Note 19 — INTRODUCTION

Again in vol. i. p. xlvii., Campbell tells how in February 1860 he ‘met two tinkers in St James’s Street, with black faces and a pan of burning coals each. They were followed by a wife, and preceded by a mangy terrier with a stiff tail. I joined the party, and one told me a version of “The Man who travelled to learn what Shivering meant,” while we walked together through the park to Westminster. It was clearly the popular tale which exists in Norse, and German, and Gaelic, and it bore the stamp of the class, and of the man, who told it in his own peculiar dialect, and who dressed the actors in his own ideas. A cutler and a tinker travel together, and sleep in an empty house for a reward. They are beset by ghosts and spirits of murdered ladies and gentlemen; and the inferior, the tinker, shows most courage, and is the hero. “He went into the cellar to draw beer, and there he found a little chap a-sittin’ on a barrel with a red cap on ’is ’ed; and sez he, sez he, ‘Buzz.’ ‘Wot’s buzz?’ sez the tinker. ‘Never you mind wot’s buzz,’ sez he. ‘That’s mine; don’t you go for to touch it,’ ” etc. etc. etc.’ [Cf. my No. 57, ‘Ashypelt,’ and No. 74, ‘The Tale of the Soldier.’19] In vol. ii. p. 285, Campbell adds that he was never able again to find this London tinker, who ‘could not read the card which I gave him, with a promise of payment if he would come and repeat his stock of stories. His female companion, indeed, could both read the card and speak French. The whole lot seemed to suspect some evil design on my part; and I have never seen the one who told the story or the woman since, though I met their comrade afterwards.’