"Henny Penny", more commonly known in the United States as "Chicken Little" and sometimes as "Chicken Licken", is a European folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries[1] and "Henny Penny" continues to be referred to in a variety of media.
The story is listed as Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index type 20C, which includes international examples of folktales that make light of paranoia and mass hysteria.[2] There are several Western versions of the story, of which the best-known concerns a chick which believes that the sky is falling when an acorn falls on its head. The chick decides to tell the king and, on its journey, meets other animals which join it in the quest. After this point, there are many endings. In the most familiar, a fox invites them to its lair and then eats them all.
In most retellings, the animals have rhyming names, commonly Chicken Licken or Chicken Little, Henny Penny or Hen-Len, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky or Ducky Daddles, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey or Goosey Poosey, Gander Lander, Turkey Lurkey, and Foxy Loxy or Foxy Woxy.
In the United States, the most common name for the story is "Chicken Little", as attested by illustrated books for children dating from the early 19th century. In Britain, it is best known as "Henny Penny" and "Chicken Licken".
History
"There was once a little chick named Kluk": beginning of the 1823 Danish version of the story.
The story was part of the oral folk tradition and only began to appear in print after the Brothers Grimm had set a European example with their collection of German tales in the early years of the 19th century. One of the earliest to collect tales from Scandinavian sources was Just Mathias Thiele, who in 1823 published an early version of the Henny Penny story in the Danish language.[3] The names of the characters there are Kylling Kluk,[note 1] Høne Pøne,[note 2] Hane Pane,[note 3] And Svand,[note 4] Gaase Paase,[note 5] and Ræv Skræv.[note 6] In Thiele's untitled account, a nut falls on Kylling Kluk's back and knocks him over. He then goes to each of the other characters, proclaiming that "I think all the world is falling" and setting them all running. The fox Ræv Skræv joins in the flight and, when they reach the wood, counts them over from behind and eats them one by one. Eventually the tale was translated into English by Benjamin Thorpe after several other versions had appeared.
Once the story began to appear in the English language, the titles by which they went varied considerably and have continued to do so. John Greene Chandler (1815–1879), an illustrator and wood engraver from Petersham, Massachusetts, published an illustrated children's book titled The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little in 1840.[4][5][6] In this American version of the story, the characters' names are Chicken Little, Hen-Pen, Duck-Luck, Goose-Loose, and Fox-Lox; Chicken Little is frightened by a leaf falling on her tail.[7]
First pages of The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little (1840)
A Scots version of the tale is found in Robert Chambers's Popular Rhymes, Fireside Stories, and Amusements of Scotland of 1842.[8] It appeared among the "Fireside Nursery Stories" and was titled "The hen and her fellow travellers". The characters included Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Daddles, Goosie Poosie, and an unnamed tod (fox). Henny Penny became convinced that "the lifts were faun" (the heavens were falling) when a pea fell on her head.
In 1849, a "very different" English version was published under the title "The Story of Chicken-Licken" by James Orchard Halliwell.[9] In this Chicken-licken was startled when "an acorn fell on her bald pate" and encounters the characters Hen-len, Cock-lock, Duck-luck, Drake-lake, Goose-loose, Gander-lander, Turkey-lurkey and Fox-lox.
It was followed in 1850 by "The wonderful story of Henny Penny" in Joseph Cundall's compilation, The Treasury of pleasure books for young children.[10] Each story there is presented as if it were a separate book, and in this case had two illustrations by Harrison Weir. In reality the story is a repetition of the Chambers narration in standard English, except that the dialect phrase "so she gaed, and she gaed, and she gaed" is retained and the cause of panic is mistranslated as "the clouds are falling".
Benjamin Thorpe's translation of Thiele's Danish story was published in 1853 and given the title "The Little Chicken Kluk and his companions".[11] Thorpe describes the tale there as "a pendant to the Scottish story…printed in Chambers" (see above) and gives the characters approximately the same names as in Chambers.
Comparing the different versions, we find that in the Scots and English stories the animals want "to tell the king" that the skies are falling; while in the American story, as in the Danish, they are not given any specific motivation. In all versions they are eaten by the fox, although in different circumstances.
