POPULAR STORIES OF THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY.
(Vol. v., p. 363. &c.)
Will you allow me, through the medium of "N. & Q.," to say how much obliged I should be for any communications on this subject. Since I last addressed you (about a year ago) I have received many interesting contributions towards my proposed collection; but not, I regret to say, quite to the extent I had anticipated. My own researches have been principally confined to the midland counties, and I have very little from the north or east. Such a large field requires many gleaners, and I hope your correspondents learned in Folklore will not be backward in lending their aid to complete a work which Scott, Southey, and a host of illustrious names, have considered a desideratum in our national antiquities.
I propose to divide the tales into three classes—Mythological, Humorous, and Nurse-tales. Of the mythological I have already given several specimens in your journal, but I will give the following, as it illustrates another link in the transmission of Mr. Keightley's Hindustani legend, which appeared in a recent Number. It is from Northamptonshire.
The Bogie and the Farmer.
Once upon a time a Bogie asserted a claim to a field which had been hitherto in the possession of a farmer; and after a great deal of disputing, they came to an arrangement by agreeing to divide its produce between them. At seed time, the farmer asks the Bogie what part of the crop he will have, "tops or bottoms." "Bottoms," said the spirit: upon which the crafty farmer sows the field with wheat, so that when harvest arrives the corn falls to his share, while the poor Bogie is obliged to content himself with the stubble. Next year the spirit, finding he had made such an unfortunate selection in the bottoms, chose the tops; whereupon cunning Hodge set the field with turnips, thus again outwitting the simple
claimant. Tired of this unprofitable farming, the Bogie agrees to hazard his claims on a mowing-match, thinking that his supernatural strength would give him an easy victory; but before the day of meeting, the cunning earth-tiller procures a number of iron bars which he stows among the grass to be mown by his opponent; and when the trial commences, the unsuspecting goblin finds his progress retarded by his scythe coming into contact with these obstacles, which he takes to be some very hard—very hard—species of dock. "Mortal hard docks, these," said he; "Nation hard docks!" His blunted scythe soon brings him to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he turns to his antagonist, now far ahead, and inquires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle-waffle (whet), mate?" "Waffle!" said the farmer, with a well-feigned stare of amazement, "O, about noon mebby." "Then," said the despairing spirit, "That thief of a Christian has done me;" and so saying, he disappeared and was never heard of more.
Under Nurse-tales, I include the extremely puerile stories of the nursery, often (as in the German ones) interlaced with rhymes. The following, from the banks of the Avon, sounds like an echo from a German story-book.
Little Elly.
In the old time, a certain good king laid all the ghosts, and hanged all the witches and wizards save one, who fell into a bad way, and kept a school in a small village. One day Little Elly looked through a chink-hole, and saw him eating man's flesh and drinking man's blood; but Little Elly kept it all to herself, and went to school as before. And when school was over the Ogee fixed his eyes upon her, and said—
"All go home but Elly,
And Elly come to me."
And when they were gone he said, "What did you see me eat, Elly?"
"O something did I see,
But nothing will I tell,
Unto my dying day."
And so he pulled off her shoes, and whipped her till she bled (this repeated three days); and the third day he took her up, and put her into a rose-bush, where the rain rained, and the snow snowed, and the hail hailed, and the wind blew upon her all night. Quickly her tiny spirit crept out of her tiny body and hovered round the bed of her parents, where it sung in mournful voice for evermore—
"Dark, weary, and cold am I,
Little knoweth Gammie where am I."
Of the Humorous stories I have already given a specimen in Vol. v., p. 363.
Any notes of legends, or suggestions of any kind, forwarded to my address as below, will be thankfully received and acknowledged.
Vincent T. Sternberg.
15. Store Street, Bedford Square.