Devil and Bailiff McGlynn, The

DESCRIPTION: A woman wishes the Devil take a piglet digging her potatoes and a boy stealing her piglet. He refuses because "it was only her lips that have said it." When she wishes the Devil take the bailiff , he does: "Twas straight from her heart that came surely"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (IRTunneyFamily01)
LONG DESCRIPTION: The Devil and Bailiff McGlynn discuss business. Nearby a woman wishes the Devil take a piglet digging among her potatos but the Devil won't take it because "it was only her lips that have said it, and that's not sufficient for me." Then a boy runs off with the piglet and she wishes the Devil might take him, but the Devil doesn't because "it was only her lips that have said it, and that's not sufficient for me." When she sees the bailiff and wishes the Devil take him, it's done: says the Devil, "Twas straight from her heart that came surely"
KEYWORDS: curse farming humorous animal youth Devil
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Tunney-StoneFiddle, p. 95, "The Devil and Bailiff McGlynn" (1 text)
Roud #5294
RECORDINGS:
Michael Gallagher, "The Devil and Bailiff Maglyn" (on IRTunneyFamily01)
NOTES [1123 words]: Tunney-StoneFiddle: "Even his [Uncle Mick's] songs of the Land War [roughly 1879-1885] and landlordism, with all its attendant evils, had a spark of humour in them. For example, listen to this little ditty describing the love and affection in which bailiffs were held in those stirring days." - BS
For background on the Land War, see e.g. "The Bold Tenant Farmer." However, there is reason to doubt this link (even if the Land War caused the Irish to tell more tales about the evils of bailiffs).
Abby Sale points out to me the clear connection between this song and the tale of "The Devil and the Bailiff" found in Asbjornsen and Moe (which is short, so the comparison is quite apt; it is on pp. 168-169 of NorwegianFolk). There seems to an equivalent Irish tale, though all the printed versions of it seem to be modern -- which hints to me that it was derived from an English version; more on this below.
In outline, the story that the Devil comes to collect the Bailiff -- but stops to chat for a bit. They hit it off well -- presumably because they are so alike. The song hints at this:
Now, one of these boys was the devil
And the other was Bailiff McGlynn,
And the one was as foul as the other
And both were as ugly as sin.
They agree to a some sort of contest, the idea apparently being that they travel along together and listen to people cursing. If someone is cursed soon enough, then the Devil takes *that* soul rather than the Bailiff's. But the curse must be "from the heart."
They visit a cottage, and as they come by, the pet pig gets its snout in the cream, and the woman says, "The devil take the pig" -- but they do not take the pig, because the curse was not from the heart. Later, a mother curses her child for being mischievous. Again, the curse is not meant. But the two then meet a pair of farmers, who curse the bailiff. That curse, the Devil declares, is from the heart -- and the bailiff is taken.
The tale is much older in England (and older still on the continent) -- Murray Schoolbraid points that it is The Friar's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales -- although in Chaucer, it is a Summoner who meets the fiend (a point Chaucer uses to bring out the rivalry between Friar and Summoner), and the devil is in disguise and the two agree to share whatever they get (an idea similar to the hunting contest in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).
The question then becomes, Where did Chaucer get the tale? Benet, p. 408, says that it is from the Latin Promptuarium Exemplorum, and others agree that it is an exemplum -- i.e. a story around which morality tales and sermons can be built.
Chaucer/Benson, p. 875, says that "The tale of the heart-felt curse is probably of folk origin, and numerous analogies found across northern Europe indicate that any avaricious type might be used for the role here played by a summoner." The notes mention in particular Cæsarius of Heisterbach's Libri VIII miraculorum, of the thirteenth century, in which the guilty party is an advocatus or administrator of church estates. But the Riverside editors note that there are two similar English folktales which resemble Chaucer's in that the man fails to realize he is under threat. One of these is from a sermon by Robert Rypon of Durham in which the man is actually a bailiff (Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 45, add that the sermon was in Latin, and point to an additional work about it by Helen Cooper). As usual, of course, Chaucer amplified the tale.
Archer Taylor, well known as a folklorist, wrote the article on the Friar's Tale in Bryan/Dempster (pp. 269-274, one of the shortest articles on Chaucer's sources in the entire book). P. 264 says that "Three recensions of a story similar to Chaucer's Friar's Tale occur in medieval and Renaissance literature. All these recensions show many agreements in detail and are evidently closely akin to Chaucer's tale, we cannot derive Chaucer's tale directly from any of them." Taylor adds that the only one Chaucer could have known is one of the Latin exempla.
Bryan/Dempster, pp. 269-270 gives the Latin text of one exemplum, from British Library MS. Additional 15833, folio 156, which was of the fourteenth century and could thus, in theory at least, have been available to Chaucer. In this, it is a farmer who meets the Devil, who openly reveals himself. The farmer seeds a driver curse a sheep; the Devil says the driver doesn't mean it. A mother curses her child; again, she doesn't mean it. A poor woman curses the farmer; "that comes from the heart." Taylor, p. 270, mentions variations in which it is a sheep or calf rather than a pig, and agrees with Chaucer/Benson that it is from Cæsarius.
The version in the Promptuarium Exemplorum is a little different, in that it is a lawyer, not a farmer, who is the Devil's victim. The rest of the tale, given on pp. 270-271 of Bryan/Dempster, is basically the same: neither the pig nor the child is taken, but many people of the town curse the lawyer, and the Devil takes him.
Another British Library manuscript, BL Cotton Cleopatra D VIII, cannot have been known to Chaucer, since it is from the fifteenth century, but he might perhaps have heard the "Narratio de Quodam Senescallo Scleroso," the "Story of a Hard-(hearted) Seneschal." The seneschal meets another man, who asks him his job: "Grinding the poor, justly or unjustly." The other says his worth is to take all things which are cursed and given them to the Devil -- but does not admit to being the devil. A poor man curses his calf, and a mother her son, but they don't mean it. But the poor curse the seneschal and he is taken away.
On pp. 272-273 of Bryan/Dempster, Taylor gives a German version, written by "Der Stricker" in the thirteenth century, in which a judge comes to seize a woman's only cow; she curses him and he is taken, but there is no conversation with the Devil. On p. 273, Taylor mentions another German version, from Johannes Pauli's 1522 Schimpf und Ernst. Finally, on p. 274, Taylor mentions three modern versions. He does not mention this one, but clearly the roots of the story go very far back, and whoever wrote this must have known some version of the tale, whether Chaucer's or one of the folktale versions. I'd be inclined to suspect Chaucer's, not because of any particular feature of the story but because the recent versions of the folktale all seem to be non-English and unlikely to be accessible to someone in Ireland.
Walton credits the song to Cathal McGarvey (1866-1927), but Walton's attributions are said to be very suspect, and it is interesting that the only collections seem to be from Tunney and his uncle, Michael Gallagher. Still, it seems certain that someone rewrote the tale as a song; the only question is, Who? - RBW
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