LXXVIII.  PUDDOCK, MOUSIE, AND RATTON

Source.—­Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s Ballad Book, 1824, slightly anglicised.

Parallels.—­Mr. Bullen, in his Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books, p. 202, gives a version, “The Marriage of the Frog and the Mouse,” from T. Ravenscroft’s Melismata, 1611.  The nursery rhyme of the frog who would a-wooing go is clearly a variant of this, and has thus a sure pedigree of three hundred years; cf. “Frog husband” in my List of Incidents, or notes to “The Well of the World’s End” (No. xli.).

LXXIX.  LITTLE BULL-CALF

Source.—­Gypsy Lore Journal, iii., one of a number of tales told “In a Tent” to Mr. John Sampson.  I have respelt and euphemised the bladder.

Parallels.—­The Perseus and Andromeda incident is frequent in folk-tales; see my List of Incidents sub voce “Fight with Dragon.”  “Cheese squeezing,” as a test of prowess, is also common, as in “Jack the Giant Killer” and elsewhere (Koehler, Jahrbuch, vii., 252).

LXXX.  THE WEE WEE MANNIE

Source.—­From Mrs. Balfour’s old nurse.  I have again anglicised.

Parallels.—­This is one of the class of accumulative stories like The Old Woman and her Pig (No. iv.).  The class is well represented in these isles.

LXXXI.  HABETROT AND SCANTLIE MAB

Source.—­Henderson’s Folk-Lore of Northern Counties, pp. 258-62 of Folk-Lore Society’s edition.  I have abridged and to some extent rewritten.

Parallels.—­This in its early part is a parallel to the Tom Tit Tot, which see.  The latter part is more novel, and is best compared with the Grimms’ Spinners.

Remark.—­Henderson makes out of Habetrot a goddess of the spinning-wheel, but with very little authority as it seems to me.

LXXXII.  OLD MOTHER WIGGLE WAGGLE

Source.—­I have inserted into Halliwell’s version one current in Mr. Batten’s family, except that I have substituted “Wiggle-Waggle” for “Slipper-Slopper.”  The two versions supplement one another.

Remarks.—­This is a pure bit of animal satire, which might have come from a rural Jefferies with somewhat more of wit than the native writer.

LXXXIII.  CATSKIN

Source.—­From the chap-book reprinted in Halliwell I have introduced the demand for magic dresses from Chambers’s Rashie Coat, into which it had clearly been interpolated from some version of Catskin.