This morality tale concerns an old man called Mr Lacy. Lacy leaves all his possessions to his three sons, on condition that they each take care of him, for one week at a time. The sons, thus rewarded, regard caring for their father as an unfortunate chore and mistreat him, so the old man goes to see a friend who was a lawyer. The friend tells Lacy that unfortunately he can suggest no legal solution, but he lends Lacy a box containing £1000, and advises him to count it in front of his sons. This changes the old man’s treatment considerably. Before he dies, he returns the box of money to his friends, tells his sons, and forgives them. 

This story is included in the seventeenth-century antiquary Abraham de la Pryme’s Diary (published 1870), and is quoted by Gutch and Peacock in Examples of Printed Folk-Lore Concerning Lincolnshire (1908). It is retold by Katharine Briggs in Folk Tales of Britain (1970), by Adrian Gray in Tales of Old Lincolnshire, and by Maureen James in Lincolnshire Folk Tales, all of whom call it ‘The Ungrateful Sons’. In Gray’s version, the father tells, and forgives, his sons in his dying words, leaving them remorseful.

Words by RORY WATERMAN