young woman who was below in a room telling her to come up and get food ready for Fionn and his men. Then there walked up the floor from below, a fine strapping handsome young woman, and it didn't take her long to get food and drink ready for them. She pulled a long ample table out into the middle of the floor, spread a tablecloth on it, and laid out the dinner for the Fianna. She seated Fionn at the head of the table and set every man's meal in front of him. No sooner had each of them put the first bite of food into his mouth than the sheep which was tied along the wall stretched and broke the hard hempen tying that was holding her and rushed towards the table. She upset it by lifting one end of it and not a scrap of food was left that wasn't thrown to the floor in front of the Fianna.

"The devil take you," cried Conan. "Look at the mess you have made of our dinner, and we badly in need of it."

"Get up, Conan, and tie the sheep," said Fionn.

Conan, looking very angry at the loss of his dinner, got up against his will and walked to the sheep. He caught her by the top of the head and tried to drag her toward the wall. But if he broke his heart in the attempt, he couldn't tie her up. He stood there looking at her.

"By heavens," said he. "As great a warrior and hero as I am, here's this sheep today, and I can't tie her. Maybe someone else can?"

Fionn in Search of His Youth

'"Get up, Diarmaid, and tie the sheep," said Fionn.

Diarmaid stood up and tried, but if he did, he failed to tie her. Each of the fourteen men made an attempt, but it was no use.

"My shame on ye," said the old man. "To say that as great as your valor has ever been, ye can't tie an animal as small as a sheep to the side of the wall with a bit of rope."

He got up from the edge of the hearth and hobbled down the floor. As he went, six pintsful of ashes fell from the backside of his trousers, because he had been so long lying on the hearth. He took hold of the sheep by the scruff of the head, pulled her easily in to the wall, and tied her up. When the Fianna saw him tie the sheep, they were seized with fear and trembling, seeing that he could do it after themselves had failed, brave and all though they were. The old man returned to his place by the fire.

"Come up here and get some food ready for Fionn and his men," he called to the young woman.

She came up from the room again, and whatever knack or magic she had, she wasn't long preparing new food to set before them.

"Start eating now, men; ye'll have no more trouble," said the old man. "This dinner will quench your thirst and hunger."

When they had eaten and were feeling happy with their stomachs full, they drew their chairs back from the table. Whatever peering around Fionn had—he was always restless—he looked toward the room and saw the young woman sitting on a chair there. He got a great desire to talk to her for a while. He went down to the room to her.

"Fionn mac Cumhaill," said she; "you had me once and you won't have me again."

He had to turn on his heel and go back to his chair. Diarmaid then went down to her, but he got the same answer; so did each of the rest of the Fianna. Oisi'n was the last to try, but she said the same thing to him. She took him by the hand and led him up the floor till she stood in front of the Fianna.

"Fionn mac Cumhaill," said she; "ye were ever famous for strength and agility and prowess, and still each of you failed to tie the sheep. This sheep is not of the usual kind. She is Strength. And that old man over there is Death. As strong as the sheep was, the old man was able to overcome her. Death will overcome ye in the same way, strong and all as ye are. 1 myself am a planet sent by God, and it is God who has placed this hovel here for ye. 1 am Youth. Each of you had me once but never will again. And now, I will give each of you whatever gift he asks me for."

Fionn was the first to speak, and he asked that he might lose the smell of clay, which he had had ever since he sinned with a woman who was dead.

Ireland

Diarmaid said that what he wanted was a love spot on his body, so that every young woman who saw it would fall in love with him.

Oscar asked for a thong which would never break for his flail.

Conan asked for the power of killing hundreds in battle, while he himself would be invulnerable.

On hearing this, Diarmaid spoke.

""Alas!" said he. ""If Conan is given the power of killing hundreds, for heaven's sake, don't let him know how to use it. He's a very strong, but a very vicious, man, and if he loses his temper, he won't leave one of the Fianna alive."

And that left Conan as he was ever afterward. He never knew how to use this power that he had, except once at the Battle of Ventry, when he looked at the enemy through his fingers and slew every one of them.

Each of the Fianna in turn asked for what he wanted. I don't know what some of them asked for, but Oisi'n asked for the grace of God. They say that he went to the Land of Youth and remained there until Saint Patrick came to Ireland, so that he would get the proper faith and knowledge of God and extreme unction when he died. He got them too, for when he returned to Ireland, Saint Patrick himself baptized him and anointed him before he died.

The Cold May Night

From Sean O'Sullivan, Folktales of Ireland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 15-18.

Type 1927 The Cold May Night. Irish Folklore Commission Vol. 1009, 289-98. Recorded in February, 1946, by Liam MacCoisdeala, collector, from Mi'cheal O Coileain (70), Cam Mor, Claregalway, county Galway. Mi'cheal heard the story more than fifty years before from his father, Tomas (60), of the same townland.

Forty-three manuscript and published versions of this tale have been recorded in Ireland. For printed versions, see D. de Hide, Celtic Review 10 (December, 1914-June, 1916): 116-43. It was republished by de Hide in Legends of Saints and Sinners, pp. 40-55, 56-62 and Bealoideas 14 (1944): 207-8. A study of the tale against its literary background has been made by E. Hull, "The Hawk of Achill, or the Legend of the Oldest of the Animals," Folk-Lore 43 (1932): 376-409.

Achill is a large island off the Mayo coast. Assaroe is the name of a

The Cold May Night

waterfall on the River Erne in county Donegal. Old May Night has been the traditional name for the night of 11 May, ever since the calendar was changed in 1752.

Motifs include B124.1 ''Salmon as oldest and wisest of animals"; B841 "Long-lived animals"; R322 "Eagle's nest as refuge"; and X1620 "Lies about cold weather."

There never was as cold a night as Old May Night long, long ago. It was the eleventh of May.

Hundreds of years later, there came a very cold evening. The Old Crow of Achill was alive at the time, and he felt the great cold. He didn't know how he would survive the night; so he flew off to a wood some distance away. He hovered about, and what should he spy on top of the highest tree in the wood but a bird's nest. He decided to pass the night in it.

When he went to it, he found an eagle's fledgling inside. The mother eagle was away, looking for food; so the old crow took hold of the fledgling in his beak and carried it off and killed it somewhere in the wood. He threw the body into some bushes and flew back to the nest.

It wasn't very long until the old eagle returned with a big lump of meat from somewhere. Night had fallen, and she thought that it was her fledgling that was in the nest. She dropped the meat, and the old crow began to eat it with joy. Then the old eagle lay down on top of him. She spent the whole night rising up and jumping about and complaining— for it is said that birds and animals could talk at that time—that she had never felt a colder night.

The Old Crow of Achill was covered with sweat during the night, fearing that when day came and the eagle saw him, she would kill him. The eagle kept complaining about the cold, and at last the old crow 'remarked that there had been a colder night.

"How do you know that," asked the eagle, "seeing that you only

came out of the shell a month ago?"

"Yes, there was a colder night—Old May Night," said the old crow.

"1 find it hard to believe you," said the eagle.

"Such a night did come," said the old crow. "If you don't believe me, go to an old blackbird in a certain forge. She'll be there before you, and you'll find that she will tell you that a colder night than last night came one time."

The old eagle got angry. She flew off and never stopped until she came to the Blackbird of the Forge. The blackbird was inside before her, standing on an iron rod. The blackbird welcomed her.

"This is what brought me here," said the eagle. "A young fledgling of mine came out of the egg a month ago. Last night was the coldest I ever experienced, and 1 spent it rising up out of the nest with the cold.

Ireland

When dawn was near, my young one said to me that there had been a colder night, but I can't imagine how it could know, and it only a month old. It told me if I didn't believe it to go to the Blackbird of the Forge to find out."

"Well, I'm the Blackbird of the Forge, and last night was the coldest I ever felt. I was put into this forge when I was young. This iron rod on which I am standing was so many inches long and so many inches thick at that time. Once every seven years, I used to rub my beak to it; and if I rub it once more, it will break. I have been here that length of time, and last night was the coldest I ever felt; but," said the blackbird, "you must go to a certain bull in a certain field. If he can't tell you, I don't know where you'll find out about it."

The eagle flew off and never stopped until she reached the field. The bull was there.

"What brought me here," said the eagle, "is that a month ago a young fledgling of mine came out of the egg. Last night was the coldest night I ever felt, and I spent the whole night rising up out of my nest to try to keep myself warm. Then when the dawn was near, my young one told me that there had been a colder night. I can't imagine how it could know, and it only a month out of the egg. It told me if I didn't believe it to go to you. Have you ever heard of a colder night than last night?"

"No, I haven't," said the bull. "I have been here for thousands of years, and two horns have fallen off me each year. They have been used to make a fence around this one-acre field, and only the two horns on my head now are wanting to complete the fence. That shows how long I have been here. And still, last night was the coldest night I ever experienced. But the Blind Salmon of Assaroe is older than I am, and he might be able to give you some account of it."

"Where is the Blind Salmon of Assaroe?" asked the eagle.

"In a certain river," said the bull, naming it. "That's where he always is."

Anger came over the eagle, but she flew off and never stopped until she reached the river. She watched the part of the river where the bull said the salmon might be, and what did she see below her but the salmon swimming in the river. She spoke to him, and he replied.

"Are you the Blind Salmon of Assaroe?"

"I am."

"Did you feel cold last night?" asked the eagle.

"I did," replied the salmon.

"I never felt a night so cold," said the eagle. "What brought me here to you is that I have a young fledgling, and I spent all of last night, jumping up and down in the nest, trying to keep it and myself warm. Toward morning, the fledgling, which is only a month out of the egg.

The Cold May Night

said to me that there had once been a colder night. I had never heard of it. It told me if I didn't believe it to go to the Blackbird of the Forge at a certain place, and he might know. I went to the Blackbird of the Forge, and he told me that he had been perched on an iron rod so many inches long and so many inches thick since he was young. Once every seven years, he rubbed his beak against the iron rod, he said, and one more rub would cut it through. He said that last night was the coldest he had ever experienced. He advised me to go to a certain bull in a certain field, because he might know. I went to the bull, and he told me that last night was the coldest he had ever felt. He had been in the field for thousands of years; a pair of horns had fallen from him each year; and the fence around the one-acre field was made of these horns; only the two horns on his head were needed to complete the fence. That was his age. But he told me to go to the Blind Salmon of Assaroe, so that he might tell me about it, and you are that salmon."

"I am," said the Blind Salmon of Assaroe. "A night colder than last night came without any doubt. I was here on Old May Night, the eleventh of May, long ago. It was freezing. I was jumping up and down in the water. It was freezing so hard that when I jumped up one time, the water had frozen when I came down. I was frozen into the ice and couldn't free myself. About two hours after daybreak, what should be passing but the Old Crow of Achill. He saw me frozen in the ice. Down he flew and started pecking at the ice with his beak. He made a hole in the ice and picked out my eye and ate it. That's why I have had only one eye ever since, and that's why I'm called the Blind Salmon of Assaroe. But look here," said the blind salmon, "as sure as I am here, it was the Old Crow of Achill that was in your nest last night and not your young one!"

"Ah, it can't be," said the eagle.

"It was," said the blind salmon. "Only he could have told you about Old May Night."

The eagle returned angrily home, but when she reached the nest, neither her fledgling nor the old crow was there. The old crow had left, and it was well for him. If she caught him, his days would be ended.

Scotland (Lowlands)

The King of England

Collected by Hamish Henderson. Forthcoming in Folktales of Scotland.

