ins. "Is that
Solomon?" she says, pretending to be afeard. "Noo, 't ain't," that says,
and that came further into the room. "Well, is that Zebedee?" says she
again. "Noo, 't ain't," says the impet. And then that laughed and
twirled that's tail till you couldn't hardly see it.

"Take time, woman," that says; "next guess, and you're mine." And that
stretched out that's black hands at her.

Well, she backed a step or two, and she looked at it, and then she
laughed out and says she, pointing her finger at it:

"Nimmy nimmy not
Your name's Tom Tit Tot."

Well, when that heard her, that gave an awful shriek and away that flew
into the dark, and she never saw it any more.

161

In 1697 the French author Charles Perrault
(1628-1703) published a little collection of
eight tales in prose familiarly known as _The
Tales of Mother Goose_ (_Contes de Ma Mere
l'Oye_). These tales were "The Fairies" ("Toads
and Diamonds"), "The Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood," "Bluebeard," "Little Red Riding Hood,"
"Puss-in-Boots," "Cinderella," "Rique with the
Tuft," and "Little Thumb." Perrault was
prominent as a scholar and may have felt it
beneath his dignity to write nursery tales. At
any rate he declared the stories were copied
from tellings by his eleven-year-old son. But
Perrault's fairies have not only saved him from
oblivion: in countless editions and
translations they have won him immortality. The
charming literary form of his versions,
"Englished by R. S., Gent," about 1730, soon
established them in place of the more somber
English popular versions. It is practically
certain that the name Mother Goose, as that of
the genial old lady who presides over the light
literature of the nursery, was established by
the work of Perrault.

"Little Red Riding Hood," a likely candidate
for first place in the affections of childish
story-lovers, is here given in its "correct"
form. Many versions are so constructed as to
have happy endings, either by having the
woodmen appear in the nick of time to kill the
wolf before any damage is done, or by having
the grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood
restored to life after recovering them from the
"innards" of th