Foxy Coxy runs with them into the wood and eats them one by one
Definition
The name "Chicken Little" and the fable's central phrase The sky is falling! have been applied in contexts where people are accused of being unreasonably afraid, or to those trying to incite an unreasonable fear in those around them. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary shows 1895 as the first use of the name "Chicken Little" to refer to "one who warns of or predicts calamity, especially without justification".[12] However, a much earlier oration delivered to the city of Boston on July 4, 1844 contains the passage:
To hear their harangues on the eve of the election, one would suppose that the fable of Chicken Little was about to become a truth, and that the sky was actually falling.[13]
Behavioural scientists have recognised that such typical fearmongering can sometimes elicit a response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as "inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis".[14] It has also been defined as "a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions".[15] The term began appearing in the 1950s[16] and the phenomenon has been noted in many different societal contexts.
Idiomatic usage
Collins Dictionary describes the term "Chicken Little" as used idiomatically in the US of "a person who constantly warns that a calamity is imminent; a vociferous pessimist".[17] The Oxford English Dictionary also notes that usage of the cognate "Chicken Licken" for "A person who panics easily, or spreads alarm amongst others" is "originally and chiefly US" usage. In support it quotes Christian Connection's Herald of Gospel Liberty for 2 November 1922 as referring to another character in the tale too: "Those who encourage nostrums and quacks are Goosey Pooseys and Chicken Lickens."[18]
Nevertheless, still other characters have appeared in the lyrics of songs in the UK. Round about 1900, Florence Hoare included "Henny Penny" as part of her suite of "Seven Children's Songs" written to fit music originally arranged by Johannes Brahms in 1858.[19] And in their song "Moving in with" (from Bummed, 1986), the English band Happy Mondays included the refrain: "Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Goosey Loosey/ Turkey Lurky, Tricky Licky, Ducky Lucky/ I'd say we're all on the move when the sound's falling in.” [20]
In the US there are many CDs, films, novels, and songs titled "The Sky is Falling", but the majority refer to the idiomatic use of the phrase rather than to the fable from which it derives. Among the several references to the tale that do so is the title "Chicken Little Was Right" (1968), by the Californian rock band The Turtles, referring to the false sense of security that alarmism challenges, although the original story is not otherwise referenced in the lyrics.[21] However, the song "Livin' on the Edge", from the album Get a Grip (1993) by Aerosmith, goes much further in the lines "If Chicken Little tells you that the sky is falling,/ Even if it wasn't would you still come crawling/ back again? I'll bet you would, my friend."[22] A further example is the song "Chicken Little" (Fancy, 1997) by Idiot Flesh, especially in the refrain "The sky is falling, gotta tell the king" and the inclusion of the names of other characters from the story at the end.[23]
Adaptations
Walt Disney Animation Studios has made two versions of the story. The first was Chicken Little,[24] a 1943 animated short released during World War II as one of a series produced at the request of the U.S. government for the purpose of discrediting Nazism. It tells a variant of the parable in which Foxy Loxy takes the advice of a book on psychology (on the original 1943 cut, it is Mein Kampf) by striking the least intelligent first. Dim-witted Chicken Little is convinced by him that the sky is falling and whips the farmyard into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox manipulates for his own benefit. The dark comedy is used as an allegory for the idea that fear-mongering weakens the war effort and costs lives. It is also one of the versions of the story in which Chicken Little appears as a character distinct from Henny Penny.
The second Disney film was the very loosely adapted Chicken Little, released in 2005 as an animated feature. It is an updated science fiction sequel to the original fable in which Chicken Little is partly justified in his fears. In this version, Foxy Loxy is changed from a male to a female, and from the main antagonist to a local bully. Another film adaptation was the animated TV episode "Henny Penny" (1999), which was part of the HBO series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. In this modern update, the story is given a satirical and political interpretation.
There have also been a number of musical settings. American composer Vincent Persichetti used the fable as the plot of his only opera, The Sibyl: A Parable of Chicken Little (Parable XX), op. 135 (1976), which premiered in 1985.[25] Then in 2007 the singer and composer Gary Bachlund used the text of Margaret Free's reading version of "Chicken Little" (The Primer, 1910) with a similar teaching aim. Setting the text for high voice and piano, Bachlund noted in the score that he intends a reference to alarmism and its tragic consequences.[26]
The folk tale's educative potential was also illustrated in the final episode of season 6 of the American TV sitcom, The Golden Girls ((May 4, 1991), where Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia perform a musical version of Henny Penny ending in increasing literacy in the school where one of them teaches.[27] Although the show's aim was comic entertainment, it was followed in 1998 by Joy Chaitin and Sarah Stevens-Estabrook's light-hearted musical version of the fable, "Henny Penny".[28] Designed for between six and a hundred junior actors, it has additional characters as optional extras: Funky Monkey, Sheepy Weepy, Mama Llama, Pandy Handy and Giraffy Laughy (plus an aggressive oak tree).
