"Mutsmag." In Richard Chase. Grandfather Tales. Boston: Houghton, 1948, pp. 40-51. With a full-page drawing, by Berkeley Williams, Jr., of the giant's wife beating him, and a drawing of the giant stuck at the riverbank at the end. Mutsmag is a female giant killer who survives cowardly bullying and neglect from her selfish sisters, uses her wits and a humble case-knife inherited from her mother to outsmart the giant and his wife, and gains a monetary reward from the king. Mutsmag gets some magic help near the beginning from a fox and a little bluebird that tells her to stop a riddel (sieve) with moss and clay in order to fill it with water. But generally, she relies less on magic than her European counterparts. Chase identifies the tale as type 1119. His sources were several people in Wise County, VA, including James Taylor Adams, and Cratis D. Williams of Boone, NC. (native of Lawrence County, KY). "Munsmeg" as collected by Richard Chase and James Taylor Adams. Full text in this web site. JTA-3068. This version directly from the oral tradition is similar to the one Chase published in Grandfather Tales. Mutsmag as adapted by R. Rex Stephenson. An online picture book in AppLit, illustrated by school children in Franklin County, VA. This story follows the same plot as the script described below. Detailed background is at Introduction to Mutsmag. "Mutsmag" by
R. Rex Stephenson.
Story
theatre
script for
The Jack Tale Players.
Ferrum, VA, 2000. Based on an unpublished manuscript of "Munsmeg"
collected by Richard Chase (see above), found in the James Taylor
Adams Collection of Folklore in the Blue Ridge Institute Archives.
Stephenson puts extra emphasis on Mutsmag's cleverness, as she has
to outwit her mean sisters and a group of three democratic one-eyed
robbers, as well as the giant and his wife. She relies even less on
magic than Chase's Mutsmag. She sings "Froggy
Went A-Courtin'" loudly to keep her sisters awake at the giant's
house and uses other tricks to survive. The two-headed giant (played by one
actor on the shoulders of another) drags his own daughters away by
mistake, but does not strangle them onstage (which is their fate in
most versions of the tale).
Performance and Publication Notes: Stephenson's "Mutsmag" and "Ashpet" were performed in Dec. 2003 within the play called Grandmother Tales at Radford University's Pridemore Playhouse. See short review in Radford's The Tartan and photo of Mutsmag at left (other photos on "Ashpet" page; photos courtesy of Radford University and Pat Whitton). Published as Grandmother Tales: Mutsmag and Ashpet, Traditional Tales from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Charlottesville, VA: New Plays for Children, 2004. Richard Chase's archive version of "Munsmeg" and Rex Stephenson's script "Mutsmag" are published in Crosscurrents of Children's Literature: An Anthology of Texts and Criticism, in Part 3 on oral and written literary traditions, Oxford University Press, Oct. 2006. "Mutts Mag." In Cratis D. Williams. Tales From Sacred Wind: Coming of Age in Appalachia. Eds. David Cratis Williams and Patricia D. Beaver. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003, pp. 72-83. This posthumous book about Williams' early life contains a photo of his grandmother, Amanda Griffith Whitt, who never went to school but learned this tale from her mother Elzina (b. 1827 in Wayne County, VA). Williams' account of the difficult lives of these women makes one imagine how satisfying Mutsmag's triumph would have seemed to them. Williams' son and daughter recall hearing it when they were young. Williams had told it to Chase (as acknowledged in Grandfather Tales) and was not sure whether his later reading of Chase's published version influenced this retelling. It was recorded in 1981 at Appalachian State University, with Williams attempting to use his grandmother's dialect. The plot is similar to Chase's, but more details from daily life are included. One difference is that Poll and Nance are Mutsmag's half-sisters, and the details on their harsh treatment of her and all the work she does make her seem more like a Cinderella/Ashpet character in the beginning. They try to kill her by locking her up in a hollow stump and a shop house. The giant is huge but has a head not much bigger than your fist. With her reward of gold, Mutts Mag buys herself a farm and builds a house on it—just like the king's house. (See Davenport film, below.) The narrator asserts in the end that "folks tole me that she's a-livin mighty fine" (p. 83). "Mutsmag."