Told by an Aberdeenshire traveling tinker (gypsy), Andrew Stewart, in August 1954 in Causewayend, Aberdeen, in the home of Jeannie Robertson, the famed ballad singer and herself once a traveling tinker. Hamish Henderson notes: ""This was the great summer when Jeannie"s wee house was always full of friends, relatives, and casual visitors, all eager to record ballads, stories, rhymes, fiddle music, etc., for my ferro-graph. The personnel in the house changed like a perpetually mobile Commedia dell'Arte. Children stayed awake as long as possible, then stretched out on the floor and slept like puppies. Andrew, a man in his fifties, came in while Jeannie's Aunt Maggie was singing ""The Forester in the Wood"" (a version of Child 110), waited while she continued with ""Bogie's Bonnie Bell"" and ""The Dewie Dens o" Yarrow,"" and then launched into ""The King of England."" Asked where he learned the story, Andrew replied, ""From my own brains.""

This long wonder tale contains some of the key motifs for type 303 The Twins or Blood Brothers, which appears in two variants in the Grimms" Household Tales. The German folktale authority Kurt Ranke studied 770 versions of the Marchen in Die Zwei Bruder (Folklore Fellows Communications 114). It is well distributed throughout Europe and densely reported from Finland, Ireland, Germany, France, and Hungary.

Motifs that correspond to the Aarne-Thompson type outline are as follows: E761 ""Life token. Object has mystic connection with the life of a person, so that changes in the life-token indicate changes in the person, usually disaster or death""; Tl5 ""Love at first sight""; L161 ""Lowly hero marries princess""; G263 ""Witch injures, enchants or transforms""; E761.1.3 ""Life-token: track fills with blood""; F577.2 ""Brothers identical in appearance""; Z210 ""Brothers as heroes""; T685.1 ""Twin adventurers""; D700 ""Person disenchanted""; K1311.1 ""Husband's twin brother mistaken by woman for her husband."

In addition a number of other motifs can be noted. Indeed Andrew Stewart's narrative constitutes a treasury of magical themes. T55.1

The King of England

'Trincess declares her love for lowly hero"; F852.1 "Glass coffin"; D765.1.2 "Disenchantment by removal of enchanting pin (thorn)"; D2070 "Bewitching"; T24.1 "Love-sickness"; M200 "Bargains and promises"; D1931.2 "Magic sword always inflicts mortal wound"; F530 "Exceptionally large or small men"; N821 "Help from little man"; D1254.1 "Magic wand"; D5 "Enchanted person"; D6 "Enchanted castle"; D1980 "Magic invisibility"; D1065.2 "Magic shoes"; D1552 "Mountains or rocks open and close"; D114.1.1.1 "Transformation: girl to deer (fawn) (by druid)"; D7 "Enchanted valley"; D191 "Transformation: man to serpent (snake)."

Well, there were once in times on the side of a mountain there was an old man and an old woman lived, and they had two sons, one called Jack and the other called William. So William one day said to his brother. Jack, "Jack," he says, "there's too little here," he says, "to keep us. I maun go," he says, "to make," he says, "push my fortune to keep my father and my old mother."

So Jack, he says, "Oh, brother," he says, "don't be like that," he says—" 'cos there's as much in the little croft," he says, "now, as kep hiz from our boyhood upward to manhood," he says, "and we never wantit."

"That's quite all right," he says, "but I never see the world," he says, "stayin' at the fuit of this mountain."

So William prepared he would go and push his fortune. So he said to his mother, "Now, mother," he says, "bake me a bannock and roast me a collop," he says—"I'm away to push my fortune."

His mother says, "Oh, William," she says, "ye're not going to leave us, surely. We've been living here since ever you were born," she says, "till now, and what is the reason," she says, "you're leavin'?"

"Well," he says, "mother. I've made my mind up," he says, "to push my fortune," he says, "let it be right or let it be wrong," he says, "I'm

goin'. So you can roast me a bannock and toast me a collop, for I'm

• / // goin .

So his mother roastit him the bannock and toastit him the collop, and he sets off and before he gaed he says, "Now John-Jack," he said —"if you see that thing changin' its color," he says, "I'm in danger and if not," he says, "I'm quite safe."

"Very well," Jack says, "I'll keep watchin' it by night and by day." So Jack, steady day after day. Jack watches this figure.

So William he's pushin' on over hedges, ditches, gates, and stiles— there was rest for the birds, but none for Jack. So one night he was persuaded to lie at the fuit of a tree. So he says, "My gracious! if I lie here," he says, "I'll be eaten with animals," he said, "or stung with snakes," he said, "or something," he said; "the best plan that I can do

Scotland (Lowlands)

is move on—keep on my feet/' And as he was travelin' along in the dark, he happened to slip his fuit and he fell down a precipice. So failin' down this precipice he thought as* he was failin' he saw light. When he landed at the fuit, he says, "My-oh," he says, "I could ha' sworn," he says, "I saw light as I was failin'." So when he thought he saw the light, he climm'd up the other side, unhurt, and he foond wi' his hands a little fuit-path. So he got on to this little fuit-path, and he's travelin' on—he says, "This is the direction," he says, "I saw this light" (speakin' to himself), and when he comes round the small bend of the rocks he looks in, and here was a very old gentleman sittin'. "Well," he says, "I wonder," he says, "can I go in here? I wonder," he says, "would that man," he says, "interfere with me by any means or any manner? Well," he says, "I'm pushin' my fortune, and when you are pushin' your fortune you must face the strong as well as the weak." And so he took courage and he walks in.

"Good-evenin'! my old man."

"Good-evenin', son!" this old man replied to him.

Now he's seen by this the old man is for no harm. "Come in and sit down," he says.

When he cam in and sat down, this old man was toastin' and roastin', hitherwise and titherwise, a lump of a sheep.

"Now, son," he says, "you'll be hungry?"

"Well, tell you the truth," he says, "Dad, Tm not very full."

So he catches a sheep and he divides it oot in two shares. He said, "There is a part for you and one for me."

So he lived there all night with this old man—very piercin'-lookin' gentleman he was—William couldn't keep from lookin' at him now and again, he was so wild. And William one dead-night he says to himself, "Noo I wonder," he says, "would that creature," he says, "if a man," he said, "he's very fearsome. I wonder," he says, "would he be for harm or good? But I shall not risk it," William says, "I shall try an' just get out."

Very well, that night. Jack, when he got the old man asleep, he skins out. So he's away up this mountains and glens as far as I could tell you or you could tell me, over hedges, ditches, gates, and stiles, till daylight came in in the mornin'. So when daylight cam in in the mornin', sir, he's about twenty to twenty-five miles from this old man's home by now, and he says, "Now I am here," he says, "and seein' I am here," he says, "am as hungry and as weak," he says, "I don't think I can go much further," he says, "with the travelin' and the bite of supper that I got," he says, "was very, very small," he says.

So he decided to have the lie-down at the dike-side here, restin' himself. So he did so and when he waked he rises up and he looks around him and he's seein' like a house away at the distance. "Well, well," he

The King of England

says, ^‘'this is a house—will it be," he says, "good people or bad people," he says, "I must gae there for the purpose of gettin' a bite of bread or something."

So he goes on, pushes on to this house, and when he comes to the house he raps at the door and oot comes a very old lady.

"Well," she says, "my man. What do you want?"

"Well," he says, "mother, I want" he says, "something to eat," he says, "because I am very weak with hunger."

"Well, come in, son," she says, "I have very little here," she says, "tell you the truth what we live on here," she says, "I don't suppose you would eat it," she says—"it's what they call 'birds' feet.'"

"Birds' feet," he said, "well," he said, "I'd eat a very small trifle."

But, howanever, he got served wi' this birds' feet, an' during the time he was at his meal in comes two as pretty girls as ever his eyes ever lookit upon, in fact, he'd never seen a girl before—this was the first as ever he saw, an he didn't know really was it men or was it women? Because he saw nothing of the kind. And he says, "Well, my old woman," he says, "what is this people," he said—"are they he or are they she?" he said.

"They're she—that is two of my daughters," she says.

"Oh me," he said, "they're two lovely creatures."

"Yes, and will you not live with us?" one of them replied to Jack.

"No, no," he says, "I'm pushin' my fortune, my girl," he says, "an' I see by this little house, you're needin' a fortune yourself, never mind sharin' with me. Where do you work?" he replies.

"I work," she said, "at the King's castle down."

"Oh," he said, "thir a King's castle here, are they?"

"Yes," she says, "thir a King's castle, an' a very savage brute I may tell you he is, 'cos doesn't matter anything flyin', creepin', or walkin', he either destroys, or beheads by some means."

"Well," William said, "that's my opportunity," he says, "if he destroys me it'll be my end, an' if I succeed," he says, "I'll have a job."

So he decided to gae down to this King's castle. Cornin' to the castle, he saw it was a right, nice, big sort of a buildin'—he says, "This is as nice a buildin' 's ever I saw," he said, "this wud make my mother's hoose twenty times over," he says, "the little small moat of a house that we have."

So it doesn't matter—he goes to the door an' he raps an' out comes the butler.

"Well," the butler says, "my man, what d'you want?"

He says, "I want," he said, "to see the King an' try an' get a job anywhere," he says. "I'm a single man," he says, "no married or nothin' like this, an' I want to see, can I get a job."

"Well," the butler replies, "if this King has a job for ye, good an'

14 Scotland (Lowlands)

well, an' if he hasn't, it's jist too bad for you. I can't help it," he says. "If I was you," the butler says, "I wud quit it."

"Oh, no," he says, "I shall not quit it," he says, "I shall see the King, let it be right or let it be wrong."

So the King came at the finish an' seen him. He says, "Now, William," he says, "listen. If I've a job for you," he said, "I shall give it to ye, but you'll give me time to consider," he says, "and look over," he says, "my books." So he lookit over. "Well," he said, "you are a lucky man," he said, "you may thank your lucky stars."

"Why, sir?" said William, says he.

He says, "Well, I have a job into the nine-stall stable, where there never was a man breathin' or born from his mother," he says, "could live five minutes."

"Ah," William says, "that's very strange," he says, "and what may be in it?" he says.

"It's horse, and there havena been a livin' soul go near that horses this last fifty years, and so they werenae young."

So, howanever, William he took the job and he was showed down to this nine-stall stable. When he gaed down to the nine-stall stable, he seen there was no ways of gettin' in—the doors was barricaded up with muck and dung and rubbidge of all sorts. "Well," William said, "I'll have to get in," he said, "to see thaim beasts." And when he got in, there were a skylight on the top of the building, so he lowers him-sel' down from the skylight and he comes into the hay-loft! "Well," he says, "my gracious," he said, "this is terrible," he says, "the like of that I never saw in my life," he says, "animals," he says, "bein' so bad," he says, "for fifty years," he says, "it's very, very wild. "But," he says, "I'll do my best."

So he got doon through the blow-hole, as we call the hay-hole, and lookit at his horses. The horses smelt him, in fact their heads was almost through holes. He hadn't far to go down. But anyway he fed his animals, as any man wud do. Seein' he fed his animals, the beasts smelt him from the sole of the feet tae the crown of the head.

"Well, well," he said, "it may be bad horse, but I don't think it," he says, and he startit the cairtin' out from the back of the door till he got the door of this stable opened.

"Now," he says, "it's for the barriein' out of this dung." So it took him three weeks to barrie this dung out of this place, till he got it anything like a stable. But it doesn't matter—he was finished wi' that now, and he started reddin' up his stable, cleanin' his harness, dressin' his horses up, combin' them, and dressing their hair up to the best of his abilities.

"Well," he said, "they dae nae harm, I don't know in the world of goodness," he says, "why is the King so severe to these animals," he says, "nice beasts; in fact," he says, "I could do with them all my life."

The King of England

But each horse jist looked at him and nickert at him. ''Well/' he said, "they're very hamely animals."

But it doesnae matter—he's sittin' cleanin' his harness one day, and this harness that the King had at one time of life happen! to be gold-mounted, but you wouldnae ken were it brass, copper, or silver by this time. So he stopped his cleanin' and he seen what he had, he seen it was very valuable harness. So he cleans them, and his stable and his harness, he had them spotless.

