Abstract
In a regent artigle1 i cited “sicily burns’s wedding” in Sut Lovingood’s Yarns by George Washington Harris as the source of Mark Twain’s stories of the whipping-boy’s bull ride, originally intended for The Prince and the Pauper, and Uncle Laxart’s bull ride in Joan of Arc. Professor Walter Blair of the University of Chicago—to whom I had sent a copy of my article has called my attention to another story of a bull ride which may have been known by Twain. It is “Deacon Smith’s Bull, or Mike Fink in a Tight Place,” by “Scroggins”. It appeared in the Milton (Pa.) Miltonian in 1851 and was reprinted in the Spirit of the Times and in the Mississippi Palladium in the same year, as well as in T. C. Halliburton’s anthology, Traits of American Humour, by Native Authors (3 vols.) in 1852.2
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References
“Mark Twain’s Story of the Bull and the Bees,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XI (September, 1952, ) 246-253.
For more detailed bibliographical information see Mike Fink: King of Mississippi Kealboatmen, by Walter Blair and Franklin J. Meine (New York, 1933), p. 276, from which I take the information given above. The story is partly retold and partly reprinted by Blair and Meine, pp. 93-97.
In Traits of American Humour, by Native Authors (London, 1852), III, 79-87. This work was made available to me by the Library of Congress through interlibrary loan.
Letter to me dated December 12, 1952.
Sut Lovingood’s Tarns, New York, 1867.
The Sut Lovingood stories came out later than the story by “Scroggins,” beginning in 1854, See the Introduction to Franlkin J. Meine’s Tall Tales of the Southwest, New York, 1930, and Walter Blair’s Horse Sense in American Humor, Chicago. 1942.
This last idea comes from Professor Blair’s letter. See note 4.
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© 1958 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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McKeithan, D.M. (1958). Bull Rides Described by “Scroggins”, G. W. Harris, and Mark Twain. In: Court Trials in Mark Twain and other Essays. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-8921-7_10
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