A Fair Bargain by Francis Hopkinson

Francis Hopkinson. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1868 - 1869.
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-2b48-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

"A Fair Bargain" by patriot-poet, musician, and Declaration-signer Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791) was first published over the initial "H." in the April 1787 issue of the great Columbian Magazine, during Hopkinson's first stint as editor.

•  https://archive.org/details/columbianmagazin17861787phil/page/392

In 1782 the Devil begs the new United States of America, personified as the gorgeous goddess Columbia, to give him one State. Scorning the kind offer of Vermont ("already got it," in other words), Satan takes Rhode Island instead. A fitting and to the poet's mind fair bargain, since Rhode Island had devilishly opposed a 5 percent impost tax on imports.

In A History of Early American Magazines 1741-1789 (New York, 1931; reprinted Octagon Books, 1966), Lyon Norman Richardson lists "A Fair Bargain" as one of Hopkinson's contributions from  March to May 1787.

For the COLUMBIAN MAGAZINE.

A FAIR BARGAIN.
(Written in the year 1782.)

 AS Satan was taking an airing one day
Columbia's fair genius fell plump in his way,
Array'd like a goddess, and blooming as May.

Vile monster, said she, you oppose me in vain,
My people shall surely their wishes obtain;
You can but perplex us — and so mark the end on't,
For, sooner or later they'll be independant. 

What you say, quoth the fiend, I confess is too true,
But why not allow the poor devil his due?
Give me one of your states, and the rest shall be free
To follow their fate, unmolested by me.

Agreed! said the lady, if that's all you want,
Here take and enjoy it — it is my Vermont.

Oh! ho! exclaim'd Satan, how gen'rous you've grown,
So kindly to give, what's already my own.
So thank you for nothing, fair lady, I trow
The Devil is not to be bamboozled so. 
Come — down with your dust — you know what I mean.
I must have at least one of your fav'rite Thirteen.

A tear in her eye, and a sigh from her breast
The doubts and the fears of the genius confest;
But while she was puzzled, unable to find
Which state might with ease be to Satan resign'd,
The Five per cent. impost law popt in her mind.
This settled the point — she look'd up with a smile and
Presented his Fiendship the state of RHODE ISLAND.
He seiz'd the fair prize — cramm'd it into his pocket,
And darted away in a blaze, like a rocket.

H.

"A Fair Bargain" was widely reprinted from the Columbian Magazine, for example in the Delaware Courant on May 12, 1787; Worcester Magazine Vol. 3, No. 8 (Fourth week in May, 1787), page 95; Country Journal and Poughkeepsie Advertiser, July 4, 1787; and American Museum Vol. 4 (August 1788), page 87.

Attributed to "Hopkinson" in the important anthology of early American poetry titled, The Beauties of Poetry, British and American (Philadelphia, 1791):

•  http://name.umdl.umich.edu/N17951.0001.001

Throughout his political career Hopkinson wrote poetry and satire on the politically derisive [divisive] issues of the day. He penned a popular and humorous work on the 1787 Constitutional Convention. He was also an accomplished harpsichordist and composer. His work “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free,” set to the words of Thomas Parnell’s “Love and Innocence,” is the first extant secular song by a native American composer. --Penn University Archives & Records Center

Without reference to Hopkinson, "A Fair Bargain" is counted with poems that Mary S. Van Deusen would ascribe, tentatively and conjecturally, to her ancestor Henry Livingston, Jr.

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Rabelais, Tutivillus, and the Devil's parchment in White-Jacket

Tutivillus
Detail of misericord from St Laurence’s Church, Ludlow, England.

"There is a story told somewhere of the Devil taking down the confessions of a woman on a strip of parchment, and being obliged to stretch it longer and longer with his teeth, in order to find room for all the lady had to say. Much thus was it with our Purser's steward, who had to lengthen out his manuscript sick-list, in order to accommodate all the names which were presented to him while we were off the pitch of Cape Horn. What sailors call the "Cape Horn fever," alarmingly prevailed; though it disappeared altogether when we got into the weather, which, as with many other invalids, was solely to be imputed to the wonder-working effects of an entire change of climate." 

-- White-Jacket, The Hospital in a Man-of-War

Although he chooses not to specify where he found it, Melville probably got the story of the Devil's stretching parchment with his teeth from Rabelais' obscene account of the birth of the giant Gargantua:

Whereupon an old ugly trot in the company, who had the repute of an expert she-physician, and was come from Brisepaille, near to Saint Genou, three score years before, made her so horrible a restrictive and binding medicine, and whereby all her larris, arse-pipes, and conduits were so oppilated, stopped, obstructed, and contracted, that you could hardly have opened and enlarged them with your teeth, which is a terrible thing to think upon; seeing the Devil at the mass at Saint Martin's was puzzled with the like task, when with his teeth he had lengthened out the parchment whereon he wrote the tittle-tattle of two young mangy whores.   

-- Gargantua and Pantagruel

Footnotes in the 1807 London edition give a note from Du Chat by way of further explication, citing the Collection of Cato's Golden Sayings by Pierre Grosnet and offering the following lines of verse in translation:

“ Two gossips prating in a church,
The dev’l, who stood upon the lurch,
In short-hand, on a parchment roll
Writ down their words; and when the scroll
Would hold no more, (it was so full)
His devilship began to pull
And stretch it with his teeth, which failing,
He knocked his head against the railing.
St. Martin laugh’d, though then at mass,
To see the devil such an ass,
To think a parchment roll, or e’en a skin,
Would hold two women's chat, when they begin."

These Englished verses present the story as a vision of St. Martin and were reprinted as witty indictments of "female loquacity" in several early 19th century miscellanies, sometimes given as "from Rabelais."

Medieval versions often delegate the Devil's role to a subordinate demon named Tutevillus or Tutivillus.  From a modern anthology of Devil Stories, crediting Francis Oscar Mann, "The Vision of Saint Simon of Blewberry":

According to mediaeval tradition the devil has his agents even in the churches. In the administration of hell where the tasks are carefully parcelled out among the thousands of imps, the church has been assigned to the fiend with the poetic name of Tutevillus. It is his duty to attend all services in order to listen to the gossips and to write down every word they say. After death these women are entertained in hell with their own speeches, which this diabolical church clerk has carefully noted down. Tradition has it that one fine Sunday this demon was sitting in a church on a beam, on which he held himself fast by his feet and his tail, right over two village gossips, who chattered so much during the Blessed Mass that he soon filled every corner of the parchment on both sides. Poor Tutevillus worked so hard that the sweat ran in great drops down his brow, and he was ready to sink with exhaustion. But the gossips ceased not to sin with their tongues, and he had no fair parchment left whereon to record their foul words. So having considered for a little while, he grasped one end of the roll with his teeth and seized the other end with his claws and pulled so hard as to stretch the parchment. He tugged and tugged with all his strength, jerking back his head mightily at each tug, and at last giving such a fierce jerk that he suddenly lost his balance and fell head over heels from the beam to the floor of the church.  

Mann's tale of Tutevillus appears in The Devil in a Nunnery, and Other Medieval Tales.

Image Credit: Jeanne de Montbaston

As explained in the online entry for Tutivillus at Feminae: Medieval and Gender Index:

"Tutivillus is very popular on English misericords as he tempts women to gossip and then notes their chatter. Women were first included by Robert Mannyng of Brunne in his Handlyng Synne, and often the list is so long that the scroll has to be stretched. On a misericord in Ludlow parish church the infamous ayle-wife is delivered to Hell with the aid of the scribbling Tutivillus." --Feminae

Image Credit: Great English Churches / Ludlow