Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs (29 August 1854 - 30 January 1916) was an Australian born folklorist who published books on English and Celtic fairy tales.

Little pig, little pig, let me come in.
To which the pig answered: Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
The wolf answered to that, Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow the house down.
Well, he [the wolf] huffed, and he puffed, and he puffed, and he puffed and he puffed and huffed; but he could not get the house down.
When the pig saw what he [the wolf] was about, he hung on a pot full of water, and made a blazing fire...and in fell the wolf...

Out the Old Woman jumped (of the window). And whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there...or taken up by a constable to the House of Correction for the vagrant she was I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything more of her.
- (note Goldilocks doesn't feature in this particular version of the story).
Who says that English folk have no fairy-tales of their own?

Kind sir, if the truth I must tell,
At the sign of Basin of Water I dwell.
- said by Princess Catskin

The sky is a-going to fall, I must go and tell the King.
- said by Henny-Penny, similar to the words said by Chicken Little

There once was upon a time a poor widow who had an only son Jack, and a cow called Milky-White.
You don't know what these beans are, said the man [that Jack meets]. If you plant them overnight, by morning they grew right up to the sky.
My man is an ogre and there is nothing he likes better than boys broiled on toast.
Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive or be he dead
I'll have his bones to grind my bread.
- (said by the ogre or giant. Now rendered as I'll grind his bones to make my bread.)
But the Harp called out quite loud: Master! Master!

Fee, fi, fo, fum
I smell the blood of some earthly one.
- (said by a giant, see Jack and the Beanstalk above.)
Woe worth you, Molly Whuppie! never you come again
Twice yet, carle, quoth she, I'll come to Spain.

...he must need wish in a hurry; and wish he did, that the black pudding may come off his nose.

Kind sir, if the truth I must tell,
At the sign of Basin of Water I dwell.
- (said by Princess Catskin).

External links