Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/20

 and goes in quest of the wolf. The wolf is found asleep: the old goat cuts him open, and out frisk all the little kids. They then fill the wolf's stomach with stones, and sew up the orifice they had made. When the wolf awakens he is thirsty, and goes to drink, but the heavy stones make him lose his balance, he falls into the well, and is drowned.

Here the essential idea is probably nothing more than the fashioning of a comic story of a weak beast's victory over a strong beast. Similar stories are frequent among the Negroes and Bushmen (see Bleek's Reynard the Fox in South Africa, and Uncle Remus), among the Red Indians, and, generally, among uncivilised peoples.

A story in some ways like that of the "Wolf and the Kids," is common among the negroes of Georgia. In a Kaffir tale (Theal) the arts of the wolf are attributed to a cannibal. Apparently the tale (as the negroes tell it) is of African origin, and is not borrowed from the whites. Old Mrs. Sow had five little pigs, whom she warned against the machinations of Brer Wolf. Old Mrs. Sow died, and each little pig built a house for itself. The youngest pig built the strongest house. Brer Wolf, by a series of stratagems, which may be compared to those in Grimms' Märchen, entrapped and devoured the four elder pigs. The youngest pig was the wisest, and would not let Brer Wolf come in by the door. He had to enter by way of the chimney, fell into a great fire the youngest pig had lighted, and was burnt to death. Here we have only to note the cunning of the wolf, and his final defeat by the youngest of the pig family, who, as in almost all household tales, is wiser and more successful than his elder brethren. In the same way Grimms' youngest kid was the kid that escaped from the wolf.