This nursery tale was commonly recited to me by women, and a great many
versions differed only in trifling respects from the pattern employed
in the oldest Jamaica version on record, Lewis, 255–259.
Here the girl breaks a jug and is sent to get a new one. Three old
women appear to her one after another, the last of them headless, to
test her courtesy. The cat appears, the rice is cooking. The eggs to be
selected are the “silent” ones out of a number of fine large ones that
cry “take me.” Out of the first egg comes the jug after which she has
been sent; the other two make her fortune.
P. Smith’s version, 31–34, has more direct Frau Holle incidents. The
good girl fulfils as she advances the requests of the grass, ping-wing
and bramble, the fruit-tree and the cow. When the old woman sends her
to draw water with a basket, Turtle tells her to put a plantain-leaf
inside. She selects a little ugly calabash. When she is pursued by
“axe-men” (as in number 82), the things she has been kind to befriend
her, as in Wona’s version of Brother Dead.
In a manuscript version in the collection of Mrs. W. E. Wilson (Wona),
Yuckie and Jubba are the two daughters. Yuckie has a present of a
string of amber beads. She puts them about her neck and says “bad dey
behind you, good dey before you,” but this only in dream. She loses the
beads in the river and is turned out of the house. On her way, she sees
and greets kindly a foot and a hand, and scratches the back of an ugly
old woman, without complaining of the insects which sting her. The pot
of rice, the cat, and the eggs are as above. The fine eggs say “Tek me
no,” the dirty ones, “No tek me.” Compare FLJ (SA) 1; 111–116, where
the girls pretend to throw their beads into the water and thus deceive
one girl into doing so, who has then to go down to the home of the
water monster to get them back.
The variants from Andros Island, Parsons, 17–26, show no such
uniformity. They are sometimes confused with the pumpkin story of
Parsons, 26–27, and Milne-Home, 84–88, in which the choice of pumpkins
is like that of the eggs in this story.
The theme is very common in African collections. Compare MacDonald
1:298–301; Junod, 191–192; 237–242; Torrend, 75–80; Tremearne, 307–314;
401–407; Barker, 89–94; Nassau, 213; Renel 1:50–64; Bundy, JAFL 32:406;
and Parsons, Andros Island, note 1, page 17 for further references. See
Grimm 24, Frau Holle; Bolte u. Polívka 2:207–227.