Told by Charlotte Ross. The Jack Tales Festival. 2002. Also
includes "Big Jack & Little Jack" by Connie Regan-Blake,
"Jack's First House" by David Joe Miller, Jack
& the Frogs by Dianne Hackworth, and "Jack
and the Doctor's Girl." by Orville Hicks. Videotape
from the 4th annual festival to benefit the Ray and Rosa Hicks fund,
August 17, 2002, at Bolick Pottery and Traditions Pottery, near Blowing
Rock, NC. For more information, see page The
Latest Tale. . . . by Dianne Hackworth in Dianne's
Storytelling Site, or call 336-877-4110. This version
of "Mutsmag" is very similar to the Cratis Williams tale
(above). Ross says it came from along Big Sandy River, on the border
of KY and WV, in 1805. Mutsmag has to go to the neighbors to get meal
for journey-cakes and then catch up to her sisters, Poll and Nance,
on the road, although she has no shoes. Ross puts her two fists together
to show how the giant has a head as big as "two fistes."
She uses lots of dialect terms, such as "unst" for "once,"
"widder" (Mutsmag's mother), "bethunk," "seed"
(past tense of "see"), "red up" (for cleaning
the house), "sos'n" (for "so that"). "Muncimeg," in Gail E. Haley. Mountain Jack Tales.
New York: Dutton, 1992. Like the tale collected by Leonard
Roberts (below), this version has a more conventional
ending with Muncimeg marrying a prince. Haley's wood engraving is
a lively portrait of Muncimeg straining tenaciously with the physical
and emotional effort of pulling a sack of gold out from under the
head of the sleeping giant. See
Appalachian Folktale Collections A-J for more details on Haley's
book of Jack tales and Muncimeg. "Muts Mag" told by Michael "Badhair" Williams, in Tell Me a Story. Vol. 5. Videocassette. Barr Entertainment, 1986. A professional North Carolina storyteller who does great character voices tells stories to a small group of children. "Muts Mag" is very similar to Chase's "Mutsmag," except that after conquering the witch, the heroine does not go back after the giant. She takes her reward of gold from the king back to her home and lives a real good life, with a big garden. Video also includes "Old One-Eye" and a short song, "Turkey in the Straw." Cartoon-like drawings illustrating the plot are shown occasionally during the storytelling. Munci
Meg by Lime Kiln Theater
(Lexington, VA) is a hilarious dramatization of the tale in which
several actors use props and quick costume changes to play all the
characters. (I saw it in summer 1993.)
AppLit article "Strong Women in Appalachian Folktale Dramatizations by R. Rex Stephenson" by Tina L. Hanlon. Includes other photos of Jack Tale performances. AppLit Study Guides on Folktale Dramatizations "Strong Women in Appalachian Folktales" by Tina L. Hanlon, in The Lion & the Unicorn, vol. 24 (April 2000): 225-46 (available online through Project Muse). Introduction to Mutsmag gives background, student writings on R. Rex Stephenson's version, and links to more pictures. Barosin, Vera Counts. "Recollections of Grandfather Elijah Rasnick." Historical Sketches of Southwest Virginia. The Historical Society of Southwest Virginia, publication 12, 1978, pp. 17-20.1857-1943. Rpt. http://www.rootsweb.com/~vawise2/sketches/HSpubl73.html. Barosin describes her grandfather's talent at telling stories passed down from the British ancestors. She quotes Chase describing Rasnick's creation of the giant's and heroine's voices in telling "Mutsmag." There is a gun called Munsmeg at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland. See Jack and the Giants and Jack and the Bean Tree for many other tales in which heroes, usually male, overcome giants. Shelby, Anne. "The Adventures of Molly Whuppie." In The Adventures of Molly Whuppie and Other Appalachian Folktales. Illus. Paula McArdle. Chapel Hill: Univ. of NC Press, 2007. pp. 1-7. A storyteller and writer from southeastern KY, Shelby adapts Joseph Jacobs' English "Molly Whuppie" and observes that her tale is closest to the Appalachian "Merrywise" collected by Leonard Roberts (see below). She adapts other tales from Appalachia, with elements from European and Japanese tales, in this collection of 14 tales, most of which have Molly as a "clever, brave, and strong" hero (book jacket). See more on this book at Appalachian Folktale Collections K-Z. Shelby, Anne. The Adventures of Molly Whuppie. A play based on eastern Kentucky tales collected by Leonard Roberts about heroic girls and Jack. The play is described in Spring 2001 Events, Women's Studies, University of Kentucky; and in Meihaus, Stacie. "Get Ready for Some Folk 'Whuppie.'" Kentucky Kernel 7 Mar. 2001, online archives of the student newspaper of the Univ. of KY, Lexington. See also "Rema Keen and the After School Drama Team." In "2002-2003 Visiting Artists." Polk County, NC Schools, 2001. Description with two photos of Rema Keen's adaptation of The Adventures of Molly Whuppie with students at Saluda School (preK-8th grade), Saluda, NC. Brown, Joella. Molly Whuppie. Musical in 4 acts with Appalachian setting and language, combining adaptation of