Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/249

Rh on each successive day, as he brought home a piece of money, a jar of milk, a cream cheese, a tom-cat, a shoulder of mutton, and at last a donkey. The humor lies in the contrast between what Jack did and what anybody "with sense" knows he ought to have done, until when royalty beheld him carrying the donkey on his shoulders, with legs sticking up in the air, it could bear no more, and burst into laughter. This is a good realistic droll to use because it impresses the truth, that even a little child must reason and judge and use his own common sense.

The Story of the Little Red Hen is a realistic tale which presents a simple picture of humble thrift. Andersen's Tin Soldier is a realistic tale which gives an adventure that might happen to a real tin soldier. The Old Woman and her Pig, whose history has been given under The Accumulative Tale, is realistic. Its theme is the simple experience of an aged peasant who swept her house, who had the unusual much-coveted pleasure of finding a dime, who went to market and bought a Pig for so small a sum. But on the way home, as the Pig became contrary when reaching a stile, and refused to go, the Old Woman had to seek aid. So she asked the Dog, the Stick, the Fire, etc. She asked aid first from the nearest at hand; and each object asked, in its turn sought help from the next higher power. One great source of pleasure in this tale is that each object whose aid is sought is asked to do the thing its nature would compel it to do—the Dog to bite, the