Page:More English Fairy Tales.djvu/269

 little, though it is indeed curious that one of Campbell's best equipped informants should turn out to be a gypsy. Even this fact, however, is not too well substantiated.

LXXII. KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT.

Source.—"Prosed" from the well-known ballad in Percy. I have changed the first query: What am I worth? Answer: Twenty nine pence—one less, I ween, than the Lord. This would have sounded somewhat bold in prose.

Parallels.—Vincent of Beauvais has the story, but the English version comes from the German Joe Miller, Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst, No. lv., p. 46, ed. Oesterley, where see his notes. The question I have omitted exists there, and cannot have "independently arisen." Pauli was a fifteenth century worthy or unworthy.

Remarks.—Riddles were once on a time serious things to meddle with, as witness Samson and the Sphynx, and other instances duly noted with his customary erudition by Prof. Child in his comments on the ballad, English and Scotch Ballads, i. 403-14.

LXXIII. RUSHEN COATIE.

Source.—I have concocted this English, or rather Scotch, Cinderella from the various versions given in Miss Cox's remarkable collection of 345 variants of Cinderella (Folk-Lore Society, 1892); see Parallels for an enumeration of those occurring in the British Isles, I have used Nos. 1-3, 8-10. I give my composite the title "Rushen Coatie," to differentiate it from any of the Scotch variants, and for the purposes of a folk-lore experiment. If this book becomes generally used among English-speaking peoples, it may possibly re-introduce this and other tales among the folk. We should be able to trace this re-introduction by the variation in titles. I have done the same with "Nix Nought Nothing," "Molly Whuppie," and "Johnny Gloke."

Parallels.—Miss Cox's volume gives no less than 113 variants of the pure type of Cinderella her type A. "Cinderella, or the Fortunate Marriage of a despised Scullery-maid by aid of an Animal Godmother through the Test of a Slipper"—such might be the explanatory title of a chapbook dealing with the pure type of Cinderella. This is represented in Miss Cox's book, so far as the British Isles are