But deah wuz all de ladies an’ genlemen clappin’ an’ sayin’, ‘Speak an, my little fox!’ ‘Well tole, my little fox!’ ‘Werry good tale, indeed!’

So de little fox speak’d an, and tell’t dem all about de ole witch, an’ how she wanted to ’stry de king’s darter, an’ he says, ‘Dis heah ole lady she fried my mammy a egg an’ a sliced of bacon; an’ ef she wur to eat it all, she’d be in de fambaley way wid some bad animal; but she on’y eat half on it, an’ den she wor so wid me. An’ dat’s de ole witch deah,’ he says, showin’ de party wid his little paw.

An’ den, after dis wuz done, an’ dey all walked togeder in de garden, de little fox says, ‘Now, my mammy, I’ve done all de good I can for you, an’ now I’m a-goin’ to leave you.’ An’ he strip’t aff his little skin, an’ he flewed away in de beautifulest white angel you ever seed in your life.

An’ de ole witch was burnt in de same chair dat wuz meant fur de young lady.

In the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Winged Hero,’ No. 26, the emperor’s daughter, for being ‘that way,’ is to be burnt with her lover; and just as the mother of the little fox is sent adrift in an ‘ole wessel,’ so in the Celtic legend is St. Thenew or Enoch, having miraculously conceived St. Kentigern, exposed in a coracle on the Firth of Forth. In her Variants of Cinderella (Folklore Soc., 1893, pp. 307, 507), Miss Cox gives an interesting parallel for this husk-myth, whose close recalls ‘Bobby Rag’ (No. 51). From Matthew Wood Mr. Sampson has heard a variant of ‘De Little Fox,’ but very different in details.

[[205]]

[[Contents]]

No. 53.—De Little Bull-calf

Centers of yeahs ago, when all de most part of de country wur a wilderness place, deah wuz a little boy lived in a pooah bit of a poverty[5] house. An’ dis boy’s father guv him a deah little bull-calf. De boy used to tink de wurl’ of dis bull-calf, an’ his father gived him everyting he wanted fur it.

Afterward dat his father died, an’ his mother got married agin; an’ dis wuz a werry wicious stepfather, an’ he couldn’t abide dis little boy. An’ at last he said, if de boy bring’d de bull-calf home agin, he wur a-goin’ to kill it. Dis father should be a willint to dis deah little boy, shouldn’t he, my Sampson?