'Stick, beat Fick, I say!
Piggie will not go home to-day!'"
This chant-tale is also common in Sweden. One copy has been printed by N. Lilja in his Violen en Samling Jullekar, Barnsånger och Sagor, i. 20, Gossen och Geten Näppa, the boy and the goat Neppa,—"There was once a yeoman who had a goat called Neppa, but Neppa would never go home from the field. The yeoman was therefore forced to promise his daughter in marriage to whoever could get Neppa home. Many tried their fortune in vain, but at last a sharp boy offered to ward the goat. All the next day he followed Neppa, and when evening came, he said, 'Now will we homeward go?' but Neppa answered, 'Pluck me a tuft or so,'" &c. The story is conducted in an exactly similar manner in which the dénoûement is brought about in the English tale. [4]
| [4] | Two other variations occur in Arwidsson, Svenska Fornsånger, 1842, iii. 387-8, and Mr. Stephens tells me he has a MS. Swedish copy entitled the Schoolboy and the Birch. It is also well known in Alsace, and is printed in that dialect in Stöber's Elsassisches Volksbüchlein, 1842, pp. 93-5. Compare, also, Kuhn und Schwark, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, 1848, p. 358, "Die frâ, dos hippel un dos hindel." |
The well-known song of "There was a lady lov'd a swine," is found in an unpublished play of the time of Charles I. in the Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 30:
There was a lady lov'd a hogge;
Hony, quoth shee,
Woo't thou lie with me to-night?
Ugh, quoth hee.
A similar song is current in Sweden, as we learn from Arwidsson, Svenska Fornsånger, iii. 482, who gives a version in which an old woman, who had no children, took a little foal, which she called Longshanks, and rocked and nursed it as if it had been her own child: [5]
Gumman ville vagga
Och inga barn hade hon;
Då tog hon in
Fölungen sin,
Och lade den i vaggan sin.
Vyssa, vyssa, långskånken min,
Långa ben bar du;
Lefver du till sommaren,
Blir du lik far din.
| [5] | It is still more similar to a pretty little song in Chambers, p. 188, commencing, "There was a miller's dochter." |
Another paradoxical song-tale, respecting the old woman who went to market, and had her petticoats cut off at her knees "by a pedlar whose name was Stout," is found in some shape or other in most countries in Europe. A Norwegian version is given by Asbjörnsen og Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr, 1843, and, if I recollect rightly, it is also found in Grimm.
The riddle-rhyme of "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" is, in one form or other, a favorite throughout Europe. A curious Danish version is given by Thiele, iii. 148: