Printed by Edward M. Wilson in “Some Humorous English Folk Tales,” Folk-Lore, XLIX (1938), 187, No. 6, from Richard Harrison of Crosthwaite, aged 16 in January, 1936, when he told this tale. He had heard it from a farm laborer born near Whitehaven.
This is Type 1697, We Three; For Money (Motif C495.2.2), known throughout Europe, and in India and the New World, Baughman lists New Jersey, Indiana, and Michigan Negro texts, the latter from Dorson, Negro Folktales in Michigan (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 183–85. A gipsy version is in the T. W. Thompson Notebooks, University of Leeds, Vol. VI, told by Reuben Gray, Old Radford, Nottingham, December 21, 1914. A Märchen form, Type 360, Bargain of the Three Brothers with the Devil, makes the replies the result of a contract with the Devil, who finally rescues the three from the gallows.
THERE WAS THREE Frenchmen came to England and none of them could speak English. So to find out they went outside a public house and listened to see what they could hear. They heard one man say, “Us three.” So the first man thought of that. Then they heard another man say, “Fifteen bob.” So the second man kept that in his head. Then they heard a third man say, “Nowt but reet and should be done.” So the third one thought of that.
The next day they saw a dead man lying in the roadside. And the policeman came on and said, “Who has done this?”
And the first man said, “Us three.”
The policeman said, “What did you do it for?”
The second man said, “Fifteen bob.”
And the policeman said, “Well, ye’ll have to be hung for this.”
The third man said, “Nowt but reet and should be done.”
71
The Deaf Man and the Pig Trough
Printed by Edward M. Wilson in “Some Humorous English Folk Tales, Part I,” Folk-Lore, XLIX (1938), 187–88, No. 7, as told by Richard Harrison of Crosthwaite, who had heard the story five or six years before as a boy of eleven. It may be derived from part of a dialect piece, “Johnny Shippard at Heeam,” written by the Rev. Thomas Clarke of Ormside, which sold widely in the past century.
Baughman adds to Type 1698B, Travelers Ask the Way (Motif X111.2, “Deaf peasant: travelers ask the way”), the present Westmorland text and a similar one from the Carolinas. The Type-Index indicates four examples from India. Antti Aarne wrote a monograph on jokes about deaf people, Schwanke über schwerhörige Menschen (Finnish Folklore Fellows, No. 20, Hamina, 1914).
THERE WAS A man that was very deaf, and he was making a stone pig trough one day. And he saw a man coming along the road, and he knew he would ask him something about what he was doing. So he thought if the man asked what he was making he would say a pig trough; and if he said how much he wanted for it he would say fifteen shillings; and if he wouldn’t buy it he would say, “If thou doesn’t someone else will.”
The man asked him the way to Bolton, and the deaf man said, “Pig trough.”
And the man said, “I asked you if this was the way to Bolton.”
And the deaf man replied, “Fifteen bob.”
The other man said, “If tha’s gaan to be cheeky I’ll punch thi back-side.”
And the deaf man said, “If thou doesn’t someone else will.”
72
The Borrowdale Cuckoo
Printed by Edward M. Wilson in “Some Humorous English Folk Tales, Part III,” Folk-Lore, LIV (1943), 260–61, No. 32, as taken down in April, 1936, from James Harrison of Low Fell, Crosthwaite, who heard the tale in 1901 from a native of Thirlmere, Cumberland. Wilson comments that the tradition relates to Borrowdale, Cumberland; various printed versions exist, all derived from that recorded by J. Briggs in The Lonsdale Magazine, II (1821), 293. He feels however that the present text is genuinely oral.
Type 1213, The Pent Cuckoo, applies to this story, which Baughman reports (under Motif J1904.2.1) for Northumberland, Yorkshire, Shropshire, Nottingham, and Cornwall. John E. Field has devoted a full study to The Myth of the Pent Cuckoo (London, 1913). Outside of England only one Walloon variant is cited. This “noodle” tale is best known as part of the exploits of the Wise Men of Gotham, collected by Ruth Tongue in Somerset, 1913.
“Intack” is enclosure; “shut (long ū) is to shoot; “steean” is stone.
NOW THEY WERE terribly bothered in Borradle about their game. There was summat ga’en on wi’ t’game eggs, an’ they couldn’t reckon it up. Well, they was watching one day an’ they spot t’cuckoo sowkin’ eggs. They tried to shut it an’ they couldn’t git a shot at it, and so it flew into an intack, and intul a tree. And so they thought they would wa’ it in. So they got a good wa’ round it, but t’cuckoo cleered t’top—nobbut just. So they thought they was a steean or two short because it just cleered it.
So they went round where they had all this game an’ t’cuckoo was there again. So they off wi’ their guns again to see if they could shut it. Awwiver, it happened to flee and into just t’same intack, just an’ so cleered t’wa’. And so they thowt they would put a bit mair wa’ on top—they thowt they would have it. Awwiver, they went in again wi’ their guns an’ it flew out again, just an’ so cleered t’wa’ again. And that carried on for about fower times, and they wa’d up till they’d wa’d aw t’steeans there was in Borradle. So they had to give it up—it could allus flee just ower t’top.
73
Growing the Church
Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 28, 1963, who was told the story by L. Wyatt in 1913 in Somerset.
For Motif F802.1, “Big rocks grow from little rocks,” Baughman cites examples from Herefordshire, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, and New York.
THERE WERE A little village, and they were very proud of their church, ’cos in the next town there was another church, and they were as alike as two peas. Well, town people they went and they measured their church all round; and village people they measured their church all round, and they were both alike. And then they measured the spires, and town church were a little bit taller—only about a inch.
Well, village people were proper upset, they was. So they got together, and they ’ad a talk, and they were very busy that night, and when morning came, all the churchyard round little church were a girt ’eap o’ muck, so’s ’e’d grow ’igher.
74
The Jamming Pan
Printed by Edward M. Wilson in “Some Humorous English Folk Tales, Part III,” Folk-Lore, LIV (1943), 258–59, No. 26. Taken down in March, 1938, from Richard Harrison of Low Fell, Crosthwaite, in Westmorland.
Type 1351 (Motif J2511), The Silence Wager, is distributed throughout Europe, with seven versions known in France, but it may be of Eastern origin since it is found in India, China, Iran, and Palestine. W. Norman Brown has studied “The Silence Wager Stories: their Origin and their Diffusion,” American Journal of Philology, XLII (1922), 289–317. In a Korean version, in Zöng In-Söb, Folk Tales from Korea (London, 1952), p. 191, No. 89, “A Selfish Husband,” it is the husband who wins the contest. In The Book of Noodles (London, 1888), pp. 107–17, 181–85, W. A. Clouston presents examples from Kashmir, Ceylon, Arabia, Turkey, and Sicily. New World texts are known in Spanish, Portuguese, French-Canadian, and Negro traditions.
English versions are hitherto unreported. Perhaps the liveliest form of the type is the Scottish ballad, “Get Up and Bar the Door” (Child No. 275).
“Drinking” here means elevenses. A “roadster” is a tramp.
THERE WAS A farmhouse situated a long way from anywheres, about five or six miles from t’nearest house. At this farm they’d a terrible lot of fruit trees, and damson time had come round again, and they were short of a brass pan for jamming with. T’ald farmer says ya day, “Eh, lad, I want thee te ga down to ald Jack Sowerby’s an’ git their brass pan.”
T’lad says, “Nay, hang it. I’s nut ga-en fer a thing like that five mile. Neea nut I.”
