‘On the 25th of April 1859, [at Inverary], John [MacDonald] the tinker gave the beginning of this as part of his contribution to the evening’s entertainment. He not only told the story, but acted it, dandling a fancied baby when it came to the adventure of the Big Women, and rolling his eyes wildly. The story which he told varied from that which he dictated in several particulars. It began:—
‘ “There was a king and a knight, as there was and will be, and [[289]]as grows the fir-tree, some of it crooked and some of it straight. And it was the King of Eirinn, it was. And the queen died with her first son, and the king married another woman. Oh! bad straddling queen, thou art not like the sonsy, cheery queen that we had ere now.”
‘And here came a long bit which the tinker put into another story, and which he seems to have condensed into the first sentence of the version which I have got and translated. He has also transferred the scene from Ireland to Greece, perhaps because the latter country sounds better, and is further off, or perhaps because he had got the original form of the story from his old father in the meantime.
‘Some of the things mentioned in the tinker’s version have to do with Druidical worship—the magic well, the oak-tree, the bird. For the Celtic tribes, as it is said, were all guided in their wanderings by the flight of birds. The Sun Goddess, for the Druids are supposed to have worshipped the sun, and the sun is feminine in Gaelic. These are all mixed up with Fionn and the Sword of Light and the Big Women, personages and things which do not appear out of the Highlands.’
The whole of this last paragraph seems to me more than questionable, for ‘The Fox’ is beyond all question identical with the Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Golden Bird and the Good Hare’ (No. 49, pp. 182–8), in the excellent Servian version of which it is a fox, not a hare. Druidism is hardly to be looked for in either Poland or Servia. In some respects the Polish-Gypsy story is better than the Tinker one, but in others the Tinker version is greatly superior. Each, indeed, supplies the other’s deficiencies. The original beginning, given by Campbell, seems to point to a form of the story where, as in the Indian versions of ‘The Bad Mother,’ cited on p. 35, note, the hero is sent on his quest by a stepmother. In his notes on the Gaelic story in Orient und Occident (ii. 1864, pp. 685–6), Reinhold Köhler cites an interesting Wallachian version.
No. 76.—The Magic Shirt[9]
‘There was a king and a knight, as there was and will be, and as grows the fir-tree, some of it crooked and some of it straight; and he was a king of Eirinn,’ said the old tinker, and then came a wicked stepmother, who was incited to evil by a wicked hen-wife. The son of the first queen was at school with twelve comrades, and they used to play at shinny every day with silver shinnies and a golden ball. The hen-wife, for certain curious rewards, gave the step-dame a magic shirt, and she sent it to her stepson, ‘Sheen [[290]]Billy,’ and persuaded him to put it on. He refused at first, but complied at last, and the shirt was a great snake about his neck. Then he was enchanted and under spells, and all manner of adventures happened; but at last he came to the house of a wise woman who had a beautiful daughter, who fell in love with the enchanted prince, and said she must and would have him.
‘It will cost thee much sorrow,’ said the mother.
‘I care not,’ said the girl, ‘I must have him.’
‘It will cost thee thy hair.’
‘I care not.’
‘It will cost thee thy right breast.’
‘I care not if it should cost me my life,’ said the girl.