"Well," he said, "that's Number One," and he's sittin' cleanin' away on to a stone at the door—who happen! to pass, but the King's daughter? Well, she looks at this man, she says, "What a puir man that is— as puir a man as ever I saw." So she gaed home and when she gaed home she took bedfast, if you understand what that means—took bedfast and she was gaed to bed and she was breakin' her heart now for this gentleman. But her father asked her what was ado, what happen!—he couldn't tell what happen!.

"Well," he says, "I'll send for all the doctors," he says, "that I can get, and professors, till I'll find out what's ado with you, my lady," he says. "There's something far worse with you." But he sent for an old Scottish doctor. "Well," this doctor replied, "now King," he says, "I want to be in this room alone with this girl and alone only," he says. "I want to ask her things I don't wish you or no other man to hear."

"Well," the King says, "you can have," he says, "your demand, come out everyone," he said, "come out bar the two soldiers, to see if you're gonnae do any good or not."

"Now," he says, "my girl, listen," he says, "you're in love."

"Yes," she says, "I'm in love."

"And who in the world," he says, "are ye in love with?"

"Well," she says, "I'll tell ye," she says, "doctor," she says, "seein' you found out I'm in love. I'm in love," she says, "with our own groom," she says, "in the nine-stall stable."

"Oh," he says, "you weren't long," he says, "of makin' love—he's only there about six months yet, as Tm led to believe."

"Yes," she says, "it doesn't matter though it was only six days," she says, "Tm in love with him," she says, "and if I don't get him I'll die."

So the doctor called in her father and her mother, and the doctor said she was in love.

"Who on earth," they says, "in this world can she be in love with?"

"Well," he says, "she can tell you."

"And who are ye in love wi'?" he says, "my daughter. Let it be gentle, simple," he says, "let it be what it likes, tell me," he says.

"Well," she says, "father," she says, "Tm in love with your groom in the nine-stall stable."

"Is that man alive yet?" he says.

16 Scotland (Lowlands)

"'Yes/' she says, "father, alive and alive—like," she says, "as live as what you are."

"But," he says, "my daughter, if he's a man that can work with them horse, I don't know very well—like," he says, "if a gentleman of that kind should have anything to do with ye." He says, "He must be more than a mortal man," he says, "or he wouldnae be there all this time."

"Can't help it," she says, "that's the man that I want, and if I don't get him," she says, "I'm goin to die—I'll break my heart."

"Right, I'll ask him."

So down he goes. When he cam down, there was William sittin' cleanin' away at his straps as usual.

"Well," he says, "William, you're busy?"

"I am," he says, "my noble King"—bows to the King—he says, "I am."

"Well, I've come down here to ask you a question," he says, "dinna be insulted," he says, "when I ask you," he says, "this question," he says—"in fact, if I'd ha' been a woman," he says, "instead of a man," he says, "I wud hae married you myself."

William looks at him. He says, "My goodness gracious!" he says, "what's gone wrong?"

"My daughter," he says, "is almost dyin' for you."

"For me!" he says, "why is she dyin' for me?" he says—"I never saw her in my life."

"Yes," he says, "she saw you," he says, "for you did not see her."

"So very well," he says, "if I can save your daughter's life," he says.

So William he washed himsel' up and made hissel' as tidy as possible to see this young girl. So up he goes, approaches the big house, and raps at the hall door.

Out comes the butler. "Well, my man," he says, "what are you after?"

He says, "I want to see the King as usual."

"All right," he says, "I'll bring him for ye."

"Come in," he says, "William," he says, "and see my girl."

So he took William in, climm'd up this stairs, tae the topmost room of the palace. When he gaed up there, there was the fairest lady lyin' in bed he ever saw in his life.

"My goodness gracious," he says, "girl," he says, "I am led to believe," he says, "you are dyin' for me," he says. "I never happent to see you," he says, "or fixed eyes before."

"That's all right," she says, "William," she says, "I have learnt your name," she says, "since I lay down."

"But howanever," he says, "and what can I do for ye?"

"Well," she says, "if I don't get you tomorrow," she says, "I'll die."

The King of England

""You'll die/' he says, ""for me?"

"Yes," she says, "for you, you only."

Well, he consented. He says, "Well, to save a life," he says, "I'll marry you," he says, "only to save your life."

"Very well!"

So the marriage preparations got on to the best of abilities. For about a month it lasted, day and night it lasted, aye on ahead, no stop. And at the finish they had a dance out on the open fields, with all his tenants and natives of his place. So he danced along there with everyone, man, female, and every sort, and the hinmost ones he danced with was the young women in the old house where he got his dinner, ye remember that, yes, well, they were the last dance that he had, and durin' the time one of those that danced wi' him flippit this that they call a sleepin'-pin at the back of his ear, and he danced away dead.

Now William, he was dead, and the safiest uproar got into this castle that you've heard in your life, about the good-son now bein' dead and only a few days married.

"Very well," this lady says, "he is dead, and he shall not be buried —I will not allow him to be buried. He'll be put into a lead coffin and a glass lid as I can see him night and by day, I can look at him."

"Very well," that was replied to.

Now I leave off o' there and I go straight back to his brother Jack. This is where the fun comes in.

So Jack rose one morning at home, and he looks at this mark that his brother made, and he see'd it was red. He ran to his mother. He said, "Mother, mother!" he said, "my brother's in danger," he says. "Will you roast me a bannock," he says, "for I'm away to push my fortune too."

"Silly man," she says, "what are you goin" to do," she says, "pushin" your fortune," she says, "after your brother," she says—"a clever man and a better man and a stronger man every way," she says, "nor what you are," she says.

"I cannot help it hoo clever he may be, or hoo strong," he says, "I'm goin' to follow him," he says, "and nothing will stop me, and if you don't bake me your bannock," he says, "and roast me my collop," he says, "I'll go without it."

"Well, well," she says, "I'll bake your bannock," she says, "and I'll roast your collop."

So she bakes the bannock and she roasts the collop, and Jack says, "Well, mother," he says, "and father," he says, "good-bye!" he said. "If ever I come back I'll see you and if I never come back ye shall never see me."

So he set sail after his brother. Day and night he's wanderin' on, day after day and night, the same direction and the same road as his

18 Scotland (Lowlands)

brother gaed, and almost the same words passed through his lips: "U I lie down here at night. Til be eaten with wild animals, and if I sleep," he says, "God knows what'll happen to me, and if I climm a tree and faa asleep," he says, "I'll faa doon and probably be killed, and the best thing I can do is keep wanderin' on." So Jack he wanders on, and he made the same mishap that his brother made—he slippit down this precipice the same way in the dark. So at the slippin' down he noticed the same light in the same way as his brother saw, but landed unhurt. "Well," he says, "thank God for that—that's a miracle," and he bended down to this little burn and took a drink of water and he says, "Well, that refreshens me," he says, "most champion."

So he climbs up this steep hill (as you would call it) up till he come to a little fuit-path, and when he comes to this little fuit-path he gropes in the dark with his hands—and he found it was a path, and on this path with his feet and he follows it on for about maybe a quarter of a mile, and he lookit round this corner of the rock, the same light and the same man that his brother saw.

"Now, I wonder," he said, "was this his culprit or not, or I wonder," he said, "was this man on his good side or not?" But he says, "I'll see." So he gaed steppin' in—an auld man, very rough and hard-toned talkin', a brave-lookin' hero, his way. So the auld man lookit roond quite coolly and says, "Well," he says, "good-evenin'," he said, "son." (For I may tell you this two brothers was very like one another.) "Son," he said, "have you come back?"

"I have come back," he says, "father."

"And where have you been?" he said, "or where were you wanderin' to?"

So he made up some scheme of his own of some sort that I do not know and told the old man. So the old man said, "Well," he said, "there's never such a thing will happen again," he said, "you'll be wi' me," he said, "for one month," which he was, and during that month he learned to be the cleverest swordsman that ever traveled Scotland or England.

"Well," he said, "thank God," he says, "I've learned something during my month's holidays wi' this old man, but," he says, "this hasnae been fetchin' me my brother." So that night he considered himself. "Well," he says, "tonight" he says, "I'll make my escape, unseen to that old hero." And when he waked through the middle of the night, this old man he was sleepin', snorin' and sleepin', and when he gaed out he'd an armory to pass, and when he gaed in here there was swords, guns, bow an' arrows—there was every sort of things ye could mention in this world, so he armed himself up with a sword, and he set off. So he's goin' on all night, all the same direction as his brother gaed and by good luck he just drappit on the same road as his brother drappit.

The King of England

and he says, "'Well," he says, "Til go and have a rest here,"' he says, ""for I am very weariet, hungry and tired. And so whatever comes ahead. . . ." So he fell fast asleep and when he wakened, as usual as his brother, he lookit around him and he saw the samne little house. ""Well," he said, ""there is a house," he says, ""perhaps," he says, ""I might get some,"' he says, ""word or whatever if my brother cam" this way at all,"' he says. "He'd be in there sure enough," he says, "and," he says, "they'll be able to tell me about his whereabouts."

So, it doesn't matter, he made to this little house, and whenever he gaed to this house it happent to be dinner-time, and the young girls and the old missis was busy at dinner and when he raps at the door the young woman comes out and looks at him, she cries "Murder!" she says—"a ghost!" she says. And when the old one heard her she made a race to the door—she's out through the window and everyone braks oot of the back windae and they're away for their livin' life—auld man, auld wumman, and the two girls—he stood mesmerized, lookin' after them.

So it doesnae matter anyway. He says, "I back you," he says, "this is the culprit," he says, "was the end of my brother. That shows," he says, "William and I," he says, "is very like one another," he says (they were like twin brothers), "and that shows," he says, "this is the lot," he says, "that has been the death of my brother. Well," he says, "if I can't get him," he says, "I'll plunder the house," and he plunders the house and all the bits of scrap eatables he could get, he ate them, 'cos he was very hungry, and he lookit onto the mantelshelf, and he saw a purse and seven gold sovereigns in it. "Well," he says, "this will come with me too." So he put that in his pocket and he strolls out of the door, and he heppent to look down to the direction of the castle and there he spies this large castle.

"Aha!" he says, "what is this down here?" he says—"I never happent to see that when I came in about," he says. "Who in the world," he says, "lives here?" So he made his way down to this castle, as his brother done. So he came to the back door, and he raps, and out comes the butler. When the butler looks at him, he cries, "Ah, murder!—the ghost!" and he fainted and he picked hisself up and he goes back in and tells the rest of the servants. "Oh!" says he—"William's at the door—the dead man's spirit's at the door."

"Nonsense!" the old cook said, "whatever good I done William," she says, "I done him no harm in this world, and," she says, "I'll go!" and she took a bundle of Bibles in her oxter—readin' all the road. She says, "Now, William," she says, "what do you want?" she says, "back on this earth again?" she says. "I thought when a man parted he parted for ever."

He says, "My old lady," he says, "Tm afraid you are makin' a great

20 Scotland (Lowlands)

mistake/' he says—"I am not William," he says, "I am Jack, happen to be, to you," he says.

"Jack," she says, "you are a spirit-man," she says, "you think I don't know a spirit—you'd think I don't know," she says, "my own king when I see him?" she says—"don't pull curtains over my eyes like that."

"Well," he says, "feel me—I am mortal.^' So she felt him, she found out that he was mortal.

"What like a man," he says—"how is that William?" he says, "you're shoutin' about," he says, "what like a man is he?"

"He's our King," she replied.

"Your King?"

"Yes."

"Well," he says, "I'll give the world," he says, "if I saw your King."

"Oh, there's no one allowed," she says, "up" she says, "where he is buried," she says. "He is buried," she says, "into the topmost room of the castle. And," she said, "he's buried in," she says, "to his wife's room."

