The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Two men find an axe, and then find some trouble, but they aren’t keen on sharing either of them.
A well-known politician once told entrepreneurs to stand back, look at their handiwork and say not ‘I built that!’ but ‘We built that!’, since no one does anything without the help of wider society. On the surface, this little Aesop’s Fable appears to back him up: the reader must be left to judge how deep the similarity goes.
Peter foretold that King John would cease to be England’s sovereign, and he was right, though John still wore his crown.
Peter of Pomfret (Pontefract, near Wakefield in Yorkshire’s West Riding) was a simple, unlettered hermit who incautiously prophesied that by Ascension Day in 1213, King John would no longer be king of England. When that day had passed, and John still sat upon his throne, the King had poor Peter hanged; but as Sir George Wrong explains, the prophecy wasn’t so wide of the mark.
If little Maggie Tulliver is going to get her hair cut, it’s going to be done on her own terms.
Little Maggie Tulliver’s aunts have called round, and she has been subjected to repeated criticism for her heavy shock of unruly black hair. Even her father has ventured that “it ’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud have the child’s hair cut, so as it ’ud lie smooth.” Rebellion rises, and Maggie beckons to her older brother Tom.
Elizabeth Bennet stonewalls her way through a disagreeable encounter with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
In Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh has heard that her wealthy nephew, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is planning to propose to Elizabeth Bennet, instead of her own daughter. She has raced to Longbourn, Elizabeth’s home, to demand an explanation of the ‘impossible’, but Lizzy sees no reason to be defensive.
In most contests the choices are win, lose or draw, but what happened here remains a mystery.
An Irish tale dating back to 1807 tells of two Cats of Kilkenny, who fought until nothing was left of them but their tails. In ‘The Duel’, a children’s rhyme by American writer Eugene Field, a dog and a cat took things a step further.
The story-teller recalls his first meeting with Nastenka, and the man who brought them together.
‘White Nights’ (1848) is set in St Petersburg during those enchanted June nights when the sun barely dips below the horizon. It was on such a night that the unnamed narrator of Dostoevsky’s tale caught his first glimpse of the woman he came to know as Nastenka, and he was far too highly strung to resist the spell.