_The Three Bears_ illustrates the third class of repetitive story, where there is repetition and variation. Here the iteration and parallelism have interest like the refrain of a song, and the technique of the story is like that of _The Merchant of Venice_. This is the ideal fairy story for the little child. It is unique in that it is the only instance in which a tale written by an author has become a folk-tale. It was written by Southey, and appeared in _The Doctor_, in London, in 1837. Southey may have used as his source, _Scrapefoot_, which Joseph Jacobs has discovered for us, or he may have used _Snow White_, which contains the episode of the chairs. Southey has given to the world a nursery classic which should be retained in its purity of form. The manner of the Folk, in substituting for the little old woman of Southey's tale, Goldilocks, and the difference that it effects in the tale, proves the greater interest children naturally feel in the tale with a child. Similarly, in telling _The Story of Midas_ to an audience of eager little people, one naturally takes the fine old myth from Ovid as Bulfinch gives it, and puts into it the Marigold of Hawthorne's creation. And after knowing Marigold, no child likes the story without her. Silver hair is another substitute for the little Old Woman in _The Three Bears_. The very little child's reception to _Three Bears_ will depend largely on the previous experience with bears and on the attitude of the person telling the story. A little girl who was listening to _The Three Bears_ for the first time, as she heard how the Three Bears stood looking out of their upstairs window after Goldilocks running across the wood, said, "Why didn't Goldilocks lie down beside the Baby Bear?" To her the Bear was associated with the friendly Teddy Bear she took with her to bed at night, and the story had absolutely no thrill of fear because it had been told with an emphasis on the comical rather than on the fearful. Similar in structure to _The Three Bears_ is the Norse _Three Billy-Goats_, which belongs to the same class of delightful repetitive tales and in which the sequence of the tale is in the same three distinct steps. II. The Animal Tale The animal tale includes many of the most pleasing children's tales. Indeed some authorities would go so far as to trace all fairy tales back to some ancestor of an animal tale; and in many cases this certainly can be done just as we trace _Three Bears_ back to _Scrapefoot_. The animal tale is either an old beast tale, such as _Scrapefoot_ or _Old Sultan_; or a fairy tale which is an elaborated development of a fable, such as _The Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ or the tales of _Reynard the Fox_ or Grimm's _The King of the Birds_, and _The Sparrow and His Four Children_; or it is a purely imaginary creation, such as Kipling's _The Elephant's Child_ or Andersen's _The Bronze Pig_.