_Remarks_.--These 25 variants of the same jingle scattered over the world from India to Spain, present the problem of the diffusion of folk-tales in its simplest form. No one is likely to contend with Prof. Müller and Sir George Cox, that we have here the detritus of archaic Aryan mythology, a parody of a sun-myth. There is little that is savage and archaic to attract the school of Dr. Tylor, beyond the speaking powers of animals and inanimates. Yet even Mr. Lang is not likely to hold that these variants arose by coincidence and independently in the various parts of the world where they have been found. The only solution is that the curious succession of incidents was invented once for all at some definite place and time by some definite entertainer for children, and spread thence through all the Old World. In a few instances we can actually trace the passage-_e.g._, the Shetland version was certainly brought over from Hamburg. Whether the centre of dispersion was India or not, it is impossible to say, as it might have spread east from Smyrna (Hahn, No. 56). Benfey (_Einleitung zu Pantschatantra_, i. 190-91) suggests that this class of accumulative story may be a sort of parody on the Indian stories, illustrating the moral, “what great events from small occasions rise.” Thus, a drop of honey falls on the ground; a fly goes after it, a bird snaps at the fly, a dog goes for the bird, another dog goes for the first, the masters of the two dogs--who happen to be kings--quarrel and go to war, whole provinces are devastated, and all for a drop of honey! “Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse” also ends in a universal calamity which seems to arise from a cause of no great importance. Benfey's suggestion is certainly ingenious, but perhaps too ingenious to be true. XVII. JACK AND HIS SNUFF-BOX. _Source_.-Mr. F. Hindes Groome, _In Gipsy Tents_, p. 201 _seq._ I have eliminated a superfluous Gipsy who makes her appearance towards the end of the tale _à propos des boltes_, but otherwise have left the tale unaltered as one of the few English folk-tales that have been taken down from the mouths of the peasantry: this applies also to i., ii., xi. _Parallels_.-There is a magic snuff-box with a friendly power in it in Kennedy's _Fictions of the Irish Celts_, p. 49. The choice between a small cake with a blessing, &c., is frequent (_cf._ No. xxiii.), but the closest parallel to the whole story, including the mice, is afforded by a tale in Carnoy and Nicolaides' _Traditions populaires de l'Asie Mineure_, which is translated as the first tale in Mr. Lang's _Blue Fairy Book_. There is much in both that is similar to Aladdin, I beg his pardon, Allah-ed-din. XVIII. THE THREE BEARS. _Source_.--_Verbatim et literatim_ from Southey, _The Doctor, &c._, quarto edition, p. 327. _Parallels_.--None, as the story was invented by Southey. There is an Italian translation, _I tre Orsi_, Turin, 1868, and it would be curious to see if the tale ever acclimatises itself in Italy.