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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13032 ***
+
+THE
+
+BOOK OF NOODLES:
+
+_STORIES OF SIMPLETONS; OR,
+FOOLS AND THEIR FOLLIES_.
+
+BY
+W.A. CLOUSTON,
+
+_Author of "Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and
+Transformations_"
+
+"Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling when all
+is done."--_Twelfth Night_.
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
+
+1888.
+
+
+
+
+Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-24351
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND
+
+DAVID ROSS, LL.D., M.A., B.Sc.,
+
+PRINCIPAL OF THE
+CHURCH OF SCOTLAND TRAINING COLLEGE,
+GLASGOW,
+
+THIS COLLECTION OF FACETIÆ
+
+IS DEDICATED.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PREFACE_.
+
+
+_Like popular tales in general, the original sources of stories of
+simpletons are for the most part not traceable. The old Greek jests of
+this class had doubtless been floating about among different peoples
+long before they were reduced to writing. The only tales and apologues
+of noodles or stupid folk to which an approximate date can be assigned
+are those found in the early Buddhist books, especially in the
+"Játakas," or Birth-stories, which are said to have been related to his
+disciples by Gautama, the illustrious founder of Buddhism, as incidents
+which occurred to himself and others in former births, and were
+afterwards put into a literary form by his followers. Many of the
+"Játakas" relate to silly men and women, and also to stupid animals, the
+latter being, of course, men re-born as beasts, birds, or reptiles. But
+it is not to be supposed that all are of Buddhist invention; some had
+doubtless been current for ages among the Hindus before Gautama
+promulgated his mild doctrines. Scholars are, however, agreed that these
+fictions date at latest from a century prior to the Christian era._
+
+_Of European noodle-stories, as of other folk-tales, it may be said
+that, while they are numerous, yet the elements of which they are
+composed are comparatively very few. The versions domiciled in different
+countries exhibit little originality, farther than occasional
+modifications in accordance with local manners and customs. Thus for the
+stupid Brahman of Indian stories the blundering, silly son is often
+substituted in European variants; for the brose in Norse and Highland
+tales we find polenta or macaroni in Italian and Sicilian versions. The
+identity of incidents in the noodle-stories of Europe with those in what
+are for us their oldest forms, the Buddhist and Indian books, is very
+remarkable, particularly so in the case of Norse popular fictions,
+which, there is every reason to believe, were largely introduced through
+the Mongolians; and the similarity of Italian and West Highland stories
+to those of Iceland and Norway would seem to indicate the influence of
+the Norsemen in the Western Islands of Scotland and in the south of
+Europe._
+
+_It were utterly futile to attempt to trace the literary history of
+most of the noodle-stories which appear to have been current throughout
+European countries for many generations, since they have practically
+none. Soon after the invention of printing collections of facetiæ were
+rapidly multiplied, the compilers taking their material from oral as
+well as written sources, amongst others, from mediæval collections of
+"exempla" designed for the use of preachers and the writings of the
+classical authors of antiquity. With the exception of those in Buddhist
+works, it is more than probable that the noodle-stories which are found
+among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere
+amusement. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the "witless devices" of
+the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction? Only the monkish
+writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if
+reproduced in these days, must be "printed for private circulation"!_
+
+_Yet may the typical noodle of popular tales "point a moral," after a
+fashion. Poor fellow! he follows his instructions only too literally,
+and with a firm conviction that he is thus doing a very clever thing.
+But the consequence is almost always ridiculous. He practically shows
+the fallacy of the old saw that "fools learn by experience," for his
+next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every
+caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does
+everything, like the man in the play, "with the best intentions." His
+mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time; but to
+that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw: he cannot
+be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it;
+and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however,
+which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster
+to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to unexpected good fortune.
+He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet Sádí alludes when he
+says, in his charming "Gulistán," or Rose Garden, "The alchemist died of
+grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin."
+Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood"'; the
+noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries.
+In brief, he is--in stories, at least--a standing illustration of the
+"vanity of human life"!_
+
+_And now a few words as to the history and design of the following
+work. When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the
+late Mr. W.J. Thoms, who was one of the leading men in its formation,
+promised to edit for the Society the "Merry Tales of the Mad Men of
+Gotham," furnishing notes of analogous stories, a task which he was
+peculiarly qualified to perform. As time passed on, however, the
+infirmities of old age doubtless rendered the purposed work less and
+less attractive to him, and his death, after a long, useful, and
+honourable career, left it still undone. What particular plan he had
+sketched out for himself I do not know; but there can be no doubt that
+had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And,
+since he did not perform his self-allotted task, his death is surely a
+great loss, perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of
+comparative folk-lore._
+
+_More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set
+about the work, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape
+of Oriental noodle-stories; but from a remark in his reply I feared
+there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That
+fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered
+as a humble substitute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is
+displaced by a more worthy one._
+
+_Since the "Tales of the Men of Gotham" ceased to be reproduced in
+chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840,
+with an introduction by Mr. J.O. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillipps);
+and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies
+themselves: the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the
+Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the
+"Shakespeare Jest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew
+Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John
+Ashton's "Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century" (1882)._
+
+_It did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite
+analogues or variants of the Gothamite Tales; nor, on the other hand,
+was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the
+Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet
+all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be
+found in the chapters entitled "Gothamite Drolleries," of which they
+form, indeed, but a small portion._
+
+_My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources,
+many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers,
+the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing
+Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are
+current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be
+thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been
+omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an
+amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of
+popular fictions from country to country. In this design I was assisted
+by Captain R.C. Temple, one of the editors of the "Indian Antiquary,"
+and one of the authors of "Wide-awake Stories," from the Punjab and
+Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some
+curious Oriental parallels to European stories of simpletons._
+
+_W.A.C._
+
+
+*.* _While my "Popular Tales and Fictions" was passing through the
+press, in 1886, I made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present
+work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has
+had unavoidably to defer its publication till now._
+
+_W.A.C_.
+
+GLASGOW, _March_, 1888.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES                                            1-15
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES:
+
+Reputed communities of stupids in different countries--The noodles of
+Norfolk: their lord's bond; the dog and the honey; the fool and his sack
+of meal--Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham: Andrew Borde not the author--
+The two Gothamites at Notts Bridge--The hedging of the cuckoo--How the
+men of Gotham paid their rents--The twelve fishers and the courtier--The
+_Gúrú Paramartan_--The brothers of Bakki--Drowning the eel--The
+Gothamite and his cheese--The trivet--The buzzard--The gossips at the
+alehouse--The cheese on the highway--The wasp's nest--Casting sheep's
+eyes--The devil in the meadow--The priest of Gotham--The "boiling"
+river--The moon a green cheese--The "carles of Austwick"--The Wiltshire
+farmer and his pigs
+                                                                  16-55
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_):
+
+The men of Schilda: the dark council-house; the mill-stone; the cat--
+Sinhalese noodles: the man who observed Buddha's five precepts--The fool
+and the _Rámáyana_--The two Arabian noodles--The alewife and her
+hens--"Sorry he has gone to heaven"--The man of Hama and the man of
+Hums--_Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard--The rustic and the dog
+                                                                  56-80
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_):
+
+The simpleton and the sharpers--The schoolmaster's lady-love--The judge
+and the thieves--The calf's head--The Kashmírí and his store of rice--
+The Turkish noodle: the kerchief; the caftan; the wolf's tail; the right
+hand and the left; the stolen cheese; the moon in the well--The good
+dreams--Chinese noodles: the lady and her husband; the stolen spade; the
+relic-hunter--Indian noodles: the fools and the mosquitoes; the fools
+and the palm-trees; the servants and the trunks; taking care of the
+door; the fool and the aloes-wood; the fool and the cotton; the cup lost
+in the sea; the fool and the thieves; the simpletons who ate the
+buffalo; the princess who was made to grow; the washerman's ass
+transformed; the foolish herdsman--Noodle-stories moralised--The
+brothers and their heritage--Sowing roasted sesame
+                                                                 81-120
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SILLY SON:
+
+Simple Simon--The Norse booby--The Russian booby--The Japanese noodle--
+The Arabian idiot--The English silly son--The Sinhalese noodle with the
+robbers--The Italian booby--The Arab simpleton and his cow--The Russian
+fool and the birch-tree--The silly wife deceived by her husband--The
+Indian fool on the tree-branch--The Indian monk who believed he was
+dead--The Florentine fool and the young men--The Indian silly son as a
+fisher; as a messenger; killing a mosquito; as a pupil--The best of the
+family--The doctor's apprentice
+                                                                121-170
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BRÁHMANS:
+
+Introduction                                                        171
+Story of the first Bráhman                                          176
+Story of the second Bráhman                                         178
+Story of the third Bráhman                                          181
+Story of the fourth Bráhman                                         185
+Conclusion                                                          190
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES                                         191-218
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+JACK OF DOVER'S QUEST OF THE FOOL OF ALL FOOLS                      219
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF NOODLES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES.
+
+
+"Old as the days of Hierokles!" is the exclamation of the "classical"
+reader on hearing a well-worn jest; while, on the like occasion, that of
+the "general" reader--a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies
+one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"--is, that it is "a Joe
+Miller;" both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in
+_joke-ology_ to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him
+as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of
+Hierokles are _old_ there can be no doubt whatever; that they were
+collected by the Alexandrian sage of that name is more than doubtful;
+while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in
+which he flourished, namely, the fifth century: it is very possible that
+some may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians! It
+is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the
+comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which
+his name is associated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's
+trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and
+cranks, and quiddities," _Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade
+Mecum_. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Miller," he
+should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it
+is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller"
+are, at least, "as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the
+man who trained his horse to live on a straw _per diem_, when it
+suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about
+a brick as a specimen of it.
+
+The collection of facetiæ ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it was
+made, is composed of very short anecdotes of the sayings and doings of
+pedants, who are represented as noodles, or simpletons. In their
+existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the
+ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular facetiæ of Europe
+through the churchmen of the Middle Ages, and, after having circulated
+long orally, passed into literature, whence, like other kinds of tales,
+they once more returned to the people. We find in them the indirect
+originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times
+been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also,
+perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type: as brave men lived
+before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very
+ancient pedigree! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now
+pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in
+ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which
+utterly fail to tickle our "sense of humour" in these double-distilled
+days. Of the [Greek: Asteia], or facetiæ, of Hierokles, twenty-eight
+only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of
+his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, and
+published at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with
+other Greek jests--of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, Cumæ, etc.--has
+been edited by Eberhard, under the title of _Philogelos Hieraclis el
+Philagrii Facetia_ which was published at Berlin in 1869.
+
+In attempting to classify the best of these relics of ancient wit--or
+witlessness, rather--it is often difficult to decide whether a
+particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an
+example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles
+or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to
+place the story of the men of Cumæ, who were expecting shortly to be
+visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they
+filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order
+that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.
+
+But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on
+going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen
+years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you
+one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his
+father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done
+me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's
+estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred
+years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.
+
+Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was the hunter who was constantly
+disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep
+with him. Another, surely, was the man of Cumæ who wished to sell some
+clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should
+not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of
+Abdera who punished a runaway ass for having got into the gymnasium and
+upset the olive oil. Having brought all the asses of the town together,
+as a caution, they flogged the delinquent ass before his fellows.
+
+Some of the jests of Hierokles may be considered either as witticisms or
+witless sayings of noodles; for example, the story of the man who
+recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and
+afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor
+whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should
+not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of the pedant who
+said to the doctor, "Pardon me for not having been sick so long;" or
+this, "I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night:" quoth the
+other, "By the gods, I was so busy, I did not hear you."
+
+But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some
+sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe,
+and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like
+ripe fruit again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he
+had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after
+stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the
+cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to
+him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You
+may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and
+again, in the man of Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the rope
+broke, and he hurt his head; but after having the wound dressed by the
+doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a
+trace of them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had
+pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up; when he told a
+friend of his mishap, he said, "Why do you sleep barefooted?"
+
+The following jest is spread--_mutatis mutandis_--over all Europe:
+A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in company, agreed
+to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He
+propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time
+came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, "What a fool is
+this barber," he cried, "for he has roused the bald man instead of me!"
+
+A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the
+heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro.
+Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when
+he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up,
+he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a
+rage, "Tuts, tuts! The silly body has waukened the wrang man."
+
+In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a
+Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in
+forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew
+near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, "I
+shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I
+have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a
+pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young
+wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to
+spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the
+pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In
+the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his
+companion's leg, he called to him, "Hey! get up, for I am perplexed in
+my mind. Who am I, and who are you? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin
+on your leg? And if you are yourself, why is the pumpkin not on my leg?"
+
+Modern counterparts of the following jest are not far to seek: Quoth a
+man to a pedant, "The slave I bought of you has died." Rejoined the
+other, "By the gods, I do assure you that he never once played me such a
+trick while I had him." The old Greek pedant is transformed into an
+Irishman, in our collections of facetiæ, who applied to a farmer for
+work. "I'll have nothing to do with you," said the farmer, "for the last
+five Irishmen I had all died on my hands." Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can
+bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen I've worked for that I
+never did such a thing." And the jest is thus told in an old translation
+of _Les Contes Facetieux de Sieur Gaulard_: "Speaking of one of his
+Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said, Truly it
+was one of the handsomest and best Curtails in all the Country; he neuer
+shewed me such a trick before in all his life."[1]
+
+Equally familiar is the jest of the pedant who was looking out for a
+place to prepare a tomb for himself, and on a friend indicating what he
+thought to be a suitable spot, "Very true," said the pedant, "but it is
+unhealthy." And we have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the
+following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it
+below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his
+wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had
+communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor
+had not been drawn off from below. "Why, you fool," said he, "it is not
+the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off."
+
+It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that
+he might know how he looked when asleep--a jest which reappears in
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ in this form: "A wealthy monsieur in
+France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his
+man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry
+with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be
+true; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so,
+except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes; and therefore
+I will have a great Looking glasse at my bed's feet for the purpose to
+try whether thou art a lying knaue or not."[2]
+
+Not unlike some of our "Joe Millers" is the following: A citizen of
+Cumæ, on an ass, passed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree
+loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the ass went on,
+leaving him suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him
+what he did there. The man replied, "I fell off the ass."--An analogue
+to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, entitled _Katha
+Manjari_: One day a thief climbed up a cocoa-nut tree in a garden to
+steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running
+from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the
+tree. "Why were you up that tree?" asked the gardener. The thief
+replied, "My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf." "Ha! ha!
+is there grass, then, on a cocoa-nut tree?" said the gardener. "No,"
+quoth the thief; "but I did not know; therefore I came down again."--And
+we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went
+into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of
+vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom.
+The gardener, coming suddenly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said,
+"What are you seeking here?" The simpleton replied, "For some days past
+a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither." "But who
+pulled up these vegetables?" "As the wind blew very violently, it cast
+me here and there; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving
+myself remained in my hands." "Ah," said the gardener, "but who filled
+this sack with them?" "Well, that is the very question I was about to
+ask myself when you came up."
+
+The propensity with which Irishmen are credited of making ludicrous
+bulls is said to have its origin, not from any lack of intelligence, but
+rather in the fancy of that lively race, which often does not wait for
+expression until the ideas have taken proper verbal form. Be this as it
+may, a considerable portion of the bulls popularly ascribed to Irishmen
+are certainly "old as the jests of Hierokles," and are, moreover,
+current throughout Europe. Thus in Hierokles we read that one of
+twin-brothers having recently died, a pedant, meeting the survivor,
+asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased.--Taylor has
+this in his _Wit and Mirth_, and he probably heard it from some one
+who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard: "A nobleman of
+France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he
+said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remember I haue often seene
+thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore
+tenants, and my name is T.J. I remember better now (said my Lord); there
+were two brothers of you, but one is dead; I pray, which of you doth
+remaine alive?"--Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the notes to his edition of
+Taylor's collection _(Shakespeare Jest Books_, Third Series), cites
+a Scotch parallel from _The Laird of Logan_: "As the Paisley
+steamer came alongside the quay[3] at the city of the Seestus,[4] a
+denizen of St. Mirren's hailed one of the passengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu
+hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the
+old nursery rhyme,--
+
+  "Ho, Master Teague, what is your story?
+  I went to the wood, and killed a tory;[5]
+  I went to the wood, and killed another:
+  Was it the same, or was it his brother?"[6]
+
+We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and
+sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating
+lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards
+meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to
+him, "Don't grieve; buy some lettuces; eat them at a corner; turn round
+it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there
+anything like this in "Joe Miller"?--Two lazy fellows were sleeping
+together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with
+it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up,
+and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead,"
+replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster,
+and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?--A pedant's
+little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom
+he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."
