Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/232

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208
A STUDY OF FAIRY TALES

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 Would n'n Go Borne 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 diffu-