No. 64.—The Ten Rabbits
In a little house on the hill lived an old woman with her three sons, the youngest of them a fool. The eldest goes to seek his fortune, and tells his mother to bake him a cake. ‘Which will you have—a big one and a curse with it, or a little one and a blessing in it?’ He chooses a big cake. He comes to a stile and a beautiful road leading to a castle; he knocks at the castle door, and asks the old gentleman for work. He is sent into a field with the gentleman’s rabbits. He eats his food, and refuses to give any to a little old man who asks for some. The rabbits run here and there. He tries to catch them, but fails to recover half of them. The gentleman counts them, and finds some missing, so cuts the eldest brother’s head off, and sticks it on a gatepost. The second brother acts in the same way, and meets the same fate. The fool also will seek his fortune. He chooses a little cake with a blessing. His mother sends him with a sieve to get water for her. A robin bids him stop up the holes with leaves and clay. He does so, and brings water. He gets the cake and goes. He sees his two brothers’ heads stuck on the gateposts, and stands laughing at them, saying, ‘What are you doing there, you two fools?’ and throwing stones at them. He enters, dines, and smiles at the old gentleman’s daughter, who falls in love with him. He goes to the field, lets the rabbits go, and falls asleep. The rabbits run about here and there. An old man by the well begs food, and Jack shares his food with him. Jack hunts for hedgehogs. He can’t get the rabbits back, but the old man gives him a silver whistle. Jack blows, and the rabbits return. The old gentleman counts them, and finds them correct. The girl brings Jack his dinner daily in the field. The old man tells Jack to marry her. He does so, still living as servant in the stable till the old people’s death. [[258]]Then he takes over the castle, and brings his mother to live with him.
A very imperfect story, still plainly identical with Dasent’s ‘Osborn’s Pipe’ (Tales from the Fjeld, p. 1), where it is hares that Boots has to tend, and an old wife gives him a magic pipe. According to an article in Temple Bar for May 1876, pp. 105–118, the same story is told of the Brussels ‘Manneken,’ the well-known bronze figure, not quite a metre high, by Duquesnoy (1619). Here a boy has to feed twelve rabbits in the forest, gets a magic whistle from an old woman, befools a fat nobleman, the princess, and the king, and finally marries the princess. In the heads of the two brothers stuck on the gateposts, Mr. Baring-Gould may find a confirmation of his theory that the stone balls surmounting gateposts are a survival of the practice of impaling the heads of one’s enemies. Anyhow, in the Roumanian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Princesses and the Unclean Spirit’ (No. 10, p. 39), the old wife threatens the hero, ‘I will cut off your head and stick it on yonder stake’ (cf. also Campbell’s West Highland Tales, i. p. 51, line 20). For the big cake with curse or the little cake with blessing, cf. p. 219. The hunting for hedgehogs is a very Gypsy touch.
No. 65.—The Three Wishes[16]
A fool lives with his mother. Once on a hillside he finds a young lady exposed to the heat of the sun, and twines a bower of bushes round her for protection. She awakes, and gives him three wishes. He wishes he were at home: no sooner said than done. On the way he catches a glimpse of a lovely lady at a window, and wishes idly that she were with child by him. She proves so, but knows not the cause. She bears a child, and her parents summon every one from far and near to visit her. When the fool enters, the babe says, ‘Dad, dad!’ Disgusted at the lover’s low estate, the parents cast all three adrift in a boat. The lady asks him how she became with child, and he tells her. ‘Then you must have a wish still left.’ He wishes they were safe on shore in a fine castle of their own. They live happily there for some time, then return home, and visit the girl’s parents splendidly dressed. The parents refuse to believe him the same man. He returns in his old clothes. Triumph and reconciliation. He provides for his old mother.
This story is largely identical with Hahn’s No. 8, ‘Der Halbe Mensch’ (i. 102; ii. 201), which lacks, however, the episode of making a bower [[259]]for the fairy. That episode forms the opening of Wratislaw’s Illyrian-Slovenish story of ‘The Vila’ (No. 60, p. 314), otherwise different. And the whole Welsh-Gypsy story is absolutely identical with Basile’s story of Peruonto in the Pentamerone (i. 3). For the recognition of the father by the child see Clouston, ii. 159, note. In Hahn’s story the child gives its father an apple; and in Friedrich Müller’s Hungarian-Gypsy story, No. 3, ‘The Wallachian Gypsy,’ a lady is adjudged to him to whom she shall throw a red apple. Cf. also Hahn, i. 94, ii. 56; Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, pp. 85, 228; and Reinhold Köhler in Orient und Occident, ii. 1864, pp. 304, 306.
No. 66.—Fairy Bride
A king has three sons, and knows not to which of them to leave his kingdom. They shoot for it with bow and arrows. The youngest shoots so far that his arrow is lost. He seeks it for a long time, and at last finds it sticking in a glass door. He enters and finds himself in the home of the Queen of the Fairies, whom he marries. After a while he returns home with his bride. An old witch who lives in the park incites the king to ask the fairy bride to fetch him a handkerchief which will cover the whole park. She does it, and then is asked to bring her brother. She refuses, but finally summons him. He enters, and terrifies the king by his threatening aspect. ‘What did you call me for?’ The king is too frightened to answer coherently. The fairy’s brother kills him and the old witch, and vanishes. They live at the castle.