Chapter XVI: Tatty Mouse and Tatty Mouse

_Source_.--Halliwell, p. 115.

_Parallels_.--This curious droll is extremely widespread; references are given in Cosquin, i. 204 _seq._, and Crane, _Italian Popular Tales_, 375-6. As a specimen I may indicate what is implied throughout these notes by such bibliographical references by drawing up a list of the variants of this tale noticed by these two authorities, adding one or two lately printed. Various versions have been discovered in:

ENGLAND: Halliwell, _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 115.

SCOTLAND: K. Blind, in _Arch. Rev_. iii. (“Fleakin and Lousikin,” in the Shetlands).

FRANCE: _Mélusine_, 1877, col. 424; Sebillot, _Contes pop. de la Haute Bretagne_, No. 55, _Litterature orale_, p. 232; _Magasin picturesque_, 1869, p. 82; Cosquin, _Contes pop. de Lorraine_, Nos. 18 and 74.

ITALY: Pitrè, _Novelline popolari siciliane_, No. 134 (translated in Crane, _Ital. Pop. Tales_, p. 257); Imbriani, _La novellaja Fiorentina_, p. 244; Bernoni, _Tradizione popolari veneziane_, punt. iii. p. 81; Gianandrea, _Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari marchigiane_, p.,11; Papanti, _Novelline popolari livornesi_, p. 19 (“Vezzino e Madonna Salciccia”); Finamore, _Trad. pop. abruzzesi_, p. 244; Morosi, _Studi sui Dialetti Greci della Terra d'Otranto_, p. 75; _Giamb. Basile_, 1884, p. 37.

GERMANY: Grimm, _Kinder-und Hausmärchen_, No. 30; Kuhn and Schwarz, _Norddeutsche Sagen_, No. 16.

NORWAY: Asbjornsen, No. 103 (translated in Sir G. Dasent's _Tales from the Field_, p. 30, “Death of Chanticleer”).

SPAIN: Maspons, _Cuentos populars catalans_, p. 12; Fernan Caballero, _Cuentos y sefrañes populares_, p. 3 (“La Hormiguita”).

PORTUGAL: Coelho, _Contes popolares portuguezes_, No. 1.

ROUMANIA: Kremnitz, _Rumänische Mährchen_, No. 15.

ASIA MINOR: Von Hahn, _Griechische und Albanesische Märchen_, No. 56.

INDIA: Steel and Temple, _Wide-awake Stories_, p. 157 (“The Death and Burial of Poor Hen-Sparrow”).

_Remarks_.--These 25 variants of the same jingle scattered over the world from India to Spain, present the problem of the diffusion of folk-tales in its simplest form. No one is likely to contend with Prof. Müller and Sir George Cox, that we have here the detritus of archaic Aryan mythology, a parody of a sun-myth. There is little that is savage and archaic to attract the school of Dr. Tylor, beyond the speaking powers of animals and inanimates. Yet even Mr. Lang is not likely to hold that these variants arose by coincidence and independently in the various parts of the world where they have been found. The only solution is that the curious succession of incidents was invented once for all at some definite place and time by some definite entertainer for children, and spread thence through all the Old World. In a few instances we can actually trace the passage-_e.g._, the Shetland version was certainly brought over from Hamburg. Whether the centre of dispersion was India or not, it is impossible to say, as it might have spread east from Smyrna (Hahn, No. 56). Benfey (_Einleitung zu Pantschatantra_, i. 190-91) suggests that this class of accumulative story may be a sort of parody on the Indian stories, illustrating the moral, “what great events from small occasions rise.” Thus, a drop of honey falls on the ground; a fly goes after it, a bird snaps at the fly, a dog goes for the bird, another dog goes for the first, the masters of the two dogs--who happen to be kings--quarrel and go to war, whole provinces are devastated, and all for a drop of honey! “Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse” also ends in a universal calamity which seems to arise from a cause of no great importance. Benfey's suggestion is certainly ingenious, but perhaps too ingenious to be true.