The Hobyahs

Commenting on Frank Key’s bedtime story about the glib hatter,  Adelephant recommends the story of The Hobyahs as suitable follow-up reading matter. This remarkable folk story was collected in Joseph Jacobs’ 1890 work ‘English Fairy Tales’. I offer no analysis or comment – it really does speak for itself…

Once there was an old man and woman and a little girl, and they all lived in a house made of hempstalks. Now the old man had a little dog named Turpie; and one night the Hobyahs came and said, “Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!” But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off; and the old man said, “Little dog Turpie barks so that I cannot sleep nor slumber, and if I live till morning I will cut off his tail.” So in the morning the old man cut off little dog Turpie’s tail.

The next night the Hobyahs came again, and said, “Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!” But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off; and the old man said, “Little dog Turpie barks so that I cannot sleep nor slumber, and if I live till morning I will cut off one of his legs.” So in the morning the old man cut off one of little dog Turpie’s legs.

The next night the Hobyahs came again, and said, “Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!” But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off; and the old man said, “Little dog Turpie barks so that I cannot sleep nor slumber, and if I live till morning I will cut off another of his legs.” So in the morning the old man cut off another of little dog Turpie’s legs.

The next night the Hobyahs came again, and said, “Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!” But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off; and the old man said, “Little dog Turpie barks so that I cannot sleep nor slumber, and if I live till morning I will cut off another of his legs.” So in the morning the old man cut off another of little dog Turpie’s legs.

The next night the Hobyahs came again, and said, “Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!” But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off; and the old man said, “Little dog Turpie barks so that I cannot sleep nor slumber, and if I live till morning I will cut off another of his legs.” So in the morning the old man cut off another of little dog Turpie’s legs.

The next night the Hobyahs came again, and said, “Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!” But little dog Turpie barked so that the Hobyahs ran off; and the old man said, “Little dog Turpie barks so that I cannot sleep nor slumber, and if I live till morning I will cut off little dog Turpie’s head.” So in the morning the old man cut off little dog Turpie’s head.

The next night the Hobyahs came again, and said, “Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! Tear down the hempstalks, eat up the old man and woman, and carry off the little girl!” And when the Hobyahs found that little dog Turpie’s head was off they tore down the hempstalks, ate up the old man and woman, and carried the little girl off in a bag.

And when the Hobyahs came to their home they hung up the bag with the little girl in it, and every Hobyah knocked on the top of the bag and said, “Look me! look me!” And then they went to sleep until the next night, for the Hobyahs slept in the daytime.

The little girl cried a great deal, and a man with a big dog came that way and heard her crying. When he asked her how she came there and she told him, he put the dog in the bag and took the little girl to his home.

The next night the Hobyahs took down the bag and knocked on the top of it, and said “Look me! look me!” and when they opened the bag–the big dog jumped out and ate them all up; so there are no Hobyahs now.

FIN.

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9 thoughts on “The Hobyahs

  1. johngjobling@googlemail.com'
    malty
    June 20, 2011 at 09:40

    A salutary tail, never answer your bag when a dog comes knocking.

    Further oddities…

    A is for Amy who fell down the stairs,
    B is for Basil, assaulted by bears.

    C is for Clara who wasted away,
    D is for Desmond, thrown out of the sleigh.

    E is for Ernest who choked on a peach,
    F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.

    G is for George, smothered under a rug,
    H is for Hector, done in by a thug.

    I is for Ida who drowned in the lake,
    J is for James who took lye by mistake.

    K is for Kate who was struck with an axe,
    L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.

    M is for Maud who was swept out to sea,
    N is for Neville who died of enui.

    O is for Olive, run through with an awl,
    P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl.

    Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire,
    R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.

    S is for Susan who perished of fits,
    T is for Titus who flew into bits.

    U is for Una who slipped down a drain,
    V is for Victor, squashed under a train.

    W is for Winnie, embedded in ice,
    X is for Xerxes, devoured by mice.

    Y is for Yorick whose head was bashed in,
    Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin.

    Following on from that….

    One afternoon Lily was having an ice cream dream,
    A young man with a glossy moustache approached her ingratiating and clean.
    He took her for a walk in the park, inserted his finger in her glove,
    He took her to his apartment and to her he made love.
    The next morning before going out he presented her with a ruffled peignoir of gin,
    After that each morning she read ladies’ magazines
    In the afternoon she entertained gentlemen on her bed,
    The young man gave way to an older man with a heavy beard.
    Under the influence of a lecture from a passing senator she decided to reform,
    She was placed in a back bedroom with bars like a prison dorm.
    She gave birth to a defective infant placed in an orphanage overfull
    And as she lost her freshness on the streets the punters she pulled.
    She was continually harassed by masculine women in black bonnets trying to set her free,
    Just before her twentieth birthday she died a loathsome disease.

    Thangs to EG and the Tiger Lillies.

    • jgslang@gmail.com'
      June 20, 2011 at 11:33

      Malty: Edward Gorey. Incomparably wonderful. I assume you know The Wast Wing. No words at all. Just…menace. No to mention The Curious Sofa.

  2. wormstir@gmail.com'
    June 20, 2011 at 11:05

    woah that is fairly dark Adelephant! And Malty too!

  3. tanith@telegraphy.co.uk'
    Adelephant
    June 20, 2011 at 12:47

    My favourite version is in a reading scheme for little children, used widely in schools until the 1980s. In contains the repeated lines
    “Through the long grass came the hobyahs, creep, creep, creeping. Through the grey woods came the hobyahs, run, run, running. Skip, skip, skipping on the ends of their toes, ran the hobyahs. And the hobyahs, cried, ‘Pull down the hut, eat up the little old man and woman, carry off the little girl.’”

    A lovely introduction to the written word.

    • Brit
      June 20, 2011 at 22:06

      You’d have to read it aloud with increasingly shrill hysteria.

    • info@triste.co.uk'
      June 25, 2011 at 16:25

      The reading scheme version is what I remember with a rather graphic illustration of a tail-less and leg-less Turpie torso featuring prominently in my memories. According to my Mother I knew the whole story by rote before I could read. Essentially this meant that she couldn’t skip ahead although doubtless bored rigid by my repeated requests for her to read the story.

      Does anybody have any idea of what the book was called in which the story appeared or the publisher?

  4. maureen.nixon@btinternet.com'
    June 24, 2011 at 14:13

    I remember the Hobyah story from my Infant School days. I suppose with overcrowded classes of baby boomers they had to keep us in check with horror stories and the cane.

  5. maureen.nixon@btinternet.com'
    June 25, 2011 at 18:40

    The Hobyahs story appears in the Beacon reading scheme published by Ginn. I don’t know if it is in the current edition of the scheme but it was certainly still to be found in classrooms in the late 1980s.

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