the folktale with a frame set in everyday life, published by New Plays for Children. "The Three Girls with the Journey-Cakes" in Marie Campbell. Tales from the Cloud Walking Country. Indiana UP, 1958. Rpt. Athens: U of Georgia Press, 2000, pp.140-43. Told by Uncle Tom Dixon in E. KY. A widow's gentle third daughter, leaving home to look for her lost older sisters who went to seek their fortunes, shares her journey-cake with the wood creatures. They help her stay awake and make the dead man she is watching stay dead. With her reward of magic liniment, she revives her sisters who had failed at this job and been killed by the man's sister. They return home to their mother, living off the third daughter's other wages: "A peck of gold and a peck of silver would last a mighty long time if a body never spent lavish." The same story appears in Ann Durell, compiler. The Diane Goode Book of American Folk Tales and Songs. Illus. Diane Goode. New York: Dutton, 1989, pp. 42-51. "The Little Girl and the Giant." In Leonard Roberts. South From Hell-fer-Sartin': Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales. U of KY Press, 1955. Rpt. Berea, KY: The Council of the Southern Mountains, 1964. A little girl, who is warned by her mother to watch out for a giant, is taken away in his pocket and made to cook dead men for the giant's supper. Her mother follows a bird to find the girl and both escape. When the giant chases them, they send him to the spring for a drink, where he drinks so much water "that he busted." The giant says "Fee fie, foe, fum," etc. as in "Jack and the Bean Tree." Roberts' notes cite type 327, The Children and the Ogre. "The Bewitched Princess," a tale from Poland collected in West Virginia, in Musick's Green Hills of Magic. A princess is able to do what her husband and mother-in-law cannot—build a bridge that hangs from one hair (like Molly Whuppie's), which then drowns the rich landowner who "made improper advances" at her wedding (p. 138). "Merrywise." Told by an 11-year-old in KY. In Leonard Roberts. I Bought Me a Dog: A Dozen Authentic Folktales from the Southern Mountains. Berea, KY: Council of the Southern Mountains, 1954. Merrywise follows his brothers after their mother dies and they stay with a friendly old woman who is a witch. Merrywise tricks her in the night by switching caps, so that she beheads her own two boys. Then he uses magic articles he drops in flight to impede the witch when she chases them. In the end they drown her in her own Puddin-tuddin bag. Roberts reprinted this tale in South From Hell-fer-Sartin' (see above), where he cites type 1119, The Ogre Kills His Own Children. A version of "Merrywise" told by Jane Muncy from Hyden, KY (as told by her grandmother), from the Berea College Southern Appalachian Archives (Berea Archives Number: LR-001-A-01) is in the Tales Online database, available through some library services and schools. "Merrywise." Told by Jane Muncy Fugate (from KY). Recorded by Carl Lindahl in a college folklore classroom, 2001. American Folktales: From the Collections of the Library of Congress. Ed. Carl Lindahl. Vol. 1. Armonk NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004, pp. 287-93. Fugate is a psychotherapist who called Merrywise an overcomer or coping person, one who doesn't always do everything right or easily, but does know how to use his tools to cope with obstacles (even though he's small and the youngest brother). Fugate's grandmother told her stories to keep her occupied, share family memories, and "to help us learn something." The other Merrywise tales from Fugate in this section are "Old Greasybeard" and "The King's Well" (where he also outwits a giant). "Nippy and the Yankee Doodle," a tale similar to "Mutsmag" with male characters, collected by Virginia Haviland from a Kentucky man. In Virginia Haviland, ed. North American Legends. New York: Collins, 1979. Nippy accomplishes feats similar to Mutsmag's, winning wives for his brothers and himself. He is clever, too, but not as flamboyant as Mutsmag with her case-knife. "Nippy and the Yankee Doodle." In Leonard Roberts. Nippy and the Yankee Doodle and Other Authentic Folk Tales from the Southern Mountains. Berea, KY: Council of the Southern Mountains, 1958. Roberts recorded the tale in 1955, identifying it as Type 328, The Boy Steals the Giant's Treasure. Instead of a giant, there is an old man whom Nippy tricks into cutting the throats of his own three daughters (saving himself and his brothers Jim and John). Roberts reprinted the tale in Old Greasybeard: Tales from the Cumberland Gap. Illus. Leonard Epstein. Detroit: Folklore Associates, 1969. Rpt. Pikeville, KY: Pikeville College Press, 1980. Also reprinted in Jimmy Neil Smith, ed. Why the Possum's Tail is Bare and Other Classic Southern Stories. New York: Avon, 1993. "Nippy." In Leonard Roberts. South From Hell-fer-Sartin': Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales. U of KY Press, 1955. Rpt. Berea, KY: The Council of the Southern Mountains, 1964, pp. 46-49. In this one Nippy