This tradition of Mark Twain’s tall talk belongs to Type 1920A, a subtype of 1920, Contest in Lying, and includes Type 1960D, The Great Vegetable. Related motifs are X1435.1, “Lie: large potatoes,” and X1301, “Lie: the great fish.” Both types are familiar in Europe and the United States. Baughman cites variants of the great vegetable and the great kettle from ten states. A Cornish text brought to Michigan is printed by R. M. Dorson in the Journal of American Folklore, LXI (1948), 138–39.
An example of Type 1920, “The Tall Tale of the Merchant’s Son,” is in D. Noy, Folktales of Israel, a companion volume in this series, No. 24, pp. 56–58.
Mark Twain made a very favorable impression in the Fens because he had known hardship in his youth.
WHEN I WAS a boy some Dons of Cambridge brought Mark Twain to a little pub near my home, to recover from a nervous breakdown. Well, he and the old Fenmen got on well together. Mark could tell a very fine yarn. He told those old fishermen that Americans never went fishing unless they took a mill with them. When the Fenmen asked what the mill was for, Mark replied that the fish were so large that no man could pull ’em out, so they had to use a mill.
A short time afterwards, Mark saw a team of horses standing outside a blacksmith’s forge, and he said to old Chafer Legge the Fenman, “What are those horses waiting for?” Chafer said, “They’re waiting for the man that’s just going out fishing.”
Another time, when the landlord of the Ship Inn where he was staying showed him some large potatoes, Mark said, “Call them spuds? You ought to see what we grow in America! They’re so large that we can only get one into a saucepan at a time!” That evening a barge came along up the river, with a great big water-tube boiler for Cambridge gasworks. They moored it into the bank, aside of the Ship Inn. Mark went out and he saw this huge boiler lashed on the deck of the barge, and he said to the landlord, “What is that?”
“Oh!” the landlord said, “That’s nothing. ’Tis just one of our saucepans we boil potatoes in.” Oh! he was a humorous old man!
92
The Endless Tale
Heard by Katharine M. Briggs from Grace Crowder in 1919 in Perthshire.
This comes under Type 2320, Rounds (Motif Z17), of which 112 instances are reported for Lithuania. Baughman gives examples collected in half a dozen states.
There are several variants of this tale. One heard in 1922 at a Girl Guide campfire began, “It was a dark and stormy night and the robbers came in two by two,” etc.
A song that was popular at that time to the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” went as follows:
The bear went over the mountain (repeat twice)
To see what he could see.
And what do you think he saw? (repeat)
The other side of the mountain (repeat twice)
Was all that he could see.
So what do you think he did? (repeat)
He went back over the mountain. etc.
IT WAS A dark and stormy night, and the Captain stood on the bridge, and he said to the Mate, “Tell us a yarn.”
And the Mate began, “It was a dark and stormy night, and the Captain stood on the bridge, and he said to the Mate, ‘Tell us a yarn.’ And the Mate began,” etc.
Glossary
Allerntide All Hallows or Hallowe’en.
barton A byre or cow-shed.
batch A piece of open common land or moorland.
beck A stream.
croom’le Crumble.
dairy maid A white and tortoise-shell cat.
Dandy dogs See wild hunt.
dew-bit An early morning snack.
diddicky Rotten.
drashel A threshold.
drinking Elevenses.
dunk A donkey.
fither Whether.
four-wents A crossroads.
Gabriel ratchets See wild hunt.
galley-trap The Somerset name for a fairy ring. The local belief is that if a thief or a murderer sets a foot in it, he will come to the gallows.
gladdon An iris, one of the sedge family.
