The Magic Pudding: Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and His Friends Bill Barnacle & Sam SawnoffLindsay, Norman
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The Magic Pudding: Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and His Friends Bill Barnacle & Sam Sawnoff
Lindsay, Norman
Animals -- Juvenile fiction; Australia -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Humorous stories; Puddings -- Juvenile fiction
They had a delightful meal, eating as much as possible, for
whenever they stopped eating the Puddin' sang out
"Eat away, chew away, munch and bolt and guzzle,
Never leave the table till you're full up to the muzzle."
But at length they had to stop, in spite of these encouraging
remarks, and as they refused to eat any more, the Puddin' got
out of his basin, remarking--"If you won't eat any more here's
giving you a run for the sake of exercise," and he set off so
swiftly on a pair of extremely thin legs that Bill had to run
like an antelope to catch him up. "My word," said Bill, when
the Puddin' was brought back. "You have to be as smart as paint
to keep this Puddin' in order. He's that artful, lawyers couldn't
manage him. Put your hat on, Albert, like a little gentleman,"
he added, placing the basin on his head. He took the Puddin's hand,
Sam took the other, and they all set off along the road. A peculiar
thing about the Puddin' was that, though they had all had a great
many slices off him, there was no sign of the place whence the
slices had been cut.
"That's where the Magic comes in," explained Bill. "The more
you eats the more you gets. Cut-an'-come-again is his name,
an' cut, an' come again, is his nature. Me an' Sam has been eatin'
away at this Puddin' for years, and there's not a mark on him.
Perhaps," he added, "you would like to hear how we came to own
this remarkable Puddin'."
"Nothing would please me more," said Bunyip Bluegum.
"In that case," said Bill, "Let her go for a song.
"Ho, the cook of the 'Saucy Sausage",
Was a feller called Curry and Rice,
A son of a gun as fat as a tun
With a face as round as a hot cross bun,
Or a barrel, to be precise.
"One winter's morn we rounds the Horn,
A-rollin' homeward bound.
We strikes on the ice,
goes down in a trice,
And all on board but Curry and Rice
And me an' Sam is drowned.
"For Sam an' me an' the cook, yer see,
We climbs on a lump of ice,
And there in the sleet we suffered a treat
For several months from frozen feet,
With nothin' at all but ice to eat,
And ice does not suffice.
"And Sam and me we couldn't agree
With the cook at any price.
We was both as thin as a piece of tin
While that there cook was bustin' his skin
On nothin' to eat but ice.
"Says Sam to me, 'It's a mystery
More deep than words can utter;
Whatever we do, here's me an you,
Us both as thin as Irish stoo,
While he's as fat as butter.'
"But late one night we wakes in fright
To see by a pale blue flare,
That cook has got in a phantom pot
A big plum-duff an' a rump-steak hot,
And the guzzlin' wizard is eatin' the lot,
On top of the iceberg bare."
"There's a verse left out here," said Bill, stopping the song,
"owin' to the difficulty of explainin' exactly what happened
when me and Sam discovered the deceitful nature of that cook.
The next verse is as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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