XXIII. Red Ettin. XXIII. Red Ettin. of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs: the whole text, 22 sentences and 269 words. Every sentence has its own page with its syntax tree and pragmatics, parsed by Mova itself.
1 _Source_.--“The Red Etin” in Chambers's _Pop. 2 Rhymes of Scotland_, p. 89. 3 I have reduced the adventurers from three to two, and cut down the herds and their answers. 4 I have substituted riddles from the first English collection of riddles, _The Demandes Joyous_ of Wynkyn de Worde, for the poor ones of the original, which are besides not solved. 5 “Ettin” is the English spelling of the word, as it is thus spelt in a passage of Beaumont and Fletcher (_Knight of Burning Pestle_, i. 1), which may refer to this very story, which, as we shall see, is quite as old as their time. 6 _Parallels_.--“The Red Etin” is referred to in _The Complaynt of Scotland_, about 1548. 7 It has some resemblance to “Childe Rowland,” which see. 8 The “death index,” as we may call tokens that tell the state of health of a parted partner, is a usual incident in the theme of the Two Brothers, and has been studied by the Grimms, i. 421, 453; ii. 9 403; by Köhler on Campbell, _Occ. u. Or. 10 _, ii. 11 119-20; on Gonzenbach, ii. 12 230; on Bladé, 248; by Cosquin, _l.c. 13 _, i. 70-2, 193; by Crane, _Ital. 14 Pop. 15 Tales_, 326; and by Jones and Kropf, _Magyar Tales_, 329. 16 Riddles generally come in the form of the “riddle-bride-wager” (_cf. 17 _ Child, _Ballads_, i. 415-9; ii. 18 519), when the hero or heroine wins a spouse by guessing a riddle or riddles. 19 Here it is the simpler Sphinx form of the “riddle task,” on which see Köhler in _Jahrb. rom. 20 Phil. 21 _, vii. 22 273, and on Gonzenbach, 215. ← previous XXII. Molly Whuppie.next → XXIV. Golden Arm.↑ back to English Fairy Tales This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/73/