"Good heavens!" he says, "that's a funny place to have a graveyard," he says, "intae a room," he said, "a human being," he says, "alive."

"Well," he says, "I've seven gold sovereigns here," he says, "I'll distribute them among you," he says, "if you take me up and only gie me one glimpse of him," he says, "because I want to see is it the man that I'm after or not."

Well, seven gold sovereigns in those days was like a hundred pound nowadays. She says, "Well, I'll see what the butler says." So she inquired of the butler; well, the butler says, "It's a great salary to us," he said, "seven gold sovereigns," he says, "we only get a sovereign in a year, and that's seven year's wages we're getting all at once," he says, "and we'll let him see if he takes off his shoes."

"Very well," Jack replies, "I'll take off my shoes."

So he took off his shoes and the butler guides him up the stair. When he cam to the door he says, "Cannie!—don't talk or hardly breathe," he says, 'cos she might hear you." "But I won't do that," he says, "I'll be very cautious." So he got to the door and opent it a small bit. He was lookin' at a lead coffin and glass lid, and his own brother lyin' in it.

He catcht the butler by the chest and he threw him—very near broke his neck—down the stair.

"Get out of my way, man!" he said, "This is the man I've been lookin' for so long."

So he traveled over the room and gaed to the coffin. When he gaed to the coffin he kicked the lid right off—he hadn't time to loose it with his hands—and he picked his brother out in his arms.

The King of England

'"Good heavens!" he says, "William," he says, "what has come over you?" he says. "Down here, man!" he says, "till I gie ye a thorough examination." So there wasn't a bit aboot his body but what he lookit, and he saw this, like a thorn, black thorn, at the back of his ear.

He says, "What's this?" he says, "I never saw this in your ears before," he says, "and you and I's been thegither," he says, "for twenty years."

So he picks out this black thorn, and the moment he pickit that out, his brother startit rubbing his eyes as if nothing had happened to him. So, howanever, he says, "Now, brother," he says, "this is where you were lyin'," he says "that I know of. You're not dead," he says, "man," he says, "ye're only at rest for a day or so," he says. "Pick yoursel' together, man." An' his brother rubbed his eyes. He says, "Hullo Jack," he says—"you here?" "Yes," he says, "I'm here," he says. "Where wad I not be," he says, "if I wouldn't follow you?"

"Well," he says, "you're the last man," he says, "in this world I expected here."

"Ah, but," he says, "I happen to be the first one instead of the last one."

"I can see that," he says, "and what's come over me?" he said.

"I don't know," he says. "You'll be able to tell me all them stories," Jack replies. He said, "That's what I'm waitin' on."

"Well," he says, "Jack, I'm married."

"Are ye?" Jack says, "Well, ye're a lucky man," he says, "for I'm not. And who are you married on?"

"Well," he says, "I'm married on," he says, "the King's daughter here" he says.

"Oh, you are!" he said. "Well," he says, "you're lucky, therefore," he says, "you're cornin' in to be our young King."

"Well, I hope so," he says, "John."

"So it doesnae matter. Jack," he says. "Now," he says, "William," he says, "I found you," he says. "You know," he says, "you weren't dead," he said, "but you were like a trance," he says, "wi' this pin they'd put at the back of your ear."

"Pin," he says, "back of my ear?" he says.

"Yes," he says, "there is the pin," he says, "a very dangerous weapon it is."

"Well, my-oh," he says, "look at me yet."

"And you know who you danced with last?" he says. "I suppose that's the person that pit it in."

"I know," William replied, he says, "that is the girls," he says, "the servants" he says, "of this house," he says, "that's why they're tellin' me now," he says, "I've been a-missin'."

22 Scotland (Lowlands)

"I can see that/' Jack says, "ye've gone a-missin' for a long time,' he says, "I can see that."

It doesn't matter anyway, this girl when she seen what she had, she raise now out of the bed, nothing wrong with whatever.

"Oh dear me!" she says, "which of you two men?" They were that like one another, she didn't know one by the t'other. And she rose— instead of catching William round the netk and kissing him, it hap-pent to be Jack she kissed.

"Oh, my dear beloved," she says, "Tm glad," she says, "you're alive again."

"But," he says, "you are making a grave mistake, my lady," he says, "that is your husband. I'm only his brother."

"It doesn't matter," she says, "which of you I kiss," she says. "The two of you is as like to me."

"Well," he said, "if you say it."

So it didn't matter. She says, "Now Jack," she says, "I hope,' she says, "you're not in the intentions of going home, or nothing like that."

"Oh no," he says, "I'll no go home. I'll stay a month at the least anyway, with you," he says, "to see everything goes right."

"Very well."

And the next thing now was the old King, he comes on the scene. When he looks at one, he says, "Good-son," he says, "my good gracious!" he says, "my good-son." (The wrong gaed to again, as his daughter done—the wrong man.)

So he says, "I beg your pardon," he says, "my noble King," he says —am not your son-in-law," he says. "Your son-in-law's standing there," he says, "that is him."

"Well, well!" he says, "if ever I seen two men in this world," he says, "two as one I never say," he says—"as like one another," he says—"as two green peas is," he says—"and tha's like enough."

"Well," Jack says, "if that's the case," he says, "we're very like one another."

"You are," he says. "Now daughter," he says, "what have you to say about Jack?"

"Well, it's Tm goin to make a bargain with Jack," she says, "Father," she says, "and the bargain is this—Jack's not going to leave this castle," she says, "till such time as I have a baby boy."

Jack replies, "That might be never," he says, "and it might be sooner than you expect."

"Well," she says, "that is the bargain," she says, "Jack. If I've a baby boy," she says, "you can leave at any time, but if I haven't got that," she says, "you will remain here for the remainder of your life. There's as much gold," she says, "as much wealth," she says, "in this castle, that'll keep you and I," she said, "and my husband and my fa-

The King of England

ther and my mother/' she said, "for the remainder of your life," she says, "with abundance for everybody."

"Very well," Jack says, "I can seal your bargain," he says, "I'll stay here till you have the first baby boy."

"Very well," she says.

So Jack stays on, sir, but he wasn't very well suited to the place, but he just stayed on. He would like to go and push his own fortune. "This is my brother's fortune," he said, "this is not mine," he says, "but that's doing me no good," he says, "don't want share," he says, "I'm thinkin' about my father and mother," he says, "at home, how they're going to get on." So that is all very well, so he goes and seen his brother William and he explained his case to William.

"Well," says William, "you made the bargain," he says, "with the young Queen," he says, "till such time as she'd a baby boy," he says, "surely, surely," he says, "Jack, you're no going," he says, "to break what you promised," he says, "your promise," he says. "You stay," says he, "to such time as she's a baby boy."

"Well," he says, "I'll stay on," he says, "I never said I would break my promise," he says, "but I'll stay on." But behold, by that time sooner nor Jack was thinkin' aboot the first year, he seen a difference. He says, "If your land's not agreeing with her," he said, "there some other thing is," he says. "But," he says, "time'll tell."

But, behold, in the nine months, this girl has a baby boy.

"Well," Jack says, "thank God!" he says, "I get a release now," he says, "that I push my own fortune." So Jack says (she was up now on her feet goin' about as usual), "Now," Jack says, "sister," he says, "I made my promise," he says, "to you, I would stay to such time as you had a baby boy." She says, "Yes, you did." "Well," he says, "this baby boy," he says, "happent to come to the world," he says, "and now it's my time to go."

"Oh, no," she says, "not yet," she says, "John. You'll wait," she says, "my dear chap," she says, "to such time," she says, "as I bake you seven little oatmeal bannocks."

"Well," he says, "that won't be long. It won't take ye hours," he says, "to bake them."

"But," she says, "you will stay tonight, and by tomorrow mornin'," she says, "you will have," she says, "your bannocks, and then you can please yourself where you go."

"All right," Jack says, "I'll do that."

She went to the scullery, and she collected the meal and she put it intae her bakin'-bowl, and she said, "Now, what am I gin a mix this bannocks with—jist the one thing and the one thing only." She says, "I'm goin' to mix them with, and that's goin' to be the milk oot of my own breast." She milks her own breast and she collects as much milk

from her breast as she could manage to bake this seven little bannocks. After she fired them and made them ready, she wrapped them up carefully and coolly intae a little small box.

And so in the morning when Jack wakens up, he says, ^"Well," he says, "Tm released—I go today."

"Now," she says, "Jack. Listen. Before you go," she says, "I am gonnae give you a present. This present's* not much to look at," she says, "but it is a lot to think about."

"And what is that?" he says.

"This present is seven little oatmeal bannocks."

"Seven little oatmeal bannocks!" he replied. "What am I to do with bannocks?"

"They're not for you," she said, "they're for others. Anyone in this world," she says, "wants to do ye onie harm, all that ye've got to say, 'Taste of my bread.' "

"Well," he says, "I'll do that."

And William replies, "Now Jack," he says, "you're gonnae push your fortune, he says, "bare-handed."

"Oh, but," he says, "I'm not—I've a sword," he says.

"Ah, but," William said, "that sword that you've got is no use, the road that you're going to go. Here is my one," he says. "Doesn't matter where you are—doesn't matter," he says, "where you may be, whatever you point this sword at," he says, "is instant death."

"Well," he says, "if that's the case," he says, "I'd better take hit," he says—"it's a very valuable sword," he says, "if it's instant death," he says, "to everything," he says, "I point it at."

So Jack took the sword and bid his sister-in-law farewell and also his brother and the old King and Queen syne, bids them farewell and he sets on his own hookum. Travelin' here and travelin' there for days and days and nights and nights—there was rest for the birds in the trees, but there was no rest for Jack—he jist keepit travelin' ahead. So one day by another, he found hissel' up on the top of a green hill.

"Well," he said, "I'll sit down here," he says, "and I'll have a piece of my bread. (But not the bannocks; he didn't eat them, for they were some of the warning.)

So it doesn't matter—he took his bread and he ate it, and durin' the time he's at his meals, he happent to look doon and he seen a line of trees at both sides of a road (that's what he thought it was).

"Well," he says, "there's been a road down there," he says—"perhaps it might be done away with now, but," he says, "where I belong to," he said, "if there's two lines of trees," he says, "together like that, it's a road or a river or something—there's something of that descriptions about there. And," he says, "when I get my dinner," he says, "I'll gae down," he says, "and investigate that road."

The King of England

So he set sail after dinner now, and he heads along for this trees. When he came to where this trees were, there was a large gate. ""^Good heavens!" he says—"there's a gate here," he says, "I never expected a gate to be in a road of this kind—an old God-forgotten road like this," he says, "it's unpossible. There must be human habitants here somewhere."

So he opens the gate and he walks in and he says, "I'll hold on this road," and there's a voice at his back says, "You'll hold on no road!" And here a little man, about three and a half feet high, with a bonnet on him like an ordinary large meal-mill wheel on his head. When he looks at him, "Good heavens!" he says, "my little man, who has brung you here?"

"I've been here," he said, "this last three hundred years," he says, "and you are the first mortal man," he says, "ever come this way, and there's nothing creepin' or walkin'," he says, "flyin'," he said, "or beneath the grund," he said, but what I can catch and kill. If you see all these bones lyin' there, it's human bones," he says, "animals' bones, birds' bones, every kinnae bones that you could mention," he says, "even to the very worms of the earth lies dead there," he says, "and you can see that."

"1 do see that," Jack replies.

"Well," he says, "I'm afraid you shall lie among the remainder. You're what they call," he says, "in forbidden lands now."

"Forbidden lands!" Jack says. "I never knew of no lands be forbidden tae man," he says. "I thought every lands was alike, you could go whaur ye like or please yoursel' where ye gaed."

"Well, but," he says, "youse cannae do thaim things," he says. "I'll fight for it."