+
+An epigram in the _Anthologia_ may find a place among noodle
+stories:
+
+  "A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light,
+  And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"
+
+This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two
+Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept
+their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did
+not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus
+puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the
+other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his
+bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's
+one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"
+
+Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the
+old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cumæ having died at Alexandria,
+the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at
+the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of
+bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any
+peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol
+replied, "He had a cough."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Etienne Tabourot, the author of this amusing little book,
+who was born at Dijon in 1549 and died in 1590, is said to have written
+the tales in ridicule of the inhabitants of Franche Comte, who were then
+the subjects of Spain, and reputed to be stupid and illiterate. From a
+manuscript translation, entitled _Bizarrures; or, The Pleasant and
+Witlesse and Simple Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy_,
+purporting to be made by "J.B., of Charterhouse," probably about the
+year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London,
+fifty copies, edited, with a preface, by "A.S." (Alexander Smith), were
+printed at Glasgow in 1884. I am indebted to the courtesy of my friend
+Mr. F.T. Barrett, Librarian of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for
+directing my attention to this curious work, a copy of which is among
+the treasures of that already important institution.
+
+[2] "_Wit and Mirth_. Chargeably collected out of Taverns,
+Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Allyes, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops,
+Highwayes, and Water-passages. Made up and fashioned into Clinches,
+Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips, and Jerkes. Apothegmatically bundled vp
+and garbled at the request of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635)--such is the
+elaborate title of the collection of jests made by John Taylor, the
+Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The
+above story had, however, been told previously in the _Bizarrures_
+of the Sieur Gaulard: "His cousine Dantressesa reproued him one day that
+she had found him sleeping in an ill posture with his mouth open, to
+order which for the tyme to come he commanded his seruant to hang a
+looking glasse upon the curtaine at his Bed's feet, that he might
+henceforth see if he had a good posture in his sleep."
+
+[3] Only a Liliputian steamer could go up the "river" Cart!
+
+[4] "Seestu" is a nickname for Paisley, the good folks of that busy town
+being in the habit of frequently interjecting, "Seestu?"--_i.e.,_
+"Seest thou?"--in their familiar colloquies.
+
+[5] "Tory" is said to be the Erse term for a robber.
+
+[6] Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes of England_, vol. iv. of Percy
+Society's publications.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES, WITH VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES.
+
+
+It seems to have been common to most countries, from very ancient times,
+for the inhabitants of a particular district, town, or village to be
+popularly regarded as pre-eminently foolish, arrant noodles or
+simpletons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly sayings and doings
+of the people of Bæotia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs the
+folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The
+Kabaïl, or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad
+as little better than idiots. The Schildburgers are the noodles of
+German popular tales. In Switzerland the townsmen of Belmont, near
+Lausanne, are typical blockheads. And England has her "men of Gotham"--a
+village in Nottinghamshire--who are credited with most of the noodle
+stories which have been current among the people for centuries past,
+though other places share to some extent in their not very enviable
+reputation: in Yorkshire the "carles" of Austwick, in Craven; some
+villages near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire; and in the counties of
+Sutherland and Ross, the people of Assynt.
+
+But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a
+similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we
+learn from a curious Latin poem, _Descriptio Norfolciensium_,
+written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of
+Peterborough, which is printed in Wright's _Early Mysteries and Other
+Latin Poems_. This poem sets out with stating that Cæsar having
+despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were
+bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the
+most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other
+peoples. Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of
+Norfolk is the following: Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a
+large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future
+burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of
+green wax. To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk.
+When it became dark, they had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure
+one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should
+use the wax seal of the bond for a candle--they should still have the
+words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate; so they made
+the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their
+merry-making. This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he
+reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice,
+at the same time producing the bond. The lord calls a clerk to examine
+the document, who pronounces it to be null and void in the absence of
+the lord's seal, and so their oppression continues.
+
+Another story is of a man of Norfolk who put some honey in a jar, and in
+his absence his dog came and ate it all up. When he returned home and
+was told of this, he took the dog and forced him to disgorge the honey,
+put it back into the jar, and took it to market. A customer having
+examined the honey, declared it to be putrid. "Well," said the
+simpleton, "it was in a vessel that was not very clean."--Wright has
+pointed out that this reappears in an English jest-book of the
+seventeenth century. "A cleanly woman of Cambridgeshire made a good
+store of butter, and whilst she went a little way out of the town about
+some earnest occasions, a neighbour's dog came in in the meantime, and
+eat up half the butter. Being come home, her maid told her what the dog
+had done, and that she had locked him up in the dairy-house. So she took
+the dog and hang'd him up by the heels till she had squeez'd all the
+butter out of his throat again, whilst she, pretty, cleanly soul, took
+and put it to the rest of the butter, and made it up for Cambridge
+market. But her maid told her she was ashamed to see such a nasty trick
+done. 'Hold your peace, you fool!' says she; ''tis good enough for
+schollards. Away with it to market!'"[1]--Perhaps the original form is
+found in the _Philogelos Hieraclis et Philagrii Facetiæ_, edited by
+Eberhard. A citizen of Cumæ was selling honey. Some one came up and
+tasted it, and said that it was all bad. He replied, "If a mouse had not
+fallen into it, I would not sell it."
+
+The well-known Gothamite jest of the man who put a sack of meal on his
+own shoulders to save his horse, and then got on the animal's back and
+rode home, had been previously told of a man of Norfolk, thus:
+
+  "Ad foram ambulant diebus singulis;
+  Saccum de lolio portant in humeris,
+  Jumentis ne noccant: bene fatuis,
+  Ut prolocutiis sum acquantur bestiis."
+
+It reappears in the _Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard:[2] "Seeing
+one day his mule charged with a verie great Portmantle, [he] said to his
+groome that was upon the back of the mule, thou lasie fellowe, hast thou
+no pitie upon that poore Beast? Take that portmantle upon thine owne
+shoulders to ease the poore Beast." And in our own time it is told of an
+Irish exciseman with a keg of smuggled whisky.
+
+How such stories came to be transferred to the men of Gotham, it were
+fruitless to inquire.[3] Similar jests have been long current in other
+countries of Europe and throughout Asia, and accident or malice may have
+fixed the stigma of stupidity on any particular spot. There is probably
+no ground whatever for crediting the tale of the origin of the proverb,
+"As wise as the men of Gotham," although it is reproduced in Thoroton's
+_Nottinghamshire_, i. 42-3:
+
+"King John, intending to pass through this place, towards Nottingham,
+was prevented by the inhabitants, they apprehending that the ground over
+which a king passed was for ever after to become a public road. The
+King, incensed at their proceedings, sent from his court soon afterwards
+some of his servants to inquire of them the reason of their incivility
+and ill-treatment, that he might punish them. The villagers, hearing of
+the approach of the King's servants, thought of an expedient to turn
+away his Majesty's displeasure from them. When the messengers arrived at
+Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to
+drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts
+upon a large barn to shade the wood from the sun; and others were
+engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush.
+In short, they were all employed in some foolish way or other, which
+convinced the King's servants that it was a village of fools."
+
+The fooleries ascribed to the men of Gotham were probably first
+collected and printed in the sixteenth century; but that jests of the
+"fools of Gotham" were current among the people long before that period
+is evident from a reference to them in the _Widkirk Miracle Plays_,
+the only existing MS. of which was written about the reign of Henry VI.:
+
+  "Foles al sam;
+  Sagh I never none so fare
+  Bote the soles of Gotham."
+
+The oldest known copy of the _Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam_
+was printed in 1630, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
+Warton, in his _History of English Poetry_, mentions an edition,
+which he says was printed about 1568, by Henry Wikes, but he had never
+seen it. But Mr. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillips), in his _Notices
+of Popular English Histories_, cites one still earlier, which he
+thinks was probably printed between 1556 and 1566: "Merie Tales of the
+Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A.B., of Phisike Doctour.
+[colophon:] Imprinted at London, in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at
+the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n.d. 12°, black
+letter." The book is mentioned in _A Briefe and Necessary
+Introduction_, etc., by E.D. (8vo, 1572), among a number of other
+folk-books: "Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, Arthur of the Round
+Table, Huon of Bourdeaux, Oliver of the Castle, The Four Sonnes of
+Amond, The Witles Devices of Gargantua, Howleglas, Esop, Robyn Hoode,
+Adam Bell, Frier Rushe, The Fooles of Gotham, and a thousand such
+other."[4] And Anthony à Wood, in his _Athenæ Oxonienses_ (1691-2),
+says it was "printed at London in the time of K. Hen. 8, in whose reign
+and after it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by scholars and
+gentlemen. Afterwards being often printed, [it] is now sold only on the
+stalls of ballad-singers." It is likely that the estimation in which the
+book was held "by scholars and gentlemen" was not a little due to the
+supposition that "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," by whom the tales were said
+to have been "gathered together," was none other than Andrew Borde, or
+Boorde, a Carthusian friar before the Reformation, one of the physicians
+to Henry VIII., a great traveller, even beyond the bounds of
+Christendom, "a thousand or two and more myles," a man of great
+learning, withal "of fame facete." For to Borde have the _Merie Tales
+of the Mad Men of Gotham_ been generally ascribed down to our own
+times. There is, however, as Dr. F.J. Furnivall justly remarks, "no good
+external evidence that the book was written by Borde, while the internal
+evidence is against his authorship."[5] In short, the ascription of its
+compilation to "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," was clearly a device of the
+printer to sell the book.[6]
+
+The _Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham_ continued to be printed as a
+chap-book down to the close of the first quarter of the present century;
+and much harmless mirth they must have caused at cottage firesides in
+remote rural districts occasionally visited by the ubiquitous pedlar, in
+whose well-filled pack of all kinds of petty merchandise such drolleries
+were sure to be found. Unlike other old collections of facetiæ, the
+little work is remarkably free from objectionable stories; some are
+certainly not very brilliant, having, indeed, nothing in them
+particularly "Gothamite," and one or two seem to have been adapted from
+the Italian novelists. Of the twenty tales comprised in the collection,
+the first is certainly one of the most humorous:
+
+There were two men of Gotham, and one of them was going to the market at
+Nottingham to buy sheep, and the other was coming from the market, and
+both met on Nottingham bridge. "Well met!" said the one to the other.
+"Whither are you a-going?" said he that came from Nottingham. "Marry,"
+said he that was going thither, "I am going to the market to buy sheep."
+"Buy sheep!" said the other. "And which way will you bring them home?"
+"Marry," said the other, "I will bring them over this bridge." "By Robin
+Hood," said he that came from Nottingham, "but thou shalt not." "By Maid
+Marian," said he that was going thither, "but I will." "Thou shalt not,"
+said the one. "I will," said the other. Then they beat their staves
+against the ground, one against the other, as if there had been a
+hundred sheep betwixt them. "Hold them there," said the one. "Beware of
+the leaping over the bridge of my sheep," said the other. "They shall
+all come this way," said one. "But they shall not," said the other. And
+as they were in contention, another wise man that belonged to Gotham
+came from the market, with a sack of meal upon his horse; and seeing and
+hearing his neighbours at strife about sheep, and none betwixt them,
+said he, "Ah, fools, will you never learn wit? Then help me," said he
+that had the meal, "and lay this sack upon my shoulder." They did so,
+and he went to the one side of the bridge and unloosed the mouth of the
+sack, and did shake out all the meal into the river. Then said he, "How
+much meal is there in the sack, neighbours?" "Marry," answered they,
+"none." "Now, by my faith," answered this wise man, "even so much wit is
+there in your two heads to strive for the thing which you have not." Now
+which was the wisest of these three persons, I leave you to judge.
+
+Allusions to these tales are of frequent occurrence in our literature of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dekker, in his _Gul's Horn
+Book_ (1609), says, "It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy
+head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, but rather set it
+on faster, bestowing upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise
+men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should
+not be able to compare with thine;" and Wither, in his _Abuses_,
+says,
+
+  "And he that tryes to doe it might have bin
+  One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,"
+
+alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols:
+
+On a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she
+should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge
+round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it,
+and said, "Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor
+drink." The cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself encompassed within
+the hedge, flew away. "A vengeance on her!" said they. "We made not our
+hedge high enough."
+
+The tales had, however, attained popular favour much earlier. Mr.
+Halliwell-Phillipps has pointed out that in _Philotimus_ (1583) the
+men of Gotham are remembered as having "tied their rentes in a purse
+about an hare's necke, and bade her to carrie it to their landlord," an
+excellent plan, which is thus described:
+
+On a time the men of Gotham had forgotten to pay their rent to their
+landlord. The one said to the other, "To-morrow is our payday, and what
+remedy shall we find to send our money to our lord?" The one said, "This
+day I have taken a quick [i.e., live] hare, and she shall carry it, for
+she is light of foot." "Be it so," said all. "She shall have a letter
+and a purse to put in our money, and we shall direct her the ready way."
+And when the letters were written, and the money put in a purse, they
+did tie them about the hare's neck, saying, "First thou must go to
+Loughborough, and then to Leicester; and at Newark there is our lord,
+and commend us to him, and there is his duty [i.e., due]." The hare, as
+soon as she was out of their hands, she did run a clean contrary way.
+Some cried to her, saying, "Thou must go to Loughborough first." Some
+said, "Let the hare alone; she can tell a nearer way than the best of us
+all do: let her go." Another said, "It is a noble hare; let her alone;
+she will not keep the highway for fear of the dogs."
+
+The well-worn "Joe Miller" of the Irishman who tried to count the party
+to which he belonged, and always forgot to count himself, which is also
+known in Russia and in the West Highlands of Scotland, is simply a
+variant of this drollery:
+
+On a certain day there were twelve men of Gotham that went to fish, and
+some stood on dry land; and in going home one said to the other, "We
+have ventured wonderfully in wading: I pray God that none of us come
+home and be drowned." "Nay, marry," said one to the other, "let us see
+that; for there did twelve of us come out." Then they told (i.e.,
+counted) themselves, and every one told eleven. Said one to the other,
+"There is one of us drowned." They went back to the brook where they had
+been fishing, and sought up and down for him that was wanting, making
+great lamentation. A courtier, coming by, asked what it was they sought
+for, and why they were sorrowful. "Oh," said they, "this day we went to
+fish in the brook; twelve of us came out together, and one is drowned."
+Said the courtier, "Tell [count] how many there be of you." One of them
+said, "Eleven," and he did not tell himself. "Well," said the courtier,
+"what will you give me, and I will find the twelfth man?" "Sir," said
+they, "all the money we have got." "Give me the money," said the
+courtier, and began with the first, and gave him a stroke over the
+shoulders with his whip, which made him groan, saying, "Here is one,"
+and so served them all, and they all groaned at the matter. When he came
+to the last, he paid him well, saying, "Here is the twelfth man." "God's
+blessing on thy heart," said they, "for thus finding our dear brother!"
+
+This droll adventure is also found in the _Gooroo Paramartan_, a
+most amusing work, written in the Tamil language by Beschi, an Italian
+Jesuit, who was missionary in India from 1700 till his death, in 1742.
+The Gooroo (teacher) and his five disciples, who are, like himself,
+noodles, come to a river which they have to cross, and which, as the
+Gooroo informs them, is a very dangerous stream. To ascertain whether it
+is at present "asleep," one of them dips his lighted cheroot in the
+water, which, of course, extinguishes it, upon which he returns to the
+Gooroo and reports that the river is still in a dangerous mood. So they
+all sit down, and begin to tell stories of the destructive nature of
+this river. One relates how his grandfather and another man were
+journeying together, driving two asses laden with bags of salt, and
+coming to this river, they resolved to bathe in it, and the asses,
+tempted by the coolness of the water, at the same time knelt down in it.
+When the men found that their salt had disappeared, they congratulated
+themselves on their wonderful escape from the devouring stream, which
+had eaten up all their salt without even opening the bags. Another
+disciple relates a story similar to the so-called Æsopian fable of the
+dog and his shadow, this river being supposed to have devoured a piece
+of meat which the dog had dropped into it. At length the river is found
+to be quiescent, a piece of charred wood having been plunged into it
+without producing any effect like that of the former experiment; and
+they determine to ford it, but with great caution. Arrived on the other
+side, they count their number, like the men of Gotham, and discover that
+one is not present. A traveller, coming up, finds the missing man by
+whacking each of them over the shoulder. The Gooroo, while gratified
+that the lost one was found, was grumbling at his sore bones--for the
+traveller had struck pretty hard--when an old woman, on learning of
+their adventure, told them that, in her young days, she and her female
+companions were once returning home from a grand festival, and adopted
+another plan for ascertaining if they were all together. Gathering some
+of the cattle-droppings, they kneaded them into a cake, in which they
+each made a mark with the tip of the nose, and then counted the marks--a
+plan which the Gooroo and his disciples should make use of on future
+occasions.
+
+The Abbé Dubois has given a French translation of the Adventures of the
+Gooroo Paramartan among the _Contes Divers_ appended to his not
+very valuable selection of tales and apologues from Tamil, Telegu, and
+Cannada versions of the _Panchatantra_ (Five Chapters, not "Cinq
+Ruses," as he renders it), a Sanskrit form of the celebrated Fables of
+Bidpaï, or Pilpay. An English rendering of Beschi's work, by Babington,
+forms one of the publications of the Oriental Translation Fund. Dubois
+states that he found the tales of the Gooroo current in Indian countries
+where Beschi's name was unknown, and he had no doubt of their Indian
+origin. However this may be, the work was probably designed, as
+Babington thinks, to satirise the Bráhmans, as well as to furnish a
+pleasing vehicle of instruction to those Jesuits in India whose duties
+required a knowledge of the Tamil language.
