Books

The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter: Strange, violent, very funny

One gets the impression Potter may have written this story in a quiet rage

A nutty tale

Lucy Sweeney Byrne
Sat May 9 2020 - 06:00

“This is a tale about a tail...”

Well, that it is, but it’s also a tale about a fairly nutty little squirrel (forgive me) and his swift comeuppance.

Squirrel Nutkin is not the best of Potter’s 23 children’s stories – far from it. When it comes to a beautiful, comforting and well-crafted tale, I’m far more in love with The Tailor of Gloucester, say, or The Tale of Tom Kitten or – the OG of all the farmyard animals – good old Peter Rabbit. I’ve chosen Nutkin, because it’s the story my father and I would rip our sides laughing over.

It’s bizarre, containing a dementedly mischievous main character. One gets the impression that Potter may have written this story in a quiet rage over some little burning irritation. It’s dedicated to “Norah”, and makes me wonder what it was that Norah did to deserve such a funny little warning shot.

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The story is simple: squirrels gather nuts on Owl Island. Every day they bring an offering to Mr Brown, the owl. Nutkin, being the weird little troublemaker he is, brings nothing, and instead dances around, singing riddles.

Finally he leaps on Mr Brown’s head, only to be caught, pocketed and brought indoors to be skinned. He escapes, losing only his tail, and perhaps the last vestiges of his squirrel sanity: “…to this day, if you meet Nutkin up a tree and ask him a riddle, he will throw sticks at you, and stamp his feet and scold, and shout- ‘Cuck-cuck-cuck-cur-r-r-cuck-k-k!’”

Huh. Alrighty then.

Such a strange and violent tale. Petrushevkayan, or Shalamovian, maybe. Poor Norah. Still, the story is fantastic in its peculiarity and, through my dad, it may have been my first introduction to absurdist comedy (then came the Pythons).

If re-reading Squirrel Nutkin isn’t your thing, let’s honour and remember Potter for her prize-winning Herwick sheep breeding, or for the fact that much of the Lake District was purchased, preserved and ultimately bequeathed to the National Trust by her. What a wonderful woman, and what magnificent little stories.