"Well," says Jack, "I'm not a fightin' man," he says, "far from that. But if it comes to be," he says, "I've got to fight for my rights," he says, "and I'll do so, the same as my brother done."

So this little customer of a man, he drew to he's sword, so Jack drew to he's. And where it was heich, it was laich, they both was at it, but this little man could use his sword and use it to perfection and Jack could do the same. It didn't—he's sword did not need usin' by him—it could use itself. For it was heich, it was laich, they were goin' at it for aboot four hours, and one couldn't make a hair of the t'other; one man was as good as the t'other, but Jack he happent to nip the sword oot of this little man's hand, accidentally more than anything else.

"Hold on," this little man says, "Jack," he says, "you are very clever indeed," he said, "I maun say. And seein'," he says, "you've beat me, my dear fellow," he says, "this sword that you've beat me happent to be my own one," he says, "and that's the sword that you're carrying— belonged to me," he said. "First and foremost in this world, it was

26 Scotland (Lowlands)

mine/' he said, "1 got that from my father," he said, "that's three hundred years ago."

Jack says, "I don't care," he said, "who ye got it from," he says, "or who ye didn't get it from, or who made it or who didn't make it," he says, "it's mine now and I mean to keep it," he says. "I got it from my brother," he said, "and I'll deliver it back whenever I return, if I live to that time."

"Well," the little man says, "I am conquered," he says, "and if I can do ye good now," he says, "Jack, in this world," he says, "I'll do it to ye," he says. "I'm not a man of that kind," he says—"if a man beats me. I'm beat, and if I beat a man," he said, "he's beat," he says, "and that's where he goes," he says, "on that bing that ye see there," he says, "wi' the remainder. I don't spare no life," he says, "for you haven't to spare mine."

"Well," Jack says, "I am not bloodthirsty," he says, "far from that, and you'll help me."

"Well," he says, "I'll help you wherever you be," this little man says to Jack. "Wherever you be in this world, all you've got to say," he says, " 'where are ye, my little man with the broad bonnet?' and I'll be there—the word's not out of your mouth," he says, "till I'm staunan beside you."

"Very well," says Jack, "ye're a very handy sort of a man."

Now the little man says to Jack, "When you go on that green avenue," he says, "there," he says, "you go on for aboot the matter of three miles," he says, "and you turn to your right. And when you turn to your right," he says, "ye'll see a forgotten castle—there's not a living human being about it in this world," he says. "They're all what they call enchanted."

"Enchanted!" Jack says. "What is that in the world?" he says. "What do you mean by enchanted?" He didn't know what enchanted meant.

"Well," he says, "enchanted means," he says, "at one time of life," he says, "not now—we don't use it," he says. "I'm enchanted myself," he says, "and I wisht I knew the way to get out of it. Enchanted, means, at one time," he says, "it's what they call a magic wand," he says, "and if you could find that magic wand," he says, "well," he says, "ye could liberate thousands in that castle," he says, "and there was as nice a King in that castle as ever the world produced."

"Oh!" says Jack. "Well," he says, "I will mind your words, and if I want your help," he says, "which I don't think I will want," he says, "if I want your help," he says, "I'll call on you, and if I don't want it," he says, "I shall not call on you."

"Very well," the little man says, "but remember, always remember

The King of England

''Very well," Jack says. So they bid each other good-bye, and Jack sets sail for this road.

Now he's travelin' down this road for this three miles, or four miles, or whatever it may be, till he came to this gate in this road going down to the right, so he turned to the right. "Well," he said, "that little man really is true," he says, "that's the fairest castle," he said, "ever I saw in my life." So he said, "My-oh!" he said, "isn't this terrible?" he said —"places of that kind," he says, "for me and my old father," he says, "and my old mother wad be glad to live within, besides a house that I made myself with heather," he says, "going to waste," he says, "isn't that a sin? But," he says, "I'll explore this castle and I'll see what's within it."

So Jack he goes to the hall door and he opens it and he walks in. "Anyone there?" No reply, no kind or another, so he says, "There's no one here, right enough—the little man is quite correct," and he climbs the stair to the very topmost room of the castle, and when he opent the door of the topmost room of the castle, there was a lady lyin' in bed.

"Good heavens!" this lady says. "Man or mortal?" she says. "What has brung you here?" she says, "or what way in the world did ever you get here?"

"I got here," he says, "my fair lady," he said, "with my two feet, which I expect to get away from't again."

"Well," she says, "you are a brave man by words," she says, "but perhaps maybe not so brave by action."

He said, "I've all those things to meet yet," he says, "my fair girl," he says, "I never met one of those things yet that could trip me."

"Well," she says, "if you take my word of honor," she says, "what is your name?"

"My name is Jack," he says, "it's all the name that I gaun under."

"Well," she says, "Jack," she says, "if you take my word of honor," she says, "you may," she says, "look at the back of that door," she says, "and see what you will see."

So Jack he looks at the back of this door, and all he could see was an old topcoat. He said, "There's nothing here," he says, "my fair princess," he says, "but an old topcoat."

"Well," she says, "you keep that. You look again," she said, "and see what you see."

So he looked again and there's a pair of old shoes, all cut and scol-lopt to pieces. He said, "There's nothing here, my old girl," he says, "but a pair of auld shoes, all cut and torn," he says, "since hundreds of years."

"Well, you keep that," she says, "too as well. That is," she says, "the

Cloak of Darkness you have got/' she says—"that coat, as you call it," she says "and that is the Shoes of Swiftness you have got, that cut and scollopt shoes," she says. "When you put that on your feet," she says, "that coat on your back, you're unvisible. No one can see you."

"Ha," he smiled—laughted. "Un-visible!" he says, "with an old topcoat!"

"Well," she says, "don't you believe me," she says—"you try and see."

"Very well!" he says, "I shall try it, my fair girl."

But he couldn't go out of this room—he bended down and he kissed this girl. "My dear little lover!" he cries. And he set sail and he's off, travelin' on and travelin' on for miles and miles, and his feet was so sore. "Daggit!" he says—"my shoes of swiftness, ye talk about. Now I'll see the virty—where the virty bits comes in." He put on this shoes and he was like a fly when he put on those shoes—he was jumpin' aboot everywhere—he couldn't be at peace one minute no place, and he put on this coat and whenever he put on the coat, he's in the air like a bird. "Good heavens!" he says—"she is quite correct," he says —"this is the cloak of darkness and the shoes of swiftness. My-oh!" he said, "it's lovely to be flying." Oot over the tops of trees, rocks, hills, and dales, he's goin' ahead, about sixty miles an hour, and he's so light. So all in a minute he looks down in a glen and he seen a very old man cuttin' rushes with a scythe.

"Good heavens!" he says, "I'll see now," he says, "can the people see me or not," he says, "here's an old gentleman down here," he says, "I'll go down an' see, can he see me?" So he lowers down to where this old gentleman was cuttin' those rushes.

"Good evenin! my old man!" He looks all round about—not a livin' soul to be seen.

The old man replies, "I could hae thought I should hae heard someone talkin'."

"So ye do," Jack replies, "I'm here."

"Well," he said, "if you're there, whatever you may be, you are not mortal!" he says.

"I am mortal," he says, "I'm alive like yourself. I'm breathing human breath," he said, "like yourself," he says, "my man. I'm alive."

"Well," he says, "I fail to see you."

"Well," he says, "you'll see me in a minute." And he unfastens the old coat and took it off and there Jack was standin' beside him.

"I see ye now," the old man replies, "I see ye now," he says, "and a nice handsome man," he says, "you are indeed," he says, "you're as pretty a man as I've seen for a long time!" So this old man says, "No one," he says, "stays here," he says, "bar me."

"And where do you stay?" Jack says.

The King of England

"1 stay here steady, where you see me staunin' here," he says. "Tve cut rushes this two hundred years back. I've been cuttin' rushes here and as quick as I can cut those rushes, as quick as they grow behind me," he says. "I'll never get away frae here."

"Did ever you see anyone," he says, "in the world," he says, "here before?"

"Yes," the old man says. "There is a man comes here," he says, "about oncet every seven years," he said, "and that is the Black Knight."

"The Black Who?" Jack asked.

"The Black Knight."

"And what does he do here?" Jack says.

"Well, he goes up," he says, "the top of that hill. Did you see a bush on the top of that hill?"

"I do," Jack says.

"Well, in that bush," he said, "there's a deer," he says, "they call the White-Milk Deer," he says, "in that bush, and he tries to catch her. And bear in mind," he says, "my man," he says, "that White-Milk Deer is his own daughter."

"His own daughter," he says. "How can that be?"

"Well," he says, "you've heard aboot enchantment, haven't you?"

"I've read about it," he says, "but I never happent to come across any of it yet."

"Well," he says, "ye're in the midst of it this minute," he says, "if ye only knew."

"Good heavens!" Jack says, "I never knew that. And is that deer there now?"

"She's there," he says, "I'll guarantee she's there, because I saw her goin in.

"Well, here's faith for the deer, my auld man," he says, "Ta ta! I'm off!"

So he goes on to this hill, but oh, the deer saw him—cloak of darkness an aa, hit seen him. So whenever he approached the bush the deer's up and hit's away, and Jack, he after it; as hard as he could go, he's after this deer, and this deer wasn't missin' the road, I tell you. So he's goin' on after this deer, sir, over hills and dales and mountains and rivers, tae he lands in what they caa the Chain of Rock Mountains —no way in the world of gettin' out of the face of this rocks but the one way—that's the way he come. "Aha!" he cries, "I have ye trapped now, my lady," he says. "They call you the White-Milk Deer," he says, "but ye'll be my deer in two, three minutes." But as he approached the rock, the rock opent in front of him—she was cuttin't with a knife.

"Ah!" he says. "Damn that!" he says. And so the identical same . . . afore his sword was the rock opent the same way, and he follows

on, for about three miles, and when he comes to the ither end of this hill, this is this deer lyin' pechin', done out.

"Aha!" he said. "You think you'd get away from me, do ye? There never was a bird," he said, "there never was an animal ever run," he says, "ever was made," he says, "once he got in front of me," he says, "any distance, I wad catch him," he says, "at the long run."

"Well," she says, "ye've catcht me," she says, "Jack."

"And you can talk too," he says.

"Oh yes," the deer replies, "I can talk."

"Well," he says, "ye're the first animal in the world," he says, "ever I talked to."

She says, "I beg your pardon," she said, "I am not an animal," she says, "I am only enchanted in this shape, as you were told by the old man among the rushes."

"Well," he says, "I love you better now than what ever I did," he says.

"But there's one thing," she says, "Jack, you must do."

"And what is that?" he says.

"Well," she says, "there is a block at your back."

When he looks round there was a block.

"And also," she said, "there's an ax."

When he lookit again, there was an ax.

"Now," she said, "you catch my head and my body and put it owre that block, and if you cannot separate my head from the body," she says, "with one blow of that ax," she said, "I'll be very sorry for you."

"Eftir me," he says, "runnin'—I don't know hoo far I've run eftir you," he says—"I'll guarantee I've run a hundred miles, and say I wad cut the head off o' you!"

"Yes," she said, "and after ye've cut the head off o' me," she said, "ye throw it doon in that well," she says, "at your back again."

When he looks round at his back again, there was a well.

She said, "Now, you pit my head, and also my body, down that well."

"Well," she said, "if you don't do it to me," she says, "I've got to do it to you. What is it goin' to be—one or the other?"

"Ah well," he says, "I don't want to die young," he says, "I'll do it to you."

So he puts her head on the block and with one blow the head fell separate. So he catcht the head and also the body and he throwed them down the well. So he sat for a while thinkin'. "Well, I was a fool," he says; "if ever there was a fool in this world, I am one," he says, "and a real one. To say an animal would catch an ax, and put my head on a block and cut my head off, that hadn't got hands for a go-off; hit had feet, but it hadn't hands—why could hit use an ax?" he says. "I never

The King of England

seen the like of that in my life/" he says, ""to be such a stupid, silly man,"" he says, ""as I am. So,"" he says, ""I wouldn"t gied the deer,"" he says, ""that I catcht,"" he says, ""for all the ladies,"" he says, ""that ever,"" he says, ""were made. I wouldn"t give my deer,"" he says, ""for the lot.""