+
+A story akin to that of the Gothamite fishers, if not, indeed, an older
+form of it, is told in Iceland of the Three Brothers of Bakki, who came
+upon one of the hot springs which abound in that volcanic island, and
+taking off their boots and stockings, put their feet into the water and
+began to bathe them. When they would rise up, they were perplexed to
+know each his own feet, and so they sat disconsolate, until a wayfarer
+chanced to pass by, to whom they told their case, when he soon relieved
+their minds by striking the feet of each, for which important service
+they gave him many thanks.[7] This story reappears, slightly modified,
+in Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_: A party of
+masons, engaged in building a dyke, take shelter during a heavy shower,
+and when it has passed, they continue sitting, because their legs had
+got mixed together, and none knew his own, until they were put right by
+a traveller with a big stick. We have here an evident relic of the
+Norsemen's occupation of the Hebrides.
+
+Several of the tales of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in
+Gaelic. That of the twelve fishers has been already mentioned, and here
+is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in
+similar terms in his _Tales of the West Highlands_:
+
+When that Good Friday was come, the men of Gotham did cast their heads
+together what to do with their white herring, their red herring, their
+sprats, and salt fish. One consulted with the other, and agreed that
+such fish should be cast into a pond or pool (the which was in the
+middle of the town), that it might increase the next year; and every man
+did cast them into the pool. The one said, "I have thus many white
+herrings;" another said, "I have thus many sprats;" another said, "I
+have thus many salt fishes; let us all go together into the pool, and we
+shall fare like lords the next Lent." At the beginning of next Lent the
+men did draw the pond, to have their fish, and there was nothing but a
+great eel. "Ah," said they all, "a mischief on this eel, for he hath eat
+up all our fish!" "What shall we do with him?" said the one to the
+other. "Kill him!" said one of them. "Chop him all to pieces!" said
+another. "Nay, not so," said the other; "let us drown him." "Be it so,"
+said all. They went to another pool, and did cast the eel into the
+water. "Lie there," said they, "and shift for thyself, for no help thou
+shalt have of us;" and there they left the eel to be drowned.
+
+Campbell's Gaelic story differs so little from the above that we must
+suppose it to have been derived directly from the English chap-book.
+Oral tradition always produces local variations from a written story, of
+which we have an example in a Gaelic version of this choice exploit:
+
+There was a man of Gotham who went to the market of Nottingham to sell
+cheese; and as he was going down the hill to Nottingham Bridge, one of
+his cheeses fell out of his wallet and ran down the hill. "Ah," said the
+fellow, "can you run to the market alone? I will now send one after the
+other;" then laying down the wallet and taking out the cheeses, he
+tumbled them down the hill one after the other; and some ran into one
+bush, and some into another; so at last he said, "I do charge you to
+meet me in the market-place." And when the man came into the market to
+meet the cheeses, he stayed until the market was almost done, then went
+and inquired of his neighbours and other men if they did see his cheeses
+come to market. "Why, who should bring them?" said one of the
+neighbours. "Marry, themselves," said the fellow; "they knew the way
+well enough," said he: "a vengeance on them! For I was afraid to see my
+cheeses run so fast, that they would run beyond the market. I am
+persuaded that they are at this time almost as far as York." So he
+immediately takes a horse and rides after them to York; but to this day
+no man has ever heard of the cheeses.
+
+In one Gaelic variant a woman is going to Inverness with a basket filled
+with balls of worsted of her own spinning, and going down a hill, one of
+the balls tumbles out and rolls along briskly, upon which she sends the
+others after it, holding the ends of each in her hand; and when she
+reaches the town, she finds a "ravelled hank" instead of her neat balls
+of worsted. In another version a man goes to market with two bags of
+cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. After waiting at
+the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his
+misfortune. She goes to the foot of the hill and finds all the cheese.
+
+The next Gothamite tale also finds its counterpart in the Gaelic
+stories: There was a man of Gotham who bought at Nottingham a trivet, or
+brandiron, and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the
+carriage thereof, and he set it down; and seeing that it had three feet,
+he said, "Ha! hast thou three feet, and I but two? Thou shalt bear me
+home, if thou wilt," and set himself down thereupon, and said to the
+trivet, "Bear me as long as I have borne thee; but if thou do not, thou
+shalt stand still for me." The man of Gotham did see that his trivet
+would not go farther. "Stand still, in the mayor's name," said he, "and
+follow me if thou wilt. I will tell thee right the way to my home." When
+he did come to his house, his wife said, "Where is my trivet?" The man
+said, "He hath three legs, and I have but two; and I did teach him the
+way to my house. Let him come home if he will." "Where left ye the
+trivet?" said the woman. "At Gotham hill," said the man. His wife did
+run and fetch home the trivet her own self, or else she had lost it
+through her husband's wit.
+
+In Campbell's version a man having been sent by his wife with her
+spinning-wheel to get mended, as he was returning home with it the wind
+set the wheel in motion, so he put it down, and bidding it go straight
+to his house, set off himself. When he reached home, he asked his wife
+if the spinning-wheel had arrived yet, and on her replying that it had
+not, "I thought as much," quoth he, "for I took the shorter way."
+
+A somewhat similar story is found in Rivière's French collection of
+tales of the Kabaïl, Algeria, to this effect: The mother of a youth of
+the Beni-Jennad clan gave him a hundred reals to buy a mule; so he went
+to market, and on his way met a man carrying a water-melon for sale.
+"How much for the melon?" he asks. "What will you give?" says the man.
+"I have only got a hundred reals," answered the booby; "had I more, you
+should have it." "Well," rejoined the man, "I'll take them." Then the
+youth took the melon and handed over the money. "But tell me," says he,
+"will its young one be as green as it is?" "Doubtless," answered the
+man, "it will be green." As the booby was going home, he allowed the
+melon to roll down a slope before him. It burst on its way, when up
+started a frightened hare. "Go to my house, young one," he shouted.
+"Surely a green animal has come out of it." And when he got home, he
+inquired of his mother if the young one had arrived.
+
+In the _Gooroo Paramartan_ there is a parallel incident to this
+last. The noodles are desirous of providing their Gooroo with a horse,
+and a man sells them a pumpkin, telling them it is a mare's egg, which
+only requires to be sat upon for a certain time to produce a fine young
+horse. The Gooroo himself undertakes to hatch the mare's egg, since his
+disciples have all other matters to attend to; but as they are carrying
+it through a jungle, it falls down and splits into pieces; just then a
+frightened hare runs before them; and they inform the Gooroo that, a
+fine young colt came out of the mare's egg, with very long ears, and ran
+off with the speed of the wind. It would have proved a fine horse for
+their revered Gooroo, they add; but he consoles himself for the loss by
+reflecting that such an animal would probably have run away with him.
+
+A number of the Gothamite tales in the printed collection are not only
+inferior to those which are preserved orally, but can be considered in
+no sense examples of preeminent folly. Three consist of tricks played by
+women upon their husbands, such as are found in the ordinary jest-books
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In one a man, who had taken
+a buzzard, invites some friends to dine with him. His wife, with two of
+her gossips, having secretly eaten the buzzard, kills and cooks an old
+goose, and sets it before him and his guests; the latter call him a
+knave to mock them thus with an old goose, and go off in great anger.
+The husband, resolved to put himself right with his friends, stuffs the
+buzzard's feathers into a sack, in order to show them that they were
+mistaken in thinking he had tried to deceive them with an old goose
+instead of a fine fat buzzard. But before he started on this business,
+his wife contrived to substitute the goose's feathers, which he
+exhibited to his friends as those of the buzzard, and was soundly
+cudgelled for what they believed to be a second attempt to mock them.--
+Two other stories seem to be derived from the Italian novelists: of the
+man who intended cutting off his wife's hair[8] and of the man who
+defied his wife to cuckold him. Two others turn upon wrong responses at
+a christening and a marriage, which have certainly nothing Gothamite in
+them. Another is a dull story of a Scotchman who employed a carver to
+make him as a sign of his inn a boar's head, the tradesman supposing
+from his northern pronunciation that he meant _bare_ head.--In the
+nineteenth tale, a party of gossips are assembled at the alehouse, and
+each relates in what manner she is profitable to her husband: one saves
+candles by sending all her household to bed in daylight; another, like
+the old fellow and Tib his wife in _Jolly Good Ale and Old_, eats
+little meat, but can swig a gallon or two of ale, and so forth.
+
+We have, however, our Gothamite once more in the story of him who,
+seeing a fine cheese on the ground as he rode along the highway, tried
+to pick it up with his sword, and finding his sword too short, rode back
+to fetch a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found
+the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this
+sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also
+in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch
+of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down
+the smithy--a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a
+moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place of
+the honest Gothamite![9]
+
+The following properly belongs to stories of the "silly son" class:
+There was a young man of Gotham the which should go wooing to a fair
+maid. His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, "When thou dost look
+upon her, cast a sheep's-eye, and say, 'How do ye, sweet pigsnie?'" The
+fellow went to the butcher's and bought seven or eight sheep's eyes; and
+when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a
+sheep's eye, saying, "How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?" "How do I?"
+said the wench. "Swine's-face, why dost thou cast the sheep's eye upon
+me?" "O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" "I defy thee,
+Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What,
+sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou
+wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live
+till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool."
+
+It is very evident that the men of Gotham were of "honest" Jack
+Falstaff's opinion that the better part of valour is discretion: On a
+time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great
+grasshopper. He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his
+neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in
+the grass. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with
+halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper. When
+they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one
+to the other, "Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will
+not meddle with him." And so they returned again, and said, "We were all
+blessed this day that we went no farther." "Ah, cowards," said he that
+had his scythe in the mead, "help me to fetch my scythe." "No," said
+they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin: better it is to lose thy
+scythe than to mar us all."
+
+There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed
+collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednesday the
+priest said to the men of Gotham, "If I should enjoin you to prayer,
+there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too
+old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not
+eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour
+all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will
+come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he
+did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after
+another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might
+have part of his meat. "And as for alms," said the priest, "ye be
+beggars all, except one or two; therefore bestow alms on yourselves."
+
+Among the numerous stories of the Gothamites preserved orally, but not
+found in the collection of "A.B., of Phisicke Doctour," is the
+following, which seems to be of Indian extraction:
+
+One day some men of Gotham were walking by the riverside, and came to a
+place where the contrary currents caused the water to boil as in a
+whirlpool. "See how the water boils!" says one. "If we had plenty of
+oatmeal," says another, "we might make enough porridge to serve all the
+village for a month." So it was resolved that part of them should go to
+the village and fetch their oatmeal, which was soon brought and thrown
+into the river. But there presently arose the question of how they were
+to know when the porridge was ready. This difficulty was overcome by the
+offer of one of the company to jump in, and it was agreed that if he
+found it ready for use, he should signify the same to his companions.
+The man jumped in, and found the water deeper than he expected. Thrice
+he rose to the surface, but said nothing. The others, impatient at his
+remaining so long silent, and seeing him smack his lips, took this for
+an avowal that the porridge was good, and so they all jumped in after
+him and were drowned.
+
+Another traditional Gothamite story is related of a villager coming home
+at a late hour and, seeing the reflection of the moon in a horse-pond,
+believed it to be a green cheese, and roused all his neighbours to help
+him to draw it out. They raked and raked away until a passing cloud sank
+the cheese, when they returned to their homes grievously
+disappointed.[10]--This is also related of the villagers near the
+Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire, and the _sobriquet_ of
+"moon-rakers," applied to Wiltshire folk in general, is said to have had
+its origin in the incident; but they assert that it was a keg of
+smuggled brandy, which had been sunk in a pond, that the villagers were
+attempting to fish up, when the exciseman coming suddenly upon the
+scene, they made him believe they were raking the reflection of the
+moon, thinking it a green cheese, an explanation which is on a par with
+the apocryphal tale of the Gothamites and the messengers of King John.
+
+The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable
+antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is
+referred to by Rabelais, and was doubtless the subject of a popular
+French tale in his time. In the twenty-second story of the _Disciplina
+Clericalis_ of Peter Alfonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was baptised in
+1106, a fox leaves a wolf in a well, looking after a supposed cheese,
+made by the image of the moon in the water; and the same fable had been
+told by the Talmudists in the fifth century.[11] The well-known "Joe
+Miller" of the party of Irishmen who endeavoured to reach a "green
+cheese" in the river by hanging one by another's legs finds its parallel
+in a Mecklenburg story, in which some men by the same contrivance tried
+to get a stone from the bottom of a well, and the incident is thus
+related in the old English jest-book entitled _The Sacke Full of
+Newes_:
+
+There were three young men going to Lambeth along by the waterside, and
+one played with the other, and they cast each other's caps into the
+water in such sort as they could not get their caps again. But over the
+place where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did
+cover a great deal of the water. One of them said to the rest, "Sirs, I
+have found a notable way to come by them. First I will make myself fast
+by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is
+with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take
+hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands
+he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand." And so they
+did; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he
+that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, "Soft, sirs! My girdle
+slacketh." "Make it fast quickly," said they. But as he was untying it
+to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well
+washed for their pains.
+
+Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who
+planted a cabbage-head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage,
+and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky. He climbs up the
+cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky. There he sees a mill, which gives
+a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the
+top. The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill; then he lies down to
+sleep. By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.
+
+He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him
+to take her with him. She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in
+his teeth and begins to climb up. The old woman, becoming tired, asked
+him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, "Not much
+farther," the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman
+fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.
+
+There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr.
+Ralston's most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian
+folk-tales), but observe the very close resemblance which it bears to
+the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the
+_Kathá Sarit Ságara_ (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand
+collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh
+century, from a similar work entitled _Vrihat Kathá_ (Great Story),
+written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century:[12]
+
+In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was
+the greatest fool of the lot. He once heard in a treatise on law, which
+was being read aloud, that a man who has a tank made gains a great
+reward in the next world. Then, as he had a large fortune, he had made a
+large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent. One
+day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and
+perceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature. The next
+day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part
+of the tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, "I will
+watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and
+I will find out what creature it is that does this." After he had formed
+this resolution, he came there early next morning, and watched, until at
+last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its
+horns. He thought, "This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to
+heaven with it?" And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands
+laid hold of the tail behind. Then the holy bull lifted up, with the
+utmost force, the foolish man who was clinging to its tail, and carried
+him in a moment to its home in Kailása.[13] There the foolish man lived
+for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties,
+sweetmeats, and other things which he obtained. And seeing that the bull
+kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny,
+thought, "I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my
+friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return
+in the same way." Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung
+to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned
+to the surface of the earth. When he entered the convent, the other
+blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been,
+and he told them. Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of
+his adventures, made this petition to him: "Be kind, and take us also
+there; enable us also to feast on sweetmeats." He consented, and told
+them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the
+tank, and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail of
+the bull with his two hands, and another took hold of his feet, and a
+third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by
+hanging on to one another's feet, the bull flew rapidly up into the air.
+And while the bull was going along, with all the fools clinging to its
+tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool,
+"Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats
+which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in
+heaven?" Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in
+hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and
+exclaimed in answer, "So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the
+bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were
+killed; and the bull returned to Kailása; but the people who saw it were
+much amused.[14]
+
+"Thus," remarks the story-teller, "fools do themselves injury by asking
+questions and giving answers without reflection"; he then proceeds to
+relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that "association with
+fools brings prosperity to no man":
+
+A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when
+he asked the way, the people said to him, "Take the path that goes up by
+the tree on the bank of the river." Then the fool went and got on the
+trunk of that tree, and said to himself, "The men told me that my way
+lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the
+bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to
+avoid falling by clinging to it. While he was clinging to it, there came
+that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on
+his back. And the fool called to him, saying, "Great sir, take me down."
+The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to
+take him down from the tree. Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the
+driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fool, who was clinging
+to the end of the tree. Then said the fool to the driver, "Sing
+something, in order that the people may hear, and come at once and take
+us down." So the elephant-driver, thus appealed to, began to sing, and
+he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased; and in his desire to
+applaud him, he forgot what he was about, let go his hold of the tree,
+and prepared to clap him with both his hands; and immediately he and the
+elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned.
+
+The germ of all stories of this class is perhaps found in the
+_Játakas_, or Buddhist Birth Stories: A pair of geese resolve to
+migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise,
+their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills,
+and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth.  As they are
+flying over Bánáres, the people exclaim in wonder to one another at such
+a strange sight, and the tortoise, unable to maintain silence, opens his
+mouth to rebuke them, and by so doing falls to the ground, and is dashed
+into pieces. This fable is also found in Babrius. (115); in the _Kathá
+Sarit Ságara_; in the several versions of the Fables of Bidpaï; and
+in the _Avadánas_, translated into French from the Chinese by
+Stanislas Julien.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To return to Gothamite stories. According to one of those which are
+current orally, the men of Gotham had but one knife among them, which
+was stuck in a tree in the middle of the village for their common use,
+and many amusing incidents, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, arose out of
+their disputes for the use of this knife. The "carles" of Austwick, in
+Yorkshire, are said also to have had but one knife, or "whittle," which
+was deposited under a tree, and if it was not found there when wanted,
+the "carle" requiring it called out, "Whittle to the tree!" This plan
+did very well for some years, until it was taken one day by a party of
+labourers to a neighbouring moor, to be used for cutting their bread and
+cheese. When the day's labour was done, they resolved to leave the knife
+at the place, to save themselves the trouble of carrying it back, as
+they should want it again next day; so they looked about for some object
+to mark the spot, and stuck it into the ground under a black cloud that
+happened to be the most remarkable object in sight. But next day, when
+they returned to the place, the cloud was gone, and the "whittle" was
+never seen again.
