Parallels.–Mr. Lang, in the essay “A Far-travelled Tale” in which he gives the story, mentions several variants of it, including the classical myth of Jason and Medea. A fuller study in Cosquin, l.c., ii. 12-28. For the finger ladder, see Köhler, in Orient and Occident, ii. III.
VIII. JACK HANNAFORD.
Source.–Henderson’s Folk-Lore of Northern Counties (first edition), p. 319. Communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.
Parallels.–"Pilgrims from Paradise” are enumerated in Clouston’s Book of Noodles, pp. 205, 214-8. See also Cosquin, l.c., i. 239.
IX. BINNORIE.
Source.–From the ballad of the “Twa Sisters o’ Binnorie.” I have used the longer version in Roberts’s Legendary Ballads, with one or two touches from Mr. Allingham’s shorter and more powerful variant in The Ballad Book. A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness.
Parallels.–The story is clearly that of Grimm’s “Singing Bone" (No. 28), where one brother slays the other and buries him under a bush. Years after a shepherd passing by finds a bone under the bush, and, blowing through this, hears the bone denounce the murderer. For numerous variants in Ballads and Folk Tales, see Prof. Child’s English and Scotch Ballads (ed. 1886), i. 125, 493; iii. 499.
X. MOUSE AND MOUSER.
Source.–From memory by Mrs. E. Burne-Jones.
Parallels.–A fragment is given in Halliwell, 43; Chambers’s Popular Rhymes has a Scotch version, “The Cattie sits in the Kilnring spinning” (p. 53). The surprise at the end, similar to that in Perrault’s “Red Riding Hood,” is a frequent device in English folk tales. ( Cf. infra, Nos. xii., xxiv., xxix., xxxiii., xli.)