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 toward the end of a tale à propos des bottes, 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, etc., 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; in Grey Norris F. L. J., i., 316; also in "Penny Jack," a story given by Mr. W. A. Clouston in Folk-Lore No. iv., and in "The Charmed Ring" of Indian Fairy Tales.
