Other Parallels

Gypsy Folk Tales, by Francis Hindes Groome, [1899], at sacred-texts.com

Other Parallels.

Resemblances only less strongly marked are observable between Campbell's two stories of 'The Shifty Lad' and 'The Three Widows' and the Welsh-Gypsy story of 'Jack the Robber' (No. 68), between his ' Tale of the Soldier' (given here as a tinker story, No. 74), and my 'Ashypelt' (No. 57), and between his 'Brown Bear of the Green Glen' (No. 73 here) and my 'Old King his Three Sons' (No. 55). There is also sometimes a striking similarity of phrase and idea in Gaelic and Welsh-Gypsy stories. Thus, in Campbell we get: 'The dun steed would catch the swift March wind that would be before, and the swift March wind could not catch her'; 'He went much further than I can tell or you can think'; and 'Whether dost thou like the big half of the bannock and my curse, or the little half and my blessing?' For which John Roberts gives: 'Off he went as fast as the wind, which the wind behind could not catch the wind before'; 'Now poor Jack goes . . . further than I can tell you to-night or ever intend to tell you'; and 'Which would you like best for me to make you--a little cake and to bless you, or a big cake and to curse you?' This last feature--of the big cake and curse, or the little cake and blessing--is found, to the best of my knowledge, in no folk-tale outside the British Isles; but it occurs also in the Aberdeenshire story of 'The Red Etin' (Chambers's Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 90), and in Kennedy's

p. lxxviii

[paragraph continues] 'Jack and his Comrades' and 'The Corpse-Watchers' (Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 5, 54).