[Ads-l] Where are the PC police?

Sun Sep 18 10:56:08 UTC 2016

Wikipedia has a thorough discussion of the Danish and American sources for Chicken Little.

By coincidence, my wife was very recently checking the Yale copy of the 1840 publication with the first use of "Chicken Little" for the OED.

Fred Shapiro

From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM>
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2016 12:50 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Where are the PC police?

Damn!  I totally forgot this till now, as I came on it well after I'd done most
of what work I did in this area:

Katherine M. Briggs, _A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales_, Part A Folk
Narratives Vol. 2 (of a total of 4 volumes):

    pp.515 ff. for Chicken-Licken and derived/related texts

    pp.531 ff. for The Hen and Her Fellow-Travellers and derived/related texts

A much more reliable text than Ashliman, where they overlap, but not I think
available as easily.  Note also that it's _British_ Folk-Tales, so no John
Greene Chandler or Joel Chandler Harris.

(Just pulled that from my shelves, where it sits above and slightly to the left
of the only two volumes of HDAS that OUP will allow us to read. Phoey!!!!)

Robin

_____________________________

>
>     On 18 September 2016 at 05:30 Robin Hamilton
> <robin.hamilton3 at VIRGINMEDIA.COM> wrote:
>
>
>     There's this, for a complete text:
>
>     https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__archive.org_stream_remarkablestoryo00bostiala-23page_n0_mode_2up&d=CwICaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=sRkhHMQo6W5Ird1lkQFqb23bCfSHAR2XjUSUG53db5M&m=ZeZFnPBjToq6EJOV76xtJTSEU19N4CbA9hE-8KQr-hE&s=_8paVknT-IfJo4L_WkITmmzYVozR_xucXTc2rpvjvYo&e=
>
>     It doesn't show up on an obvious google (or internal Internet Archive)
> search,
>     as John Greene Chandler's name has been removed in the course of
> (various?)
>     reprinting(s), but you can get to it via the title.
>
>     Not the original 1840 edition, where the illustrations are in colour, but
> as far
>     as I can make out, otherwise identical.
>
>     I'm not absolutely sure, as I've never managed to get my eyes near a
> proper
>     first edition to check it against, but probably good enough for government
> work.
>
>     (Thinking about it, I'm not even absolutely sure that the illustrations
>     originally *were* in colour. I've seen images like that, but they may have
> been
>     coloured after the fact.)
>
>     Actually, comparing the text from the link above, with the images Garson
> links
>     to below, they seem (a) to be, with the exception that Chandler's name is
>     obliterated from the cover of the reprint, identical, and (b) to my
> untrained
>     eye, the colours in the americanantiquarian images look as if they were
>     hand-painted onto/into an originally penny-plain text.
>
>     Which is what would more likely be found at a country fair, which was
> where
>     Chandler sold it first.
>
>     Robin
>
>     (Who unlike Garson, managed to totally misremember the date. With the
> correct
>     date of 1840, Chandler beats the first printing of the Scottish version by
> two
>     years, and takes the crown. More, possibly, if the longer [abominably
> prolix]
>     MS version which lies behind the printed text was written substantially
>     earlier.)
>
>     Incidentally, there's a raft of versions, including the 1849
> Halliwell-Phillipps
>     one, here:
>
>     https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.pitt.edu_-7Edash_type2033.html-23chambers1841&d=CwICaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=sRkhHMQo6W5Ird1lkQFqb23bCfSHAR2XjUSUG53db5M&m=ZeZFnPBjToq6EJOV76xtJTSEU19N4CbA9hE-8KQr-hE&s=e8yA-qifbY4ROK1RmKzb7_R3FHgTy2-8l0C7xQuS-5w&e=
>
>     The Scottish version should [but doesn't] carry a health-warning. It's, to
> put
>     it mildly, "translated" into English. On the whole, I really like
> Ashliman's
>     site, both here and beyond the issue at hand, but in that instance ...
> words
>     fail me. :-(
>
>     R.
>
>     >
>     > On 18 September 2016 at 04:14 ADSGarson O'Toole
>     > <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>     >
>     >
>     > 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.
>     >
>     > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americanantiquarian.org_Exhibitions_View_7_fig7-5F7.htm&d=CwICaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=sRkhHMQo6W5Ird1lkQFqb23bCfSHAR2XjUSUG53db5M&m=ZeZFnPBjToq6EJOV76xtJTSEU19N4CbA9hE-8KQr-hE&s=XBgZExdSQO-CcjNdGOCSi3I0ZdznrnHACEhTEae32Nc&e=
>     >
>     > https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americanantiquarian.org_Exhibitions_Inpursuit_case8_case8-5F11.htm&d=CwICaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=sRkhHMQo6W5Ird1lkQFqb23bCfSHAR2XjUSUG53db5M&m=ZeZFnPBjToq6EJOV76xtJTSEU19N4CbA9hE-8KQr-hE&s=eLm_xRj5RmQLFdIQQ9CfqHVWwEnm8_kR4-d6mbpq9HQ&e=
>     >
>     > 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
>     >
>     >
>     >
>
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