Parallels.—The incident "Bones together" occurs in Rushen Coatie (infra, No. lxx.), and has been discussed by the Grimms, i., 399, and by Prof. Köhler, Or. und Occ., ii., 680.
LXI. THE BLINDED GIANT
Source.—Henderson's Folk-Lore of Northern Counties. See also Folk-Lore.
Parallels.—Polyphemus in the Odyssey and the Celtic parallels in Celtic Fairy Tales, No. v., "Conall Yellowclaw." The same incident occurs in one of Sindbad's voyages.
Remarks.—Here we have another instance of the localisation of a well-known myth. There can be little doubt that the version is ultimately to be traced back to the Odyssey. The one-eyed giant, the barred door, the escape through the blinded giant's legs in the skin of a slaughtered animal, are a series of incidents that could not have arisen independently and casually. Yet till lately the mill stood to prove if the narrator lied, and every circumstance of local particularity seemed to vouch for the autochthonous character of the myth. The incident is an instructive one, and I have therefore included it in this volume, though it is little more than an anecdote in its present shape.
LXII. SCRAPEFOOT
Source.—Collected by Mr. Batten from Mrs. H., who heard it from her mother over forty years ago.
Parallels.—It is clearly a variant of Southey's Three Bears (No. xviii.).
Remarks.—This remarkable variant raises the question whether Southey did anything more than transform Scrapefoot into his naughty old woman, who in her turn has been transformed by popular tradition into the naughty girl Silver-hair. Mr. Nutt ingeniously suggests that Southey heard the story told of an old vixen, and mistook the rustic name of a female fox for the metaphorical application to women of fox-like temper. Mrs. H.'s version to my mind has all the marks of priority. It is throughout an animal tale, the touch at the end of the shaking the paws and the name Scrapefoot are too volkstümlich to have been conscious variations on Southey's tale. In introducing the story in his Doctor, the poet laureate did not claim to do more than repeat a popular tale. I think that there can be little doubt that in Mrs. H.'s version we have now recovered this in its original form. If this is so, we may here have one more incident of the great Northern beast epic of bear and fox, on which Prof. Krohn has written an instructive monograph, Bär (Wolf.) und Fuchs (Helsingfors, 1889).
LXIII. THE PEDLAR OF SWAFFHAM