‘Now,’ ’ee sez, ‘I think we’ll go back an’ see the old ’ooman an’ the old man, how they are gettin’ on, from ’ere,’ sez Ashypelt to ’is brothers. ‘An’ when we get nigh ’ome, you eleven brothers stop behind, an’ I’ll drive up to the little farm, an’ ax the old lady what came of her eleven sons what she ’ad.’
So poor Ashypelt drives up to the ’ouse.
‘Hello! my old lady,’ ’ee sez, ‘what’s come of all the eleven sons as you ’ad?’
‘Oh!’ sez ’er, ‘they all went off for soldiers.’
So ’ee calls ’is eleven brothers up, an’ ’ee sez, ‘Didn’t you try to burn my eleven brothers in that barn,’ ’ee sez, ‘when you set the barn alight, an’ told ’em as the pressgang o’ soldiers was after ’em?’
So she sez, ‘No—true—no,’ she sed.
I tell you, sir, they give me a shilling for telling you that lie.
The name Ashypelt (Scottish Ashypet, Irish Ashiepelt, etc.; cf. Engl. Dialect Dict., pp. 80, 81) must be of Teutonic origin—akin to the familiar High German Aschenbrödel (‘Cinderella’) and the Norse Askepot (‘Boots’). The form coming nearest to it is also the oldest known to me: the mystic, Johann Tauler (c. 1300–61), says, in the Medulla Animæ, ‘I thy stable-boy and poor Aschenbaltz.’ See Grimm’s Household Tales, i. 366–7. In another story told by Cornelius Price, ‘The Black Dog of the Wild Forest,’ the hero is hidden by an old witch in the ash-hole under the fire. In the Polish-Gypsy tale of ‘A Foolish Brother and a Wonderful Bush’ (No. 45), that brother crouches over his stove; in Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, Boots sits all his life in the ashes (pp. 90, 232, 382); in Ralston’s story ‘Ivan Popyalof’ (p. 66), from the Chernigof government, the third brother, a simpleton, ‘for twelve whole years lay among the ashes from the stove, but then he arose and shook himself, so that six poods of ashes fell off from him’; and in Léger’s Bohemian story (Contes Slaves, p. 130) of ‘La Montre Enchantée,’ which is a variant of our No. 54, the third brother, a fool, does nothing but begrime himself with the cinders from the stove. The idea, then, extends beyond the Teutonic area; but how the name Ashypelt has found its way to South Wales is past my telling.
Compare Grimm’s No. 4 (i. 11), ‘The Story of the Youth who went forth to learn what Fear was,’ with the variants on pp. 342–347; also a fragment from Calver, Derbyshire, ‘The Boy who Feared Nothing,’ in Addy’s Household Tales. From a London tinker Campbell of Islay got a story of a cutler and a tinker who ‘travel together, and sleep in an empty haunted house for a reward. They are beset by ghosts and spirits of murdered ladies and gentlemen, and the inferior, the tinker, shows most courage, and is the hero. “He went into the cellar to draw beer, and there he found a little chap a-sittin’ on a barrel with a red cap [[243]]on ’is ’ed; and sez he, sez he, ‘Buzz.’ ‘Wot’s Buzz?’ sez the tinker. ‘Never you mind wot’s buzz,’ sez he. ‘That’s mine; don’t you go for to touch it,’ ” etc., etc., etc.’ (Tales of the West Highlands, vol. i. p. xlvii.). And in vol. ii. p. 276, Campbell gives a Gaelic story, ‘The Tale of the Soldier’ (our No. 74), which was told by a tinker.