" It occurs even earlier in
Alfonsi's _Disciplina Clericalis_, No. xxx., at beginning of the twelfth
century, among the _Fabliaux_, and in Bebel, _Werke_, iii., 71, whence
probably it was reintroduced into England. See Prof. Crane's note _ad
loc._
_Remarks._--Almost all Alfonsi's _exempla_ are from the East. It is
characteristic that the German version finishes up with a loss of
honour, the English climax being loss of fortune.
LXXVIII. PUDDOCK, MOUSIE, AND RATTON
_Source._--Kirkpatrick Sharpe's _Ballad Book_, 1824, slightly
anglicised.
_Parallels._--Mr. Bullen, in his _Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books_,
p. 202, gives a version, "The Marriage of the Frog and the Mouse," from
T. Ravenscroft's _Melismata_, 1611. The nursery rhyme of the frog who
would a-wooing go is clearly a variant of this, and has thus a sure
pedigree of three hundred years; _cf._ "Frog husband" in my List of
Incidents, or notes to "The Well of the World's End" (No. xli.).
LXXIX. LITTLE BULL-CALF
_Source.
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