Today on Project Gutenberg: "Amusing Prose Chap Books"
Today on Project Gutenberg, we have…
Amusing Prose Chap Books by Various
“Chapbook” is a term you may have heard before if you’re in the writing community. Something of an indie publishing method, chapbooks are short (a couple dozen pages at most) and often cheaply produced. It can be an elaborate handmade work or something as simple as a folded sheet of paper with a poem printed inside. Point is, they are a popular way for writers to make physical copies of their work and share them with readers. And as it turns out, they’ve been around for a long time.
This Project Gutenberg find comes to us from the year 1889, and the stories within allegedly date from about a century earlier. The editor, Robert Hays Cunningham, presents this as something of an anthropological text as well as a piece of entertainment. He explains in an introduction that the chapbook was the earliest form of literature made by and for working-class people. Middle-class readers of the past would have had no interest in such things, but “all that is changed, and it has been discovered that much of extreme interest can be learned from the superstitions, habits, beliefs, tastes, customs, ideas, amusements, and general social life of the uneducated or lower classes of previous times” (page 5).
What follows is a short story collection of traditional English folktales. A few of them are stories you may recognize: there’s Robin Hood, Bluebeard, Dick Whittington and his cat, Dr. Faustus and “Jack the Giant Killer” (a variant of “Jack and the Beanstalk”). But there are even more stories that have mostly been lost to time. You can read “Daniel O’Rourke’s Wonderful Voyage to the Moon,” about a drunken servant who rides an eagle up into space and then pisses off the the Man in the Moon. I quite liked the stories about Long Meg, an implacable servant girl who gets into all sorts of scrapes and beats up anyone who tries to harm her or her friends.
A bailiff, having for the purpose took forty shillings, arrested a gentleman in Meg's mistress's house, and desired the company to keep peace. She, coming in, asked what was the matter. "O," said he, "I'm arrested." "Arrested! and in our house? Why this unkind act to arrest one in our house; but, however, take an angel and let him go." "No," said the bailiff, "I cannot, for the creditor is at the door." "Bid him come in," said she, "and I'll make up the matter." So the creditor came in; but, being found obstinate, she rapped him on the head with a quart pot and bid him go out of doors like a knave. "He can but go to prison," quoth she, "where he shall not stay long if all the friends I have can fetch him out."
The creditor went away with a good knock, and the bailiff was going with his prisoner. "Nay," said she, "I'll bring a fresh pot to drink with him." She came into the parlour with a rope, and, knitting her brows, "Sir Knave," said she, "I'll learn thee to arrest a man in our house. I'll make thee a spectacle for all catchpoles;" and, tossing the rope round his middle, said to the gentleman, "Sir, away, shift for yourself; I'll pay the bailiff his fees before he and I part." Then she dragged the bailiff unto the back side of the house, making him go up to his chin in a pond, and then paid him his fees with a cudgel, after which he went away with the amends in his hands, for she was so well beloved that no person would meddle with her.
Pages 303-304
If you ask me, this is a charming little find. There are so many stories in here that you’re sure to find something to pique your interest. Taken as a whole, they offer a fascinating peek into the history of English folklore and the pop culture of centuries past.
And that’s what we found today on Project Gutenberg! See you next time!
— Dana