"Once upon a time and a very good time it was, though it wasn't in my
time nor in your time nor in any one else's time," is effective enough
for a fairy epoch, and is common, according to Mayhew (_London Labour_.
iii.), among tramps. We have the rhyming formula:
Once upon a time when pigs spoke rhyme,
And monkeys chewed tobacco,
And hens took snuff to make them tough,
And ducks went quack, quack, quack Oh!
on which I have variants not so refined. Some stories start off without
any preliminary formula, or with a simple "Well, there was once a ----".
A Scotch formula reported by Mrs. Balfour runs, "Once on a time when a'
muckle folk were wee and a' lees were true," while Mr. Lang gives us
"There was a king and a queen as mony ane's been, few have we seen and
as few may we see." Endings of stories are even less varied. "So they
married and lived happy ever afterwards," comes from folk-tales, not
from novels. "All went well that didn't go ill," is a somewhat cynical
formula given by Mrs.
Pages:
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260