The First Banana
Heard by Katharine M. Briggs in 1944 while serving in the R.A.F. in Errol, Perthshire, probably from Mary Studholme of Cumberland.
Very soon after the beginning of the Second World War bananas became unobtainable in England, so that many children had never tasted them. Because of the blackout the trains were often not lit at night. It is against this background that the tale was told in England, but there are Wisconsin and Arkansas versions in which the actors are from the backwoods. See Baughman, MotifJ2214(b), “Woman eats her first banana just before her train enters a tunnel.”
TWO LITTLE SISTERS were making a train journey alone, and opposite them was a soldier just come back from overseas, who opened his knapsack and took out two long yellow things.
“Like a banana?” he said.
“What is it?” said the eldest little girl.
“It’s a banana; you take the skin off it and eat it; it tastes good.”
The little girls looked at the bananas doubtfully, and then the eldest peeled hers and began to eat it. Just then the train went into a tunnel. The elder sister said to the younger, “Have you begun to eat your banana yet?”
“No,” said the younger.
“Well, don’t, because it makes you go blind.”
68
The Farmer and the “Parson”
Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 28, 1963, who heard the rhozzum about 1907 from an old North Somerset groom.
This falls under the general motif X800, “Humor based on drunkenness.” Also present is Motif F491.1, “Will-o’-the-Wisp leads people astray.” A comparable anecdote is told in northern Michigan of a drunken lumberjack crawling along the main street of Sault Ste Marie. “Can I give you a lift?” asks a passerby. “You’ve got more than you can carry.” “By God,” he says, “if I can’t carry her, I can drag her” (R. M. Dorson, Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers, Cambridge, Mass., 1952, pp. 189–90).
“Rhines” are the deep ditches on the sides of roads. “Spunkies” are will-o’-the-wisps. “Four-wents” is a crossroads.
THERE WERE AN old varmer coming whoame from Bridgwater Fair and he were proper market-merry. But he did try all ways to keep on causeway. There were a deep rhine to each zide of drove and he didn’t want no cold dip. So he were extra careful. He knowed the road were straight as a withy till he comed to the four-wents, and he kept so near middle of it as any man could. But you wouldn’ believe how that road try to trick him. It went up and down like a caterpillar, and he never knowed when to lift a foot high or put it down flat; then it would give a wiggle like and he’d find hisself with both feet set two inches above they cold deep rhines; and then to make things worse the spunkies come out all a-shining and a-beckoning all round he. They was all round the poor man, beckoning so it made him dizzy.
“I’ll be at bottom of they rhines afore I can walk two-three steps,” he say to hisself. “But I’ll beat’n! I’ll get whoame if I crawls.” So he get down on his all fours and he go on up road which didn’t zigzag near so much. He were quite proud he was making road behave at last, and beating they bothering spunkies, when he look up and there in the mist, right in front of him, were a girt white thing and it had four arms!
“Rhines and roads and spunkies!” groans varmer, “an’ now ’tis ghosteses. I’ll shut my eyes and go on.” Well, he crawled and he crawled and every time he took a peep, there were thic terrible white thing above him. In the end he just lay down where he was, and slept, as clean wore out as the knees of his breeches.
When he woke up, sun was up, and he was flat on his face, below the parson at the four-wents.
“Why do you call it a ‘parson’?” I asked.
“It do point the right way to go.” (The general finish of this is “but it don’t go there itself.”)
69
The Irishman’s Hat
Printed by Edward M. Wilson in “Some Humorous English Folk Tales, Part I,” Folk-Lore, XLIX (1938), 184–85, No. 3, as told in March, 1936, by Mrs. Joseph Haddow, who heard the tale from her father-in-law, who was a native of Ulverston.
A gipsy version is in the T. W. Thompson Notebooks at the University of Leeds, Vol. III, “The Hat that Paid,” told by Gus Gray at Cleethorpe, October 7, 1914.
Motif K111.2, “Alleged bill-paying hat sold,” appears as an element of Type 1539, Cleverness and Gullibility, known all over Europe, and in Asia and the New World. Baughman has provided a new subtype, 1539A, The Hat that Pays for Everything, citing a Texas reference besides the present text.
THIS IRISHMAN, HE’D got fifteen pounds, and he didn’t want to take it hay-timing with him, so he went to the first public house, and asked the landlord if he would keep five pounds for him. “Certainly.” And he said, “When I come back I don’t want everyone to know our business, so if I lift my hat and say, ‘Do you remember the man with the white hat with the green band round it?’, then you will give me the money.” So he went to the next public house and said the same there, and to the third public house and said the same there.
And so when he was coming home from his hay-time place, a butcher with his cart overtook him. And they go on about money matters and the Irishman said, “I can get money when you can’t.” And the butcher said, “How will you manage that?” So they had a bet of five pounds. So when they came to the first public house, they went in and the butcher ordered drinks apiece. So when the landlord brought them, the Irishman lift’ his hat, and said, “Do you remember the man with the white hat with the green band round it?” The landlord said, “Yes, there’s five pounds for him”
So t’Irishman said t’butcher, “Come on, let’s try t’next pub.” And there they did all t’same again, and t’butcher called for drinks as before an’ everything.
And they said, “Well, we’ll go to t’next.” And all was said again—he got his five pounds again, and so he got his fifteen pounds.
T’butcher said, “I think I’ll try t’next.”
And t’Irishman said, “You’ll want this hat.”
And t’butcher said, “How much for it?”
He says, “Five pounds.”
So t’butcher, going into the next public house he came to, ordered himself a drink, and when landlord brought it, he lift’ his hat and said, “Do you remember the man with the white hat with the green band round it?”
And t’landlord said, “No, what’s up wi’ him?”
He says, “Isn’t there five pound for me?”
T’landlord said, “No, there’s mi shoe if ye aren’t gittin’ out.”
70
The Three Foreigners