In Singapore, a more involved musical was performed in 2005. This was Brian Seward's The Acorn - the true story of Chicken Licken.[29] It is a tale of mixed motivations as certain creatures (including some among the 'good guys') take advantage of the panic caused by Chicken Licken.[30]
Later in the UK the Guildhall School of Music and Drama pioneered a scheme to harness opera, in this case based on the tale of Henny Penny, as a tool for language education in primary schools. This was a participatory exercise whereby children took part in a production adapted in various European languages - French (Cocotte Chocotte), German (Hennig Pfennig), Spanish (Pollita Chiquita), Italian (Sabrina Gallina) - as well as using English.[31][32]
Related stories
A very early example containing the basic motif and many of the elements of the tale is some 25 centuries old and appears in the Buddhist scriptures as the Daddabha Jataka (J 322).[1] In it, the Buddha, upon hearing about some particular religious practices, comments that there is no special merit in them, but rather that they are "like the noise the hare heard." He then tells the story of a hare disturbed by a falling fruit who believes that the earth is coming to an end. The hare starts a stampede among the other animals until a lion halts them, investigates the cause of the panic and restores calm.[1] The fable teaches the necessity for deductive reasoning and subsequent investigation.
The Australian author Ursula Dubosarsky tells the Tibetan version of the Jataka tale in rhyme, in her book The Terrible Plop (2009), which has since been dramatised, using the original title Plop!.[33] In this version, the animal stampede is halted by a bear, rather than a lion, and the ending has been changed from the Tibetan original.[34]
The Br'er Rabbit story, "Brother Rabbit Takes Some Exercise", is closer to the Eastern versions. In this story, Br'er Rabbit initiates the panic but does not take part in the mass flight, although Br'er Fox does. In this case it is Br'er Terrapin that leads the animals back to question Br'er Rabbit.[35][36]
Notes
1 2 Kylling means "chick" (baby chicken); Kluk is an onomatopoeic representation of a chicken's vocalization, similar to English "cluck"
"The Three Little Pigs" is a fable about three pigs who build their houses of different materials. A Big Bad Wolf blows down the first two pigs' houses which are made of straw and sticks respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house that is made of bricks. The printed versions of this fable date back to the 1840s, but the story is thought to be much older. The earliest version takes place in Dartmoor with three pixies and a fox before its best known version appears in English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs in 1890, with Jacobs crediting James Halliwell-Phillipps as the source. In 1886, Halliwell-Phillipps had published his version of the story, in the fifth edition of his Nursery Rhymes of England, and it included, for the first time in print, the now-standard phrases "not by the hair of my chiny chin chin" and "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in".
Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, where he served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years, Harris spent most of his adult life in Atlanta working as an associate editor at The Atlanta Constitution.
Song of the South is a 1946 American live-action/animated musical drama film directed by Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson; produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is based on the Uncle Remus stories as adapted by Joel Chandler Harris, and stars James Baskett as Uncle Remus in his final film role. The film takes place in the U.S. state of Georgia during the Reconstruction era, a period of American history after the end of the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery. The story follows seven-year-old Johnny who is visiting his grandmother's plantation for an extended stay. Johnny befriends Uncle Remus, an elderly worker on the plantation, and takes joy in hearing his tales about the adventures of Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear. Johnny learns from the stories how to cope with the challenges he is experiencing while living on the plantation.
Uncle Remus is the fictional title character and narrator of a collection of African American folktales compiled and adapted by Joel Chandler Harris and published in book form in 1881. Harris was a journalist in post–Reconstruction era Atlanta, and he produced seven Uncle Remus books. He did so by introducing tales that he had heard and framing them in the plantation context. He wrote his stories in a dialect which was his interpretation of the Deep South African-American language of the time. For these framing and stylistic choices, Harris's collection has garnered controversy since its publication. Many of these stories are believed to have Creek Indian influence too.
