"The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, and Benjamin Bunny," by Beatrix Potter

In which adorable anthropomorphic animals are threatened with grisly deaths in a trio of short morality plays involving a variety of produce.



All right, full disclosure, I was planning on reading a totally different story for you this time around, but then I found a beautiful hardcover collection of Beatrix Potter's complete tales and I was all "HOW DID I NOT KNOW BEATRIX POTTER'S STORIES WERE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN?" and I decided I had to read some of them. Also, the story I had planned had serious English accents, and that sounded hard.

Anyway, not too much to say that I didn't go over in the intro, except that with these stories ("Peter Rabbit," specifically) Potter essentially invented merchandizing. Very shortly after "Peter Rabbit" was published, she patented a Peter Rabbit doll and board game. A wide variety of officially licensed toys, games, books, decorations, dishes, etc. followed, making her and her publishers a zillion dollars.

Now, Potter's illustrations are just as famous -- if not even more so -- than the actual stories, and they are quite numerous. I'll be splitting them up by story, and much like with the Oz books they're so numerous that time-stamping them is practically pointless, so I won't bother. Heck, even just captioning them I practically copied all of the text. The few notes that I deemed necessary are time-stamped, though, and in their proper places.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit 

 

Frontispiece - His mother put him to
bed, and made some camomile tea;
and she gave a dose of it to Peter!

See the rest after the jump!

Title illustration

The lived with their Mother in a sand-bank,
underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.

'Now my dears,' said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning,
'you may go into the fields or down the lane,
but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden.'

'Now run along, and don't get
into mischief. I am going out.'

Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her
umbrella, and went through the wood to the baker's.

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who
were good little bunnies, went down
the lane to gather blackberries.

Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to
Mr. McGregor's garden, and squeezed under the gate!

First he ate some lettuces and some French
beans; and then he ate some radishes;

And then, feeling rather sick, he
went to look for some parsley.

But round the end of a cucumber frame,
whom should he meet but Mr. McGregor!

3:33 - "Cucumber frames." Wait... we heard about cucumber frames mentioned way, way back in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, our very first book! I hadn't decided at that time to do the unnecessarily extensive notes that I do now, so here we go: Cucumbers grow on a creeping vine and are usually cultivated to grow up on trellises or frames. This makes them less susceptible to disease, less likely to rot, and more able to reach the sun, in addition of course to saving space in your garden.

He jumped up and ran after Peter, waving
a rake and calling out, 'Stop thief!'

He lost one of his shoes among the cabbages,
and the other shoe amongst the potatoes.

I think he might have got away altogether if he
had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net

4:05 - "Gooseberry net." The net that Peter gets his buttons caught in is placed over gooseberry bushes to keep the birds away. In my opinion, this explains the next part.

His sobs were overheard by some friendly
sparrows, who... implored him to exert himself.

Peter wriggled out just in time, leaving his jacket behind him.

And rushed into the tool-shed, and jumped into a can.

Mr. McGregor was quite sure that
Peter was somewhere in the tool-shed.

And tried to put his foot upon
Peter, who jumped out of a window.

Peter sat down to rest.

She only shook her head at him. Peter began to cry.

A white cat was staring at some gold-fish.

His back was turned towards Peter,
and beyond him was the gate!

He slipped underneath the gate, and was
safe at last in the wood outside the garden.

Mr. McGregor hung up the little jacket
and the shoes for a scare-crow

His mother was busy cooking; she wondered
what he had done with his clothes.

'One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.'

But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread
and milk and blackberries for supper.

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin

Frontispiece

Title illustration

His name was Nutkin.

Amongst those trees stands a hollow oak-tree, which
is the house of an owl who is called Old Brown.

All the little squirrels came out of the
wood, and down to the edge of the lake.

They made little rafts out of twigs.

'Old Mr. Brown, will you favour us with
permission to gather nuts upon your island?'

But Nutkin was excessively impertinent in his manners.

10:30 - "I'll give you a groat." The groat in Nutkin's obnoxious riddle was an English coin issued irregularly between the 13th century and the mid-19th century. It was silver and was worth four pence. Other countries had coins called groats as well, particularly Scotland and Ireland of course, but Nutkin is probably referring to the English one, though it hadn't been in general circulation in England for nearly 50 years by the time his story was published.

(Incidentally, if you can't figure out the answers to Nutkin's riddles and haven't picked up on Potter's subtle clues, listen for the italics.)

The squirrels filled their little sacks with nuts.

Twinkleberry and the others brought a fine fat mole.

'If you touch Hitty Pitty,
Hitty Pitty will bite you!"

