powerful in proportion to the low culture of the people who entertain
it. In the Kaffir tale, where the girl disenchants the Crocodile by
_licking_ him (kissing, perhaps, being unfamiliar), the man who comes
out of the crocodile skin merely says that the girl's 'power' (her
native magical force) is greater than that of 'the enemies of his
father's house,' who had enchanted him (Theal, _The Bird who made
Milk_). This idea may and does exist apart from the notion, which so
commonly accompanies it, of a taboo, or prohibition on freedom of
intercourse between the lover and the lady, either of whom has been
disenchanted by the other.

If the original and popular basis of this kind of story was moral, the
moral was strangely coloured by the fancy of early men. In Perrault
little but the moral, told in a gallant apologue, remains. It may be
compared with a Thibetan story, analysed by M. Gaston Paris[92].

[Footnote 91: Theal's _Kaffir Folk Lore_, p. 37.]

[Footnote 92: _Revue Critique_, July, 1874.]

LE PETIT POUCET.

_Hop o' my Thumb._

Perrault's tale of _Le Petit Poucet_ has nothing but the name in common
with the legend of _Le Petit Poucet_ (our 'Tom Thumb') on which M.
Gaston Paris has written a learned treatise. The Poucet who conducts the
Walloon _Chaur-Poce_, our 'Charles's Wain,' merely resembles Hop o' my
Thumb in his tiny stature, and little can be gained by a comparison of
two personages so unlike in their adventures (Gaston Paris, _Mem. de la
Societe de Linguistique_, i. 4, p. 372).

In _Hop o' my Thumb_, as Perrault tells it, there are many traces of
extreme antiquity.

The incidents are (1) Design of a distressed father and mother to expose
their children in a forest. (2) Discovery and frustration of the scheme
by the youngest child, whose clue leads him and his brethren home again.
(3) The same incident, but the clue (scattered crumbs) spoiled by birds.
(4) Arrival of the children at the house of an ogre. They are
entertained by his wife, but the ogre discovers them by the smell of
human flesh. (5) Hop o' my Thumb shifts the golden crowns of the ogre's
children to the heads of his brethren, and the ogre destroys his own
family in the dark. (6) Flight of the boys, pursued by the ogre in
Seven-Leagued Boots. (7) There is a choice of conclusion. In one (8) Hop
o' my Thumb steals the boots of the sleeping ogre, and gets his
treasures from the ogre's wife. (9) Hop o' my Thumb steals the boots and
by