faces a giant and switches lockets with the giant's three daughters. After his brothers escape, Nippy hides under the bed playing an organ. When Nippy escapes, a man pays him to steal the organ and several other things from the giant, including moonlight. "Then he went back home, and he was rich and his other brothers wa'n't." "Nippy and the Giants." Collected in Hiawassee, GA. In John A. Burrison, ed. Storytellers: Folktales and Legends from the South. Athens, GA: U of GA Press, 1989, pp. 219-21. Nippy is a servant of the giant family that plans to eat him. Nippy steals the giant's oxen and magic music box, makes the giant kill his own daughters, and chops off the head of the giant's wife before she can bake him. In each episode Nippy escapes on a swinging bridge. Much of this tale is similar to Mutsmag and Molly Whuppie tales. "Little Nippy." Told by Lee Wallin, Sodom, NC. Recorded by Henry Glassie (accompanied by Richard Chase), Madison Co, NC, 1963. American Folktales: From the Collections of the Library of Congress. Ed. Carl Lindahl. Vol. 2. Armonk NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004, pp. 573-79. With background on the storyteller and his style, and the collectors. Wallin insisted on having an audience of children to tell this tale. Nippy and his brothers make three trips across a river to get things from a giant, using a staff that makes a bridge for him. He also kills the giant's three daughters and beheads his wife, so Nippy gets to marry "the king's baby girl" in the end. "The Babes in the Woods" and "The Two Lost Babes" and "Hansel and Gretel" depict children who are lost or abandoned in the woods. In some tales with these or similar titles, they take shelter in a witch's house, where they have to use their wits to survive. See comments below on comparisons between Molly Whuppie and "Hansel and Gretel." "Two Children and the Giant." Told by Hattie Presnell to Barbara McDermitt. Cassette tape MCD-5. Barbara McDermitt Collection. Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University. On this tape, Presnell comments on the storytelling tradition of Beech Mountain, NC, and tells swiftly narrated versions of some tales to McDermitt, admitting that there are some she can't remember of the vast number told by her family. This tale begins like "The Two Lost Babes" or "Hansel and Gretel" with a family abandoning their children in the woods because they are too poor to feed them, but this version observes that the parents did this because they did not want to see their children die. Cocklepea (a name also used in versions of "Two Lost Babes" for another boy, not the brother) protects his sister throughout the story. They return home because he suspects something and scatters rocks on the path when their parents take them to the woods. Then he scatters breadcrumbs that disappear. Then he carries his sister on his back and climbs tall trees to find his way. When he sees a light and knocks on a door, a woman warns them that her husband is a giant who will try to kill them, at which point the tale begins to resemble "Mutsmag." The giant twice says, "Fee Fie Fum, I smell the blood of English," and won't be convinced that the smell is sheep. When his wife explains about the poor hidden children starving to death, he tells her to "fatten 'em up, fatten 'em up." The children are given good food and red caps to wear at night. Cocklepea switches the caps for the black ones on the giant's two children, so the giant cuts off their heads and cooks his own children. The other two children meanwhile run far away. When the giant realizes what has happened, he puts on his "mile-at-a-step boots" to pursue the children but can't get them out from under a big rock where they are hiding during the daytime. While the giant waits and then falls asleep, Cocklepea takes the giant's boots, goes to the wife, tells her the giant is in jail and needs money, acquires a knife, and cuts off the giant's head. The children live happy ever after. "Jack and the Miller's Daughter" contains the motif (number H1023.2.0.1) of filling the sieve with moss to carry water. When their mother sends them on this errand, Will and Tom ignore the little bird's advice and throw rocks at it, while Jack feeds the bird, which gives him wing feathers and enables him to fly across the flooded river. When Will and Tom arrive at the rich miller's house, Jack is already finely dressed in residence there, having won the contest for the miller's daughter's hand by being the first one to cross the river. Will and Tom ran off "because they couldn't stand to think that they had been beaten by their youngest brother whom they had called a fool." In Leonard Roberts. South From Hell-fer-Sartin': Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales. U of KY Press, 1955. Rpt. Berea, KY: The Council of the Southern Mountains, 1964, pp. 86-88. Roberts notes that he had seen no complete parallel to this tale from a Kentucky teenager, who seemed to have northern European sources, or to a similar Norse tale.
