The Storytellers’ Magazine
Vol. I — JUNE, 1913 — No. 1
Nimmy Nimmy Not
An English Fairy-tale
Retold from English Folk and Fairy Tales—Camelot Series
This story is built upon the lines of a perfect dramatic unit, as set forth by Freytag in his “Technik des Dramas”—(1) Exposition. Facts preceding the principal interest, i. e. the girl and her mother, etc. (2) Ascending Action. The coming of the king. The task. The development of the plot. (3) The Climax. This is the revelation of the name by the king, followed by the Supreme Moment which was the revelation of the proper name to Nimmy Nimmy Not. (4) Descending Action. The disposal of the villain through his “shrivelling up” and “flying away.” (5) Conclusion. “Living happy ever after.”
Joseph Jacobs in his “English Fairy Stories” gives us the following information in regard to the story: “Unearthed by Mr. E. Clodd, from the Suffolk Notes and Queries of the Ipswitch Journal, and re-printed by him in Folk-Lore Journal vii. 138-43. It has its parallels in Devonshire’s as “Duffy and the Devil,” in Hunt’s Romances and Drolls of the West of England, 239-47; in Scotland two variants are given by Chambers, “In Popular Rhymes of Scotland.” It is clearly the same as Grimm’s “Rumpelstiltskin” (No. 14).
Mr. Clodd sees in the class of name-guessing stories, a “survival” of the superstition that to know a man’s name gives you power over him, for which reason savages object to tell their names. It may be necessary—to explain to the little one, that Tom Tit can only be referred to as “That” because his name is not known until the end.
The version of the story here given is republished by permission from “Story Telling in School and Home,” by Evelyn Newcombe Partridge and George Everett Partridge, Ph. D., New York. Sturgis & Walton Co.
The illustrations for the story are reproduced from “English Fairy Stories,” through the courtesy of the author Joseph Jacobs and the publishers Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.
Once upon a time there was a woman, and she baked five pies. And when she took them from the oven, she found that they had baked so long the crusts were too hard to eat. So she said to her daughter: