Then the Green Lady said, “Now, go to the well, and bring in a pail of nice clean water to cook the supper in. If the water isn’t clean, change it and change it till it is.”
Then the little girl took a pail and went to the well. The first pail she drew, the water was so muddy and dirty, she threw it away. The next pailful she drew, the water was a little clearer, but there was a silver fish in it.
The fish said, “Little girl, little girl, wash me and comb me, and lay me down softly.”
So she washed it and combed it, and laid it down softly. Then she drew another pailful. The water was a little clearer, but there was a gold fish in it.
The fish said, “Little girl, little girl, wash me and comb me, and lay me down softly.”
So she washed it and combed it, and laid it down softly. Then she drew another pailful. There was clear water, but there was still another fish who said the same thing as the others; so she washed this one too, combed it, and laid it down softly. Then she drew another pailful, and this was quite fresh and clear.
Then the three fish raised their heads and said:
They who eat the fairies’ food
In the churchyard soon shall dwell.
Drink the water of this well,
And all things for thee shall be good.
Be but honest, bold and true,
So shall good fortune come to you.
Then the little girl hasted to the house, swept up the kitchen, and made the dust fly quickly, for she thought she would surely be scolded for being away so long, and she was hungry too. The Green Lady then showed her how to cook the supper, and take it into the parlor, and told her she could take some bread and milk for herself afterwards. But the little girl said she would rather have a drink of water and some of her own cake; she had found some crumbs in her pocket you must know. Then the Green Lady went into the parlor, and the little girl sat down by the fire. Then she was thinking about her place, and what the fish had said, and she wondered why the Green Lady had told her not to look through the keyhole. She thought there could not be any harm in doing this, and she looked through the keyhole, when what should she see but the Green Lady dancing with a bogey! She was so surprised that she called out:
“Oh! what can I see?
A green lady dancing with a bogey.”
The Green Lady rushed out of the room and said: “What can you see?”
The little girl replied,
“Nothing can I see, nothing can I spy,
Nothing can I see till the days high die.”
[The day I die?]
Then the Green Lady went into the parlor again to have her supper, and the little girl again looked through the keyhole. Again she sang:
“Oh! what can I see?
A green lady dancing with a bogey.”
The Green Lady rushed out: “Little girl, little girl, what can you see?”
The girl said,
“Nothing can I see, nothing can I spy,
Nothing can I see till the days high die.”
This happened a third time, and then the Green Lady said: “Now you shall see no more,” and she blinded the little girl’s eyes. “But,” said the Green Lady, “because you have been a good girl, and made the dust fly, I will give you your wages and you shall go home.”
So she gave her a bag of money and a bundle of clothes, and sent her away. So the little girl stumbled along the path in the dark and presently she stumbled against the well. Now, there was a fine young man sitting on the edge of the well, and he told her he had been sent by the fish of the well to see her home, and would carry her bag of money and her bundle for her. He told her, too, before starting on her journey, to bathe her eyes in the well. [Rhyme missing here.] This she did and she found her eyes come back to her, and she could see as well as ever. So the young man and the little girl went along together, until they arrived at her father’s cottage; and when the bag was opened, there was all sorts of money in it, and when the bundle was opened, there was all sorts of fine clothes in it. And the little girl married the young man, and they lived happy ever after.
Now, when the other girl saw all the fine things her sister had got, she came to her father and said, “Father, give me a cake and a bottle of beer, and let me seek my fortune.”
Her father gave her a cake and a bottle of beer, and the same things happened to her as to her sister. But when the old man asked her for some dinner, she said, “I haven’t enough for myself; so I can’t give you any,” and when she was at the Green Lady’s house, she didn’t make the dust fly, and the Green Lady was cross with her; and when she went to the well and the fish got into her pails of water, she said the fishes were wet, sloppy things, and she wasn’t going to mess her hands and clean frock with them, and she threw them back roughly into the well; and she said she wasn’t going to drink nasty cold water for her supper, when she could have nice bread and milk; and when the Green Lady put her eyes out for looking through the keyhole, she didn’t get a bag of money and a bundle of clothes or her wages, because she hadn’t made the dust fly, and she had no one to help her and take her home. So she wandered about all night and all day, and she died; and no one knows where she was buried or what became of her.
3
Tom Tit Tot
Reprinted by Edward Clodd in “The Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin,” Folk-Lore Journal, VII (1889), 138–43, from the Ipswich Journal, Notes and Queries, edited by the noted collector of gipsy folktales, F. Hindes Groome, who received the tale from a lady who had heard it in childhood from a West Suffolk nurse.
Clodd was fascinated by this folktale as an example of survival from the savage belief of magic in names, and developed his study into a full-length book, Tom Tit Tot, An Essay on Savage Philosophy in Folk-Tale (London, 1898). The most famous version is Grimm No. 55, “Rumpelstilzchen.” This story is Type 500, The Name of the Helper, most heavily reported in Ireland, Germany, Denmark, and Finland. Key motifs are H521, “Test: guessing unknown propounder’s name”; H1092, “Tasks: spinning impossible amount in one night”; and N475, “Secret name overheard by eavesdropper.”
In England, a long Cornish droll was printed by Robert Hunt in Popular Romances from the West of England, First Series (London, 1865), pp. 273–84, under the title “Duffy and the Devil.” Hartland reprinted the present text in English Fairy and Other Folk Tales, pp. 28–34. Robert Chambers gives a Scottish text in The Popular Rhymes of Scotland, pp. 262–63. An American Negro text from North Carolina is in the Journal of American Folklore, XXX (1917), 198. Three versions of Type 500 appear in Folktales of Norway, a companion volume in this series, Nos. 5, 7, and 159.
The present text is told in West Suffolk dialect. “Maw’r” or “Mawther” is the curious Suffolk word for a daughter or young maid. “Gatless” means heedless or senseless.
WELL, ONCE UPON a time, there were a woman and she baked five pies. And when they come out of the oven, they was that overbaked, the crust were too hard to eat. So she says to her darter—
“Maw’r,” she says, “put you them there pies on the shelf an’ leave ’em there a little, an’ they’ll come agin,”—she meant, you know, the crust ’ud get soft.