Jacobs, Joseph. "Molly Whuppie." English Fairy Tales. 3rd ed. 1898. Rpt. New York: Dover, 1967. pp.125-30. Jacobs' source notes acknowledge that the tale is "originally Celtic" and he changed the name Mally to Molly. Reprinted online at Rick Walton, Children's Author: Classic Tales and Fables. This version is brief and quite blunt in telling that Molly's parents send the three girls into the woods because they are too poor to feed them, the giant beats his girls to death and is tricked into battering his wife inside a sack, and Molly is sent to steal the giant's sword, purse, and ring. The giant survives, however, and the end simply says Molly never sees him again. Illustration by John Batten of giant catching Molly Whuppie De la
Mare, Walter. Molly Whuppie. Illus. Errol LeCain. New York:
Farrar, 1983. Picture book with beautiful illustrations. De la Mare’s
version, with more beautiful poetic images and less violence than
others, is also reprinted in anthologies such as Rosemary Minard's
feminist
collection. Molly Whuppie. The beautiful web site Sur La Lune Fairy Tales reprints Jacobs' version in the section "Tales Similar to Hansel and Gretel." Maria Tatar also groups this tale with "Hansel and Gretel" variants in The Classic Fairy Tales. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. For a college student's comparison, see "Mutsmag" vs. "Hansel and Gretel." Muller, Robin. Mollie Whuppie and the Giant. Buffalo, NY: Firefly, 1982. This picture book contains some modern enhancements of Mollie’s self-reliance and generosity. It emphasizes her bravery in figuring out that the bridge of one hair is magic and taking her sisters across it. She also reforms the giant’s wife instead of killing her. At the end she leaves her prince at the altar, making him wait until she goes off on adventures. Click for illustration. Molly
Whuppie: An English Fairy Tale. Adapted and illustrated by Toni
Murphy. In Story
Hour. Kidspace@The Internet Public Library. Read the text or listen
to an audio version narrated by Meaghan Murphy. See Evaluating
Electronic Children's Literature for comments from Tufts Univ.
on the photographed images of clay figurines used as illustrations. In "Kumaku and the Giant" (from Fiji), a girl escapes from two giants by tricking them with her magic song, which summons help from the wind. In Kathleen Ragan, ed. Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World. New York: Norton, 1998, pp. 294-95. Kumaku is also similar to Little Red Riding Hood and the girl in the African-American "A Wolf and Little Daughter."
