Rounding off a smashing month and the publication of our collection of Commonwealth Tales, here's one that ehm...slipped through the net. Next stop on our Commonwealth Odyssey...Uncommon Tales comic with Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes...
Once upon a time, was a very good time.
Monkey chew tobacco and spit white lime.
Cockaroach keep high low time.
This was a boy One day say to his mama, 'I gwine to look for a living." His ma say, ''Ah right, son, good behind you, bad before you." The boy went on his journey, and he meet a large broken-down t'atch house. So he went in. He met an old man. The old man was man by the name of Father John. The boy ask the old man to let him sleep there that night. The old man say, 'All right, boy."
Father John used to sleep seven years. This boy didn't know this. It was night, so they went to bed and they slept that night. The nex morning the boy wake, the sun was up, the old man was still snoring, so the boy call, 'Father John! Father John!" The boy call till the sun set. The harder he call, the harder Father John snore. So the boy went to sleep again. The nex' night he sleep all night again
without any food. The nex' morning he get up pretty weak, so he call again. That day the harder he call, the harder Father John snore. So he call all day until seven days, and he died. And Father
John find out that the boy was dead. He get up, he went into the kitchen and set on the big pot and boil the boy. And he sit down and eat the boil boy.
Be bo ben.
My story is end.
From the Journals of the American Folklore Society
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