msuprovenance:

It is not uncommon to find threats of violence, capital punishment, and divine retribution in ownership inscriptions, especially those of children in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.  

The book curses shown here represent only a small sampling of the incantations against theft we’ve come across in our extensive collection of early American textbooks. Most of the verses are formulaic, and show up in one form or another across state and national borders, spanning decades or even centuries.  They are passed down from book to book, generation to generation, in the way of most “underground” folk knowledge.

Here are transcriptions of the verses shown above.  I’ve cleaned up the formatting a bit to make them easier to read.

The first is found in a 1929 textbook on English grammar and composition:

Do not grab this book
My little friend
Or a hangman’s noose
Will be your end

The second, in a math text published 100 years earlier, also promises death by hanging, but incorporates other threats as well:

Steal not this Book my honest friend
For fear the gallows will be your end
The Lord will say on Judgement Day
What made you take this Book away
Steal not this Book for fear of life
For here you see the butcher knife

The life + knife rhyme is a common theme, showing up in this 1867 grammar book as well:

Steal not this book
For fear of your life
For the owner carries
A big jack knife

The threat in this 1847 English reader isn’t from a knife, but from something a little less deadly:

Take not this book, you
Yes if you do
You’ll feel the wate [weight?]
Of my old shoe

In the final inscription, from an 1821 arithmetic text, any pretense of rhyme or meter begins to break down by the end, and the verse devolves into a direct threat of bodily harm against the would-be book thief:

Steal not this book for fear of shame
For hear [sic] you’ll see the owner’s name
If you do you may expect a thumpt side of your head as hard as I can draw: and that won’t be all and if I can kick your ___ I will

Amusingly, a later reader seems to have gone over this inscription with a pencil and corrected the previous owner’s spelling in several places.  It also appears that the later editor may have rubbed out an offensive word from the original.