English Fairy TalesXIV. THREE LITTLE PIGS.
Source.—Halliwell, p. 16.
Parallels.—The only known parallels are one from Venice,
Bernoni, Trad. Pop., punt. iii. p. 65, given in Crane, Italian
Popular Tales, p. 267, “The Three Goslings;” and a negro
tale in Lippincott’s Magazine, December, 1877, p. 753 (“Tiny
Pig”).
Remarks.—As little pigs do not have hair on their chinny
chin-chins, I suspect that they were originally kids, who have.
This would bring the tale close to the Grimms’ “Wolf and
Seven Little Kids,” (No. 5). In Steel and Temple’s “Lambikin”
(Wide-awake Stories, p. 71), the Lambikin gets inside a
Drumikin, and so nearly escapes the jackal.
XV. MASTER AND PUPIL
Source.—Henderson, Folk-Lore of Northern Counties, first
edition, p. 343, communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.
The rhymes on the open book have been supplied by Mr.
Batten, in whose family, if I understand him rightly, they
have been long used for raising the——; something similar
occurs in Halliwell, p. 243, as a riddle rhyme. The mystic
signs in Greek are a familiar “counting-out rhyme”: these
have been studied in a monograph by Mr. H. C. Bolton; he
thinks they are “survivals” of incantations. Under the cir-
cumstances, it would be perhaps as well if the reader did not
read the lines out when alone. One never knows what may
happen.Parallels.—Sorcerers’ pupils seem to be generally selected for
their stupidity—in folk-tales. Friar Bacon was defrauded of his
labour in producing the Brazen Head in a similar way. In one of
the legends about Virgil he summoned a number of demons,
who would have torn him to pieces if he had not set them at
work (J. S. Tunison, Master Virgil, Cincinnati, 1888, p. 30).