+
+When an Austwick "carle" comes into any of the larger towns of
+Yorkshire, it is said he is greeted with the question, "Who tried to
+lift the bull over the gate?" in allusion to the following story: An
+Austwick farmer, wishing to get a bull out of a field--how the animal
+got into it, the story does not inform us--procured the assistance of
+nine of his neighbours to lift the animal over the gate. After trying in
+vain for some hours, they sent one of their number to the village for
+more help. In going out he opened the gate, and after he had gone away,
+it occurred to one of those who remained that the bull might be allowed
+to go out in the same manner.
+
+Another Austwick farmer had to take a wheelbarrow to a certain town,
+and, to save a hundred yards by going the ordinary road, he went through
+the fields, and had to lift the barrow over twenty-two stiles.
+
+It was a Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined
+to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the
+branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted
+up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck
+broken, until at last there were none left.--And quite as witless,
+surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired to move
+their church three yards farther westward, so they carefully marked the
+exact distance by leaving their coats on the ground. Then they set to
+work to push with all their might against the eastern wall. In the
+meantime a thief had gone round to the west side and stolen their coats.
+"Diable!" exclaimed they on finding that their coats were gone, "we have
+pushed too far!"
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Coffee House Jests_. Fifth edition. London. 1688. P. 36.
+
+[2] "See _ante_, p. 8, note." [Transcriber's note: This is Chapter I,
+Footnote 1 in this etext.]
+
+[3] Fuller, while admitting that "an hundred fopperies are forged and
+fathered on the townsfolk of Gotham," maintains that "Gotham doth breed
+as wise people as any which laugh at their simplicity."
+
+[4] Collier's _Bibliographical Account_, etc., vol. i., p. 327.
+
+[5] Forewords to Borde's _Introduction of Knowledge_, etc., edited,
+for the Early English Text Society, by F.J. Furnivall.
+
+[6] It is equally certain that Borde had no hand either in the _Jests
+of Scogin_ or _The Mylner of Abyngton_, the latter an imitation
+of Chaucer's _Reve's Tale_.
+
+[7] Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_, Second Series.
+
+[8] An imitation of Boccaccio, _Decameron_, Day vii., nov. 8, who
+perhaps borrowed the story from Guerin's _fabliau_ "De la Dame qui
+fit accroire a son Mari qu'il avait rêve; _alias_, Les Cheveux
+Coupés" (Le Grand's _Fabliaux_, ed. 1781, tome ii., 280).
+
+[9] A slightly different version occurs in the _Tale of Beryn_,
+which is found in a unique MS. of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and
+which forms the first part of the old French romance of the _Chevalier
+Berinus_. In the English poem Beryn, lamenting his misfortunes, and
+that he had disinherited himself, says:
+
+  "But I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies]
+  He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies,
+  And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase,
+  Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase
+  Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was,
+  And kissid so the evese, that brent was al the plase."
+
+It is certain that the author of the French original of the _Tale of
+Beryn_ did not get this story out of our jests of the men of Gotham.
+
+[10] There is an analogous Indian story of a youth who went to a tank to
+drink, and observing the reflection of a golden-crested bird that was
+sitting on a tree, he thought it was gold in the water, and entered the
+tank to take it up, but he could not lay hold of it as it appeared and
+disappeared in the water. But as often as he ascended the bank he again
+saw it in the water, and again he entered the tank to lay hold of it,
+and still he got nothing. At length his father saw and questioned him,
+then drove away the bird, and explaining the matter to him, took the
+foolish fellow home.
+
+We have already seen that the men of Abdera (p. 5) flogged an ass before
+its fellows for upsetting a jar of olive oil, but what is that compared
+with the story of the ass that drank up the moon? According to Ludovicus
+Vives, a learned Spanish writer, certain townspeople imprisoned an ass
+for drinking up the moon, whose reflection, appearing in the water, was
+covered with a cloud while the ass was drinking. Next day the poor beast
+was brought to the bar to be sentenced according to his deserts. After
+the grave burghers had discussed the affair for some time, one at length
+rose up and declared that it was not fit the town should lose its moon,
+but rather that the ass should be cut open and the moon he had swallowed
+taken out of him, which, being cordially approved by the others, was
+done accordingly.
+
+[11] This is also one of the Fables of Marie de France (thirteenth
+century).
+
+[12] A complete translation of the _Kathá Sarit Ságara_, by
+Professor C.H. Tawney, with notes of variants, which exhibit his wide
+acquaintance with the popular fictions of all lands, has been recently
+published at Calcutta (London agents, Messrs. Trübner and Co.), a work
+which must prove invaluable to every English student of comparative
+folk-lore.
+
+[13] Siva's paradise, according to Hindu mythology, is on Mount Kailása,
+in the Himályas, north of Mánasa.
+
+[14] Tawney's translation, which is used throughout this work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_).
+
+
+The Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gothamites of
+Germany, and the stories of their stupidity, after being orally current
+for years among the people, were collected near the close of the
+sixteenth century, the earliest known edition being that of 1597. In a
+most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances"
+(_Foreign Quarterly Review_, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms
+has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from
+which the following particulars and tales are extracted: "There have
+been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from
+one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally
+gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils
+of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their
+circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and
+then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered
+affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity,
+and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as
+to prove 'plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this
+strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the
+Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and
+receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and
+signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn
+themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the
+Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by
+which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on
+which some of their descendants, who may be known by their
+characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."
+
+Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows.
+When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, "saw
+they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a
+state of things; and having in vain gone outside and examined the
+building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to hold a
+council upon the subject on the following day. At the time appointed
+they assembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating
+himself, he stuck in his hat. After much discussion, one genius,
+brighter than the rest, decided that they could not see for want of
+daylight, and that they ought on the morrow to carry in as much of it as
+possible. Accordingly, the next day, when the sun shone, all the sacks,
+bags, boxes, baskets, tubs, pans, etc. of the village were filled with
+its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied
+there, but with no good effect. After this they removed the roof, by the
+advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion. This
+plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter
+fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, they found the house
+just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in
+their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting
+the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell
+through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had
+never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get
+daylight in by making a window.
+
+Another tale relates how the boors of Schilda contrived to get their
+millstone twice down from a high mountain:
+
+The boors of Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour
+they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the
+summit of a high mountain; and when the stone was finished, they carried
+it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the
+bottom, it occurred to one of them that they might have spared
+themselves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down.
+"Verily," said he, "we are the stupidest of fools to take these
+extraordinary pains to do that which we might have done with so little
+trouble. We will carry it up, and then let it roll down the hill by
+itself, as we did before with the tree which we felled for the
+council-house."
+
+This advice pleased them all, and with greater labour they carried the
+stone to the top of the mountain again, and were about to roll it down,
+when one of them said, "But how shall we know where it runs to? Who will
+be able to tell us aught about it?" "Why," said the bailiff, who had
+advised the stone being carried up again, "this is very easily managed.
+One of us must stick in the hole [for the millstone, of course, had a
+hole in the middle], and run down with it." This was agreed to, and one
+of them, having been chosen for the purpose, thrust his head through the
+hole, and ran down the hill with the millstone. Now at the bottom of the
+mountain was a deep fish-pond, into which the stone rolled, and the
+simpleton with it, so that the Schildburgers lost both stone and man,
+and not one among them knew what had become of them. And they felt
+sorely angered against their old companion who had run down the hill
+with the stone, for they considered that he had carried it off for the
+purpose of disposing of it. So they published a notice in all the
+neighbouring boroughs, towns, and villages, calling on them, that "if
+any one come there with a millstone round his neck, they should treat
+him as one who had stolen the common goods, and give him to justice."
+But the poor fellow lay in the pond, dead. Had he been able to speak, he
+would have been willing to tell them not to worry themselves on his
+account, for he would give them their own again. But his load pressed so
+heavily upon him, and he was so deep in the water, that he, after
+drinking water enough--more, indeed, than was good for him--died; and he
+is dead at the present day, and dead he will, shall, and must remain!
+
+The forty-seventh chapter recounts "How the Schildburgers purchased a
+mouser, and with it their own ruin":
+
+Now it happened that there were no cats in Schilda, and so many mice
+that nothing was safe, even in the bread-basket, for whatsoever they put
+there was sure to be gnawed or eaten; and this grieved them sorely. And
+upon a time there came a traveller into the village, carrying a cat in
+his arms, and he entered the hostel. The host asked him, "What sort of a
+beast is that?" Said he, "It is a mouser." Now the mice at Schilda were
+so quiet and so tame that they never fled before the people, but ran
+about all day long, without the slightest fear. So the traveller let the
+cat run, who, in the sight of the host, soon caught numbers of mice. Now
+when the people were told this by the host, they asked the man whether
+the mouser was to be sold, for they would pay him well for it. He said,
+"It certainly was not to be sold; but seeing that it would be so useful
+to them, he would let them have it if they would pay him what was
+right," and he asked a hundred florins for it. The boors were glad to
+find that he asked so little, and concluded a bargain with him, he
+agreeing to take half the money down, and to come again in six months to
+fetch the rest. As soon as the bargain was struck on both sides, they
+gave the traveller the half of the money, and he carried the mouser into
+the granary, where they kept their corn, for there were most mice there.
+The traveller went off with the money at full speed, for he feared
+greatly lest they should repent them of the bargain, and want their
+money back again; and as he went along he kept looking behind him to see
+that no one was following him. Now the boors had forgotten to ask what
+the cat was to be fed upon, so they sent one after him in haste to ask
+him the question. But when he with the gold saw that some one was
+following him, he hastened so much the more, so that the boor could by
+no means overtake him, whereupon he called out to him from afar off,
+"What does it eat?" "What you please! What you please!" quoth the
+traveller. But the peasant understood him to say, "Men and beasts! Men
+and beasts!" Therefore he returned home in great affliction, and said as
+much to his worthy masters.
+
+On learning this they became greatly alarmed, and said, "When it has no
+more mice to eat, it will eat our cattle; and when they are gone, it
+will eat us! To think that we should lay out our good money in buying
+such a thing!" And they held counsel together and resolved that the cat
+should be killed. But no one would venture to lay hold of it for that
+purpose, whereupon it was determined to burn the granary, and the cat in
+it, seeing that it was better they should suffer a common loss than all
+lose life and limb. So they set fire to the granary. But when the cat
+smelt the fire, it sprang out of a window and fled to another house, and
+the granary was burned to the ground. Never was there sorrow greater
+than that of the Schildburgers when they found that they could not kill
+the cat. They counselled with one another, and purchased the house to
+which the cat had fled, and burned that also. But the cat sprang out
+upon the roof, and sat there, washing itself and putting its paws behind
+its ears, after the manner of cats; and the Schildburgers understood
+thereby that the cat lifted up its hands and swore an oath that it would
+not leave their treatment of it unrevenged. Then one of them took a long
+pole and struck at the cat, but the cat caught hold of the pole, and
+began to clamber down it, whereupon all the people grew greatly alarmed
+and ran away, and left the fire to burn as it might. And because no one
+regarded the fire, nor sought to put it out, the whole village was
+burned to a house, and notwithstanding that, the cat escaped. And the
+Schildburgers fled with their wives and children to a neighbouring
+forest. And at this time was burned their chancery and all the papers
+therein, which is the reason why their history is not to be found
+described in a more regular manner.
+
+Thus ended the career of the Schildburgers as a community, according to
+the veracious chronicle of their marvellous exploits, the first of
+which, their carrying sunshine into the council-house, is a favourite
+incident in the noodle-stories of many countries, and has its parallel
+in the Icelandic story of the Three Brothers of Bakki: They had observed
+that in winter the weather was colder than in summer, also that the
+larger the windows of a house were the colder it was. All frost and
+sharp cold, therefore, they thought sprang from the fact that houses had
+windows in them. So they built themselves a house on a new plan, without
+windows in it at all. It followed, of course, that there was always
+pitch darkness in it. They found that this was rather a fault in the
+house, but comforted themselves with the certainty that in winter it
+would be very warm; and as to light, they thought they could contrive
+some easy means of getting the house lighted. One fine day in the middle
+of summer, when the sunshine was brightest, they began to carry the
+darkness out of the house in their caps, and emptied it out when they
+came into the sunshine, which they then carried into the dark room. Thus
+they worked hard the whole day, but in the evening, when they had done
+all their best, they were not a little disappointed to find that it was
+as dark as before, so much so that they could not tell one hand from the
+other.[1]
+
+There is a Kashmírí story which bears a slight resemblance to the
+exploit of the Schildburgers with the cat. A poor old woman used to beg
+her food by day and cook it at night. Half of the food she would eat in
+the morning, and the other half in the evening. After a while a cat got
+to know of this arrangement, and came and ate the meal for her. The old
+woman was very patient, but at last could no longer endure the cat's
+impudence, and so she laid hold of it. She argued with herself as to
+whether she should kill it or not. "If I slay it," she thought, "it will
+be a sin; but if I keep it alive, it will be to my heavy loss." So she
+determined only to punish it. She procured some cotton wool and some
+oil, and soaking the one in the other, tied it on to the cat's tail and
+then set it on fire. Away rushed the cat across the yard, up the side of
+the window, and on to the roof, where its flaming tail ignited the
+thatch and set the whole house on fire. The flames soon spread to other
+houses, and the whole village was destroyed.[2]
+
+An older form of this incident is found in the introduction to a Persian
+poetical version of the Book of Sindibád (_Sindibád Náma_), of
+which a unique MS. copy, very finely illuminated, but imperfect, is
+preserved in the Library of the India Office:[3] In a village called
+Buzina-Gird (i.e., Monkey Town) there was a goat that was in the habit
+of butting at a certain old woman whenever she came into the street. One
+day the old woman had been to ask fire from a neighbour, and on her
+return the goat struck her so violently with his horns when she was off
+her guard as to draw blood. Enraged at this, she applied the fire which
+she held to the goat's fleece, which kindled, and the animal ran to the
+stables of the elephant-keeper, and rubbed his sides against the reeds
+and willows. They caught fire, which the wind soon spread, and the heads
+and faces of the warlike elephants were scorched. With the sequel--how
+the king caused all the monkeys to be slaughtered, as their fat was
+required to cure the scorched elephants--we have no concern at
+present.[4]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Ceylon whole districts, such as Tumpane, in the central province,
+Morora Korle, in the southern province, and Rayigam Korle, in the
+western province, are credited with being the abode of fools. A learned
+writer on the proverbial sayings of the Sinhalese states that these
+often refer to "popular stories of stupid people to which foolish
+actions are likened. The stories of the Tumpane villagers who tried to
+unearth and carry off a well because they saw a bees' nest reflected in
+the water; of the Morora Korle boatmen who mistook a bend in the river
+for the sea, left their cargo there, and returned home; of the Rayigam
+Korle fools who threw stones at the moon to frighten her off one fine
+moonlight night when they thought she was coming too near, and that
+there was danger of her burning their crops, are well known, and it is
+customary to ask a man if he was born in one of these places if he has
+done anything particularly foolish. The story of the double-fool--i.e.,
+of the man who tried to lighten the boat by carrying his pingo load over
+his shoulders;[5] of the man who stretched out his hands to be warmed by
+the fire on the other side of the river; of the rustic's wife who had
+her own head shaved, so as not to lose the barber's services for the day
+when he came, and her husband was away from home; of the villagers who
+tied up their mortars in the village in the belief that the elephant
+tracks in the rice fields were caused by the mortars wandering about at
+night; of the man who would not wash his body in order to spite the
+river; of the people who flogged the elk-skin at home to avenge
+themselves on the deer that trespassed in the fields at night; and of
+the man who performed the five precepts--all these are popular stories
+of foolish people which have passed into proverbs."[6]
+
+The last of the stories referred to in the above extract is as follows:
+A woman once rebuked her husband for not performing the five (Buddhist)
+precepts. "I don't know what they are," he replied. "Oh, it's very
+easy," she said; "all you have to do is to go to the priest and repeat
+what he says after him." "Is that all?" he answered. "Then I'll go and
+do it at once." Off he went, and as he neared the temple the priest saw
+him and called out, "Who are you?" to which he replied, "Who are you?"
+"What do you want?" demands the priest. "What do you want?" the
+blockhead answers dutifully. "Are you mad?" roared the priest. "Are you
+mad?" returned the rustic. "Here," said the priest to his attendants,
+"take and beat him well;" and notwithstanding that he carefully repeated
+the words again, taken and thoroughly well thrashed he was, after which
+he crawled back to his wife and said, "What a wonderful woman you are!