Chicken Little is a 2005 American animated science fiction comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Mark Dindal from a screenplay by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, and Ron Anderson, based on a story by Dindal and Mark Kennedy, loosely inspired on the European folk tale "Henny Penny", known in the United States as "Chicken Little". In this version, the title character is ridiculed by his town for causing a panic, thinking that the sky was "falling". A year later he attempts to fix his reputation, followed by an unexpected truth regarding his past being revealed. The film is dedicated to Disney artist and writer Joe Grant, who died before the film's release. This also marked the final film appearance of Don Knotts during his lifetime, as his next and final film, Air Buddies, would be released posthumously.
The Tar-Baby is the second of the Uncle Remus stories published in 1881; it is about a doll made of tar and turpentine used by the villainous Br'er Fox to entrap Br'er Rabbit. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes.
Splash Mountain is a log flume ride at Tokyo Disneyland. It was formerly located at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom. The attraction is based on the animated sequences of Disney's 1946 film Song of the South. The ride experience begins with a peaceful outdoor float-through that leads to indoor dark ride segments, with a climactic steep drop into a "briar patch" followed by an indoor finale. The drop is 52.5 feet.
Henny Penny is a fable, also known as Chicken Little or Chicken Licken.
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck is a book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1908. The protagonist Jemima Puddle-Duck first appeared in The Tale of Tom Kitten.
Chicken Little is a 1943 short film created by Walt Disney during World War II and directed by Clyde Geronimi. The short was based on the European folk tale "Henny Penny", known in the United States as "Chicken Little". It is an anti-Nazi film showing the evils of mass hysteria.
Chicken Licken is a South African fast-food fried chicken restaurant chain. The company had a 5% share of South Africa's fast food market in 2010, tying with McDonald's. According to a case study published by the Henny Penny Corporation in 2011, Chicken Licken is the "largest non-American-owned fried chicken franchise in the world".[
The fox appears in the folklore of many cultures, but especially European and East Asian, as a figure of cunning, trickery, or as a familiar animal possessed of magic powers, and sometimes associated with transformation. Literature, film, television, games, music, and other forms of cultural expression may reflect the folklore image and reputation.
The Sky Is Falling or Sky Is Falling may refer to:
Br'er Rabbit is a central figure in an oral tradition passed down by African-Americans of the Southern United States and African descendants in the Caribbean, notably Afro-Bahamians and Turks and Caicos Islanders. He is a trickster who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn, provoking authority figures and bending social mores as he sees fit. Popular adaptations of the character, originally recorded by Joel Chandler Harris in the 19th century, include Walt Disney Productions' Song of the South in 1946.
An animal tale or beast fable generally consists of a short story or poem in which animals talk. They may exhibit other anthropomorphic qualities as well, such as living in a human-like society. It is a traditional form of allegorical writing.
Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear are fictional characters from African-American oral traditions popular in the Southern United States. These characters have been recorded by many different folklorists, but are most well-known from the folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, featuring his character Uncle Remus.
World War II changed the possibilities for animation. Prior to the war, animation was mostly seen as a form of family entertainment. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a turning point in its utility. On December 8, 1941, the United States Army began working with Walt Disney at his studio, stationing Military personnel there for the duration of the war. The Army and Disney set about making various types of films for several different audiences. Most films meant for the public included some type of propaganda, while films for the troops included training and education about a given topic.
Uncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit is an American Disney comic strip that ran on Sundays from October 14, 1945, to December 31, 1972. It first appeared as a topper strip for the Mickey Mouse Sunday page, but after the first few years, almost always appeared on its own. The strip replaced the 1932-1945 Silly Symphony strip, which had spent its final year on gag strips featuring Panchito from The Three Caballeros.
↑ Landry, John R. (1998). Can Mission Statements Plant the "Seeds" of Dysfunctional Behaviors in an Organization's Memory? in Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. p.169. CiteSeerX10.1.1.108.2917.
↑ See, e.g., Audio Visual Communication Review, v.3-4, pp. 226–227, National Education Association of the United States Dept. of Audiovisual Instruction, 1955
↑ Harris, Joel Chandler (1883). "Brother Rabbit Takes Some Exercise". Nights with Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation (20). Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company: 108–13.
↑ D. L. Ashliman, ed. (1999). "Brother Rabbit Takes Some Exercise". The End of the World The Sky Is Falling, folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 20C (including former type 2033), in which storytellers from around the world make light of paranoia and mass hysteria.
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