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The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog washerwoman (laundress) who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District. A child named Lucie happens upon the cottage and stays for tea. The two deliver freshly laundered clothing to the animals and birds in the neighbourhood. Potter thought the book would be best enjoyed by girls, and, like most girls' books of the period, it is set indoors with a focus on housework. Potter's pet hedgehog, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, and Kitty MacDonald, a Scottish washerwoman, were the inspirations for the eponymous heroine. Lucie Carr, a child friend of Potter's, was the model for the fictional Lucie. Potter's Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny make cameo appearances in the illustrations. The Newlands Valley and the surrounding fells are the sources for the backgrounds in the illustrations. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle has been described as one of Potter's most positive creations. Although Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is set in an identifiable place and time period, the tale is mythologized by reaching back to an age when household chores were performed manually and without the aid of modern mechanical inventions. The simple dwellings, rustic pathways, and stone fences enhance the tale's timeless aspect and suggest an unchanging countryside and its way of life. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle became a popular character and the subject of considerable merchandise over the decades including nursery ware and porcelain figurines. The tale has been published in braille and the Initial Teaching Alphabet, and has been translated into French, German, and Dutch. In 1971, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle became a character performed by Sir Frederick Ashton in The Royal Ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter. In 1993, the tale was adapted to animation and telecast as an episode of the BBC series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends. In BCC series the story was combined with The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, the 7th book in the series. This book, the tale of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, is the 6th book in the series. It is also the 6th book to be published. Plot A little girl named Lucie lives on a farm called Little-Town. She is a good little girl, but has lost three pocket handkerchiefs and a pinafore. She questions Tabby Kitten and Sally Henny-penny about them, but they know nothing (especially since Tabby Kitten licks her paw, and Sally Henny-penny flaps back into the barn clucking, "I go barefoot, barefoot, barefoot!" neither of which is very helpful). Lucie mounts a stile and spies some white cloths lying in the grass high on a hill behind the farm. She scrambles up the hill along a steep path-way which ends under a big rock. She finds a little door in the hillside, and hears someone singing behind it: Lily-white and clean, oh! With little frills between, oh! Smooth and hot – red rusty spot Never here be seen, oh! She knocks. A frightened voice cries out, "Who's that?" Lucie opens the door, and discovers a low-ceilinged kitchen. Everything is tiny, even the pots and pans. At the table stands a short, stout person wearing a tucked-up print gown, an apron, and a striped petticoat. She is ironing. Her little black nose goes sniffle, sniffle, snuffle, and her eyes go twinkle, twinkle, and beneath her little white cap are prickles! She is Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, a Washerwoman and "an excellent clear-starcher". She keeps busy with her work. She has found Lucie's lost things, and launders them for her. She also shows Lucie items belonging to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's animal customers. They have tea together, though Lucie keeps her distance from Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle due to the prickles. The laundered clothing is tied up in bundles and Lucie's handkerchiefs are neatly folded into her clean pinafore. They set off together down the path to return the fresh laundry to the little animals and birds in the neighbourhood. At the bottom of the hill, Lucie mounts the stile and turns to thank Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. However, strangely, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is "running running running up the hill". She has not asked Lucie for the washing bill nor has she said goodbye. Her cap, shawl, and print gown are nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is much smaller and covered in brown prickles. Lucie realises that Mrs. Tiggy Winkle is nothing more than a Hedgehog!" The narrator tells the reader that some thought Lucie had fallen asleep on the stile and dreamed the encounter, but if so, then how could she have three clean handkerchiefs and a laundered pinafore? "Besides," the narrator assures the reader, "I have seen that door into the back of the hill called Cat Bells – and besides I am very well acquainted with dear Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle!" Background The story of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was inspired by Kitty MacDonald, a Scottish washerwoman the Potters employed over the course of eleven summers at Dalguise House on the River Tay in Perthshire. Potter was 26 when, in 1892, she visited MacDonald while staying at Heath Park, Birnam. She wrote in her journal: "Went out with the pony ... to see Kitty MacDonald, our old washerwoman ... Kitty is eighty-three but waken, and delightfully merry ... She is a comical, round little woman, as brown as a berry and wears a multitude of petticoats and a white mutch. Her memory goes back for seventy years, and I really believe she is prepared to enumerate the articles of her first wash in the year '71". (The Scots Language Centre defines "mutch" as "A head-dress, especially a close-fitting day cap of white linen or muslin…specifically such as used to be worn by married women”.) In 1942, the year before she died, Potter's thoughts returned to Kitty MacDonald when she wrote about a piece of crockery:Seventy eighty years ago it belonged to another old woman, old Katie MacDonald, the Highland washerwoman. She was a tiny body, brown as a berry, beady black eyes and much wrinkled, against an incongruously white frilled mutch. She wore a small plaid crossed over shawl pinned with a silver brooch, a bed jacket, and a full kilted petticoat. She dropped bob curtsies, but she was outspoken and very independent, proud and proper ... The joy of converse with old Katie was to draw her out to talk of the days when she was a wee bit lassie—herding the kine. The days when 'Boney' [Napoleon] was a terror ... the old woman wouldn't dwell upon hard weather and storms; she spoke of the sunshine and clouds, and shadows, the heather bells, ... "the broom of the Cowden Knowes", the sun and wind on the hills where she played, and knitted, and herded cattle and sheep. A bonny life it was, but it never came back ..." Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle may have been conceived as early as 1886, it was not until 1901 Potter began elaborating it while on holiday at Lingholm west of Derwentwater where she met young Kathleen and Lucie Carr, daughters of the local vicar. In 1902, it was put to paper. The Carr family l.... Discover the M Daphne Kutzer popular books. Find the top 100 most popular M Daphne Kutzer books.