+You manage to repeat the five precepts every day, and are strong and
+healthy, while I, who have only said them once, am nearly dead with
+fever from the bruises."[7]
+
+To this last may be added a story in the _Kathá Manjari_, a
+Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the _Rámáyana_, one
+of the two great Hindú epics: One day a man was reading the
+_Rámáyana_ in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might
+be instructed by hearing it, sent him there. He went, and stood leaning
+on his crook--for he was a shepherd--when presently a practical joker,
+seeing his simplicity, jumped upon his shoulders, and he stood with the
+man on his back until the discourse was concluded. When he reached home,
+his wife asked him how he liked the _Rámáyana_. "Alas!" said he,
+"it was not easy; it was a man's load."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The race of Gothamites is indeed found everywhere--in popular tales, if
+not in actual life; and their sayings and doings are not less diverting
+when husband and wife are well mated, as in the following story:
+
+An Arab observing one morning that his house was ready to tumble about
+his ears from decay, and being without the means of repairing it, went
+with a long face to his wife, and informed her of his trouble. She said,
+"Why, my dear, need you distress yourself about so small a matter? You
+have a cow worth thirty dirhams; take her to the market and sell her for
+that sum. I have some thread, which I will dispose of to-day, and I
+warrant you that between us both we shall manage very well." The man at
+once drove the cow to the market, and gave her over for sale to the
+appraiser of cattle. The salesman showed her to the bystanders, directed
+their attention to all her good points, expatiated on all her good
+qualities, and, in short, passed her off as a cow of inestimable value.
+To all this the simpleton listened with delight and astonishment; he
+heard his cow praised for qualities that no other cow ever possessed,
+and determined in his own mind not to lose so rare a bargain, but
+purchase her himself and balk the chapmen. He therefore called out to
+the appraiser, and asked him what she was going at. The salesman
+replied, "At fifteen dirhams and upwards." "By the head of the Prophet,"
+exclaimed the wittol, "had I known that my cow was such a prodigy of
+excellence, you should not have caught me in the market with her for
+sale." Now it happened that he had just fifteen dirhams, and no more,
+and these he thrust upon the broker, exclaiming, "The cow is mine; I
+have the best claim to her." He then seized the cow and drove her home,
+exulting all the way as if he had found a treasure. On reaching home he
+inquired eagerly for his wife, to inform her of his adventure, but was
+told she was not returned from market. He waited impatiently for her
+return, when he sprang up to meet her, crying, "Wife, I have done
+something to-day that will astonish you. I have performed a marvellous
+exploit!" "Patience!" says his wife. "Perhaps I have done something
+myself to match it. But hear my story, and then talk of cleverness, if
+you please." The husband desired her to proceed.
+
+"When I went to market," says she, "I found a man in want of thread. I
+showed him mine, which he approved of, and having bargained for it, he
+agreed to pay me according to the weight. I told him it weighed so much,
+which he seemed to discredit, and weighed it himself. Observing it to
+fall short of the weight I had mentioned, and fearing I should lose the
+price I at first expected, I requested him to weigh it over again, and
+make certain. In the meantime, taking an opportunity unobserved, I
+stripped off my silver bracelets and put them slily into the scale with
+my thread. The scale, of course, now preponderated, and I received the
+full price I had demanded." Having finished her story, she cried out,
+"Now, what do you think of your wife?" "Amazing! amazing!" said he.
+"Your capacity is supernatural. And now, if you please, I will give you
+a specimen of mine," and he related his adventure at the market. "O
+husband," she exclaimed when he had told his story, "had we not
+possessed such consummate wisdom and address, how could we have
+contrived means to repair our old house? In future vex not yourself
+about domestic concerns, since by the exercise of our talents we need
+never want for anything!"
+
+The exploits of that precious pair may be compared with the following:
+An alewife went to the market with a brood of chickens and an old black
+hen. For the hen and one chicken she could not find a purchaser; so,
+before leaving the town, she called upon a surgeon, to try to effect a
+sale. He bought the chicken, but declined taking the hen. She then asked
+him if he would draw a tooth for it. The tooth was drawn, and he
+expressed his surprise on finding it was perfectly sound. "Oh," said
+she, "I knew it was sound; but it was worth while having it drawn for
+the old hen." She then called upon another surgeon, and had a second
+tooth drawn, as sound as the other. "What's to pay?" she inquired. "A
+shilling," said the surgeon. "Very well," rejoined the hostess, with a
+chuckle; "you left a shilling due in my house the other night, and now
+we are quits." "Certainly we are," responded the perplexed tooth-drawer,
+and the delighted old woman returned to her hostelry, to acquaint all
+her gossips of how cleverly she had outwitted the doctors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ferrier says, in his _Illustrations of Sterne_, that the facetious
+tales of the Sieur Gaulard laid the foundation of some of the jests in
+our old English collections. A few of them found their way somehow into
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_, and this is one: A monsieur chanced to
+meet a lady of his acquaintance, and asked her how she did and how her
+good husband fared, at which she wept, saying that her husband was in
+heaven. "In heaven!" quoth he. "It is the first time that I heard of it,
+and I am sorry for it with all my heart."
+
+Similar in its point is a story in _Archie Armstrong's Banquet of
+Jests_:[8] Sitting over a cup of ale in a winter night, two widows
+entered into discourse of their dead husbands, and after ripping up
+their good and bad qualities, saith one of them to the maid, "I prithee,
+wench, reach us another light, for my husband (God rest his soul!) above
+all things loved to see good lights about the house. God grant him light
+everlasting!" "And I pray you, neighbour," said the other, "let the maid
+lay on some more coals or stir up the fire, for my husband in his
+lifetime ever loved to see a good fire. God grant him fire everlasting!"
+
+This seems cousin-german to the Arabian story of two men, one of whom
+hailed from the town of Hama (ancient Hamath), the other from Hums
+(ancient Emessa). Those towns are not far apart, but the people of the
+former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the
+latter are proverbially as stupid. (And for the proper understanding of
+the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb _hama_
+means to "protect" or "defend," the verb _hamasa_ to "roast" or
+"toast.") These men had some business of importance with the nearest
+magistrate, and set out together on their journey. The man of Hums,
+conscious of his own ignorance, begged his companion to speak first in
+the audience, in order that he might get a hint as to how such a formal
+matter should be conducted. Accordingly, when they came into the pasha's
+presence, the man of Hama went forward, and the pasha asked him, "Where
+are you from?" "Your servant is from Hama," said he. "May Allah PROTECT
+(_hama_) your excellency!" The pasha then turned to the other man,
+and asked, "And where are you from?" to which he answered, "Your servant
+is from Hums. May Allah ROAST _(hamasa)_ your excellency!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not a few of the _Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard are the
+prototypes of bulls and foolish sayings of the typical Irishman, which
+go their ceaseless round in popular periodicals, and are even
+audaciously reproduced as original in our "comic" journals--save the
+mark! To cite some examples:
+
+A friend one day told M. Gaulard that the Dean of Besançon was dead.
+"Believe it not," said he; "for had it been so he would have told me
+himself, since he writes to me about everything."
+
+M. Gaulard asked his secretary one evening what hour it was. "Sir,"
+replied the secretary, "I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun
+is set." "Well," quoth M. Gaulard, "and can you not see by the candle?"
+
+On another occasion the Sieur called from his bed to a servant desiring
+him to see if it was daylight yet. "There is no sign of daylight," said
+the servant. "I do not wonder," rejoined the Sieur, "that thou canst not
+see day, great fool as thou art. Take a candle and look with it out at
+the window, and thou shalt see whether it be day or not."
+
+In a strange house, the Sieur found the walls of his bedchamber full of
+great holes. "This," exclaimed he in a rage, "is the cursedest chamber
+in all the world. One may see day all the night through."
+
+Travelling in the country, his man, to gain the fairest way, rode
+through a field sowed with pease, upon which M. Gaulard cried to him,
+"Thou knave, wilt thou burn my horse's feet? Dost thou not know that
+about six weeks ago I burned my mouth with eating pease, they were so
+hot?"
+
+A poor man complained to him that he had had a horse stolen from him.
+"Why did you not mark his visage," asked M. Gaulard, "and the clothes he
+wore?" "Sir," said the man, "I was not there when he was stolen." Quoth
+the Sieur, "You should have left somebody to ask him his name, and in
+what place he resided."
+
+M. Gaulard felt the sun so hot in the midst of a field at noontide in
+August that he asked of those about him, "What means the sun to be so
+hot? How should it not keep its heat till winter, when it is cold
+weather?"
+
+A proctor, discoursing with M. Gaulard, told him that a dumb, deaf, or
+blind man could not make a will but with certain additional forms. "I
+pray you," said the Sieur, "give me that in writing, that I may send it
+to a cousin of mine who is lame."
+
+One day a friend visited the Sieur and found him asleep in his chair. "I
+slept," said he, "only to avoid idleness; for I must always be doing
+something."
+
+The Abbé of Poupet complained to him that the moles had spoiled a fine
+meadow, and he could find no remedy for them. "Why, cousin," said M.
+Gaulard, "it is but paving your meadow, and the moles will no more
+trouble you."
+
+M. Gaulard had a lackey belonging to Auvergne, who robbed him of twelve
+crowns and ran away, at which he was very angry, and said he would have
+nothing that came from that country. So he ordered all that was from
+Auvergne to be cast out of the house, even his mule; and to make the
+animal more ashamed, he caused his servants to take off its shoes and
+its saddle and bridle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Although Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ is the most "original" of our old
+English jest-books--that is to say, it contains very few stories in
+common with preceding collections--yet some of the diverting tales he
+relates are traceable to very distant sources, more especially the
+following:
+
+A country fellow (that had not walked much in streets that were paved)
+came to London, where a dog came suddenly out of a house, and furiously
+ran at him. The fellow stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the dog,
+and finding them all fast rammed or paved in the ground, quoth he, "What
+a strange country am I in, where the people tie up the stones and let
+the dogs loose!"
+
+Three centuries and a half before the Water Poet heard this exquisitely
+humorous story, the great Persian poet Sa'dí related it in his
+_Gulistán_ (or Rose-garden), which was written A.D. 1278:
+
+A poor poet presented himself before the chief of a gang of robbers, and
+recited some verses in his praise. The robber-chief, however, instead of
+rewarding him, as he fondly expected, ordered him to be stripped of his
+clothes and expelled from the village. The dogs attacking him in the
+rear, the unlucky bard stooped to pick up a stone to throw at them, and
+finding the stones frozen in the ground, he exclaimed, "What a vile set
+of men are these, who set loose the dogs and fasten the stones!"
+
+Now here we have a very curious instance of the migration of a popular
+tale from Persia--perchance it first set out on its travels from India
+--in the thirteenth century, when grave and reverend seigniors wagged
+their beards and shook their portly sides at its recital, to London in
+the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed "the wisest fool
+in Christendom"!), when Taylor, the Water Poet, probably heard it told,
+in some river-side tavern, amidst the clinking of beer-cans and the
+fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado, and "put it in his book!"
+How it came into England it would be interesting to ascertain. It may
+have been brought to Europe by the Venetian merchants, who traded
+largely in the Levant and with the Moors in Northern Africa.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_, Second Series, p.
+626.
+
+[2] _Dictionary of Kashmírí Proverbs and Sayings_. Explained and
+illustrated from the rich and interesting folk-lore of the Valley. By
+the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles. Bombay: 1885.
+
+[3] This work was composed A.H. 776 (A.D. 1374-5), as the anonymous
+author takes care to inform us in his opening verses.
+
+[4] A still older form of the story occurs in the _Pancha Tantra_
+(Five Sections), a Sanskrit version of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai,
+in which a gluttonous ram is in the habit of going to the king's kitchen
+and devouring all food within his reach. One of the cooks beat him with
+a burning log of wood, and the ram rushed off with his blazing fleece
+and set the horses' stables on fire, and so forth. The story is most
+probably of Buddhist extraction.
+
+[5]  A Sinhalese variant of the exploit of the man of Norfolk and of the
+man of Gotham with the sack of meal. "See _ante_, p. 19." [Transcriber's
+note: this approximates to the text reference for Chapter II
+Footnote 1 in this etext.]
+
+[6]  Mr. C.J.R. le Mesurier in _The Orientalist_ (Kandy, Ceylon:
+1884), pp. 233-4.
+
+[7] _The Orientalist_, 1884, p. 234. A much fuller version, with
+subsequent incidents, is given in the same excellent periodical, pp.
+36-38.
+
+[8] Archie Armstrong was Court jester to James I. of England. It is
+needless, perhaps, to say that he had no hand in this book of facetiæ,
+which is composed for the most part of jests taken out of earlier
+collections.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES _(continued)._
+
+
+Tales of sharpers' tricks upon simpletons do not quite fall within the
+scope of the present series of papers, but there is one, in the
+_Arabian Nights_--not found, however, in our common English version
+of that fascinating story-book--which deserves a place among
+noodle-stories, since it is so diverting, is not very generally known,
+and is probably the original of the early Italian novel of the _Monk
+Transformed_, which is ascribed to Michele Colombo:
+
+A rustic simpleton was walking homeward dragging his ass after him by
+the halter, which a brace of sharpers observing, one said to his fellow,
+"Come with me, and I will take the ass from that man." He then quietly
+advanced to the ass, unloosed it from the halter, and gave the animal to
+his companion, who went off with it, after which he put the halter over
+his own head, and allowed the rustic to drag him for some little
+distance, until he with the ass was fairly out of sight, when he
+suddenly stopped, and the man having tugged at the halter several times
+without effect, looked round, and, amazed to see a human being in place
+of his beast, exclaimed, "Who art thou?" The sharper answered, "I was
+thy ass; but hear my story, for it is wonderful. I had a good and pious
+mother, and one day I came home intoxicated. Grieved to see me in such a
+state, she gently reproved me, but I, instead of being penetrated with
+remorse, beat her with a stick, whereupon she prayed to Allah, and, in
+answer to her supplication, lo! I was transformed into an ass. In that
+shape I have continued until this day, when my mother, as it appears,
+has interceded for my restoration to human form, as before." The
+simpleton, believing every word of this strange story, raised his eyes
+to heaven, saying, "Of a truth there is no power but from Allah! But,
+pray, forgive me for having used thee as I have done." The sharper
+readily granted his forgiveness, and went off to rejoin his companion
+and dispose of the ass; while the simpleton returned home, and showing
+his wife the bridle, told her of the marvellous transformation which had
+occurred. His wife, in hopes of propitiating Heaven, gave alms and
+offered up many prayers to avert evil from them, on account of their
+having used a human being as an ass. At length the simpleton, having
+remained idle at home for some time, went one day to the market to
+purchase another ass, and on entering the place where all the animals
+were fastened, he saw with astonishment his old ass offered for sale.
+Putting his mouth to its ear, he whispered, "Woe to thee, unlucky!
+Doubtless thou hast again been intoxicated; but, by Allah, I will never
+buy thee!"
+
+Another noodle-story, of a different class, in the _Arabian
+Nights_, may be here cited in full from Sir R.F. Burton's
+translation of that delightful work, privately printed for the
+subscribers, and it will serve, moreover, as a fair specimen of the
+admirable manner in which that ripe scholar has represented in English
+the quaint style of his original:
+
+[Quoth one of the learned,] I passed once by a school wherein a
+schoolmaster was teaching children; so I entered, finding him a
+good-looking man, and a well-dressed, when he rose to me and made me sit
+with him. Then I examined him in the Koran, and in syntax and prosody,
+and lexicography; and behold, he was perfect in all required of him; and
+I said to him, "Allah strengthen thy purpose! Thou art indeed versed in
+all that is requisite." Thereafter I frequented him a while, discovering
+daily some new excellence in him, and quoth I to myself, "This is indeed
+a wonder in any dominie; for the wise are agreed upon a lack of wit in
+children's teachers."[1] Then I separated myself from him, and sought
+him and visited him only every few days, till coming to see him one day,
+as of wont, I found the school shut, and made inquiry of his neighbours,
+who replied, "Some one is dead in his house." So I said in my mind, "It
+behoveth me to pay him a visit of condolence," and going to his house,
+knocked at the door, when a slave-girl came out to me and asked, "What
+dost thou want?" and I answered, "I want thy master." She replied, "He
+is sitting alone mourning;" and I rejoined, "Tell him that his friend
+So-and-so seeketh to console him." She went in and told him; and he
+said, "Admit him." So she brought me in to him, and I found him seated
+alone, and his head bound with mourning fillets. So I said to him,
+"Allah requite thee amply! This is a path all must perforce tread, and
+it behoveth thee to take patience," adding, "but who is dead unto thee?"
+He answered, "One who was dearest of the folk to me, and best beloved."
+"Perhaps thy father?" "No." "Thy brother?" "No." "One of thy kindred?"
+"No." Then asked I, "What relation was the dead to thee?" and he
+answered, "My lover." Quoth I to myself, "This is the first proof to
+swear by of his lack of wit." So I said to him, "Assuredly there be
+others than she, and fairer;" and he made answer, "I never saw her that
+I might judge whether or no there be others fairer than she." Quoth I to
+myself, "This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, "And how
+couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied,
+"Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo! there passed
+by a man, singing the following distich:
+
+  "'Umm Amr', thy boons Allah repay!
+  Give back my heart, be't where it may!'"
