Appendix 
True, his name did not fit; but his wife did not 
fail, in the story, to bid him have patience and 
think of Job. I suspeét that a certain yarn from 
Scotland (quite unprintable) is akin to this. The 
incident is different: Job is not mentioned; yet 
the old heartless rustic humour sounds clear in 
the wife’s retort bidding her husband ‘“ Have 
patience ’’ amidst his wailings under ridiculous 
misfortune. 
In this sort of folk-anecdote there is enough 
of John Smith’s whimsical humour, and of the 
country he belonged to, to justify, 1 hope, col- 
leGting further examples here. Moreover, it 
should be noted, these tales are rapidly dying out. 
The schoolmaster, the railway, the week-end 
cottage, are wiping away many such traces of an 
older England—wiping them clean away. So 
that if they are worth saving at all, that task 
cannot be undertaken too soon. 
Some of the tales must be very old indeed. 
One there was, of which I remember a variant in 
Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The hero there was, I 
think, a Prince, while the villain was a giant. 
In the English version (which reached me from 
Farnborough, but had probably come from York- 
shire) the persons were a small boy named Jack, 
and a chimney-sweep who had kidnapped him and 
carried him away inasack. Crossing a heath, the 
sweep sat down and went tosleep. Jack crept out 
206 
