Page:English Fairy Tales.djvu/299

 Rh setting in his Earthly Paradise. He derived this from Nouvelles Françoises du Treizième Siècle, which he has himself translated under the title Old French Romances. In my introduction to his translation I have pointed out that this particular romance has a Byzantine source, an Ethiopic version of which has recently been discovered by Dr. E. Kuhn. The story is, indeed, told under the title of Constant the Emperor as a sort of folk etymology of the name Constantinople. It seems probable that the tale was thus brought from Byzantium to France and England and became localised in different forms at Stepney and York. Curiously enough, the letter to “kill bearer” is found in India, and is of course familiar from the Iliad. But whatever its ultimate source, there can be little doubt that this tale is more immediately derived from the Byzantine Romance of the Emperor Constant

XXXVI. THE MAGPIE’S NEST

Source.—I have built up “The Magpie’s Nest” from two nidification myths, as a German professor would call them, in the Rev. Mr. Swainson’s Folk-Lore of British Birds, pp. 80 and 166. I have received instruction about the relative values of nests from a little friend of mine named Katie, who knows all about it. If there is any mistake in the order of neatness in the various birds’ nests, I must have learnt my lesson badly.

Remarks.—English popular tradition is curiously at variance about the magpie’s nidificatory powers, for another legend given by Mr. Swainson represents her as refusing to be instructed by the birds, and that is why she does not make a good nest. The latter part of our tale occurs in the Welsh “Fables of Catwg” in the Iolo MS.

XXXVII. KATE CRACKERNUTS

Source.—Given by Mr. Lang in Longman’s Magazine, vol. xiv., and reprinted in Folk-Lore, Sept., 1890. It is very corrupt, both girls being called Kate, and I have had largely to rewrite.