Comments

In this tale on the phenomenon of paranoid projection, it is significant that it begins with the dwarf's wife calling him a midget first. Then he hears it everywhere. He cannot bury or silence the word, the shaming voice—it comes alive, transferred from wife to plant to buffalo to dog to babbling river. It is originally a toddler tale. Toddlers are just beginning to make the distinction between self and nonself. The tale plays on the confusion between the two, between human, animal, and inanimate objects, and between human words and nonhuman cries and noises. Kids laugh a great deal at the fool for not making the distinction that's beginning to seem so obvious to them. Such tales also reinforce the distinction.

[NKTT, but it is a cumulative tale involving a chain with interdependent members (Motif Z 40).]