Source.—Halliwell, 148.
XIII. JACK AND THE BEANSTALK.
Source.—I tell this as it was told me in Australia, somewhere about the year 1860.
Parallels.—There is a chap-book version which is very poor; it is given by Mr. E. S. Hartland, English Folk and Fairy Tales (Camelot Series), p. 35, seq. In this, when Jack arrives at the top of the Beanstalk, he is met by a fairy, who gravely informs him that the ogre had stolen all his possessions from Jack's father. The object of this was to prevent the tale becoming an encouragement to theft! I have had greater confidence in my young friends, and have deleted the fairy who did not exist in the tale as told to me. For the Beanstalk elsewhere, see Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, 293-8. Cosquin has some remarks on magical ascents (i. 14).
XIV. THREE LITTLE PIGS.
Source.—Halliwell, p. 16.
Parallels.—The only known parallels are one from Venice, Bernoni, Trad. Pop., punt. iii. p. 65, given in Crane, Italian Popular Tales, p. 267, “The Three Goslings;” and a negro tale in Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1877, p. 753 (“Tiny Pig”).
Remarks.—As little pigs do not have hair on their chinny chin-chins, I suspect that they were originally kids, who have. This would bring the tale close to the Grimms' “Wolf and Seven Little Kids,” (No. 5). In Steel and Temple's “Lambikin” (Wide-awake Stories, p. 71), the Lambikin gets inside a Drumikin, and so nearly escapes the jackal.
XV. MASTER AND PUPIL
Source.—Henderson, Folk-Lore of Northern Counties, first edition, p. 343, communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. The rhymes on the open book have been supplied by Mr. Batten, in whose family, if I understand him rightly, they have been long used for raising the——; something similar occurs in Halliwell, p. 243, as a riddle rhyme. The mystic signs in Greek are a familiar “counting-out rhyme”: these have been studied in a monograph by Mr. H. C. Bolton; he thinks they are “survivals” of incantations. Under the circumstances, it would be perhaps as well if the reader did not read the lines out when alone. One never knows what may happen.