The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County Mark Twain | Hennig Cohen (essay date 1963)
Hennig Cohen (essay date 1963)
SOURCE: "Twain's Jumping Frog: Folktale to Literature to Folktale," in Western Folklore, Vol. 22, January, 1963, pp. 17-18.
[In the following essay, Cohen claims that despite its clear origins in folklore, Twain's frog story achieved such a widespread reputation and was so clearly associated with his name that later folk versions of the tale were assumed to have used his tale as their source.]
Sometime in February, 1865, when Mark Twain was at Angel's Camp, California, trying his luck at pocket mining, he made an entry in his notebook as follows:
Coleman with his jumping frog—bet a stranger $50.—Stranger had no frog and C. got him one:—In the meantime stranger filled C's frog full of shot and he couldn't jump. The stranger's frog won.
He had heard the jumping frog story from Ben Coon, a solemn, old river pilot who spun yarns in a run-down tavern that Twain...
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