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.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In Tattercoats, the granddaughter the old lord by the sea will not look upon grows up in rags with only the gooseherd and his pipe for company — and comes to the King's ball at midnight in her torn petticoat and bare feet, exactly as the Prince himself asked her. In The Hedley Kow, an old woman finds a big black pot brim-full of gold pieces by the roadside, and is just as delighted with her luck as it turns to a lump of silver, then iron, then a stone to hold her door. In The Pedlar of Swaffham, a poor pedlar follows a dream three times told to London Bridge, and hears there from a laughing shopkeeper the news that sends him home to dig beneath his own oak-tree. In The Three Wishes, a woodman spares a fairy's oak and gains his next three wishes, be they what they may — and a link of black pudding does the rest. And in The King o' the Cats, a sexton comes home from a grave asking "Who's Tommy Tildrum?", and Old Tom, the big black cat by the fire, answers for himself.
A note on the tales as written. Three carry a moment of the old tales' colour, worth naming plainly. In Tattercoats the servants' harshness to the girl is told in summary — they would drive her from the house with blows and mocking words — and the same words are used of the old nurse turned from the lord's room; no blow is ever shown, and the tale answers the harshness with music, dancing, and a Prince who asks for the goosegirl exactly as she is. In The Three Wishes, husband and wife pull at the black pudding on the goodman's nose till they had nigh pulled the nose off — one clause of farce, and the wish that frees him costs them their last wish, which is the tale's whole point. In The King o' the Cats, nine black cats carry a small coffin with a gold coronet upon its pall, and the death they announce happened off the page before the tale began; what happens in it is only a message delivered, and a cat gone up the chimney. The Hedley Kow and The Pedlar of Swaffham carry no note at all. 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
0:22 Tattercoats
7:47 The Hedley Kow
13:35 The Pedlar of Swaffham
16:48 The Three Wishes
20:25 The King o' the Cats
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 Scratch. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
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