Chapter XLVII: My Own Self

_Source._--Told to Mrs. Balfour by Mrs. W., a native of North Sunderland, who had seen the cottage and heard the tale from persons who had known the widow and her boy, and had got the story direct from them. The title was "Me A'an Sel'," which I have altered to "My Own Self."

_Parallels._--Notwithstanding Mrs. Balfour's informant, the same tale is widely spread in the North Country. Hugh Miller relates it, in his _Scenes from my Childhood_, as "Ainsel"; it is given in Mr. Hartland's _English Folk and Fairy Tales_; Mr. F.B. Jevons has heard it in the neighbourhood of Durham; while a further version appeared in _Monthly Chronicle of North Country Folk-Lore_. Further parallels abroad are enumerated by Mr. Clouston in his _Book of Noodles_, pp. 184-5, and by the late Prof. Köhler in _Orient und Occident_, ii., 331. The expedient by which Ulysses outwits Polyphemus in the Odyssey by calling himself [Greek: outis] is clearly of the same order.

_Remarks._--The parallel with the Odyssey suggests the possibility that this is the ultimate source of the legend, as other parts of the epic have been adapted to local requirements in Great Britain, as in the "Blinded Giant" (No. lxi.), or "Conall Yellowclaw" (_Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. v.). The fact of Continental parallels disposes of the possibility of its being a merely local legend. The fairies might appear to be in a somewhat novel guise here as something to be afraid of. But this is the usual attitude of the folk towards the "Good People," as indeed their euphemistic name really implies.