Wag-by-Wall
Old Sally Scales lives alone in a Lakeland cottage. She has a singing kettle that the village blacksmith has patched and patched again, and an ancient pendulum clock called Wag-by-Wall. On a frosty Christmas Eve, with the last of her tea and the last of her peat, she asks the kettle to sing one more tune. A small girl named Goldie-locks comes to live with her. They keep the singing kettle and the old clock for the rest of their lives.
The story began on the 25th of November 1909 as The Little Black Kettle, but Beatrix could not finish it. "Sally's story stuck because the kettle was obstinately dumb." The real Sally Scales lived at Stott Farm in the woods near Graythwaite. Beatrix tried again in 1929, intending it for The Fairy Caravan, but lifted it out. Then in 1940, an American editor named Bertha Mahony Miller asked if the story might be printed in The Horn Book Magazine as a Christmas tale. Beatrix rewrote it once more.
"I cannot judge my own work," she wrote in November 1941. "Is not Wag-by-the-Wa' rather a pretty story… I thought of it years ago as a pendant to The Tailor of Gloucester — the lonely old man and the lonely old woman; but I never could finish it all." In August 1943 she sent the final manuscript. The story was held for the magazine's 20th anniversary issue. Beatrix died on the 22nd of December 1943, seven weeks before the proofs arrived.
The cover shown is the original edition. Amazon carries the copies in print today.
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Particulars
- First publication
- May 1944, The Horn Book Magazine, 20th anniversary issue (posthumous)
- Setting
- A Lakeland cottage, on a frosty Christmas Eve
- Origin
- Started 25 November 1909 as The Little Black Kettle; abandoned and rewritten three times across thirty-four years
- Real model
- Sally Scales of Stott Farm, near Graythwaite — a knowledgeable woman "about cows and pigs"
- Position
- The first of Beatrix's posthumous publications
Curiosities
- ❦The title evolved through three forms: The Little Black Kettle (1909) → Wag-by-the-Wa' (1929 Fairy Caravan version) → Wag-by-Wall (1944 published version). Wa' is Lakeland dialect for wall; Wag is the pendulum.
- ❦Beatrix conceived it as a quiet sister-story to The Tailor of Gloucester — "the lonely old man and the lonely old woman."
- ❦The final version cuts a Shepherd Boy's song from Pilgrim's Progress. Beatrix asked the editor: "Do you think it is good taste to put in the Shepherd Boy's song in a story book? Pilgrim's Progress is next to the Bible; one would not wish to make it common place."
- ❦Beatrix posted the final draft on the 8th of August 1943, "with some pruning… The longer verses left out — John Bunyan's too good, and my own too bad, at the end!"
- ❦She never saw the proofs. The story was held for the Horn Book's May 1944 anniversary issue. Beatrix died on the 22nd of December 1943.
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