+
+The schoolmaster continued, "When I heard the man humming these words as
+he passed along the street, I said to myself, 'Except this Umm Amru were
+without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and
+canzon.' So I fell in love with her; but two days after, the same man
+passed, singing the following couplet:
+
+  "'Ass and Umm Amr' went their way,
+  Nor she nor ass returned for aye.'
+
+Thereupon I knew that she was dead, and mourned for her. This was three
+days ago, and I have been mourning ever since." So I left him and fared
+forth, having assured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinder's
+wit[2].
+
+Here, surely, was the very Father of Folly, but what shall we say of
+judges and magistrates being sometimes (represented as) equally witless?
+Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish Kází, that two
+men came before him one of whom complained that the other had almost bit
+his ear off. The accused denied this, and declared that the fellow had
+bit his own ear. After pondering the matter for some time, the judge
+told them to come again two hours later. Then he went into his private
+room, and attempted to bring his ear and his mouth together; but all he
+did was to fall backwards and break his head. Wrapping a cloth round his
+head, he returned to court, and the two men coming in again presently,
+he thus decided the question: "No man can bite his own ear, but in
+trying to do so he may fall down and break his head."
+
+A Sinhalese story, which is also well known in various forms in India,
+furnishes a still more remarkable example of forensic sagacity. It is
+thus related by the able editor of _The Orientalist_, vol. i., p.
+191:
+
+One night some thieves broke into the house of a rich man, and carried
+away all his valuables. The man complained to the justice of the peace,
+who had the robbers captured, and when brought before him, inquired of
+them whether they had anything to say in their defence. "Sir," said
+they, "we are not to blame in this matter; the robbery was entirely due
+to the mason who built the house; for the walls were so badly made, and
+gave way so easily, that we were quite unable to resist the temptation
+of breaking in." Orders were then given to bring the mason to the
+court-house. On his arrival he was informed of the charge brought
+against him. "Ah," said he, "the fault is not mine, but that of the
+coolie, who made mortar badly." When the coolie was brought, he laid the
+blame on the potter, who, he said, had sold him a cracked chattie, in
+which he could not carry sufficient water to mix the mortar properly.
+Then the potter was brought before the judge, and he explained that the
+blame should not be laid upon him, but upon a very pretty woman, who, in
+a beautiful dress, was passing at the time he was making the chattie,
+and had so riveted his attention, that he forgot all about the work.
+When the woman appeared, she protested that the fault was not hers, for
+she would not have been in that neighbourhood at all had the goldsmith
+sent home her earrings at the proper time; the charge, she argued,
+should properly be brought against him. The goldsmith was brought, and
+as he was unable to offer any reasonable excuse, he was condemned to be
+hanged. Those in the court, however, begged the judge to spare the
+goldsmith's life; "for," said they, "he is very sick and ill-favoured,
+and would not make at all a pretty spectacle." "But," said the judge,
+"somebody must be hanged." Then they drew the attention of the court to
+the fact that there was a fat Moorman in a shop opposite, who was a much
+fitter subject for an execution, and asked that he might be hanged in
+the goldsmith's stead. The learned judge, considering that this
+arrangement would be very satisfactory, gave judgment accordingly.
+
+If some of the last-cited stories are not precisely Gothamite
+drolleries, though all are droll enough in their way, there can be no
+doubt whatever that we have a Sinhalese brother to the men of Gotham in
+the following: A villager in Ceylon, whose calf had got its head into a
+pot and could not get it out again, sent for a friend, celebrated for
+his wisdom, to release the poor animal. The sagacious friend, taking in
+the situation at a glance, cut off the calf's head, broke the pot, and
+then delivered the head to the owner of the calf, saying, "What will you
+do when I am dead and gone?"--And we have another Gothamite in the
+Kashmírí who bought as much rice as he thought would suffice for a
+year's food, and finding he had only enough for eleven months, concluded
+it was better to fast the other month right off, which he did
+accordingly; but he died just before the month was completed, leaving
+eleven months' rice in his house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The typical noodle of the Turks, the Khoja Nasru-'d-Dín, is said to have
+been a subject of the independent prince of Karaman, at whose capital,
+Konya, he resided, and he is represented as a contemporary of Timúr
+(Tamerlane), in the middle of the fourteenth century. The pleasantries
+which are ascribed to him are for the most part common to all countries,
+but some are probably of genuine Turkish origin. To cite a few
+specimens: The Khoja's wife said to him one day, "Make me a present of a
+kerchief of red Yemen silk, to put on my head." The Khoja stretched out
+his arms and said, "Like that? Is that large enough?" On her replying in
+the affirmative he ran off to the bazaar, with his arms still stretched
+out, and meeting a man on the road, he bawled to him, "Look where you
+are going, O man, or you will cause me to lose my measure!"
+
+Another day the Khoja's wife washed his caftan and spread it upon a tree
+in the garden of the house. That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he
+sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. "Give
+me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he
+shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into
+the house. Next morning, when he discovered that it was his own caftan
+he had shot at, he exclaimed, "By Allah, had I happened to be in it, I
+should have killed myself!"
+
+The Ettrick Shepherd's well-known story of the two Highlanders and the
+wild boar has its exact parallel in the Turkish jest-book, as follows:
+One day the Khoja went with his friend Sheragh Ahmed to the den of a
+wolf, in order to take the cubs. Said the Khoja to Ahmed, "Do you go in,
+and I will watch without;" and Ahmed went in, to take the cubs in the
+absence of the old wolf. But she came back presently, and had got
+half-way into her den when the Khoja seized hold of her tail. The wolf
+in her struggles cast up a great dust into the eyes of Ahmed, who called
+out to the Khoja, "Hallo! what does all this dust mean?" The Khoja
+replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks, you will soon know what the dust
+means!"
+
+Several of the jests closely resemble "Joe Millers" told of Irishmen,
+such as this: It happened one night, after the Khoja and a guest had
+lain down to sleep, that the taper went out. "O Khoja Effendi," said the
+guest, "the taper is gone out. But there is a taper at your right side.
+Pray bring it and let us light it." Quoth the Khoja, "You must surely be
+a fool to think that I should know my right hand in the dark." And this:
+A thief having stolen a piece of salted cheese from the Khoja, he ran
+immediately and seated himself on the border of a fountain. Said the
+people to him, "O Khoja, what have you come here to look for in such a
+hurry?" The Khoja replied, "The thief will certainly come here to drink
+as soon as he has eaten my salted cheese; I always do so myself."
+
+And here is one of the Gothamite class: One evening the Khoja went to
+the well to draw water, and seeing the moon reflected in the water, he
+exclaimed, "The moon has fallen into the well; I must pull it out." So
+he let down the rope and hook, and the hook became fastened to a stone,
+whereupon he exerted all his strength, and the rope broke, and he fell
+upon his back. Looking into the sky, he saw the moon, and cried out
+joyfully, "Praise be to Allah! I am sorely bruised, but the moon has got
+into its place again."
+
+There is a well-worn jest of an Irishman who, being observed by a friend
+to look exceedingly blank and perplexed, was asked what ailed him. He
+replied that he had had a dream. "Was it a good or a bad dream?"
+"Faith," said he, "it was a little of both; but I'll tell ye. I dreamt
+that I was with the Pope, who was the finest gentleman in the whole
+district; and after we had conversed a while, his Holiness axed me,
+Would I drink? Thinks I to myself, 'Would a duck swim?' So, seeing the
+whisky and the lemons and the sugar on the side-board, I said, I didn't
+mind if I took a drop of punch. 'Cold or hot?' says his Holiness. 'Hot,
+your Holiness,' says I. So on that he steps down to the kitchen for the
+boiling water, but, bedad, before he came back, I woke straight up; and
+now it's distressing me that I didn't take it cold!"
+
+We have somewhat of a parallel to this in a Turkish jest: The Khoja
+dreamt that some one gave him nine pieces of money, but he was not
+content, and said, "Make it ten." Then he awoke and found his hands
+empty. Instantly closing his eyes again, and holding out his hand, he
+said, "I repent; give me the nine pieces[3]."
+
+But the Chinese relate the very counterpart of our Irishman's story. A
+confirmed drunkard dreamt that he had been presented with a cup of
+excellent wine, and set it by the fire to warm[4], that he should better
+enjoy the flavour of it; but just as he was about to drink off the
+delicious draught he awoke. "Fool that I am," he cried, "why was I not
+content to drink it cold?"[5]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chinese seem to have as keen a sense of humour as any other people.
+They tell a story, for instance, of a lady who had been recently
+married, and on the third day saw her husband returning home, so she
+slipped quietly behind him and gave him a hearty kiss. The husband was
+annoyed, and said she offended all propriety. "Pardon! pardon!" said
+she. "I did not know it was you." Thus the excuse may sometimes be worse
+than the offence. There is exquisite humour in the following
+noodle-story: Two brothers were tilling the ground together. The elder,
+having prepared dinner, called his brother, who replied in a loud voice,
+"Wait till I have hidden my spade, and I shall at once be with you."
+When he joined his elder brother, the latter mildly reproached him,
+saying, "When one hides anything, one should keep silence, or at least
+should not cry aloud about it, for it lays one open to be robbed."
+Dinner over, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his
+spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and
+_whispered_ mysteriously in his ear, "My spade is stolen!"--The
+passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed: A man who was
+fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false,
+expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the
+lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor
+Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he
+carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in
+the streets, "Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Taï-Koung."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest
+extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the _Játakas_,
+or Buddhist Birth-stories. Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad
+men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes
+when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to _Játaka_
+44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon
+the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every
+one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and
+injured one another. And nothing more foolish is recorded of the
+Schildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his _Kathá Sarit Ságara_,
+of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees: Being required to furnish
+the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was
+very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself,
+they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and
+having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up
+and planted them again, thinking they would grow.
+
+In illustration of the apothegm that "fools who attend only to the words
+of an order, and do not understand the meaning, cause much detriment,"
+is the story of the servants who kept the rain off the trunks: The camel
+of a merchant gave way under its load on a journey. He said to his
+servants, "I will go and buy another camel to carry the half of this
+camel's load. And you must remain here, and take particular care that if
+it clouds over the rain does not wet the leather of these trunks, which
+are full of clothes." With these words the merchant left the servants by
+the side of the camel and went off, and suddenly a cloud came up and
+began to discharge rain. Then the fools said, "Our master told us to
+take care that the rain did not touch the leather of the trunks;" and
+after they had made this sage reflection they dragged the clothes out of
+the trunks and wrapped them round the leather. The consequence was that
+the rain spoiled the clothes. Then the merchant returned, and in a rage
+said to his servants, "You rascals! Talk of water! Why, the whole stock
+of clothes is spoiled by the rain!" And they answered him, "You told us
+to keep the rain off the leather of the trunks. What fault have we
+committed?" He answered, "I told you that if the leather got wet the
+clothes would be spoiled. I told you so in order to save the clothes,
+not the leather."
+
+The story of the servant who looked after the door is a farther
+illustration of the same maxim. A merchant said to his foolish servant,
+"Take care of the door of my shop; I am going home for a short time."
+After his master was gone, the fool took the shop-door on his shoulder
+and went off to see an actor perform. As he was returning his master met
+him, and gave him a scolding, and he answered, "I have taken care of
+this door, as you told me."
+
+This jest had found its way into Europe three centuries ago. It is
+related of Giufa, the typical Sicilian booby, and probably came to
+England from Italy. This is how it is told in the _Sacke Full of
+Newes_, a jest-book originally printed in the sixteenth century: "In
+the countrey dwelt a Gentlewoman who had a French man dwelling with her,
+and he did ever use to go to Church with her; and upon a time he and his
+mistresse were going to church, and she bad him pull the doore after him
+and follow her to the church; and so he took the doore betweene his
+armes, and lifted it from the hooks, and followed his mistresse with it.
+But when she looked behinde her and saw him bring the doore upon his
+back, 'Why, thou foolish knave,' qd she, 'what wilt thou do with the
+door?' 'Marry, mistresse,' qd he, 'you bad me pull the doore after me.'
+'Why, fool,' qd she, 'I did command thee that thou shouldest make fast
+the doore after thee, and not bring it upon thy back after me.' But
+after this there was much good sport and laughing at his simplicity and
+foolishnesse therein."
+
+In the capacity of a merchant the simpleton does very wonderful things,
+and plumes himself on his sagacity, as we have already seen in the case
+of the Arab and his cow. And here are a brace of similar stories: A
+foolish man once went to the island of Katáha to trade, and among his
+wares was a quantity of fragrant aloes-wood. After he had sold his other
+goods, he could not find any one to take the aloes-wood off his hands,
+for the people who live there are not acquainted with that article of
+commerce. Then seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, he burnt
+his stock of aloes-wood and reduced it to charcoal. He sold it for the
+price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his
+cleverness, and became the laughing-stock of everybody.--Another
+blockhead went to the market to sell cotton, but no one would buy it
+from him, because it was not properly cleaned. In the meanwhile he saw
+in the bazaar a goldsmith selling gold which he had purified by heating
+it, and he saw it taken by a customer. Seeing that, he threw his cotton
+into the fire in order to purify it, and it was all burned to ashes.
+
+ There must be few who have not heard of the Irishman who was hired by a
+Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship. As the vessel was about to
+sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, "Captain, I lost your shovel
+overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern,
+just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back."--A
+similar story is told of an Indian simpleton. He was sailing in a ship
+when he let a silver cup fall from his hand into the water. Having taken
+notes of the spot by observing the eddies and other signs in the water,
+he said to himself, "I will bring it up from the bottom when I return."
+As he was recrossing the sea, he saw the eddies and other signs, and
+thinking he recognised the spot, he plunged into the water again and
+again, to recover his cup, but he only got well laughed at for his
+pains.
+
+We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that "distress is sure to
+come from being in the company of fools" in the following, from the
+Canarese story-book entitled _Kathé Manjari_: A foolish fellow
+travelled with a shopkeeper. When it became dark, the fool lay down in
+the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree.
+Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet
+against the fool's legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions,
+"What is this? Is it a piece of wood?" The fool was angry, and said, "Go
+away! go away! Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the
+loins of a plank in your house?" The thieves then seized him, and took
+away his annas. As they were moving off, they asked if the money was
+good or bad, to which the noodle replied, "Ha! ha! is it of my money you
+speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad? Look--
+there is a shopkeeper in that tree," pointing with his finger--"show it
+to him." Then the thieves went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of
+two hundred pagodas.
+
+In our next story, of the villagers who ate the buffalo, is exemplified
+the fact that "fools, in the conceit of their folly, while they deny
+what need not be denied, reveal what it is their interest to suppress,
+in order to get themselves believed." Some villagers took a buffalo
+belonging to a certain man, and killed it in an enclosure outside the
+village, under a banyan tree, and dividing the flesh, ate it up. The
+owner of the buffalo went and complained to the king, and he had the
+villagers who had eaten the animal brought before him. The proprietor of
+the buffalo said before the king, in their presence, "These men took my
+buffalo under a banyan tree near the tank, and killed and ate it before
+my eyes," whereupon an old fool among the villagers said, "There is no
+tank or banyan tree in our village. He says what is not true; where did
+we kill his buffalo or eat it?" When the man heard this, he replied,
+"What! are there not a banyan tree and a tank on the east side of the
+village? Moreover, you ate my buffalo on the eighth day of the lunar
+month." The old fool then said, "There is no east side or eighth day in
+our village." On hearing this, the king laughed, and said, to encourage
+the fool, "You are a truthful person; you never say anything false; so
+tell me the truth: did you eat that buffalo, or did you not?" The old
+fool answered, "I was born three years after my father died, and he
+taught me skill in speaking. So I never say what is untrue, my king. It
+is true that we ate his buffalo, but all the rest that he alleges is
+false." When the king heard this, he and his courtiers could not
+restrain their laughter; but he restored the price of the buffalo to the
+man, and fined the villagers.
+
+But sometimes even kings have been arrant noodles, and their credulity
+quite as amusing--or amazing--as that of their subjects. Once on a time
+there was a king who had a handsome daughter, and he summoned his
+physicians, and said to them, "Make some preparation of salutary drugs,
+which will cause my daughter to grow up quickly, so that she may be
+married to a good husband." The physicians, wishing to get a living out
+of this royal fool, replied, "There is a medicine which will do this,
+but it can only be procured in a distant country; and while we are
+sending for it, we must shut up your daughter in concealment, for this
+is the treatment laid down in such cases." The king having consented,
+they placed his daughter in concealment for several years, pretending
+that they were engaged in procuring the medicine; and when she was grown
+up, they presented her to the king, saying that she had been made to
+grow by the preparation; so the king was highly pleased, and gave them
+much wealth.
