This story also deals with the Apple-Tree Man of the preceding tale, and contains Motif D950.10, “Magic apple tree.” There is a suggestion of Motif G243, “Witch’s sabbath.”
A “dairy maid” is a white and tortoise-shell cat. There is a saying round Pitminster, “You want to know too much, like Tibb’s cat.”
THERE WAS A little cat down Tibb’s Farm, not much more’n a kitten—a little dairy-maid with a face so clean as a daisy. A pretty little dear her was, but her wanted to know too much. There was fields down along as wasn’t liked. No one cared much about working there. Y’see, ’twas all elder there, and there was a queer wind used to blow there most times, and sound like someone talking it would. I wouldn’t go there myself unless I had a criss-cross of salt on a crust. Oh! yes, my maid, I could show ’ee the field now, but I ’on’t, and don’t you be like Tibb’s cat, and go look-see for yourself! There’s summat bad about down there, and that was why all they wild black cats goed there on certain nights, and Tibb’s cat she wished to go too. She tried to find the way Candlemas Eve, and Allern [Hallowe’en] and all the wisht nights witches do meet, but her weren’t big enough to catch up. So, when New Year’s Eve come, she tried again.
This time she got as far as the orchet, and then the Apple-Tree Man he called out to her, “Yew go on back whoame, my dear. There’s folk a-coming to pour cider for my roots, and shoot off guns to drive away the witches. This be no place for yew. Yew go back whoame, and don’t come awandering round at night till St. Tibb’s Eve.”
The little dairy-maid her took off home with her tail stiff with vright. Properly scared she, the Apple-Tree Man did. And she never wandered at night again, ’cause she didn’t know when St. Tibb’s Eve is. Nor do anybody else.
15
The Man in the Wilderness
Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 28, 1963, who heard it from her aunt, Annie Tongue of Alkboro, Lincolnshire, told by her grandmother in 1860, who had it from her mother about 1800.
The most relevant motif here is G681, “Ogre gives riddle on pain of death,” known in Germany, the Slavic countries, and India.
The tale was repeated always in the same words so that the children learned it by heart. As a rhyming riddle “The Man in the Wilderness” is a well-known nursery rhyme. See James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, The Nursery Rhymes of England (London, 1843, No. CCCLXIX, pp. 157, 209), who refers to a seventeenth-century MS text in the Sloane Collection. Beatrix Potter in her story for children, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (London, 1903), p. 33, makes use of it, along with other traditional riddles. Riddling tests are common in folklore; “The Fause Knight upon the Road” (Child No. 3) is a familiar example. The Red Sea was the usual place to which malignant spirits were banished.
It is possible that the story may have been inspired by the rhyme and invented by the great-grandmother, but even so it has existed in oral tradition for four generations.
TOM, DICK AND JACK were going to the Fair. They came to a wood where there was a Bad ’un, and no one could send him to the Red Sea. He asked travelers a question, and if they couldn’t tell it they were never seen any more. So Tom says, “I’m the eldest, I’ll go in first.”
So they waited. By and by Tom came back, and he said,
The Man in the Wilderness asked of me
“How many blackberries grow in the sea?”
I answered him as I thought good,
“As many red herrings as grow in the wood.”
“And he had to let me go.”
So Dick said, “Now it’s my turn.”
And they waited, and by and by, Dick came back, and he said,
The Man in the Wilderness asked me why
His hen could swim, and his pig could fly.
I answered him briskly as I thought best,
“Because they were born in a cuckoo’s nest.”
“And he had to let me go.”
Then it was little Jacky’s turn. So they waited, and all of a sudden there was a great puff of smoke, and by and by little Jacky came back and said,
The Man in the Wilderness asked me to tell
The sands in the sea and I counted them well.
Says he with a grin, “And not one more?”
I answered him bravely, “You go and make sure!”
“So he had to go, and the Bad ’uns in the Red Sea will keep him.”
Then Tom, Dick, and little Jacky went to the Fair quite safely.
16
The Old Man at the White House
Reprinted from S. O. Addy, “Four Yorkshire Folktales,” Folk-Lore, VIII (1897), pp. 393–94, told by Richard Hirst, age 18, of Sheffield.
Central motifs are C420.2. “Tabu: not to speak about a certain happening,” and D1825.4.3, “Magic power to see lost things.” G. L. Kittredge in Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), p. 165, discusses the power of witches to recover lost articles. The ending of Type 366, The Man from the Gallows, has a ghost seizing a man who robbed his corpse. Mark Twain’s “The Man with the Golden Arm” similarly scares the listener. The traditional version of this was published in Jacob’s English Fairy Tales, p. 138.
THERE WAS ONCE a man who lived in a white house in a certain village, and he knew everything about everybody who lived in the place.
In the same village there lived a woman who had a daughter called Sally, and one day she gave Sally a pair of yellow gloves and threatened to kill her if she lost them.
Now Sally was very proud of her gloves, but she was careless enough to lose one of them. After she had lost it she went to a row of houses in the village and inquired at every door if they had seen her glove. But everybody said “No,” and she was told to go and ask the old man that lived in the white house.
So Sally went to the white house and asked the old man if he had seen her glove. The old man said, “I have thy glove, and I will give it thee if thou wilt promise me to tell nobody where thou hast found it. And remember, if thou tells anybody I shall fetch thee out of bed when the clock strikes twelve at night.”
