The Watkins Book of English Folktales by Neil Philip

Author:Neil Philip
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786787255
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eva Gray was born in Lowestoft in 1858. She was highly regarded as a storyteller, and T. W. Thompson notes that ‘Doctor Forster’ was ‘Eva’s favourite tale’. Thompson’s original notes of the narration are in Notebooks 4 and 5 in the Brotherton Collection, under the title ‘The Cellar of Blood’. There is also another full version in Notebook D, under the present title. All three texts relate to the same telling, though the change of title has misled Katharine Briggs into listing it as two separate stories. Eva apparently did know two other stories about ‘Squire King Kaley’: ‘Sorrow and Love’ (p. 71) and another which was never recorded.

The great clutter of supporting detail in this story is what the Grays particularly prized in Eva’s storytelling. Thompson writes:

‘What I like about Eva,’ said Shanny on one occasion, ‘is the way she can fill in as she goes along: I’ve never heard her equal for that. However she comes to think of it all I can’t make out; and it’s all so natural, so intimate like, you think she must ha’ bin there and sin it all for herself from the way she pictures it. And the little sly touches she puts in; she’ll make you laugh with ’em many a time they’re so true on the nail.’

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