Sir Gammer Vans is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs

Joseph Jacobs was a folklorist, literary critic and historian. His works included contributions to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, translations of European works, and critical editions of early English literature...

 in More English Fairy Tales.

It is Aarne-Thompson 1965, Lying Tales, and includes an episode of 1890, the lucky shot.

Synopsis

In a sequence of events most of which are self-contradictory, the narrator goes to visit Sir Gammer Vans in his house -- "a brick house, built entirely of flints, standing alone by itself in the middle of sixty or seventy others just like it" -- is fed breakfast -- "a slice of beer, and a cup of cold veal" -- and goes hunting with him. He shoots a deer, breaking its ribs without hurting it, finds the arrow in a beehive, and shoots partridges when they jump out -- 18 they say, but he claims 36.

Motifs

The references to arrows and venison point to its being an old tale, which may indicate the "sir" is a title for a clerical honor, rather than a knight.