+
+Between an Indian rájá and an Indian dhobie, or washerman, there is the
+greatest possible difference socially, but individually--when both are
+noodles--there may be sometimes very little to choose; indeed, of the
+two, all things considered, the difference, if any, is perhaps in favour
+of the humble cleanser of body-clothes. A favourite story in various
+parts of India, near akin to that last cited, is of a poor washerman and
+his young ass. This simpleton one day, passing a school kept by a
+mullah, or Muhammedan doctor of laws, heard him scolding his pupils,
+exclaiming that they were still asses, although he had done so much to
+make them men. The washerman thought that here was a rare chance, for he
+happened to have the foal of the ass that carried his bundles of
+clothes, which, since he had no child, he should get the learned mullah
+to change into a boy. Thus thinking, he goes next day to the mullah, and
+asks him to admit his foal into his school, in order that it should be
+changed into the human form and nature. The preceptor, seeing the poor
+fellow's simplicity, answered that the task was very laborious, and he
+must have a fee of a hundred rupís. So the washerman went home, and soon
+returned leading his foal, which, with the money, he handed over to the
+teacher, who told him to come again on such a day and hour, when he
+should find that the change he desired had been effected. But the
+washerman was so impatient that he went to the teacher several times
+before the day appointed, and was informed that the foal was beginning
+to learn manners, that its ears were already become very much shorter,
+and, in short, that it was making satisfactory progress.
+
+It happened, when the day came on which he was to receive his young ass
+transformed into a fine, well-educated boy, the simpleton was kept busy
+with his customers' clothes, but on the day following he found time to
+go to the teacher, who told him it was most unfortunate he had not come
+at the appointed hour, since the youth had quitted the school yesterday,
+refusing to submit any longer to authority; but the teacher had just
+learned that he had been made kází (or judge) in Cawnpore. At first the
+washerman was disposed to be angry, but reflecting that, after all, the
+business was better even than he anticipated, he thanked the preceptor
+for all his care and trouble, and returned home. Having informed his
+wife of his good luck, they resolved to visit their quondam young foal,
+and get him to make them some allowance out of his now ample means. So,
+shutting up their house, they travelled to Cawnpore, which they reached
+in safety. Being directed to the kází's court, the washerman, leaving
+his wife outside, entered, and discovered the kází seated in great
+dignity, and before him were the pleaders, litigants, and officers of
+the court. He had brought a bridle in one hand and a wisp of hay in the
+other; but being unable, on account of the crowd, to approach the kází,
+he got tired of waiting, so, holding up the bridle and the hay, he cried
+out, "Khoor! khoor! khoor!" as he used to do in calling his donkeys,
+thinking this would induce the kází to come to him. But, instead of
+this, he was seized by the kází's order and locked up for creating a
+disturbance.
+
+When the business of the court was over, the kází, pitying the supposed
+madman, sent for him to learn the reason of his strange behaviour, and
+in answer to his inquiries the simpleton said, "You don't seem to know
+me, sir, nor recognise this bridle, which has been in your mouth so
+often. You appear to forget that you are the foal of one of my asses,
+that I got changed into a man, for the fee of a hundred rupis, by a
+learned mullah who transforms asses into educated men. You forget what
+you were, and, I suppose, will be as little submissive to me as you were
+to the mullah when you ran away from him." All present were convulsed
+with laughter: such a "case" was never heard of before. But the kází,
+seeing how the mullah had taken advantage of the poor fellow's
+simplicity, gave him a present of a hundred rupis, besides sufficient
+for the expenses of his journey home, and so dismissed him.
+
+ A party of rogues once found as great a blockhead in a rich Indian
+herdsman, to whom they said, "We have asked the daughter of a wealthy
+inhabitant of the town in marriage for you, and her father has promised
+to give her." He was much pleased to hear this, and gave them an ample
+reward for their trouble. After a few days they came again and told him
+that his marriage had taken place. Again he gave them rich presents for
+their good news. Some more days having passed, they said to him, "A son
+has been born to you," at which he was in ecstacies and gave them all
+his remaining wealth; but the next day, when he began to lament, saying,
+"I am longing to see my son," the people laughed at him on account of
+his having been cheated by the rogues, as if he had acquired the
+stupidity of cattle from having so much to do with them.
+
+It is not generally known that the incident which forms the subject of
+the droll Scotch song "The Barring of the Door," which also occurs in
+the _Nights_ of Straparola, is of Eastern origin. In an Arabian
+tale, a blockhead, having married his pretty cousin, gave the customary
+feast to their relations and friends. When the festivities were over, he
+conducted his guests to the door, and from absence of mind neglected to
+shut it before returning to his wife. "Dear cousin," said his wife to
+him when they were alone, "go and shut the street door." "It would be
+strange indeed," he replied, "if I did such a thing. Am I just made a
+bridegroom, clothed in silk, wearing a shawl and a dagger set with
+diamonds, and am I to go and shut the door? Why, my dear, you are crazy.
+Go and shut it yourself." "Oh, indeed!" exclaimed the wife. "Am I,
+young, robed in a dress, with lace and precious stones--am I to go and
+shut the street door? No, indeed! It is you who are become crazy, and
+not I. Come, let us make a bargain," she continued; "and let the first
+who speaks go and fasten the door." "Agreed," said the husband, and
+immediately he became mute, and the wife too was silent, while they both
+sat down, dressed as they were in their nuptial attire, looking at each
+other and seated on opposite sofas. Thus they remained for two hours.
+Some thieves happened to pass by, and seeing the door open, entered and
+laid hold of whatever came to their hands. The silent couple heard
+footsteps in the house, but opened not their mouths. The thieves came
+into the room and saw them seated motionless and apparently indifferent
+to all that might take place. They continued their pillage, therefore,
+collecting together everything valuable, and even dragging away the
+carpets from beneath them; they laid hands on the noodle and his wife,
+taking from their persons every article of jewellery, while they, in
+fear of losing the wager, said not a word. Having thus cleared the
+house, the thieves departed quietly, but the pair continued to sit,
+uttering not a syllable. Towards morning a police officer came past on
+his tour of inspection, and seeing the door open, walked in. After
+searching all the rooms and finding no person, he entered their
+apartment, and inquired the meaning of what he saw. Neither of them
+would condescend to reply. The officer became angry, and ordered their
+heads to be cut off. The executioner's sword was about to perform its
+office, when the wife cried out, "Sir, he is my husband. Do not kill
+him!" "Oh, oh," exclaimed the husband, overjoyed and clapping his hands,
+"you have lost the wager; go and shut the door." He then explained the
+whole affair to the police officer, who shrugged his shoulders and went
+away.[6]
+
+A party of noodles are substituted for the husband and wife in a Turkish
+version of the tale, in the _History of the Forty Vazirs. _ Some
+bang-eaters,[7] while out walking, found a sequin. They said, "Let us go
+to a cook, and buy food and eat." So they went and entered a cook's shop
+and said, "Master, give us a sequin's worth of food." The cook prepared
+all kinds of food, and loaded a porter with it; and the bang-eaters took
+him without the city, where there was a ruined tomb, which they entered
+and sat down in, and the porter deposited the food and went away. The
+bang-eaters began to partake of the food, when suddenly one of them
+said, "The door is open; do one of you shut it, else some other
+bang-eaters will come in and annoy us: even though they be friends, they
+will do the deeds of foes." One of them replied, "Go thou and shut the
+door," and they fell a-quarrelling. At length one said, "Come, let us
+agree that whichever of us speaks or laughs shall rise and fasten the
+door." They all agreed to this proposal, and left the food and sat quite
+still. Suddenly a great number of dogs came in; not one of the
+bang-eaters stirred or spoke, for if one spoke he would have to rise and
+shut the door, so they spoke not. The dogs made an end of the food, and
+ate it all up. Just then another dog leapt in from without, but no food
+remained. Now one of the bang-eaters had partaken of everything, and
+some of the food remained about his mouth and on his beard. That newly
+come dog licked up the particles of food that were on the bang-eater's
+breast, and while he was licking up those about his mouth, he took his
+lip for a piece of meat and bit it. The bang-eater did not stir, for he
+said within himself, "They will tell me to shut the door." But to ease
+his soul he cried, "Ough!" inwardly cursing the dog. When the other
+bang-eaters heard him make that noise, they said, "Rise, fasten the
+door." He replied, "After loss, attention! Now that the food is gone,
+and my lip is wounded, what is the use of shutting that door?" and
+crying, "Woe! alas!" they each went in a different direction.[8]
+
+A similar story is known in Kashmir: Five friends chanced to meet, and
+all having leisure, they decided to go to the bazaar and purchase a
+sheep's head, and have a great feast in the house of one of the party,
+each of whom subscribed four annas. The head was bought, but while they
+were returning to the house it was remembered that there was not any
+butter. On this one of the five proposed that the first of them that
+should break silence by speaking should go for the butter. Now it was no
+light matter to have to retrace one's steps back to the butter-shop, as
+the way was long and the day was very hot. So they all five kept strict
+silence. Pots were cleaned, the fire was prepared, and the head laid
+thereon. Now and then one would cough, and another would groan, but
+never a tongue uttered a word, though the fire was fast going out, and
+the head was getting burnt, owing to there being no fat or butter
+wherewith to grease the pot. Thus matters were when a policeman passed
+by, and, attracted by the smell of cooking, looked in at the window, and
+saw these five men perfectly silent and sitting around a burnt sheep's
+head. Not knowing the arrangement, he supposed that these men were
+either mad or were thieves, and so he inquired how they came there, and
+how they obtained the head. Not a word was uttered in reply. "Why are
+you squatting there in that stupid fashion?" shouted the policeman.
+Still no reply. Then the policeman, full of rage that these wretched men
+should thus mock at his authority, took them all off straight to the
+police inspectors office. On arrival the inspector asked them the reason
+of their strange behaviour, but he also got no reply. This rather tried
+the patience and temper of the man of authority, who was generally
+feared, and flattered, and bribed. So he ordered one of the five to be
+immediately flogged. The poor fool bore it bravely, and uttered never a
+sound; but when the blows repeatedly fell on the same wounded parts, he
+could endure no longer, and cried out, "Oh! oh! Why do you beat me?
+Enough, enough! Is it not enough that the sheep's head has been
+spoiled?"
+
+His four associates now cried out, "Go to the bazaar and fetch the
+butter."[9]
+
+There is quite as droll a version current among the people of Ceylon, to
+the following effect: A gentleman once had in his employment twenty-five
+idiots. In the old times it was customary with Sinhalese high families
+not to allow their servants to eat from plates, but every day they were
+supplied with plantain leaves, from which they took their food. After
+eating, they were accustomed to shape the leaf into the form of a cup
+and drink out of it. Now in this gentleman's house the duty of providing
+the leaves devolved upon the twenty-five idiots, who were scarcely fit
+for any other work. One day, when they had gone into the garden to cut
+the leaves, they spoke among themselves and said, "Why should we, every
+one of us, trouble ourselves to fetch plantain leaves, when one only
+could very easily do it? Let us therefore lie down on the ground and
+sleep like dead men, and let him who first utters a sound or opens his
+eyes undertake the work." It was no sooner said than done. The men lay
+in a heap like so many logs. At breakfast-time that day the hungry
+servants went to the kitchen for their rice, only to be disappointed. No
+leaves were forthcoming on which to distribute the food, and a complaint
+was made to the master that the twenty-five idiots had not returned to
+the house since they went out in the morning. Search was at once made,
+and they were found fast asleep in the garden. After vainly endeavouring
+to rouse them, the master concluded that they were dead, and ordered his
+servants to dig a deep hole and bury them. A grave was then dug, and the
+idiots were, one by one, thrown into it, but still there was no noise or
+motion on their part. At length, when they were all put into the grave,
+and were being covered up, a tool employed by one of the servants hit
+sharply by accident against the leg of one of the idiots, who then
+involuntarily moaned. Thereupon all the others exclaimed, "You were the
+first to utter a sound; therefore from henceforth you must take upon
+yourself the duty of providing the plantain leaves."[10]
+
+It has already been remarked that a literary Italian version of the
+Silent Couple is found in the _Nights_ of Straparola, but there are
+other variants orally current among the common people in different parts
+of Italy. This is one from Venice: There were once a husband and a wife.
+The former said one day to the latter, "Let us have some fritters." She
+replied, "What shall we do for a frying-pan?" "Go and borrow one from my
+godmother." "You go and get it; it is only a little way off." "Go
+yourself, and I will take it back when we are done with it." So she went
+and borrowed the pan, and when she returned said to her husband, "Here
+is the pan, but you must carry it back." So they cooked the fritters,
+and after they had eaten, the husband said, "Now let us go to work, both
+of us, and the one who speaks first shall carry back the pan." Then she
+began to spin, and he to draw his thread--for he was a shoemaker--and
+all the time keeping silence, except that when he drew his thread he
+said, "Leulerò! leulerò!" and she, spinning, answered, "Picicì! picicì!
+piciciò!" And they said not another word. Now there happened to pass
+that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any
+shoemaker in that street. She said there was one near by, and took him
+to the house. The, soldier asked the shoemaker to come and cut his horse
+a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but "Leulerò!
+leulerò!" and his wife "Picicì! picicì! piciciò!" Then the soldier said,
+"Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." The
+shoemaker only answered, "Leulerò! leulerò!" and his wife "Picicì!
+picicì! piciciò!" Then the soldier began to grow angry, and seized his
+sword, and said to the shoemaker, "Either come and cut my horse a girth,
+or I will cut your head off." But to no purpose. The shoemaker did not
+wish to be the first one to speak, and only replied, "Leulerò! leulerò!"
+and his wife "Picicì! picicì! piciciò!" Then the soldier got mad in good
+earnest, seized the shoemaker's head, and was going to cut it off. When
+his wile saw that, she cried out, "Ah, don't, for mercy's sake!" "Good!"
+exclaimed her husband, "good! Now you go and carry the pan back to my
+godmother, and I will go and cut the horse's girth."
+
+In a Sicilian version the man and wife fry some fish, and then set about
+their respective work--shoemaking and spinning--and the one who finishes
+first the piece of work begun is to eat the fish. While they are singing
+and whistling at their work, a friend comes along, who knocks at the
+door, but receives no answer. Then he enters and speaks to them, but
+still no reply. Finally, in anger, he sits down at the table, and eats
+up all the fish himself.[11]
+
+Thus, it will be observed, the droll incident which forms the subject of
+the old Scotch song of "The Barring of the Door" is of world-wide
+celebrity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gothamite stories appear to have been familiar throughout Europe during
+the later Middle Ages, if we may judge from a chapter of the _Gesta
+Romanorum_ in which the monkish compiler has curiously "moralised"
+the actions of three noodles:
+
+We read in the "Lives of the Fathers" that an angel showed to a certain
+holy man three men labouring under a triple fatuity. The first made a
+faggot of wood, and because it was too heavy for him to carry, he added
+to it more wood, hoping by such means to make it light.  The second drew
+water with great labour from a very deep well with a sieve, which he
+incessantly filled.  The third carried a beam in his chariot, and,
+wishing to enter his house, whereof the gate was so narrow and low that
+it would not admit him, he violently whipped his horse until they both
+fell together into a deep well. Having shown this to the holy man, the
+angel said, "What think you of these three men?" "That they are fools,"
+answered he. "Understand, however," returned the angel, "that they
+represent the sinners of this world. The first describes that kind of
+men who from day to day do add new sins to the old, because they cannot
+bear the weight of those which they already have. The second man
+represents those who do good, but do it sinfully, and therefore it is of
+no benefit. And the third person is he who would enter the kingdom of
+heaven with all his world of vanities, but is cast down into hell."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite class to
+conclude the present section. In Málava there were two Bráhman brothers,
+and the wealth inherited from their father was left jointly between
+them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one
+having too little and one having too much, and they made a teacher
+learned in the Vedas arbitrator, and he said to them, "You must divide
+everything your father left into two halves, so that you may not quarrel
+about the inequality of the division." When the two fools heard this,
+they divided every single thing into two equal parts--house, beds, in
+fact, all their property, including their cattle. Henry Stephens (Henri
+Estienne), in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[12] relates
+some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his shins
+before the fire, and not having wit enough to go back from it, sent for
+masons to remove the chimney; of the fool who ate the doctor's
+prescription, because he was told to "take it;" of another wittol who,
+having seen one spit upon iron to try whether it was hot, did likewise
+with his porridge; and, best of all, he tells of a fellow who was hit on
+the back with a stone as he rode upon his mule, and cursed the animal
+for kicking him. This last exquisite jest has its analogue in that of
+the Irishman who was riding on an ass one fine day, when the beast, by
+kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet
+entangled in the stirrup, whereupon the rider dismounted, saying,
+"Faith, if you're going to get up, it's time I was getting down."
+
+The poet Ovid alludes to the story of Ino persuading the women of the
+country to roast the wheat before it was sown, which may have come to
+India through the Greeks, since we are told in the _Kathá Sarit
+Ságara_ of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds,
+and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quantity of roasted
+seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in
+Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, and is probably of Buddhistic
+origin. And an analogous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens
+hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to
+have been entertained from ancient times, and to be still prevalent in
+the East; the so-called jests of Hierokles are all at the expense of
+pedants; and the Turkish typical noodle is Khoja _(i.e.,_ Teacher)
+Nasru-'d-Dín, some of whose "witless devices" shall be cited presently.
+
+[2] _Elf Laylawa Layla_, or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a
+Night. Translated, with Introduction, Notes on the Manners and Customs
+of Moslem Men, and a Terminal Essay on the History of _The Nights_,
+by R.F. Burton. Vol. v.
+
+[3] The Khoja, however, was not such a fool as we might conclude from
+the foregoing examples of his sayings and doings; for, being asked one
+day what musical instrument he liked best, he answered, "I am very fond
+of the music of plates and saucepans."