""Surely, surely,"" a voice said at his back, ""you must be in an awful state for that deer. Jack!""

When he lookit round, this was the loveliest lady that ever he saw in his life.

""I come from the well where you put me,"" she says. ""You put me in there, didn"t you—you cut my head off, you put me in there,"" she says. ""Well, here I am,"" she says, ""back to you,"" she says, ""in my natural state as I used to be once before. And remember,"" she said, ""that is three hundred years ago.""

""Well,"" he says, ""you"ve lived a long time after your mother,"" he says.

""Now,"" she says, ""Jack, how are we going to get oot of here?""

""Well,"" Jack says, ""1 do not know; I can"t get back,"" he says. ""I was tryin" my sword agen the rocks, but,"" he says, ""they"re as hard as granite.""

""Well,"" she says, ""one word of my mouth,"" she says, ""will open the rocks. Where there is rock,"" she says, ""let it be level land,"" she says, ""and where there is level land,"" she says, ""let it be hills, and where there"s no roads, let roads be, and where there"s no carriage let one be now.""

And no sooner she said it, there was a carriage standing beside them.

""Now,"" she says, ""in over here,"" she says, ""Jack, and we"ll drive home.""

So Jack he jumps in over this carriage, him and this fair lady, and he says, ""Well,"" he says, ""I never thought,"" he says, ""for one moment,"" he says, ""would see a lady,"" he says, ""in a carriage here.""

""Aha!"" she says, ""Jack, ye"d wonder what is here,"" she says, ""there"s things here,"" she says, '"I doot, that you never saw in your, life,"" she says. ""You come here,"" she says, ""and you"ll be seeing them richt sometime, but not just now.""

So they"re goin" on, goin" on with this pony as far as they could, mile after mile, passin" hill after hill and all of a suddent this girl looks; she says, ""Here ye are,"" she says, ""Jack"" she says, ""now"s the time to test yourself,"" she says. ""Here is my father comin","" she says, ""one of the deadliest men,"" she says, ""on the face of the earth,"" she says.

""Oh,"" he said, ""he is, is he?""

""Yes,"" she said, ""he is.""

""Well,"" he says, ""Til test him in a very quiet way.""

So he comes on him with a horse and a spear and when he approaches the carriage, he says, ""One minute to pray for your souls!""

''Don't be in a hurry," Jack replies. He says, "My man," and he pit his hand in his pocket and he pulls oot this small little packet of oatcakes, and he said, "You taste of my bread, sir," he says. And so gently he put out his hand and tasted his bread. He says, "Curse," he says, "on me," he says, "the day I was born," he says, "if I did kill the man that is goin' to dae me good."

"You'd better eat anither piece," he says,’ "my man," he says.

So he ate anither piece, but he ate many pieces, till he ate the whole lot by this time.

"Well, well," he says, "Jack," he says, "I am as proud now," he said, "I've met you and my daughter, one of the fairest queens," he says, "in the world. And" he says, "I was gaun to kill the man," he says, "was gaun to do me all the good," he says, "in the world," he says. "The castle that you've seen," he says, "unoccupied, is mine," he says. "I am the King of that place," he says, "one of the largest estates," he says, "in the world and one of the valuablest estates in the world."

"Well," Jack says, "Tm proud to hear so."

"And for saving my daughter," he says, "now. Jack," he says, "breaking her enchantment," he says, "she's goin' to be," he says, "your wife," he says, "you'll get her at the morning."

"Well," Jack says, "it'll always be something," he says, "for my luck."

So they rid on and rid on. "But there's one thing," he says, "Jack, before we go much further, I must tell you," he says. "I've to meet yet," he says, "one of the dangerousest snakes," he says, "on earth, and this dangerous snake, I call him," he said, "is a human being like us, but he's very, very dangerous," he said—"he's worse than a snake," he says, "and we'll meet him, because he knows we're cornin', by this time."

So Jack's goin' on wondering what the man was talkin' about—didn't know what this man was talkin' about, no more than what I do. "And but he's fiendish," he said, "he'd soon learn," he said, "what he was talking aboot—here was a man cornin', like the Devil himself, if there was such a thing in this world, he's cornin'. Here he is!" this man replies, "he's cornin'," and he crouches on the corner of this machine, and he darts forrit like a bullet from a gun, and the both of them, what was hills, they were makin' it level lands, and what was level lands, they are makin' it hills and they fought for aboot four hours.

But Jack's father-in-law supposed-to-be is the winner.

"Well," Jack says, "listen," he says, "my King," he says, "you are," he says, "the cleverest man ever I saw," he says, "I never saw a man doin' things like that," he says, "in my life."

"Yes," he says, "Jack—you've mentioned the words," he says, "quite

Johnnie in the Cradle

right, when you said your father-in-law—that is the real word for it," he said. "But ye're unmarried yet," he said, "but I guarantee you there's not monie days till you'll married."

So Jack and his sweetheart gaed home and his father-in-law—they managed to get home and lived for six weeks.

Now there used to be mountains and rivers and great precipices as no man—it practically took a bird to cross this mountains to get to his brother's place from here—took him days and days to travel, and you could have traveled it all in a quarter of an hour, when the roads was straightened out properly as they should be. So Jack and his wife was married, and his brother and his sister-in-law and the other King was there and all got married together, and so they lived there happy all the days of their life, and the last time I played at that big hoose wi' my auld bagpipes, he gied me tuppence, and he gied me a crust of a pie for tellin' a lie, and the skin of a red herrin'.

Johnnie in the Cradle

Collected by Hamish Henderson. Forthcoming in Folktales of Scotland.

Told by Andrew Stewart (but not the narrator of "The King of England"), nicknamed Andra Hoochten because of his expertise in singing mouth-music, of the Stewarts of Blairgowrie. Andra was forty-three in August 1955 when Henderson recorded this legend in the Standing Stones berry field on the road to Essendy. These "tinker" (Scottish gypsy) families in the evening would gather 'round the bonfires and sing songs and tell stories. Andra possessed a vivid storytelling style, and rendered the "nyaa, nyaa" of the changeling baby and its whispered commands to the tailor with dramatic change of voice.

Printed in Von Prinzen, Trollen und Herrn Fro (Jahresgabe 1958 der Gesellschaft zur Pflege des Marchengutes der europaischen Volker, Rheine in Westfalen), pp. 115-27 (Scots and German), and issued as a recording in 1960 by the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh, disc A.001/2.

This family tradition deals with the well-known phenomenon of the changeling (motif F321.1). Submotifs are F321.1.1.2 "Changeling plays on pipe and thus betrays his maturity"; and F321.1.4 "Disposing of a changeling." The idea of the changeling, held throughout Great Britain and so reported for the motif by Baughman, is that a fairy has

34 Scotland (Lowlands)

stolen the baby and left in its place a fairy-substitute that looks like a child but behaves like an adult. Baughman lists a number of strategies used by the parents to recover their child and get rid of the changeling.

It was a man in a farm, and ... a man and his wife . . . they werenae long married, ye see, and they'd a wee kiddie, and they christened its name Johnnie, see? But it was a very crabBit wee baby this, it was always goin' "nyaaa, nyaaa, nyaaa," jist that way a' the time, ye see. So here, there was another neighbor man, the tailor, used to come up and visit this farmer, ye see (he'd a small croft). And when they come up tae the farm, they used always to have a wee drink o' whiskey between them, ye see, and a bit talk and a game o' cards, and somethin' like that, ye see. So anyway, it was the day o' the market (I think in them days, if I can mind, it's every six month, or every year, there was a market day); they went away—they loaded up their van wi' pigs or anything, cattle, they went away tae the market with them. So, it was a very warm day, and just as usual, Johnnie wasnae growin', it was aye about the same size nae gettin' oot o' the bit, and it was aye goin' "nyaaa, nyaa," greetin' away.

So here, they were in the . . . down in the byre. The man was cleanin' oot the byre, ye see, an' the man says . . . the tailor says to the farmer, he says, "You're awfy worried-lookin'," he says. "What's wrong wi' ye?"

"Och," he says, "it's market day the morn," he says; "my wife," he says "me and the wife had a bit o' a row," he says. "And . . . she wanted to come wi' me tae the market. She's been . . . stayed closed in the hoose, watchin' the wean," he says, "and that," he says, "she's gettin' kin' o' fed-up. She wants to go tae the market, she wants tae buy some things. And she's naebody to watch the wean."

"Oh, but," says the tailor, he says, "I'll no see naebody . . . wee Johnnie wantin' a nurse. I'll nurse the wean—see? so—if she wants to go."

So the man says, "No, no" he says, "I dinnae think she wad let ye doe that, but we'll gae roon an' see anyway."

So he went roon wi' the tailor, and he asked his wife if she wad let the tailor watch Johnnie till they would get a day at the market. So the woman was pleased, you see, and the next morning come (to make a long story short). The next morning come, and they packed up their van, yoked up the horses—I think it was two horses they had in them days—and away they went to the market. So the man was in, and he was doin' somethin', the tailor, sewin' at a pair o' trousers or makin' a suit, or somethin' at the side o' the fire, finishin' off a job, and he hears a voice sayin':

"Is my mother and faither awa?" See?

So the tailor looks roond, and didnoe think but for one minute it

Johnnie in the Cradle

was the baby that was talkin'. See? So he looks roond, he goes over tae the windae, he looks oot the windae, and he could see nothin'. He goes back and sits in the chair again. He thought the baby was sleepin'; it had stopped cryin'.

So he hears the voice sayin' again, "Is my mother and my faither awa tae the market? Are they awa?"

So he looks roond, and this was the baby haudin' wi' its wee hands at each side the pram; it was sittin' up. And it says. . . .

Of course, the tailor was a wee bit . . . he got kin' o' feared like, an' he looks at the baby and he kin' o' kep' hissel', an' he says, "Yes," he says, "they're away tae the market, Johnnie," he says. "What is it?"

He says, "If you look in the boddom press," he says, "there's a bottle o' whiskey," the baby says, "take it oot an gie me a wee taste." See?

So he takes the bottle o' whiskey oot. ... He went and sure enough the tailor he opened up the boddom o' the press, and here was the bottle o' whiskey, and teemed oot some for the wee baby—the wee baby took the whiskey an' drunk it. See? So it says, "Are there ony pipes . . . hae ye got a set o' pipes in the hoose?" "No' me," says the tailor, he says. "I cannae play the pipes," he says, "but," he says, "I like to hear the pipes."

"Well," he says, "go oot to the byre and bring me in a strae, and I'll play ye a tune."

So of course the tailor got up, and oot he went, brings in a strae. (It wisnae a bashed strae, it was a roon straw, it had to be roon, so that the fairy could blow through it, ye see?) Takes the straw in, and hands it tae Johnnie, and the tailor's watchin' everythin', see? He was worried, the tailor, noo; he was thinkin' aboot the mother and the faither, and this wee Johnnie bein' the fairy, see? Didnae know what to say aboot it. . . . He sat doon and he's watchin'. He says, "Can ye play a strae?" the tailor said.

So the fairy says, "Ay," he says, "I'll play ye a tune on the pipes." Sat doon, and it played the loveliest tune on the pipes that ever ye heard—through a strae! The greatest pipe music—he says he heard lots o' pipers in them days, the MacCrimmons an a' them, pipin', ye see?—but he says he never heard the like o' it in his life, this wee baby in the pram. He knew it was a fairy then, ye see, it was playin' the pipes.

