With the intent of revisiting the tales of my childhood, I selected “Jack and the Bull” as the first tale for review. This tale has numerous variations on the initial circumstances which can indicate the origin or the story. In some versions, Jack is hired help on a rich man’s farm. In other accounts he is working on his father’s farm. In all of the stories, his adversary is the wife or his stepmother who despises him. She gives him meager amounts of food until Jack is wasting away and realizes he will soon starve.
While sitting in the pasture crying about his state in life, and his imminent starvation, a bull comes over and inquiries about his sorrow. In some variations, the bull had already been on the farm and in others it is a wandering bull never seen before. The talking bull never elicits any surprise from the Jack. After Jack explains his dilemma, the bull tells him to remove the horn on the left and there will be food inside. The horn on the right is purported to contain milk. Some accounts have the horns being knocked off, some sawn off, and some screwed off.
But they all have the horns being replaced after Jack has dined. This process is repeated daily until Jack regains his original health and shows significant improvement in health and virility. Most renditions have the old woman attempting to discover the secret to Jack’s newfound health and strength without an obvious source of nutrition. However, the tales begin to vary in her pursuit with some having her send her children, usually three boys or three girls, to spy on Jack. In truncated renditions, the old woman herself follows Jack to determine his secret.
In the extended versions using three children, they most often have the characteristics where one has one eye, one has two eyes, and one has three eyes. When the first child follows, Jack plays a musical instrument at the bull’s instruction and lulls the observer to sleep before the food source is discovered. This action is successful with the first two children, but the third child with three eyes is able to keep the third eye open and ascertains the source of Jack’s meals. The old woman convinces Jack’s father or the landowner that the bull must be slaughtered.
In some accounts she craves a specific organ from the bull and only that meal will satisfy her, so she badgers her husband until he capitulates. In the vast majority of portrayals, the bull advises Jack to pretend to acquiesce to the slaughter, but at the last minute swings the instrument at the old woman to bring about her death. Sanitized renditions of the story leave the old woman alive, but original versions leave her dead and Jack riding away on the bull. In some accounts during their journey, the bull predicts upcoming events through portents such as bubbles in a pool.
Other variations focus on Jack having visions in dreams to foretell the future. The commonality is the bull will have to fight another animal, usually another bull, each of the next three days and will succumb to the battle on the third day. Before the final battle, the bull instructs Jack that he will not survive and that Jack must cut a strip of hide from the bull, beginning at the tail and going to his nose. In some tales only the hide is required, but in other versions, the horns are also removed by Jack.
After the death of Jack’s bull helper, the stories progress to Jack encountering challenges in which the hide and horns are not only able to save him, but provide wealth and security. In some accounts of these challenges, Jack accepts employment from an old woman who is in fact a witch. After she attacks him, he uses the bull’s gifts to subdue her with the command “tie, strop tie! ” and the command “beat, horns, beat! ” The witch gives him clothes, money, and a horse to leave her alive.
In other tales, there are three giants, which Jack overcomes one by one with the third giant rewarding Jack richly for sparing his life. In all adaptations, Jack returns home a wealthy young man. “Jack and the Bull” involve travel to find riches and rewards and a magical helper, in this case a talking animal. The conflict with a wicked stepmother or landowner’s wife is common across English and American versions. The original, and less sanitized, accounts can be identified based on the level of violence and death in the tale, such as the demise of the wicked stepmother.
American Jack seems to always take his success and riches to a new location to settle down and live happily ever after fulfilling the American dream of moving to prosperity, whereas English Jack often returns to his family to share his prosperity. An interesting aspect of the tale is the length of Jack’s challenges after the death of the bull. In most tales the number of the trials are three, but a few versions have extended numbers of trials. Another tale that has many variations is most commonly known as “Sop Doll! ” The common theme begins with Jack on the road looking for employment.
He comes to a small village where a man tells him that he has a grist mill but no time to work it. Before he offers Jack the job, he informs Jack that every other hired hand mysteriously perished on the first night of work. The grist mill owner shares his suspicions that the previous workers were poisoned. Jack asks to take a look at the mill, and agrees to take the job. In some renderings, Jack already has a little silver blade knife that was given to him by his father, or obtained from a traveling stranger after an act of kindness from Jack.
In others, the stranger appears at the mill as the sun is setting and Jack obligingly starts the mill to grind the stranger’s corn even though it is past work hours. In all cases, Jack’s kindness to an elderly person result in the silver knife being in his possession. After the sun has set, Jack sits down to his dinner, which in some variations is a soup that he prepares himself and in others is a plate of dinner provided by the miller’s wife. But in all versions, a black cat appears and tries to put its paw into the food. Jack refuses to allow the cat to touch his food, and the cat always speaks “Sop Doll. “Doll” is interpreted as a slang for a paw, or foot and the cat is asking to dip or ‘sop’ its paw in Jack’s food.
Jack refuses, and the cat persists in asking to dip its paw into the food. In most adaptations the cat is joined by more cats, usually a number totaling thirteen. Other renditions have only a single cat as the adversary. All versions concur that Jack threatens the cat if it continues to attempt to touch his food, and follows through on the threat by cutting off its paw with his silver knife. As the cat yowls and flees, Jack is surprised to see the paw transform into the hand of a woman.
