Old Mister Dunderbeck and his machine.
Most of us are familiar with Steven Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but we may not know that the story is derived from a very old folktale and folksong. In the May 15th, 1952, edition of the Arkansas Folklore newsletter (published by the Arkansas Folklore Society), an anonymous author asks:
Do some of you know the ballad of 'Dunderbeck's (or Donderback's) Machine'? Two versions collected by Vance Randolph some years ago tell the story of how the butcher Donderback or Berbeck ground up the neighbor's dogs and cats in the sausage grinder he had invented. His wife has a nightmare, accidentally sets the machine in motion, and grinds up the butcher himself. J. C. Edwards writes that he knows the story in the form of a folktale related to him many years ago by an uncle. The story is somewhat more gruesome than the song, and seems to hint at a possible basis in an actual happening; it includes lines reminiscent of some in the song. Here is the story:
Old Mister Dunderbeck
"A long time ago there lived a mean, mean old man called old Mister Dunderbeck. He lived all alone in a ramshackle log cabin sitting on the bank of the river. He dearly loved sausage made of human beings. So he made him a sausage mill big enough to grind into sausage a whole man at one grinding. By one wile or another he would entice some person into his cabin and show him his strange mill. He would tell his victim to lean 'way over and look down into the hopper of his mill. Then he would toss the looker into the hopper of his sausage mill and begin grinding…
"After several people—mostly children—had disappeared from the neighborhood and no trace of them could be found high or low, the neighbors became suspicious of Old Mister Dunderbeck, and a gang of men decided to investigate him. They slipped over and hid near his cabin and waited for him to leave home… Then the men broke into the cabin and discovered the sausage mill. They hid in the cabin and waited for Old Mister Dunderbeck to come back. Soon one of the men, watching through the window, saw him coming back leading a little boy… just as Old Mister Dunderbeck reached his cabin with the little boy, the men jumped out and grabbed him. They gave him a terrible beating and tied him to a tree. While some of the men stayed to watch him, the others went and told the neighbors to gather at Old Mister Dunderbeck's cabin… They all joined hands in a circle around Old Mister Dunderbeck and sang:
Old Mister Dunderbeck, what makes you be so mean?
You're going to be ground to sausage meat in Dunderbeck's machine.
After they got tired of singing this song, the men took Old Mister Dunderbeck and tossed him into his sausage mill and ground him to sausage meat. And that was the end of Old Mister Dunderbeck."
"But it wasn't," Mr. Edwards adds. "In response to questions, the uncle would tell how that sausage was fed to the hogs, the cabin burned, and the mill dumped into the river; but children passing the cabin site still sing:
Old Mister Dunderbeck, what makes you be so mean?
You're going to be ground to sausage meat in Dunderbeck's machine."