celebrated "She stood at the door of the fish-sauce shop, welcoming him in."
Parallels.—Halliwell, p. 151, has the same with the title "Chicken-Licken." It occurs also in Chambers's Popular Rhymes, p. 59, with the same names of the dramatis personæ as my version. Kennedy, Fireside Tales of Ireland, p. 25, has it under the title "The End of the World." For European parallels, see Crane, Ital, Pop. Tales, 377, and authorities there quoted.
XXI. CHILDE ROWLAND
Source.—Jamieson's Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814, p. 397 seq., who gives it as told by a tailor in his youth, c. 1770. I have Anglicised the Scotticisms, eliminated an unnecessary ox-herd and swine-herd, who lose their heads for directing the Childe, and I have called the Erlkônig's lair the Dark Tower on the strength of the description and of Shakespeare's reference. I have likewise suggested a reason why Burd Ellen fell into his power, chiefly in order to introduce a definition of "widershins." "All the rest is the original horse," even including the erroneous description of the youngest son as the Childe or heir (cf. "Childe Harold" and Childe Wynd, infra. No. xxxiii.) unless this is some "survival" of Junior Right or "Borough English," the archaic custom of letting the heirship pass to the younger son. I should add that, on the strength of the reference to Merlin, Jamieson calls Childe Rowland's mother, Queen Guinevere, and introduces references to King Arthur and his Court. But as he confesses that these are his own improvements on the tailor's narrative, I have eliminated them. Since the first appearance of this book, I should add, Mr. Grant Allen has made an ingenious use of Childe Rowland in one of his short stories now collected in the volume entitled Ivan Greet's Masterpiece.
Parallels.—The search for the Dark Tower is similar to that of the Red Ettin (cf. Köhler on Gonzenbach, ii., 222). The formula "Youngest best." in which the youngest of the three
