Tailor and Louse

DESCRIPTION: A tailor and louse live in a house. Spitefully, the tailor sews the louse into a button. The louse escapes, has misadventures in town and dies. His body is carried by six fleas. A bug tolls the bell to carry the louse's soul to Hell.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1906 (Reeves-TheEverlastingCircle)
KEYWORDS: burial death humorous bug clothes
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "TAILOR AND THE LOUSE, THE"
Reeves-TheEverlastingCircle 129, "Tailor and Louse" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: F.C.H. in Notes and Queries (London, 1871 ("Digitized by Google")), Fourth Series Vol. VIII, No. 194, September 16 1871, p. 231, ("There was a tailor and a louse") (1 text)
Roud #16577
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Benjamin Bowmaneer" (theme of tailors and insects)
NOTES [56 words]: Reeves-TheEverlastingCircle: "The traditional connection between tailors and lice is indicated in the expression to prick a louse: i.e. to be a tailor, which goes back at least to the seventeenth century." For other examples see "Benjamin Bowmaneer" and "Four and Twenty Fiddlers."
F.C.H.[1871]: "in vogue about seventy years ago." - BS
Last updated in version 6.8
File: ReCi129

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