So they had a good talk together, this fairy and the tailor, ye see, so it says, "Is it time for my father and mother to come hame yet?"

So he says, "Ay", he says, "they'll be hame in aboot half an 'oor."

So he says, "Well," he says, "ye'd better take a look an' see if they're

• / // comm .

So the tailor he went oot, and looked oot the windae, and he says, "Ay, here they're cornin' up the lane." Ye see?

So of course, the wee fairy, he says, "I'll have tae get back into my

pram again." And it lay doon on its back and it's goin' . . . and when the mother come to the door the wee bairn started goin' again "nyaaa, nyaaa," greetin' away, ye see?

So here noo the tailor was worriet. But he broke the news off to the fairmer, ye see, and tellt the fairmer.

"Well," he says, "I don't know," he says, "what I'll dae."

But in them days, what they done wi' a fairy, they got a girdle, ye know a girdle for bakin' scones. They put thon on the fire, and they took—in them days, to put away a fairy—they took horse's manure off the road, or a anywhere at all, ye see, and they put it in a pan and burned it in a pan, and the fairies seen that, they took fear and they disappeared. Ye see? Put it on the top o' the pan. My mother used to tell us this.

So here—the fairmer asked him what was wrong. So he tells the fairmer.

"Well," he says, "I'll have to break it to my wife," he says. "But," he says, "I don't know how I'm goin' tae dae it, it'll break her hairt," he says. "I can hardly believe this."

"Well," says the tailor, he says, "I'll tell ye what I'll dae. You and your wife," he says, "go . . . wait for a while, and go tae another market. Let on there's another market, that the stuff wasnae half sellt, there's two days' market. And go through . .

In them days, there was a hole fae the byre right to the kitchen, ye could look through a hole in the wall, through to the byre. Ye see? Ye could see the cattle, and everything.

"Go into the byre, and lift the curtain back, and listen tae everything that's goin' on. Ye can see what I'm tellin' ye," says the tailor, "is true. It's a fairy ye've got for a wan." See?

So, anyway, the next mornin' come, and they packed up their things as usual, lettin' on that they were goin' tae another market. And they went through tae the byre. And here, they're sittin'. An' it heard . . . the mother an' the farmer heard the wee fairy sayin' tae the tailor, "Is my mother and father away tae the market?" So the tailor spoke kin' o' loud, ye see, to let them hear him.

"O yes," he says, "they're away tae the market," he says. "Johnnie," he says, "you'll be wantin' a drink."

"Ay, get the whiskey oot," he says, "and gie me a drink."

Well, the woman nearly fainted when she heard the fairy speakin' . . . her ain baby speakin' tae the tailor, ye see? Soon efter this went on, the next mornin' they never said nothin' when they found oot it was a fairy.

The farmer come in . . . the baby's father come in . . . got the girdle . . . and the fairy looke wi' its eyes wild, watched the mother . . . the father pittin' the girdle on the fire, seein' nae flour or nothin' on the table . . . wi'oot any bread gettin baked, ye see?

Applie and Orangie

Next thing come in, was wi' a bit o' a half o' a bag full o' the horse manure on tap o' the girdle, like that. And the fairy begun to get feared noo, its eyes kin' o' raised up, and it was gettin' feared when it seen the girdle. And just as the farmer was cornin' forward to reach for wee Johnnie in the cradle he just made a dive like that, and made a jump up the lum—went up the lum itsel', and it cries doon the chimley:

"I wish I had 'a kent my mother—if I had 'a been longer wi' my mother," he says, "I would have like to ken her better."

Ye can take that meaning oot o' that, what the fairy said, back doon the chimley, when it disappeared.

That was a story my mother told me, years ago.

Applie and Orangie

Collected by Hamish Henderson. Forthcoming in Folktales of Scotland.

Told by Andrew Stewart (Andra Hoochter), narrator of "Johnnie in the Cradle," in conjunction with his sister Bella and her son Donald Higgins, in August 1955 in Bella's house in Blairgowrie, Perthshire. Bella was a "settled" or urbanized tinker who had given up the itinerant life. Her home became a notable "ceilidh house" where family and friends engaged in night-long sessions of singing and tale-telling. Andra had just finished a rendition of "The Demon Lover" (Child ballad 243) when he offered this cante-fable. Bella too sang Child ballads and was a skilled piper who could play on the great Highland war-pipes.

The dialogue between the three speakers portrays the reality of folktale narration.

This is type 720 My Mother Slew Me; My Father Ate Me. Motifs present are S31 "Cruel stepmother"; G61 "Relative's flesh eaten unwittingly"; E607.1 "Bones of dead collected and buried. Return in another form directly from grave"; E613.0.1 "Reincarnation of murdered child as bird"; N271 "Murder will out"; Q211.4 "Murder of children punished"; Q412 "Punishment: millstone (axe) dropped on guilty person."

This version stops with the revenge on the cruel stepmother, but other versions conclude with the transformation of the bird back into the child. The bird's song, here rendered in Anglo-Scots dialect, is the heart of this tale. Type 720 is a Grimm tale with a broad European distribution, especially in France, but with scant popularity in Ireland, so often the numerical leader in tale-type counts.

Henderson: Tell us, Andra, what was this story your mother was tellin' ye?

Stewart: The story of Applie and Orangie. It was two girls, two little girls. The man—this was his second wife, and his first wife's kiddie was either called Applie or Orangie—I don't know which o' the names they were called, but we'll just say Applie an' Orangie, see?

So one day—the stepmother was very bad to one of the little girls. One day she says tae the good little girl: "Applie," she says, "I want ye tae go," she says, "an' get me milk. This is my golden jug—take this, an'," she says, "if ye break it," she says, "I'll murder ye," she says, "when ye get back." She used that word, ye see?

So anyway, away they went, an' the bad girl tripped her up, an' broke the jug. So, when they come home, the father was away workin . And when he come home, for two or three (wasn't it?), he missed the girl. She was a-missin'.

Higgins: The stepmother said she was outside, playin' with skippin' ropes.

Stewart: Ay, playin' with skippin' ropes, an' that. But this went on too long, there was no signs o' the wee girl, see? But here, the mother had murdered the wee girl—boiled her, pit parts o' her body in a pot, an' made soup, an' got the husband tae eat it, ye see.

Higgins: He came across the wee pinkie in amongst the soup. Stewart: He took the bones, a' the little bones thegither—an' he give the wife a good layin'-on at that time—an' he took the bones an' buried them.

Higgins: No, he give them tae the ither sister, an' the ither sister took them oot an' put them atween twa marble stones . . .

Stewart: He put them in marble stones, an' as time goes on, they grew intae a pigeon.

An' one day—he didnae know that wee girl was murdered, though, until the pigeon told him.

Higgins: No, he knew by pinkie.

Stewart: Ah, but . . .

Bella Stewart (Andrew's sister, Donald's mother): Yes, he knew by the pinkie; he got the pinkie in his soup.

Higgins: The wee lassie took the bones, and put them between twa marble stones, ye see. Well, as time goes on, this wee pigeon grows oot, ye see. So it's fleein' aboot, an' it's thinkin' aboot revenge, ye see, on the mother. So it flees aboot . . .

Stewart: An' it lands on the street . . .

Higgins: An' it goes in this shop . . .

Bella Stewart: . . . near Christmas time . . .

Higgins: Near Christmas time, for to buy a present, ye ken. An' it goes intae the first shop, an' it stands on the coonter, an' it says:

Applie and Orangie

My mammy killed me.

My daidy ate me.

My sister Jeannie pickit my banes An' put me atween twa marble stanes An' I growed intae a bonnie wee doo-doo.

So the shopkeeper, he's listenin' tae this, ye see, an' the shopkeeper says, "Now," he says, "if ye say that again," he says, "I'll give ye the biggest doll in the shop," he says, "the best doll in the shop." So it starts doon again, an' says:

My mammy killed me.

My daidy ate me.

My sister Jeannie pickit my banes An' put me atween twa marble stanes An' I growed intae a bonnie wee doo-doo.

The man says, "That's marvelous, that's marvelous!" So he gies it the big doll, an' away it goes, an' it goes tae the jeweler's shop—ye see? It flies in the door o' the jeweler's shop, an' it sits on the coonter, an' it does the same thing again:

My mammy killed me.

My daidy ate me.

My sister Jeannie pickit my banes An' put me atween twa marble stanes An' I growed intae a bonnie wee doo-doo.

So the man in the shop says, "Now," he says, "if ye do that again," he says, "I'll give ye the best watch in the shop." Ye see?

However, tae cut a long story short, she says it again, an' she gets the watch, an' goes on again, an' flies tae the next shop. An' it's an ironmonger's an' it stands on the coonter, an' it says:

My mammy killed me.

My daidy ate me.

My sister Jeannie pickit my banes An' put me atween twa marble stanes An' I growed intae a bonnie wee doo-doo.

So the man in the shop says, "Now," he says, "if ye say that again," he says, "I'll give ye the sharpest ax in the shop." So she says it again, an' gets the sharpest ax in the shop, an' away she goes flyin' through the air—the wee doo—an' it comes tae the chimney, ye see? An' it shouts doon the chimney the same again, ye see?

My mammy killed me.

My daidy ate me.

My sister Jeannie pickit my banes An' put me atween twa marble stanes An' I growed intae a bonnie wee doo-doo.

So the wee lassie hears it, an' she pits her heid through the windae, an' it draps the doll doon, ye see, an' the wee lassie catches it.

"O mammy, mammy, mammy," she says, "daddy! Look whit I got —fae Santae Claus!" (She thought it was fae Santae Claus, ye see.)

An' the man says, "My God," he says, "whit's this?" So he pits his heid through—down comes the watch—the gold watch, ye see?

So he says, "O my goodness, wife! Look at that!" he says; "look at that." Ye see?

She says, "Wait a minute, mebber there'll be somethin' for me!" An' she dives forrit, an' she pits her heid under, and the ax comes doon wheek, and wips the heid off her.

The Aberdonians and the Chocolates

Collected by Hamish Henderson. Forthcoming in Folktales of Scotland.

Told by Donald MacLean of Tobermory when a student at Edinburgh University in 1965. MacLean frequently contributed humorous tales to the convivial group frequenting Sandy Bell's pub (the Forrest Hill Bar). He subsequently returned to the West Highlands as a teacher at Oban.

Scots' stinginess is proverbial, and the residents of Aberdeen are reputed the most close-fisted of Scotsmen. Type 1704 Anecdotes About Absurdly Stingy Persons.

It was told by one of the lecturers at this youth camp in Perthshire, and it's a fairly typical sort of joke but it appealed to me in that I am sure it was a minister who told it.

And it was about this Aberdonian couple, both reputed even in Aberdonian circles for their miserliness. And the pair of them got married and they were going on their honeymoon to Edinburgh. And just as the train was pulling out of the station at Aberdeen, after the wedding reception, somebody threw a two-pound box of chocolates into the compartment shouting—"Best of luck."

So the train had traveled about twenty miles out of Aberdeen when the wife asked if she could have a chocolate. Very grudgingly, the hus-

The Lone Highlander

band opened the box of chocolates and said, '"There you are, have one/' So the wife had the one chocolate, ate it, but still kept an eye on the box of chocolates. Obviously she would have liked to have eaten more. As they were crossing the Tay Bridge she again asked if she could have a chocolate. Same answer from the husband, "There you are, have one." And as the train was traveling through Fife for to come to the Forth Bridge she again asked if she could have a chocolate. Three she'd eaten during the course of the journey. The husband said to the wife, "Hang on, lassie, I think you're eating far too many; we'll need to keep some for the bairn."

The Lone Highlander

Collected by Hamish Henderson and printed in Scottish Studies 2 (1967): part 2, pp. 237-38.

