Episode Details

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Folk Tales of the United Kingdom continues with five more tales of England and Scotland as Joseph Jacobs collected them in his More English Fairy Tales (London, 1894). They are read here complete, exactly as written.

In A Pottle o' Brains, a fool who is ever getting into scrapes goes to the wise woman on the hill to buy a pottle o' brains, and she will help him only for the heart of the thing he likes best of all. News! is a tale told as a dialogue: a steward breaks the news from home one answer at a time — the magpie dead, the horses dead, the house burned, and worse behind each. Puddock, Mousie and Ratton is a wedding rhyme in verse: Puddock comes a-wooing to Mousie's mill, Uncle Ratton comes home, and Duckie, Sir Drake and the old carl cat break up the feast. In The Wee, Wee Mannie, a wee, wee mannie cannot milk his big, big Coo, and stick, butcher and silver penny all fail him until a word about a fine laddie from the wars does the work. And in Habetrot and Scantlie Mab, a lass who loves play better than work must spin seven heads of lint in three days, and the old spinners beneath the self-bored stone spin it for her.

A note on the tales as written. In A Pottle o' Brains, the fool kills his pig in a single clause, meaning to bring its heart; his mother dies in her bed and is mourned, and though he carries her body to the wise woman in a sack, he never takes her heart — the tale itself refuses the act. In News!, every calamity is reported in the steward's answers and none is enacted. Puddock, Mousie and Ratton ends in a brief animal scuffle — Duckie makes Puddock squeak, Drake catches him, the cat pulls Ratton down and the kittens claw his crown; no killing is told. In The Wee, Wee Mannie, the bids to beat the Coo and have the butcher kill her are chain rungs that never happen; the sword is only glimpsed, and put by. In Habetrot and Scantlie Mab, the mother's beating of her daughter is one reported clause of backstory. No word has been altered in any of the five: no period slur occurs in these tales, and nothing in the telling called for one to be softened or set aside.

Chapters

0:00 Opening Theme

1:03 A Pottle o' Brains

12:43 News!

15:09 Puddock, Mousie and Ratton

16:48 The Wee, Wee Mannie

20:32 Habetrot and Scantlie Mab

From More English Fairy Tales (1894), collected by Joseph Jacobs — public domain. Tales of England and Scotland as Jacobs collected them; no Irish tales appear on this shelf. Narrated by Mira. Music: opening and closing theme, "Damp Pine Sunrise" — heard at the introduction and the close only; the tales themselves are read dry.

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