_Remarks._--One might almost suspect Mrs. Balfour of being the victim of a piece of invention on the part of her autobiographical informant. But the scrap of verse, especially in its original dialect, has such a folkish ring that it is probable he was only adapting a local legend to his own circumstances. L. THE THREE FEATHERS _Source._--Collected by Mrs. Gomme from some hop-pickers near Deptford. _Parallels._--The beginning is _à la_ Cupid and Psyche, on which Mr. Lang's monograph in the Carabas series is the classic authority. The remainder is an Eastern tale, the peregrinations of which have been studied by Mr. Clouston in his _Pop. Tales and Fictions_, ii., 289, _seq._ _The Wright's Chaste Wife_ is the English _fabliau_ on the subject. M. Bédier, in his recent work on _Les Fabliaux_, pp. 411-13, denies the Eastern origin of the _fabliau_, but in his Indiaphobia M. Bédier is _capable de tout_. In the Indian version the various messengers are sent by the king to test the chastity of a peerless wife of whom he has heard. The incident occurs in some versions of the "Battle of the Birds" story (_Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xxiv.), and considering the wide spread of this in the British Isles, it was possibly from this source that it came to Deptford. LI. SIR GAMMER VANS _Source._--Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes and Tales._ _Parallels._--There is a Yorkshire Lying Tale in Henderson's _Folk-Lore_, first edition, p. 337, a Suffolk one, "Happy Borz'l," in _Suffolk Notes and Queries_, while a similar jingle of inconsequent absurdities, commencing "So he died, and she unluckily married the barber, and a great bear coming up the street popped his head into the window, saying, 'Do you sell any soap'?" is said to have been invented by Charles James Fox to test Sheridan's memory, who repeated it after one hearing. (Others attribute it to Foote.) Similar _Lugenmärchen_ are given by the Grimms, and discussed by them in their Notes, Mrs. Hunt's translation, ii., pp. 424, 435, 442, 450, 452, _cf._ Crane, _Ital. Pop. Tales_, p. 263. _Remarks._--The reference to venison warrants, and bows and arrows seems to argue considerable antiquity for this piece of nonsense. The honorific prefix "Sir" may in that case refer to clerkly qualities rather than to knighthood. LII. TOM HICKATHRIFT _Source._--From the Chap-book, _c._ 1660, in the Pepysian Library, edited for the Villon Society by Mr. G.L. Gomme. Mr. Nutt, who kindly abridged it for me, writes, "Nothing in the shape of incident has been omitted, and there has been no rewriting beyond a phrase here and there rendered necessary by the process of abridgment. But I have in one case altered the sequence of events putting the fight with the giant last."