Midnight Market Scrip

Twelve notes on one letter sheet, for the purse every guest gets at the gate of The Midnight Market. There are three kinds, four of each: One Copper, One Silver Penny and One Golden Curl. Every note says the same thing at the bottom: “Good at any stall until cockcrow. Then hawthorn leaves.”

Where the Names Come From

When the goblins first offer Laura their fruit in Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1862), she tells them she can’t pay (Project Gutenberg):

‘Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather.’

The goblins answer, “‘Buy from us with a golden curl.’” Later her sister Lizzie “put a silver penny in her purse” before she goes down to the brook. So the three notes are the copper Laura doesn’t have, Lizzie’s silver penny, and the golden curl.

“Then hawthorn leaves” is ours. It comes from a 1930s Irish schools’ folklore story, “The Fairy Fair,” where a card player wins gold at a fairy fair and wakes to find “a pocketful of hawthorn leaves” (Dúchas). The blueprint has the rest of that story.

Why It Doesn’t Look Like Money

It isn’t meant to. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s page on currency images sets the conditions for illustrations of U.S. currency, and quotes the federal law against any “business or professional card, notice, placard, circular, handbill, or advertisement in the likeness or similitude of any obligation or security of the United States” (BEP). Party scrip is neither, and we kept it well clear anyway. These notes have no numbers anywhere, no dollar signs, no portraits, no seals and no serial numbers, they’re nearly square rather than banknote-shaped, and they print on one side. Values are words, and prices at the stalls are set in words too (“two coppers and a curl”).

How Many to Print

Four coppers, four silver pennies and four golden curls is one guest’s purse. For a sixteen-guest market, print sixteen sheets, or print fewer sheets and hand out a smaller purse; the blueprint suggests a purse and lets the stall keepers price to it.

Printing and Cutting

Print at actual size. Cut along the dashed rule around each note; a paper trimmer makes quick work of the straight runs. The light version saves ink and takes a colored pencil well if you want the coppers copper and the curls gold.

Pairs With

• The Midnight Market blueprint
• Midnight Market Stall Signs, each with a “Price in scrip” line
• Midnight Market Invitation