This is a tricky little story. The persona of the narrator - a village story-teller - is allowed many a knowing nod and wink. The characters are set up in traditional terms, and then collapse away from their normal scripts: nobody is quite what they seem to be, and the narrator's attempts to encapsulate her characters within folk-types are constantly evaded by the story itself - which also manages to avoid the rather banal 'moralité' which the teller tries to impose on her listeners.

Closer to Oscar Wilde or Angela Carter than to Hans Christian Anderson.