Some versions have the hand being that of an old woman and some of a young woman, but most variations relate a unique and significant ring on the severed hand. The next morning the miller arrives to see if Jack has survived, but expecting to find another body. When Jack shares the events of the previous night and shows the miller the severed hand, the miller always expresses surprise and recognition. The miller and Jack return to the miller’s house where they confront the miller’s wife. She is always in bed, hiding her hands and professing an illness.
They show her the severed hand and she relents and reveals she is missing her hand which reveals her as the witch. The miller proclaims that he suspected there was a witch, or witches in the stories with multiple cats and now he has the proof. In sanitized adaptations, the witch escapes through the window never to be seen again. In other versions, the witch, and sometimes her coven, are trapped in the house and burned alive by Jack and the miller. The ending is similar in all stories, where the miller rewards Jack with a significant payday and Jack resumes his travels.
The “Sop Doll! ” story contains elements of both English Jack and American Jack. The talking animal and appearance of witches are common in both American and English tales. The origin of the silver knife can denote the cultural influence as American Jack often already has the knife from an unknown origin, whereas English Jack just earn the knife through an act of virtue. True English Jack must earn the knife from a seemingly supernatural old man traveler, while more American Jack is rewarded for his willingness to perform his new job regardless of the hour.
I did discover a version of this tale, where Jack’s silver knife was an heirloom of his father who carried it during the American Civil War as a soldier of the Confederacy. The American Jack is most often sanitized so that the witches escape to another region, whereas English Jack and the miller exact immediate revenge by burning the witches. An example of a story which seems to have been written to justify a song is “Fill Bowl Fill! ” Most often this story begins with a father who has three beautiful daughters and his desire to prevent them from marrying.
To discourage the suitors, he sets up a physical test with the price of failure being the suitor’s loss of life. In some accounts the father is a king or a wealthy man, while in other versions is local farmer. It is never clear why the father desires to keep his daughters unwed, but some renderings hint at nefarious intentions. A few versions sanitized the punishment for failure to pass the test with banishment or a flogging, but the majority specifies the death of the suitor.
The frequent theme of the test involves a ring drawn on the ground in a large circle, ten feet most common, and the suitor must make a wild rabbit remain in the circle for a specified period of time. Jack decides to try his luck at winning the hand of one of the beautiful daughters. This story sometimes includes a dowry of gold, or jewels and sometimes only the daughter is the prize. In most stories, Jack encounters an old man on the road with whom he shares his lunch, or offers another gesture of kindness.
The old man is the prototypical Traveling Stranger, Supernatural Elder, who dispenses either magical gifts or punishment to individuals based on their actions toward him. Some versions of this tale have the stranger giving Jack a wooden drill after sharing his lunch, and others require Jack to demonstrate an additional act of obedience or faith by performing a seemingly ridiculous action at the stranger’s behest. The stranger instructs Jack that if he places the drill into the ground inside the circle, the rabbit will remain confined not matter how wild it might be.
Jack proceeds to the location of the farmer, king, or wealthy man and informs him that he has arrived to seek the hand of a daughter in marriage. The father goes over the rules, in detail, specifically pointing out the price of failure to Jack in gruesome detail. Whereupon Jack agrees to the terms, and twists the wooden drill into the middle of the circle. In some versions, the father offers to increase the stakes to include money, gold, or other valuables if Jack is willing to extend the time allotted that the rabbit must remain in the circle.
In a few adaptations, the father offers to give up his life to Jack if he loses the bet. The courage or cockiness of Jack remains in all tales, where he agrees to any increase of the stakes and trusts the drill will work as the old man promised. Once the released rabbit runs fanatically without being able to exit the circle, the father begins to fear that he may lose the bet, including his life or fortune, and therefore he enlists each of the daughters to trick Jack out of the drill.
In some versions of the tale, the daughters each come out and willingly try to cajole Jack into giving up the drill for money, or love. In some portrayals, one daughter is more interested that Jack wins the bet and her hand in marriage. The final desperate act of the father is to send his own wife to reason with Jack and offer him a daughter and money to forfeit the bet. Jack remains resolute in adhering to the rules of the bet. At this point, the stories bring in the title article, the bowl.
The father brings out a bowl, presumed magical, and tells Jack that if he will sing it full of lies, then he will include all of his possessions in the bet, because he will lose his life or a significant amount of his wealth. Jack sings a verse about the youngest daughter coming to trick him, and how he fooled around with her and kissed her. In some versions the implication is more crude and vulgar. In every version I encountered, the song ends with the line “Fill Bowl Fill! ” The father says the bowl only has a drop in it from Jack’s lies.
Jack sings a similar verse about the second daughter’s attempts to trick him and how he kissed her and more. “Fill Bowl Fill! ” The father informs Jack that the bowl has a couple of drops from Jack’s lies now. Jack sings a similar verse about the third daughter’s attempts to trick him and how he kissed her and more. “Fill Bowl Fill! ” The father informs Jack that the bowl now has a little liquid in the bottom from Jack’s lies. Then Jack begins to sing about his amorous adventures with the father’s beautiful wife and the father begs him to stop because the bowl is overflowing.