✦ Story Summary ✦
Johnny-Cake
A folktale, as told by Joseph Jacobs, 1890. This is a short summary, not the full text. Watch the read-aloud above to hear the whole story.
An old man and an old woman had a little boy. One morning the old woman made a johnny-cake, a flat cake of cornmeal, and put it in the oven to bake, telling the little boy to watch it. But while no one was looking, Johnny-Cake popped out of the oven, rolled out of the door, and away down the road.
The old man, the old woman, and the little boy chased him, but they soon ran out of breath. Johnny-Cake rolled on and met two well-diggers, then two ditch-diggers, then a bear, and then a wolf. Each one wanted to eat him, and each time Johnny-Cake boasted about everyone he had already outrun and raced away again.
At last he met a fox lying quietly by the fence. The fox pretended he couldn’t hear and asked Johnny-Cake to come a little closer, and then closer still. When Johnny-Cake leaned in to shout his boast, the fox snapped him up in his jaws.