Then came the Holy One, blessed be He,
     And killed the angel of death,
     That killed the butcher,
     That slew the ox,
     That drank the water,
     That quenched the fire,
     That burned the staff,
     That beat the dog,
     That bit the cat,
     That ate the kid,
     That my father bought
     For two pieces of money: 
     A kid, a kid.

The remarkable similarity to The Old Woman, and Her Pig[8] at once proclaims the origin of that tale also.  The interpretation of this tale is as follows:  The kid is the Hebrews; the father by whom it was purchased, is Jehovah; the two pieces of money are Aaron and Moses; the cat is the Assyrians; the dog is the Babylonians; the staff is the Persians; the fire is the Greek Empire and Alexander; the water is the Romans; the ox is the Saracens; the butcher is the Crusaders; and the angel of death is the Turkish Power.  The message of this tale is that God will take vengeance over the Turks and the Hebrews will be restored to their own land.

Another tale of simple repetition, whose fairy element is the magic key, is The Key of the Kingdom, also found in Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes of England:—­

     This is the key of the kingdom. 
     In that kingdom there is a city,
     In that city there is a town,
     In that town there is a street,
     In that street there is a lane,
     In that lane there is a yard,
     In that yard there is a house,
     In that house there is a room,
     In that room there is a bed,
     On that bed there is a basket,
     In that basket there are some flowers. 
     Flowers in the basket, basket on the bed,
       bed in the room, etc.

The Old Woman and Her Pig illustrates the second class of accumulative tale, where there is an addition, and like Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse, where the end turns back on the beginning and changes all that precedes.  Here there is a more marked plot.  This same tale occurs in Shropshire Folk-Lore, in the Scotch Wife and Her Bush of Berries, in Club-Fist, an American folk-game described by Newell, in Cossack fairy tales, and in the Danish, Spanish, and Italian.  In the Scandinavian, it is Nanny, Who Wouldn’t Go Home to Supper, and in the Punjab, The Grain of Corn, also given in Tales of Laughter.  I have never seen a child who did not like it or who was not pleased with himself for accomplishing its telling.  It lends itself most happily to illustration. Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse pleases because of the liveliness of its images, and because of the catastrophe at the end, which affects the child just as the tumble of his huge pile of blocks—­the crash and general upheaval delight him.  This tale has so many variants that it illustrates well the diffusion of fairy tales.  It is Grimm’s The Spider and the Flea, which as we have seen, is appealing in its simplicity; the Norse The Cock Who Fell into the Brewing Vat; and the Indian The Death and Burial of Poor Hen.  The curious succession of incidents may have been invented once for all at some definite time, and from thence spread to all the world.