In Lazy Jack the setting is in humble life. A poor mother lived on the common with her indolent son and managed to earn a livelihood by spinning. One day the mother lost patience and threatened to send from home this idle son if he did not get work. So he set out. Each day he returned to his mother with his day's earnings. The humor lies in what he brought, in how he brought it, and in what happened to it; in the admonition of his mother, "You should have done so and so," and Jack's one reply, "I'll do so another time"; in Jack's literal use of his mother's admonition, and the catastrophe it brought him on the following day, and on each successive day, as he brought home a piece of money, a jar of milk, a cream cheese, a tom-cat, a shoulder of mutton, and at last a donkey. The humor lies in the contrast between what Jack did and what anybody "with sense" knows he ought to have done, until when royalty beheld him carrying the donkey on his shoulders, with legs sticking up in the air, it could bear no more, and burst into laughter. This is a good realistic droll to use because it impresses the truth, that even a little child must reason and judge and use his own common sense.
The Story of the Little Red Hen is a realistic tale which presents a simple picture of humble thrift. Andersen's Tin Soldier is a realistic tale which gives an adventure that might happen to a real tin soldier. The Old Woman and her Pig, whose history has been given under The Accumulative Tale, is realistic. Its theme is the simple experience of an aged peasant who swept her house, who had the unusual much-coveted pleasure of finding a dime, who went to market and bought a Pig for so small a sum. But on the way home, as the Pig became contrary when reaching a stile, and refused to go, the Old Woman had to seek aid. So she asked the Dog, the Stick, the Fire, etc. She asked aid first from the nearest at hand; and each object asked, in its turn sought help from the next higher power. One great source of pleasure in this tale is that each object whose aid is sought is asked to do the thing its nature would compel it to do—the Dog to bite, the Stick to beat, etc.; and each successive object chosen is the one which, by the law of its nature, is a master to the preceding one. The Dog, by virtue of ability to bite, has power over the Pig; the Stick has ability to master the Dog; and Water in its power to quench is master over Fire. Because of this intimate connection of cause and effect, this tale contributes in an unusual degree to the development of the child's reason and memory. He may remember the sequence of the plot or remake the tale if he forgets, by reasoning out the association between the successive objects from whom aid was asked. It is through this association that the memory is exercised.
How Two Beetles Took Lodgings, in Tales of Laughter, is a realistic story which has a scientific spirit and interest. Its basis of truth belongs to the realm of nature study. Its narration of how two Beetles set up housekeeping by visiting an ant-hill and helping themselves to the home and furnishings of the Ants, would be very well suited either to precede or to follow the actual study of an ant-hill by the children. The story gives a good glimpse of the home of the Ants, of their manner of living, and of the characteristics of the Ants and Beetles. It is not science mollified, but a good story full of life and humor, with a basis of scientific truth.
Many tales not realistic contain a large realistic element. The fine old romantic tales, such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Bremen Town Musicians, have a large realistic element. In The Little Elves we have the realistic picture of a simple German home. In Beauty and the Beast we have a realistic glimpse of the three various ways the wealthy merchant's daughters accommodated themselves to their father's loss of fortune, which reminds us of a parallel theme in Shakespeare's King Lear. In Red Riding Hood we have the realistic starting out of a little girl to visit her grandmother. This realistic element appeals to the child because, as we have noted, it accords with his experience, and it therefore seems less strange.
In Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse the setting is realistic but becomes transformed into the romantic when natural doings of everyday life take on meaning from the unusual happening in the tale. It is realistic for Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse to live in a little house, to get some corn, to make a pudding, and to put it on to boil. But when the pot tumbled over and scalded Titty, the romantic began. The stool which was real and common and stood by the door became transformed with animation, it talked: "Titty's dead, and so I weep"; and it hopped! Then a broom caught the same animation from the same theme, and swept; a door jarred; a window creaked; an old form ran round the house; a walnut tree shed its leaves; a little bird moulted his pretty feathers; a little girl spilled her milk; a man tumbled off his ladder; and the walnut tree fell with a crash, upsetting everything and burying Titty in the ruins. They all learned to convey the same message. The common and customary became uncommon and unusual with extraordinary life, feeling, and lively movement.
Other romantic tales with a large realistic element are The Three Bears, The Three Pigs, and The Three Billy-Goats, animal tales which of necessity must be largely realistic, for their foundation is in the facts of the nature, habits, and traits of the animal characters they portray.
V. The Romantic Tale
The romantic tale reflects emotion and it contains adventure and the picturesque; it deals with dreams, distant places, the sea, the sky, and objects of wonder touched with beauty and strangeness. The purpose of the romantic is to arouse emotion, pity, or the sense of the heroic; and it often exaggerates character and incidents beyond the normal. The test of the romantic tale as well as of the realistic tale is in the reality it possesses. This reality it will possess, not only because it is true, but because it is also true to life. And it is to be remembered that because of the unusual setting in a romantic tale the truth it presents stands out very clearly with much impressiveness. Red Riding Hood is a more impressive tale than The Three Bears.
Cinderella is a good type of the old romantic tale. It has a never-ending attraction for children just as it has had for all peoples of the world; for this tale has as many as three hundred and forty-five variants, which have been examined by Miss Cox. In these variants there are many common incidents, such as the hearth abode, the helpful animal, the heroine disguise, the ill-treated heroine, the lost shoe, the love-sick prince, magic dresses, the magic tree, the threefold flight, the false bride, and many others. But the one incident which claims the tale as a Cinderella tale proper, is the recognition of the heroine by means of her shoe. In the Greek Rhodope, the slipper is carried off by an eagle and dropped into the lap of the King of Egypt, who seeks and marries the owner. In the Hindu tale the Rajah's daughter loses her slipper in the forest where it is found by the Prince. The interpretation of Cinderella is that the Maiden, the Dawn, is dull and gray away from the brightness of the sun. The Sisters are the Clouds that shadow the Dawn, and the Stepmother is Night. The Dawn hurries away from the pursuing Prince, the Sun, who, after a long search, overtakes her in her glorious robes of sunset.
This tale is the Hindu Sodewa Bai, the Zuni Poor Turkey Girl, and the English Rushen Coatie, Cap-o'-Rushes, and Catskin. Catskin, which Mr. Burchell told to the children of the Vicar of Wakefield, is considered by Newell as the oldest of the Cinderella types, appearing in Straparola in 1550, while Cinderella appeared first in Basile in 1637. Catskin, in ballad form as given by Halliwell, was printed in Aldermary Churchyard, England, in 1720; and the form as given by Jacobs well illustrates how the prose tale developed from the old ballad. The two most common forms of Cinderella are Perrault's and Grimm's, either of which is suited to the very little child. Perrault's Cinderella shows about twenty distinct differences from the Grimm tale:—