11:07 - "Nettle." Is this really the first reference to nettles we've had? Or just the first one I decided to write a note about, because they made such a big deal about it? Either way, "nettle" can refer to a bunch of different plants, but "true" nettles are those that belong to the genus Urtica. The best known of these, and the one that these stories tend to refer to, is Urtica dioica, the common or stinging nettle. They are covered with small stinging hairs that are painful to the touch and cause a histamine reaction in the skin. A frequent use of them in these stories is references to "grasping the nettle firmly," because gently touching the nettle allows the hairs to sting you, but holding it firmly crushes the hairs down so they can't sting you so well.

Nutkin peeped through the key-hole.

But Nutkin sat upon a beech-stump playing marbles.

On the third day the squirrels got up very early and went fishing.

Nutkin ran in front, singing.

Each beetle was wrapped up carefully in a
dock-leaf, fastened with a pine-needle pin.

Nutkin gathered robin's pincushions off a briar
bush, and stuck them full of pine-needle pins.

It was so sweet and sticky that they licked their
fingers as they put it down upon the stone.

Old Mr. Brown turned up his eyes in
disgust at the impertinence of Nutkin.

But Nutkin played ninepins with
a crab apple and green fir-cones.

They brought a new-laid egg in a little rush
basket as a last parting present for Old Brown.

He opened one eye and shut it again. But still he did not speak.

Nutkin danced up and down like a sunbeam;
but still Old Brown said nothing at all.

He took a running jump right onto the head of Old Brown!

There was Old Brown sitting on his door-step, quite
still, with his eyes closed, as if nothing had happened.

This looks like the end of the story; but it isn't.

Okay, I admit, I'm a little confused as to why Potter says that Nutkin was in Old Mr. Brown's waistcoat pocket and then clearly drew him without a waistcoat. Unless "in one's waistcoat pocket" is some British euphemism for "pinned to the ground by one's talons." I am also intrigued by the hint of what appears to be maybe a chair on the left there, inside of Mr. Brown's house.

He dashed up the staircase and escaped out of the attic window.

'Cuck-cuck-cuck-cur-r-r-cuck-k-k!'

The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

Frontispiece - Old Mrs. Rabbit earned her living by
knitting rabbit-wool mittens and muffatees. She also
sold herbs, and rosemary tea, and rabbit-tobacco.

Note that from this illustration we learn that Old Mrs. Rabbit's actual name is Josephine.

Title illustration

One morning a little rabbit sat on a bank.

Little Benjamin Bunny slid down into the
road, and set off to call upon his relations.

 

In the neatest, sandiest hole of all lived Benjamin's aunt
and his cousins—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.

17:56 - "Muffetees." This is simply a small muff that's worn over the wrist.

He came round the back of the fir-tree, and nearly
tumbled upon the top of his Cousin Peter.

He looked poorly, and was dressed in
a red cotton pocket-handkerchief.

See, his spirit's been completely broken by his own previous morality tale! BE GOOD, KIDS.

Little Benjamin sat down beside his cousin.

At this point old Mrs. Rabbit's voice
was heard inside the rabbit hole.

Peter's coat and shoes were plainly to be
seen upon the scarecrow, topped with an
old tam-o'-shanter of Mr. McGregor's.

 19:13 - "Tam-o-shanter." The illustration makes it clearer what this is, but the tam o'shanter is a traditional Scottish hat that looks sort of like a large, floppy beret perched on top of a cylindrical hatband, with a pompom on top. Picture a stereotypical cartoon Scotsman, or Bugs Bunny playing golf. He's probably wearing a tam o'shanter.

Peter fell down head first; but it was of no consequence.

They left a great many odd little footmarks all over the bed.

Benjamin tried on the tam-o'-shanter, but it was too big for him.

Peter did not seem to be enjoying
himself; he kept hearing noises.

Yup! Broken spirit.

The lettuces certainly were very fine.

Presently Peter dropped half the onions.

They went along a little walk on
planks, under a sunny, red brick wall.

Presently Peter let the pocket-handkerchief go again.

Peter heard noises worse than ever;
his eyes were as big as lolly-pops!

This is what those little rabbits saw round that corner!

The cat got up and stretched herself,
and came and sniffed at the basket.

She sat there for five hours.

Old Mr. Benjamin Bunny was smoking a pipe of
rabbit-tobacco, and had a little switch in his hand.

He took a tremendous jump off the
top of the wall on to the top of the cat.

Dude! Old Mr. Benjamin Bunny is HARDCORE.

Then he took out his nephew Peter.

Then he took out the handkerchief of
onions, and marched out of the garden.

Ha! I only just now noticed the poor cat behind the greenhouse window. Nicely done.

When Mr. McGregor returned about half an hour
later he observed several things which perplexed him.

Oh come on, Mr. McGregor, you really can't figure out the tiny clog footprints? Your scarecrow had a coat and shoes that you personally saw a rabbit wearing.

Cotton-tail and Peter folded up the pocket-handkerchief.

If you would like to read along, the texts and illustrations can be found at Project Gutenberg: Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, and Benjamin Bunny. No reading ahead, though!