[Ads-l] Where are the PC police?

Sun Sep 18 03:14:03 UTC 2016

Back in 2010 I mentioned that "Google Books contains a document titled
'Remarkable Story of Chicken Little' by John Greene Chandler dated
1840 but it cannot be examined because there is 'No preview
available'."

Robin just sent me (off-list) some additional bibliographical data
about this 1840 edition.

Now, I see that American Antiquarian Society based in Worcester,
Massachusetts has an "extremely rare first edition" from 1840, and
they have posted scans of a few pages.

http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/View/7/fig7_7.htm
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Inpursuit/case8/case8_11.htm

There is a downloadable PDF at the second link that contains a few
pages. Here is the story text on the pages. Please double-check for
errors. The main plot event: A leaf fell on the tail of Chicken
Little.

[Begin text of page 1]
Did you ever hear of Chicken Little, how she disturbed a whole
neighborhood by her foolish alarm?
[End text]

[Begin text of page 2]
Well, Chicken Little was running about in a gentleman's garden, where
she had no business to be: she ran under a rose-bush, and a leaf fell
on her tail; so she was dreadfully frightened, and ran away to Hen
Pen.
[End excerpt]

Page 3 and subsequent pages are not displayed on the website of the
American Antiquarian Society. The text below is from a later section
of the story. It contains the key phrase "the sky is falling". This
text was displayed in the back cover, I think.

[Begin text (located on back cover, I think)]
"O Duck Luck!" says Hen Pen, "the sky is falling." "How do you know
it?" says Duck Luck. "Chicken Little told me." "Chicken Little, how do
you know it?" "O, I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and
part of it fell on my tail. O, come, let us run!"
[End text]

