168
English Fairy Tales
XLI. THE WELL OF THE WORLD’S END.
Source.—Leyden’s edition of
The Complaynt of Scotland, p.
234
seq., with additional touches from Halliwell, 162-3, who
makes up a slightly different version from the rhymes. The
opening formula I have taken from Mayhew,
London Labour,
iii. 390, who gives it as the usual one when tramps tell folk-
tales. I also added it to No. xvii.
Parallels.—Sir W. Scott remembered a similar story; see Taylor’s
Gammer Grethel, ad fin. In Scotland it is Chambers’s tale of
The
Paddo, p. 87; Leyden supposes it is referred to in the
Complaynt,
(c. 1548), as “The Wolf of the Warldis End.” The well of this
name occurs also in the Scotch version of the “Three Heads of
the Well,” (No. xliii.). Abroad it is the Grimms’ first tale, while
frogs who would a-wooing go are discussed by Prof. Köhler,
Occ. u. Orient ii. 330; by Prof. Child, i. 298; and by Messrs.
Jones and Kropf,
l.c., p. 404. The sieve-bucket task is wide-
spread from the Danaids of the Greeks to the leverets of
Uncle
Remus, who, curiously enough, use the same rhyme: “Fill it wid
moss en dob it wid clay.”
Cf., too, No. xxiii.
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