"Managing Molly." In Diane Goode. Diane Goode's Book of Giants and Little People. New York: Dutton Children's Books, 1997. pp. 30-37, with warm, colorful illustrations. Molly and her poor father trick a greedy, rich Ogre who wants to marry her. Molly is so clever and her father so proud of her that the Ogre is at first impressed with her thrift but then doesn't want her, and gives them a fine flock of geese for their trouble. At the end: "As for Managing Molly, with her good dowry, she was able to pick precisely whom she wanted to marry." Adapted from a longer 19th-century English tale by Julia Horatia Ewing, published in Aunt Judy's Magazine. Werth, Kurt and Mabel Watts. Molly and the Giant. Illus. Kurth Werth. New York: Parents Magazine Press, 1973. N. pag. Werth, a German artist, was a political cartoonist and illustrator in New York after escaping from Nazi Germany. "He found Molly and the Giant... in an old collection of Irish folktales." Watts, a native of England, lived in California. Molly O'Shea is a beautiful girl in a poor Irish cottage, "beautiful as a bog flower, brave as a lion, and smart as a treeful of owls." Her two older sisters are "shy as violets and timid as hares." Their father sends them out to seek their fortunes since food is so scarce at home. After a weary day of walking, the sisters find "a hidden house in a tangled woods" with "the door ajar." The woman says they are foolish to enter the house of the giant, her husband. "'Giant or no,' said Molly, 'being tired and hungry, we are willing to take our chances, even if it should be the end of us.'" The wife welcomes them and gives them Irish stew. The giant says, "Bedad... if there's anything better than Irish stew, 'tis a girl in a pot with parsley sauce." The cheerful wife tells the hidden girls there is room for six if there is room for three in the loft where three giant children are sleeping. The giant puts chains of straw and gold on the children, which Molly switches so that she and her sisters wear the gold instead of straw. They creep downstairs and out the door, "through thicket and bramble in the stormy, desperate weather till they reached the castle of the king." The guards think they are princesses visiting King Erin in their gold necklaces, which were stolen from this castle years ago, so Molly tells the king how they got the necklaces. As she tries to rest, the king says, "A girl like you could be very helpful." He offers the eldest sister his eldest son and a castle if Molly brings back the sword the giant had stolen. "I'll be after doing my best, even if it should be the end of me," Molly says, and the king tells her to be smart and brave. When the giant catches Molly stealing the sword while he sleeps, she runs "over hump and hollow" and over "the Bridge of True Love's Hair in the nick of time." As she tries to rest at her sister's wedding banquet, the king asks her to recover a bag of gold. Molly, finding the giant drinking tea from a bucket, slips in a bottle of wine the king gave her so the giant falls asleep "giddy as a goose." Molly pulls the bag of gold from under the giant's pillow and he thinks it's walking off by itself for a stroll until his wife says it's Molly O'Shea "walking and talking," and then regrets exposing Molly. After Molly escapes over the bridge and her second sister weds a prince, the king asks for a ring on the giant's thumb, promising Molly his youngest son and a castle. The youngest prince gives Molly a locket "to help you when you need it most." Molly finds the king's youngest son "a handsome, dashing lad, and Molly was fair enchanted. For him she would do just about anything!" The locket is full of goose grease that Molly uses to get the ring off the thumb of the sleeping giant. The giant wakes and asks how she would punish him if he were the one caught. "Being smart as a treefull of owls, Molly carefully thought out her answer." She says she'd put him in a sack with a dog, cat, needle, thread, and sharp pair of scissors, and then beat the sack with a stick. While he is getting the stick, Molly cuts a hole in the sack, jumps out with the cat and dog who escape, and fills the sack with oatmeal to make it "fat and bumpy as before." Molly hides, "brave as ever but twice as scared," as the giant, "full of meanness and full of glee," beats the sack. The giant says "You'll be the death of me yet" when he sees her out the window, but she escapes over the Bridge of One True Love (without killing the giant). In the end, "Dizzy with joy, she gave [the youngest prince] her promise true, just like a proper princess, and there was great rejoicing." She goes to a castle to live "happily ever after" with her husband, "with her fortune found and her future bright." The cover shows little Molly escaping over a gorge by the sea on a bridge made of hairs, toward the castle, while the giant looms in the foreground with his huge stick, shaking his fist at her. Last
update:
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Mutsmag tricks his wife into going
off to drink up the Atlantic Ocean (similar to the giant's fate in
“Maol a Chliobain”), and tricks the giant into sniffing
"magic powder" that is really pepper, so that he falls down
and breaks apart (reminiscent of the giant's fall to his death in
"
"Molly Mullet"
(1975) by Patricia Coombs is very much like "Molly Whuppie"
or "Mutsmag." Rpt. in Jack Zipes, ed. The Outspoken
Princess and the Gentle Knight: A Treasury of Modern Fairy Tales. Illus.
Stephanie Poulin. New York: Bantam, 1994. This Molly has no siblings,
but her parents and king seem to belittle the girl child, until the
end reveals that her mother, a tired housewife, deliberately gave
her the scissors and yarn she uses to escape from the giant (like
Mutsmag's mother giving her the old kitchen knife). The king tries
to give her father credit for recovering stolen gold from the giant.
A blackbird helps her make a bridge of braided yarn (like Molly Whuppie's
bridge of one hair) and defeat the giant, who finally falls in the
gulch between his home and Molly's. The book's cover illustration
is a painting of stalwart Molly holding the giant's huge sword after
stealing it, while the king bows to her, before making her a knight.