Garson

On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Robin Hamilton
<robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:
> I have a feeling it was actually that very thread that started me off
> thinking about the business.  Halliwell-Philips in 1849 isn't the earliest
> -- there's an earlier Scots version, and may be others -- but most of the
> this-side-of-the-Atlantic discussion in the rest of the nineteenth century
> refers back to him.
>
> The American version, oddly enough, emerges in exactly the same year, so
> they're almost certainly independent versions of a common folk original
> somewhere that predates them both, despite the substantial similarity
> between H-P and America. I could dig out the Arne-Thomson number of the
> motif if anyone's interested.
>
> But the two versions seem to develop completely independently.
>
> I'll dive back into my notes and see what I found as the earliest, Garson.
> If you have an earlier, or indeed anything before 1849, I'd be interested.
>
> <<  The earliest version recorded in the British Isles was in Scots, by
> Robert Chambers. Chambers (1802-1871), a noted Scottish author and printer,
> published his first collection of Scottish folk material in 1826, as
> _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, “chiefly collected from oral sources.” It was
> in the second edition of this, first published in 1842, that the story of
> the Sky Falling first appeared. In this version, the chicken is absent, and
> the narrative begins with a pea falling on the head of Henny-Penny:
>
> “A hen picking at a pease-stack, a pea fell on her head, and she thought the
> lifts were faun. And she thought she would go and tell the king about it.
> And she gaed, and gaed, and gaed ...”   >>
>
> I haven't rechecked that, simply carved it straight out of my notes, and it
> may anyway have been lifted from the 2010 ADS-l thread, though I like to
> think I'd have flagged it if so.
>
> But it was all so long ago.
>
> I'll check out the thread you cited, Garson.  Thanks.
>
> Robin
>
> On 18 September 2016 at 02:07 ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
>
>
> There was a discussion thread about Chicken Little and Chicken Licken
> back in 2010. I located some evidence before the important 1849
> citation mentioned by Robin. There seems to be some uncertainty about
> the original character names:
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2010-December/105724.html
>
> Perhaps more material is available now.
> Garson
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 8:41 PM, Robin Hamilton
> <robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:
>> I should have said, the whole point of my last post, that even in the UK,
>> even
>> in Scotland, the badge Jon refers to read "Chicken Little [sic] Was
>> Right".
>>
>> Even when we knew better.
>>
>> Very much a sixties sort of scene, in origin at least.
>>
>> R.
>>
>>>
>>> On 18 September 2016 at 01:29 Robin Hamilton
>>> <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> It's odd ... Not so much that "Chicken Licken Was Right" doesn't sound
>>> right,
>>> but *why* it doesn't sound right.
>>>
>>> Chicken Licken is embedded in the rhyme-cascade of Chicken Licken, Henny
>>> Penny,
>>> Ducky Lucky, Goosy Loosey ... Foxy Loxy, whereas Chicken Little [sic] is
>>> detachable.
>>>
>>> As to why Chicken Licken in England whereas Chicken Little in America.
>>> *That* I
>>> dunno. The when but not the why.
>>>
>>> Way it goes.
>>>
>>> Robin
>>>
>>> >
>>> > On 18 September 2016 at 00:34 Jim Parish <jparish at SIUE.EDU> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > The Turtles released a song by that title in 1967. (It's not one of
>>> > their better songs....)
>>> >
>>> > Jim Parish
>>> >
>>> > On 9/17/2016 6:32 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>> > > In the year 1968 I purchased, in NYC, a novelty button that read,
>>> > > "CHICKEN
>>> > > LITTLE WAS RIGHT."
>>> > >
>>> > > It has served me well ever since.
>>> > >
>>> > > On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 7:00 PM, Robin Hamilton <
>>> > > robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > >> It's worse than that, even, Wilson, since there's a degree of
>>> > >> gender-bending
>>> > >> involved in making the protagonist male:
>>> > >>
>>> > >> I quote myself from some long-ago notes:
>>> > >>
>>> > >> << The second version of the narrative to be written down [the
>>> > >> earliest
>>> > >> version is Scots, and begins with a hen], with the initial figure
>>> > >> now
>>> > >> a
>>> > >> younger
>>> > >> barnyard fowl named Chicken Licken, was that of James Orchard
>>> > >> Halliwell-Philips
>>> > >> (as he was finally known by the end of his life), Shakespearean
>>> > >> scholar,
>>> > >> and
>>> > >> anthologist of nursery rhymes and folk tales. Halliwell-Philips
>>> > >> introduces
>>> > >> Chicken Licken in his 1849 anthology. It is here for the first time
>>> > >> that
>>> > >> the
>>> > >> protagonist is named Chicken Licken, while it is now an acorn [not a
>>> > >> pea,
>>> > >> as in
>>> > >> the earlier Scottish version] which falls on the creature’s head:
>>> > >>
>>> > >> “As Chicken-Licken went one day to the wood, an acorn fell upon her
>>> > >> poor
>>> > >> bald
>>> > >> pate, and she thought the sky had fallen. So she said she would go
>>> > >> and
>>> > >> tell the
>>> > >> king that the sky had fallen …”
>>> > >>
>>> > >> This was the version which was to dominate the British strand of the
>>> > >> tale. >>
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Or so I once seem to have averred.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> As to why she's called Chicken Little in America ... well, children,
>>> > >> that's
>>> > >> another story.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Robin Hamilton
>>> > >>
>>> > >>
>>> > >>> On 17 September 2016 at 20:44 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> Chicken Little (2005) - IMDb
>>> > >>> www.imdb.com/title/tt0371606/
>>> > >>> IMDb
>>> > >>> Rating: 5.8/10 - ‎64,469 votes
>>> > >>> Animation · After ruining _his_ reputation with the town, a
>>> > >> courageous
>>> > >>> _chicken_ must come to the rescue of _his_ fellow citizens when
>>> > >> aliens
>>> > >>> start an invasion.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> When did chickens - not to mention honeybees, wasps, hornets, cows,
>>> > >> etc. -
>>> > >>> become *male*? No less a light than Seth MacFarlane has even
>>> > >> portrayed
>>> > >>> bulls as having udders.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> Is it becoming the case that, in English, _male_ v. _female_ is
>>> > >> relevant
>>> > >>> only WRT personkind?
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> --
>>> > >>> -Wilson
>>> > >>> -----
>>> > >>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange
>>> > >>> complaint
>>> > >> to
>>> > >>> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>>> > >>> -Mark Twain
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> > >>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> > >>>
>>> > >> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> > >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> > >>
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> >
>>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> >
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org