are measured utterances. At first there was the spontaneous
expression of a little community, with its gesture, action, sound, and
dance, and the word, the shout, to help out. There was the group which
repeated, which acted as a chorus, and the leader who added his
individual variation. From these developed the folk-tale with the
dialogue in place of the chorus.

Of the accumulative tales, _The House that Jack Built_ illustrates the
first class of tales of simple repetition. This tale takes on a new
interest as a remarkable study of phonics. If any one were so happy as
to discover the phonic law which governs the euphony produced by the
succession of vowels in the lines of Milton's poetry, he would enjoy
the same law worked out in _The House that Jack Built_. The original,
as given by Halliwell in his _Nursery Rhymes of England_, is said to
be a Hebrew hymn, at first written in Chaldaic. To the Hebrews of the
Middle Ages it was called the _Haggadah_, and was sung to a rude chant
as part of the Passover service. It first appeared in print in 1590,
at Prague. Later, in Leipzig, it was published by the German scholar,
Liebrecht. It begins:--

A kid, a kid, my father bought
For two pieces of money:
A kid, a kid,
Then came the cat and ate the kid, etc.

Then follow the various repetitive stanzas, the last one turning back
and reacting on all the others:--

Then came the Holy One, blessed be He,
And killed the angel of death,
That killed the butcher,
That slew the ox,
That drank the water,
That quenched the fire,
That burned the staff,
That beat the dog,
That bit the cat,
That ate the kid,
That my father bought
For two pieces of money:
A kid, a kid.

The remarkable similarity to _The Old Woman, and Her Pig_[8] at once
proclaims the origin of that tale also. The interpretation of this
tale is as follows: The kid is the Hebrews; the father by whom it was
purchased, is Jehovah; the two pieces of money are Aaron and Moses;
the cat is the Assyrians; the dog is the Babylonians; the staff is the
Persians; the fire is the Greek Empire and Alexander; the water is the
Romans; the ox is the Saracens; the butcher is the Crusaders; and the
angel of death is the Turkish Power. The message of this tale is that
God will take vengeance over the Turks and the Hebrews will be
restored to their own land.

Another tale of simple repetition, whose