CHAPTER ONE

The Three Farmers

Down in the valley there were three farms. The owners of these farms were rich men. They were also nasty men. All three of them were as nasty and mean as any men could be. Their names were Farmer Boggis, Farmer Bunce and Farmer Bean. Boggis was a chicken farmer. He kept thousands of chickens. He was very fat.

This was because he ate three boiled chickens with dumplings every day for breakfast, lunch and supper. Bunce was a duck-and-goose farmer. He kept thousands of ducks and geese. He was a kind of pot-bellied dwarf. He was so short his chin would have been underwater in the shallow end of any swimming-pool in the world. His food was doughnuts and goose-livers.

He made a disgusting paste from the livers and then put it into the doughnuts. This diet gave him a tummy-ache and a beastly temper. Bean was a turkey-and-apple farmer. He kept thousands of turkeys in an orchard full of apple trees. He never ate any food at all. Instead, he drank gallons of strong cider which he made from the apples in his orchard. He was as thin as a pencil and the cleverest of them all.

"Boggis and Bunce and Bean One fat, one short, one lean These horrible crooks So different in looks Were none the less equally mean." That is what the children round about usually sang when they saw them.