It is
throughout an animal tale, the touch at the end of the shaking the paws
and the name Scrapefoot are too _volkstuemlich_ to have been conscious
variations on Southey's tale. In introducing the story in his _Doctor_,
the poet laureate did not claim to do more than repeat a popular tale. I
think that there can be little doubt that in Mrs. H.'s version we have
now recovered this in its original form. If this is so, we may here have
one more incident of the great Northern beast epic of bear and fox, on
which Prof. Krohn has written an instructive monograph, _Baer (Wolf.) und
Fuchs_ (Helsingfors, 1889).
LXIII. THE PEDLAR OF SWAFFHAM
_Source._--_Diary of Abraham de la Pryme_ (Surtees Soc.) under date 10th
November, 1699, but rewritten by Mr. Nutt, who has retained the few
characteristic seventeenth century touches of Pryme's dull and
colourless narration. There is a somewhat fuller account in Blomefield's
_History of Norfolk_, vi., 211-13, from Twysden's _Reminiscences_, ed.
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