English Fairy Tales

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 bet-
ter 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 bur-
ies 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 Bal-
lads and Folk Tales, see Prof. Child’s English and Scotch Bal-
lads (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.)

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147
Joseph Jacobs
XI. CAP O’ RUSHES.
Source.—Discovered by Mr. E. Clodd, in “Suffolk Notes
and Queries” of the Ipswich Journal, published by Mr. Lang
in Longinan’s Magazine, vol. xiii, also in Folk-Lore, Sept. 1890.
Parallels.—The beginning recalls “King Lear.” For “loving
like salt,” see the parallels collected by Cosquin, i. 288. The
whole story is a version of the numerous class of Cinderella
stories, the particular variety being the Catskin sub-species
analogous to Perrault’s Peau d’Ane. “Catskin” was told by
Mr. Burchell to the young Primroses in “The Vicar of
Wakefield,’” and has been elaborately studied by the late H.
C. Coote, in Folk-Lore Record, iii. 1-25. It is only now extant
in ballad form, of which “Cap o’ Rushes” may be regarded
as a prose version.