Told by Donald MacLean of Tobermory when a student at Edinburgh University, on 15 March 1965. Henderson printed the text with supplementary notes. There he writes: "International anecdotes that cross political and language frontiers are sometimes hard to place in categories of type and motif, but they frequently illustrate, as nothing else can, the mental attitudes of the communities in which they take root. The following version of an anecdote found all over Scotland, and variously set in the days of the Roman invasion, the Wars of Independence, and the Jacobite rebellions, gives native chauvinistic expression to the 'guid conceit o' himself' not seldom exhibited by the Scottish soldier."

Well, this refers to an incident that took place after the '45 Rebellion in Scotland, when the English were sending troops of Redcoats through the Highlands, partly to police the Highlands, but mainly to put on a great show of strength—subdue the natives. And they were going through this glorious glen in Perthshire—beautiful summer morning, great show of strength, the sun glistening on their bayonets; musket, fife, and drum playing. Everything was grand until they got to the far end of the glen, and standing up on one of the hills was this lone Highlander, who was breaking every rule in the book by brandishing a claymore, wearing a kilt, drinking out of a bottle of whiskey. This was bad enough in itself until he started shouting insults at the regiment

42 Scotland (Lowlands)

below, and started calling them Sasunnach [English] so and so s, and told them all to get home, that they were no use anyway. So the colonel in charge of the regiment rather took offense at this, and delegated a corporal and a private, you see. He said to them, "'Corporal, take a man with you, get up there, I want that man." So the corporal and the private disappeared over the hill, and the lone Highlander had of course disappeared over the skyline beyond. And great sounds of battle were heard over the skyline. Half an hour elapsed and the battle still raging. A few minutes later the Highlander himself appeared—no signs of the corporal or the private. He was still brandishing his claymore and saying that was great fun, send some more.

So the colonel thought, "Well, this has just gone too far altogether. Sergeant, take a platoon with you—thirty men. Get up there, I want that man, dead or alive." Too much altogether, sort of. The sergeant and a platoon of thirty men charged up the hillside. The little Highlander disappeared over the skyline as before. Tremendous battle altogether this time that lasted for about an hour. And at the end of the hour the little Highlander appeared again completely unscathed, but his sword dripping blood, you see. By this time he was in grand form altogether and he challenged the whole regiment shouting "Come on, come on, the lot of you—Tm just in trim."

So the colonel: "This is it. It's gone beyond a joke now. Bugler, sound the general advance." So the bugler sounded the advance, and the whole regiment, five thousand, charged up the hillside. The Highlander disappeared over the skyline as before. Just as the regiment arrived at the top of the hill, they were confronted with the original corporal, or at least what was left of him, and he was dying obviously and making a dying attempt to save the regiment. He was shouting, "Get back, get back, it's a trap, it's a trap, there are two of them."

[Postnote by Henderson]

This story is not exclusively Scottish, however. On 26 June 1967, the Hamburg weekly, Der Spiegel, printed (on p. 66) the following version in an article describing the Israeli Blitzkrieg:

Hinter einer Diine entdeckten die Agypter einen israelischen Scharf-schiitzen. Zwei Nassersoldaten sollten ihn erledigen, aber keiner kam zuriick. Daraufhin schickte der Kompaniechef zwolf Manner vor ■ und—als auch die nicht wieder kamen—die ganze Kompanie.

Zwei Stunden spater kroch ein zerfledderter Agypter in den Gefechstand. "Wir sind in eine jiidische Falle geraten," stammelte er. "Das war nicht ein Scharfschiitze. Es waren zwei."

(Translation: The Egyptians discovered an Israeli sniper behind the sand-dune. Two Nasser soldiers were told off to silence him, but nei-

The Minister to His Flock

ther of them came back. The company commander then sent twelve to do the job, and finally—when these didn't come back either—he sent the entire company.

Two hours later a torn and tattered Egyptian crept back to Company H.Q. "We fell into a Jewish trap," he stammered. "It wasn't just one sniper. There were two of them.")

Der Spiegel's comment was: "This Jewish front-line joke is the latest variant of the old story of tiny David who put paid to the giant Goliath."

The variant quoted by the German weekly is clearly brand-new, at any rate as far as the modern state of Israel is concerned, but it has emerged from a community of culture and tradition with ancestral memories of a fight against the big battalions. One of the leading military figures of the war that led to the creation of the Israeli state has been conducting the excavations at Masada, where a Jewish garrison defied the Romans, and was massacred to the last man. The Israeli public has apparently taken very great interest in this archaeological reminder of the nation's military prowess in ancient times. Also, that the story has in fact earlier roots among the Jews than might at first seem likely is suggested by the fact that—as Professor D. K. Wilgus of the University of California, Los Angeles, informed me on 1 September 1967—the same anecdote was circulating among students of his university immediately after the end of the four-day Israel-Arab war in June.

The story continues to be popular in Scotland. In 1966 the Glasgow folk-singer Matt McGinn wrote a popular song on the same theme; it is entitled "The Hielanman," and the period of the exploit is in this case the Roman invasion of Pictland; the moral of the story is stated to be "Hadrian's Wall." The text of Matt's song was published in Chaphook Vol. 3, No. 3, and his performance of his own song is recorded on a Transatlantic LP (Xtra 1045) issued in December 1966.

The Minister to His Flock

Collected by Hamish Henderson. Forthcoming in Folktales of Scotland.

Told by Alan Jackson, a young Scottish poet, in 1965. An old joke in a new variant, treating humorously motif Q560 "Punishments in hell" and the barbaric black humor of Calvinist Scotland.

44 Scotland (Lowlands)

Aye, ye're enjoyin' yoursels noo wi' yer drinkin' and yer women an' yer nights oot at the pictures, and never a thought given to the Word of God, and his great and terrible laws.

But ye'll change your tune when ye're doon below in the fiery pit, an' ye're burnin' an' ye're sufferin', and ye'll cry: "O, Lord, Lord, we didna ken, we didna ken." And the Lord in his infinite mercy will bend doon frae heaven, and say "Well, ye ken noo."

Scotland (Highlands)

The Blacksmith's Son

Contributed by John Macinnes. Forthcoming in Folktales of Scotland.

This novella was recorded in 1946 by the noted Scots' collector Calun I. Maclean on Barra in the outer Hebrides. Maclean described the narrator as follows:

In the Island of Barra today there survives only one storyteller of the type that both (John Francis) Campbell and (Alexander) Carmichael found quite common in the years 1860-80 ... he is the last of the old storytellers, and he is now nearing eighty-six years of age. He is an old fisherman named Seumas MacKinnon. I still remember the first evening I went to visit him, one wet September evening in 1946. He was busy repairing shoes when I entered the kitchen of his house. He raised his head to greet me. His eyes were mischievous, his face weatherbeaten, and his features were beautifully chiseled. He wore the peaked blue cap of fishermen and blue dungarees. His life of eighty years had been spent almost as much on sea as on land. At eighty he was still a very handsome old man.

. . . His diction was crisp, concise, and clear. Every sentence was short and perfectly balanced. His style was, of course, that of the real traditional storyteller. By modulation of tone and gesture he brought considerable dramatization to bear on his telling of a tale. He acted the part of characters and showed that he had mastered an art that had taken centuries to develop. His voice was beautifully clear and pleasing. He stamped his personality on every story he told, and his lively sense of humour enhanced his storytelling considerably [from Arv 8 (1952): 124-25. Cf. also Giverin 1 (1956-1957): 21-33].

In the herring fishery Seamus MacKinnon found appreciative audiences for good storytellers. In the evening when the nets were set, the fishermen went aboard the boats of outstanding narrators and listened the night to their tales. MacKinnon could neither read nor write and spoke little English. He narrated some forty pieces: wonder tales, romantic tales, jokes and anecdotes, legends illustrating fairy belief.

The present narrative represents a class of novellas and historical legends in Scottish Gaelic reflecting Scottish-English hostility. In these chauvinistic tales the Gael, by accident or design, always succeeds. For a stirring account, supposedly historical but clearly patterned on the David-Goliath combat, of a sword duel between a Highland stripling and a burly English champion whom he kills, see ''After the Battle of Culloden" in R. M. Dorson, Folklore,' Selected Essays (Bloomington, Indiana, 1972), pp. 85-88, reprinted from The Dewar Manuscripts, ed. John MacKechnie (Glasgow, 1964), pp. 233-36. Motifs: D1711.0.1 "Magician's apprentice (son outdoes father)"; D1719.1 "Contest in magic"; D1183 "Magic scissors, shears (scythe)."

Some time or other long ago, when it was winter—just as it is now a ship went ashore down there at Isinish Point and became a total wreck; she broke up completely. There was a tremendous load of wood in her, and the people of the place bought every scrap of it. They bought it in lots. Any man who had a piece of wood with a lock on it —they were very valuable locks except that they didn't have keys in them, the keys had got lost—any man who had a piece of wood with a lock on it took out the lock and went to the blacksmith to have a key made.

There was a smith somewhere down in Uist who had only one son. When the people had all the locks off the wood, they collected them and gave them to the smith; but the smith was unable to make keys for them. Then, one winter's day, the smith's son—he was only a young lad—went out to the smithy to ask his father to come in for dinner. When his father had gone, the boy began to look around the smithy and saw all these locks, and not one of them with a key in it. He realized that his father had failed to make the keys. So he said to himself that if he could manage to make the keys he'd have the money for himself—whatever the charge was for making keys—for Christmas and New Year. He shut the door and set to work and turned out the keys as well as if they'd been made in a mold. When he had finished them all he sent word for people to come and fetch their locks, because the keys were ready; so they came along, and the boy got a lot of money for the keys.

One day his father said to the boy that he'd have to give him a bit of money—he had too much money just to blow at Christmas. But the boy wasn't willing to hand it over. When his father saw this he put him out of the smithy and shut the door on him. "Don't you ever dare come through that smithy door again!" he said.

"You can keep it tight shut for long enough before I come to open it!" said the boy.

And he left home and went and joined the army. It was to England

The Blacksmith's Son

that he was sent for training; so there he was, living in barracks there. Now, their commander used to go around in the company of Englishmen a lot, and one of them said to him that there was never a blacksmith in Scotland who could beat an Englishman at the smith's trade. The commander said he didn't know—that might be true; all the same, there were good blacksmiths in Scotland. "Well," said the Englishman, "we'll bet you five hundred pounds."

"I won't take you up on that right now," said the commander, "but I will if I see you tomorrow."

When he paraded the soldiers next day he began to ask each of them in turn, "Can you do blacksmith's work?" At last he came to the blacksmith's son and asked him the same question.

"What kind of blacksmith's work do you want, exactly?" said the soldier.

The commander told him how the Englishmen were betting five hundred pounds that there was never a smith in Scotland to beat an English smith at his trade. "Whatever kind of blacksmith's work you want," said the boy, "1 can do it for you."

"Well, then, a good gun is the first thing I want made," said the commander.

The soldier went off and found a smithy for himself, set to work, and made the gun. The gun was to have an iron plate on the stock. He fixed this plate on in such a way that it could be lifted off; and he put his own name on the underside of it. When the plate was fixed on the stock you couldn't see the name. Now the Englishmen were to get a gun made too, to see which of them had the better craftsman.

The night the commander was going off with the gun, the soldier said to him, "Now when you get at the hotel where you're to meet, don't take the gun inside at all; leave it at the outer door and make the Englishmen leave their gun out beside it. Otherwise, you'll never prove to them that your gun's the better one. But you ask their man to go out and bring in the better of the two guns; if it's yours that gets brought in, all you have to do is lift this plate and you'll see my name on the underside."

Anyway, they arrived at the hotel and the commander left his gun outside. The Englishman came and left his gun beside it. They went in.

"Well, now," said the commander, "one of you go out and bring in whichever is the better made of the two guns."

They went out and brought in the Scotsman's gun.

"Now you go and bring in your own gun," said the Englishman, "this is mine."