Shick-Shack and Shit-Sack

Folklore, Annual, 1999 by J.B. Smith

Here we see that the original episode, in which the preacher cannot get away because he is suspended in a sack, has been skilfully and convincingly adapted to the new environment and circumstances of the story. For present purposes, however, two important points emerge. The first is that a tale hitherto thought to be modern and restricted to America has an eighteenth-century British antecedent allegedly reaching back to the reign of Charles II. The second is that the expression "shit-sack" as used in connection with the British version enables us to hypothesise convincingly about the etymology of "shick-shack" (Simpson and Weiner 1989, 15, 251 and 287), an expression that has suffered from more than its fair share of obfuscation and wild speculation.

Note

(1) See also Roberts 1955, 261, for details of parallels not listed in Aarne and Thompson 1973 or Baughman 1966.

References Cited

Aarne, Antti and Stith Thompson. The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. F.F. Communications, no. 3. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961; 1973.

Baughman, Ernest W. Type and Motif-Index of the Folktales of England and North America. Indiana University Folklore Series, no. 20. The Hague: Mouton, 1966.

Granger, J. A Biographical Dictionary of England. 4 vols. 2nd edn. London: T. Davies, 1775.

Grose, Francis. Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. 1787; 1811; reprint London: Macmillan, 1981.

Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: University Press, 1996; 1997.

Irvis, K. Leroy. "Negro Tales from Eastern New York." New York Folklore Quarterly 11 (Autumn 1955):165--76.

Jones, Malcolm. Review of Hutton 1997. Folklore 108 (1997):137--40.

Roberts, Leonard W. South from Hell-fer-Sartin: Kentucky Mountain Tales. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955.

Simpson, J.A. and E.S.C. Weiner. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd edn. 20 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Smith, J.B. "Shick-Shack." Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset 34:348 (September 1998):243-8.3