--- title: LXXXIII. Catskin — More English Fairy Tales · full text with trees description: LXXXIII. Catskin, «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: _Source. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [More English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/) / LXXXIII. Catskin # LXXXIII. Catskin LXXXIII. Catskin of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs: the whole text, 32 sentences and 704 words. Every sentence has its own page with its syntax tree and pragmatics, parsed by Mova itself. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/1/) — \_Source. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/2/) — \_--From the chap-book reprinted in Halliwell I have introduced the demand for magic dresses from Chambers's \_Rashie Coat\_, into which it had clearly been interpolated from some version of Catskin. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/3/) — \_Parallels. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/4/) — \_--Miss Cox's admirable volume of variants of \_Cinderella\_ also contains seventy-three variants of \_Catskin\_, besides thirteen "indeterminate" ones which approximate to that type. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/5/) — Of these eighty-six, five exist in the British Isles, two chap-books given in Halliwell and in Dixon's \_Songs of English Peasantry\_, two by Campbell, Nos. xiv. and xiv\_a\_, "The King who Wished to Marry his Daughter," and one by Kennedy's \_Fireside Stories\_, "The Princess in the Catskins." - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/6/) — Goldsmith knew the story by the name of "Catskin," as he refers to it in the \_Vicar\_. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/7/) — There is a fragment from Cornwall in \_Folk-Lore\_, i., App. p. 149. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/8/) — \_Remarks. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/9/) — \_--\_Catskin, or the Wandering Gentlewomen\_, now exists in English only in two chap-book ballads. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/10/) — But Chambers's first variant of \_Rashie Coat\_ begins with the Catskin formula in a euphemised form. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/11/) — The full formula may be said to run in abbreviated form--\_Death-bed promise--Deceased wife's resemblance marriage test--Unnatural father\_ (desiring to marry his own daughter)--\_Helpful animal--Counter tasks--Magic dresses--Heroine flight--Heroine disguise--Menial heroine--Meeting-place--Token objects named--Threefold flight--Lovesick prince--Recognition ring--Happy marriage\_. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/12/) — Of these the chap-book versions contain scarcely anything of the opening \_motifs\_. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/13/) — Yet they existed in England, for Miss Isabella Barclay, in a variant which Miss Cox has overlooked (\_Folk-Lore\_, i., \_l.c. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/14/) — \_), remembers having heard the Unnatural Father incident from a Cornish servant-girl. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/15/) — Campbell's two versions also contain the incident, from which one of them receives its name. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/16/) — One wonders in what form Mr. Burchell knew Catskin, for "he gave the \[Primrose\] children the Buck of Beverland,\[3\] with the history of Patient Grissel, the adventures of Catskin and the Fair Rosamond's Bower" (\_Vicar of Wakefield\_, 1766, c. vi.). - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/17/) — Pity that "Goldy" did not tell the story himself, as he had probably heard it in Ireland, where Kennedy gives a poor version in his \_Fireside Stories\_. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/18/) — Yet, imperfect as the chap-book versions are, they yet retain not a few archaic touches. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/19/) — It is clear from them, at any rate, that the Heroine was at one time transformed into a Cat. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/20/) — For when the basin of water is thrown in her face she "shakes her ears" just as a cat would. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/21/) — Again, before putting on her magic dresses she bathes in a pellucid pool. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/22/) — Now, Professor Child has pointed out in his notes on Tamlane and elsewhere (\_English and Scotch Ballads\_, i., 338; ii., 505; iii., 505) that dipping into water or milk is necessary before transformation can take place. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/23/) — It is clear, therefore, that Catskin was originally transformed into an animal by the spirit of her mother, also transformed into an animal. - [24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/24/) — If I understand Mr. Nutt rightly (\_Folk-Lore\_, iv, 135, \_seq. - [25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/25/) — \_), he is inclined to think, from the evidence of the hero-tales which have the unsavoury \_motif\_ of the Unnatural Father, that the original home of the story was England, where most of the hero-tales locate the incident. - [26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/26/) — I would merely remark on this that there are only very slight traces of the story in these islands nowadays, while it abounds in Italy, which possesses one almost perfect version of the formula (Miss Cox, No. 142, from Sardinia). - [27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/27/) — Mr. Newell, on the other hand (\_American Folk-Lore Journal\_, ii., 160), considers Catskin the earliest of the three types contained in Miss Cox's book, and considers that Cinderella was derived from this as a softening of the original. - [28](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/28/) — His chief reason appears to be the earlier appearance of Catskin in Straparola,\[4\] 1550, a hundred years earlier than Cinderella in Basile, 1636. - [29](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/29/) — This appears to be a somewhat insufficient basis for such a conclusion. - [30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/30/) — Nor is there, after all, so close a relation between the two types in their full development as to necessitate the derivation of one from the other. - [31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/31/) — \[Footnote 3: Who knows the Buck of Beverland nowadays?\] - [32](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/76/32/) — \[Footnote 4: It is practically in Des Perier's \_Récréations\_, 1544.\] - ← previous: [LXXXII. Old Mother Wiggle Waggle](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/75/) - next →: [LXXXIV. Stupid's Cries](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/77/) - ↑ back to [More English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/)