Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/248

224 and the test is not how much, but how little, credulity it arouses.

Grimm's Hans in Luck is a perfect realistic tale, as are Grimm's Clever Elsa and the Norse Three Sillies, although these tales are suited to slightly older children. The drolls often appear among the realistic tales, as if genuine humor were more fresh when related to the things of actual life. The English Lazy Jack is a delightful realistic droll which contains motifs that appear frequently among the tales. The Touchstone motif of a humble individual causing nobility to laugh appears in Grimm's Dummling and His Golden Goose. It appears also in Zerbino the Savage, a most elaborated Neapolitan tale retold by Laboulaye in his Last Fairy Tales; a tale full of humor, wit, and satire that would delight the cultured man of the world.

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