+
+[4] In China wine is almost invariably taken hot, according to Davis, in
+his work on the Chinese.
+
+[5] This and the following specimens of Chinese stories of simpletons
+are from "Contes et Bon Mots extraits d'un livre chinois intitule
+_Siao li Siao_, traduit par M. Stanislas Julien," (_Journal
+Asiatique_, tom. iv., 1824).
+
+[6] In another Arabian version, the man desires his wife to moisten some
+stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an
+altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and
+moisten the bread.  A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds
+the couple dumb; he kisses the wife, but the man says nothing; he gives
+the man a blow, but still he says nothing; he has the man taken before
+the kází, but even yet he says nothing; the kází orders him to be
+hanged, and he is led off to execution, when the wife rushes up and
+cries out, "Oh, save my poor husband!"  "You wretch," says the man, "go
+home and moisten the bread!"
+
+[7]  Bang is a preparation of hemp and coarse opium.
+
+[8] From Mr. E.J.W. Gibb's translation of the _Forty Vazirs_
+(London: 1886).
+
+[9] Knowles' _Dictionary of Kashmírí Proverbs and Sayings_, pp.
+197-8. The article bought by the five men is called a _hir_, which
+Mr. Knowles says "is the head of any animal used for food," and a
+_sheep's_ head were surely fitting food for such noodles. Mr.
+Knowles makes it appear that the whole affair of keeping silence was a
+mere jest, but we have before seen that it is decidedly meant for a
+noodle-story.
+
+[10] _The Orientalist_, 1884, p. 136.
+
+[11] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 284-5.
+
+[12] A separate work from the _Apologie pour Herodote_ Such was the
+exasperation of the French clerics at the bitter truths set forth in it,
+that the author had to flee the country. An English translation,
+entitled "_A World of Wonders;_ or, an introduction to a Treatise
+tovching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a
+Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,'" etc., was
+published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio.
+The _Apologie pour Herodote_ was printed at the Hague.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SILLY SON.
+
+
+Among the favourite jests of all peoples, from Iceland to Japan, from
+India to England, are the droll adventures and mishaps of the silly son,
+who contrives to muddle everything he is set to do. In vain does his
+poor mother try to direct him in "the way he should go": she gets him a
+wife, as a last resource; but a fool he is still, and a fool he will
+always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny chap-books
+and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how
+
+  Simple Simon went a-fishing
+    For to catch a whale,
+  But all the water he had got
+    Was in his mother's pail?
+
+an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still
+more celebrated prototypes:
+
+  Three men of Gotham
+  Went to sea in a bowl;
+  If the bowl had been stronger,
+  My tale had been longer.
+
+Then there is the prose history of _Simple Simon's Misfortunes; or,
+his Wife Marjory's Outrageous Cruelty_, which tells (1) of Simon's
+wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his
+roast-meat clothes (_i.e.,_ Sunday clothes) the very next morning
+after he was married; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a
+basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him
+look like a red herring; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was
+going to the mill to have it ground; (4) how Simon went to market with a
+basket of eggs, but broke them by the way: also how he was put into the
+stocks; (5) how Simon's wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money
+for the eggs; (6) how Simon lost his wife's pail and burnt the bottom of
+her kettle; (7) how Simon's wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but
+going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river: also how a
+ragman ran away with his clothes. No wonder if, after this crowning
+misfortune, poor Simon "drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as
+being weary of his life"!
+
+Again, we have _The Unfortunate Son; or, a Kind Wife is worth Gold,
+being full of Mirth and Pastime_, which commences thus:
+
+  There was a man but one son had,
+    And he was all his joy;
+  But still his fortune was but bad,
+    Though he was a pretty boy.
+
+  His father sent him forth one day
+    To feed a flock of sheep,
+  And half of them were stole away
+    While he lay down asleep!
+
+  Next day he went with one Tom Goff
+    To reap as he was seen,
+  When he did cut his fingers off,
+    The sickle was so keen!
+
+Another of the chap-book histories of noodles is that of _Simple John
+and his Twelve Misfortunes_, an imitation of _Simple Simon_; it
+was still popular amongst the rustics of Scotland fifty years ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The adventures of Silly Matt, the Norwegian counterpart of our typical
+English booby, as related in Asbjornson's collection of Norse
+folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular
+fictions:
+
+The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge
+across the river and take toll of every one who wished to go over it; so
+he sets to work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at
+one end--"at the receipt of custom." Three men come up with loads of
+hay, and Matt demands toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay.
+Next comes a pedlar, with all sorts of small wares in his pack, and Matt
+gets from him two needles. On his return home his mother asks him what
+he has got that day. "Hay and needles," says Matt. Well! and what had he
+done with the hay? "I put some of it in my mouth," quoth he, "and as it
+tasted like grass, I threw it into the river." She says he ought to have
+spread it on the byre-floor. "Very good," replies the dutiful Matt;
+"I'll remember that next time." And what had he done with the needles?
+He stuck them into the hay. "Ah," says the mother, "you should rather
+have stuck them in and out of your cap, and brought them home to me."
+Well! well! Matt will not forget to do so next time. The following day a
+man comes to the bridge with a sack of meal and gives Matt a pound of
+it; then comes a smith, who gives him a gimlet: the meal he spread on
+the byre-floor, and the gimlet he stuck in and out of his cap. His
+mother tells him he should have come home for a bucket to hold the meal,
+and the gimlet he should have put up his sleeve. Very good! Matt will
+not forget next time. Another day some men come to the bridge with kegs
+of brandy, of which Matt gets a pint, and pours it into his sleeve; next
+comes a man driving some goats and their young ones, and gives Matt a
+kid, which he treads down into a bucket. His mother says he should have
+led the goat home with a cord round its neck, and put the brandy in a
+pail. Next day he gets a pat of butter and drags it home with a string.
+After this his mother despairs of his improvement, till it occurs to her
+that he might not be such a noodle if he had a wife. So she bids him go
+and see whether he cannot find some lass who will take him for a
+husband. Should he meet any folk on his way, he ought to say to them,
+"God's peace!" Matt accordingly sets off in quest of a wife, and meets a
+she-wolf and her seven cubs. "God's peace!" says Matt, and then returns
+home. When his mother learns of this, she tells him he should have
+cried, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" Next day he goes off again, and
+meeting a bridal party, he cries, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" and goes
+back to his mother and acquaints her of this fresh adventure. "O you
+great silly!" says she; "you should have said, 'Ride happily, bride and
+bridegroom!'" Once more Matt sets out to seek a wife, and seeing on the
+road a bear taking a ride on a horse, he exclaims joyfully, "Ride
+happily, bride and bridegroom!" and then returns home. His mother, on
+hearing of this new piece of folly, tells him he should have cried, "To
+the devil with you!" Again he sets out, and meeting a funeral
+procession, he roars, "To the devil with you!" His mother says he should
+have cried, "May your poor soul have mercy!" and sends him off for the
+fifth time to look for a lass. On the road he sees some gipsies busy
+skinning a dead dog, upon which he piously exclaims, "May your poor soul
+have mercy!" His mother now goes herself to get him a wife, finds a lass
+that is willing to marry him, and invites her to dinner. She privately
+tells Matt how he should comport himself in the presence of his
+sweetheart; he should cast an eye at her now and then. Matt understands
+her instruction most literally: stealing into the sheepfold, he plucks
+out the eyes of all the sheep and goats, and puts them in his pocket.
+When he is seated beside his sweetheart, he casts a "sheep's eye" at
+her, which hits her on the nose.[1]
+
+This last incident, as we have seen, occurs in the _Tales of the Men
+of Gotham ("ante_, p. 41" in original. This section is to be found
+immediately after the reference to Chapter II, Footnote 9 in this
+e-text), and it is also found in a Venetian story (Bernoni,
+_Fiabe_, No. 11) entitled "The Fool," of which the following is the
+first part:
+
+Once upon a time there was a mother who had a son with little brains.
+One morning she said, "We must get up early, for we have to make bread."
+So they both rose early, and began to make bread. The mother made the
+loaves, but took no pains to make them the same size. Her son said to
+her finally, "How small you have made this loaf, mother." "Oh," said
+she, "it does not matter whether they are big or little, for the proverb
+says, 'Large and small, all must go to mass.'" "Good! good!" said her
+son. When the bread was made, instead of taking it to the baker's, the
+son took it to the church, for it was the hour for mass, saying, "My
+mother said that, 'large and small, all must go to mass.'" So he threw
+the loaves down in the middle of the church. Then he went home to his
+mother, and said, "I have done what you told me to do," "Good! Did you
+take the bread to the baker's?" "O mother, if you had seen how they all
+looked at me!" "You might also have cast an eye on them in return," said
+his mother. "Wait; wait. I will cast an eye at them too," he exclaimed,
+and went to the stable and cut out the eyes of all the animals, and
+putting them in a handkerchief, went to the church, and when any man or
+woman looked at him, he threw an eye at them.[2]
+
+Silly Matt has a brother in Russia, according to M. Leger's _Contes
+Populaires Slaves_, published at Paris in 1882: An old man and his
+wife had a son, who was about as great a noodle as could be. One day his
+mother said to him, "My son, thou shouldst go about among people, to get
+thyself sharpened and rubbed down a little." "Yes, mother," says he;
+"I'm off this moment." So he went to the village, and saw two men
+threshing pease. He ran up to them, and rubbed himself now on one and
+then on the other. "No nonsense!" cried the men. "Get away." But he
+continued to rub himself on them, till at last they would stand it no
+longer, and beat him with their flails so lustily that he could hardly
+crawl home. "What art thou crying about, child?" asked his mother. He
+related his misfortune. "Ah, my child," said she, "how silly thou art!
+Thou shouldst have said to them, 'God aid you, good men! Do you wish me
+to help you to thresh?' and then they would have given thee some pease
+for thy trouble, and we should have had them to cook and eat." On
+another occasion the noodle again went through the village, and met some
+people carrying a dead man. "May God aid you, good men!" he exclaimed.
+"Do you wish me to help you to thresh?" But he got himself well thrashed
+once more for this ill-timed speech. When he reached home, he howled,
+"They've felled me to the ground, beaten me, and plucked my beard and
+hair!" and told of his new mishap. "Ah, noodle!" said his mother, "thou
+shouldst have said, 'God give peace to his soul!' Thou shouldst have
+taken off thy bonnet, wept, and fallen upon thy knees. They would then
+have given thee meat and drink." Again he went to the village, and met a
+marriage procession. So he took off his bonnet, and cried with all his
+might, "God grant peace to his soul!" and then burst into tears. "What
+brute is this?" said the wedding company. "We laugh and amuse ourselves,
+and he laments as if he were at a funeral." So they leaped out of the
+carriages, and beat him soundly on the ribs. Home he returned, crying,
+"They've beaten me, thrashed me, and torn my beard and hair!" and
+related what had happened. "My son," said his mother, "thou shouldst
+have leaped and danced with them." The next time he went to the village
+he took his bagpipe under his arm. At the end of the street a cart-shed
+was on fire. The noodle ran to the spot, and began to play on his
+bagpipe and to dance and caper about, for which he was abused as before.
+Going back to his mother in tears, he told her how he had fared. "My
+son," said she, "thou shouldst have carried water and thrown it on the
+fire, like the other folks." Three days later, when his ribs were well
+again, the noodle went through the village once more, and seeing a man
+roasting a little pig, he seized a vessel of water, ran up with it, and
+threw the water on the fire. This time also he was beaten, and when he
+got home, and told his mother of his ill-luck, she resolved never again
+to allow him to go abroad; so he remains by the fireside, as great a
+fool as ever.
+
+ This species of noodle is also known in Japan. He is the hero of a
+farce entitled _Hone Kaha_, or Ribs and Skin, which has been done
+into English by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in his _Classical Poetry
+of the Japanese_. The rector of a Buddhist temple tells his curate
+that he feels he is now getting too old for the duties of his office,
+and means to resign the benefice in his favour. Before retiring to his
+private chamber, he desires the curate to let him know if any persons
+visit the temple, and bids him, should he be in want of information
+regarding any matter, to come to him. A parishioner calls to borrow an
+umbrella. The curate lends him a new one, and then goes to the rector
+and informs him of this visitor. "You have done wrong," says the rector.
+"You ought to have said that you should have been happy to comply with
+such a small request, but, unfortunately, the rector was walking out
+with it the other day, when, at a place where four roads meet, a sudden
+gust of wind blew the skin to one side and the ribs to another; we have
+tied the ribs and skin together in the middle, and hung it from the
+ceiling. Something like that," adds the rector, "something with an air
+of truth about it, is what you should have said." Next comes another
+parishioner, who wishes to borrow a horse. The curate replies with great
+politeness, "The request with which you honour me is a mere trifle, but
+the rector took it out with him a few days since, and coming to the
+junction of four cross roads, a gust of wind blew the ribs to one side
+and the skin to another, and we have tied them together, and hung them
+from the ceiling; so I fear it would not suit your purpose." "It is a
+horse I want," said the man. "Precisely--a horse: I am aware of it,"
+quoth the curate, and the man went off, not a little perplexed, after
+which the curate reports this new affair to the rector, who says it was
+to an umbrella, not to a horse, that such a story was applicable. Should
+any one come again to borrow a horse, he ought to say, "I much regret
+that I cannot comply with your request. The fact is, we lately turned
+him out to grass, and becoming frolicsome, he dislocated his thigh, and
+is now lying, covered with straw, in a corner of the stable." "Something
+like that," adds the rector, "something with an air of truth about it,
+is what you should say." A third parishioner comes to invite the rector
+and the curate to a feast at his house. "For myself," says the curate,
+"I promise to come; but I fear it will not be convenient for the rector
+to accompany me." "I presume then," says the man, "that he has some
+particular business on hand?" "No, not any particular business," answers
+the curate; "but the truth is, we lately turned him out to grass, and
+becoming frisky, he dislocated his thigh, and now lies in a corner of
+the stable, covered with straw." "I spoke of the rector," says the
+parishioner. "Yes, of the rector. I quite understand," responds the
+curate, very complaisantly, upon which the man goes away, not knowing
+what to make of such a strange account of the rector's condition. This
+last affair puts the rector into a fury, and he cuffs his intended
+successor, exclaiming, "When was I ever frisky, I should like to know?"
+
+ As great a jolterhead as any of the foregoing was the hero of a story
+in Cazotte's "Continuation" of the _Arabian Nights_, entitled
+"L'Imbécille; ou, L'Histoire de Xailoun,"[3] This noodle's wife said to
+him one day, "Go and buy some pease, and don't forget that it is pease
+you are to buy; continually repeat 'Pease!' till you reach the
+market-place." So he went off, with "Pease! pease!" always in his mouth.
+He passed the corner of a street where a merchant who had pearls for
+sale was proclaiming his wares in a loud voice, saying, "In the name of
+the Prophet, pearls!" Xailoun's attention was at once attracted by the
+display of pearls, and at the same time he was occupied in retaining the
+lesson his wife had taught him, and putting his hand in the box of
+pearls, he cried out, "Pease! pease!" The merchant, supposing Xailoun
+played upon him and depreciated his pearls by wishing to make them pass
+for false ones, struck him a severe blow. "Why do you strike me?" said
+Xailoun. "Because you insult me," answered the merchant. "Do you suppose
+I am trying to deceive people?" "No," said the noodle. "But what must I
+say, then?" "If you will cry properly, say as I do, 'Pearls, in the name
+of the Prophet!'" He next passed by the shop of a merchant from whom
+some pearls had been stolen, and his manner of crying, "Pearls!" etc.,
+which was not nearly so loud as usual, appeared to the merchant very
+suspicious. "The man who has stolen my pearls," thought he, "has
+probably recognised me, and when he passes my shop lowers his voice in
+crying the goods." Upon this suspicion he ran after Xailoun, and
+stopping him, said, "Show me your pearls." The poor fool was in great
+confusion, and the merchant thought he had got the thief. The supposed
+seller of pearls was soon surrounded by a great crowd, and the merchant
+at last discovered that he was a perfect simpleton. "Why," said he, "do
+you cry that you sell pearls?" "What should I say, then?" asked Xailoun.
+"It is not true," said the merchant, not listening to him.  "It is not
+true," exclaimed the noodle. "Let me repeat, 'It is not true,' that I
+may not forget it;" and as he went on he kept crying, "It is not true."
+His way led him towards a place where a man was proclaiming, "In the
+name of the Prophet, lentils!" Xailoun, induced by curiosity, went up to
+the man, his mouth full of the last words he remembered, and putting his
+hand into the sack, cried, "It is not true." The sturdy villager gave
+him a blow that caused him to stagger, saying, "What d'ye mean by giving
+me the lie about my goods, which I both sowed and reaped myself?" Quoth
+the noodle, "I have only tried to say what I ought to say." "Well,
+then," rejoined the dealer, "you ought to say, as I do, 'Lentils, in the
+name of the Prophet!'" So our noodle at once took up this new cry, and
+proceeded on his way till he came to the bank of the river, where a
+fisherman had been casting his net for hours, and had frequently changed
+his place, without getting any fish. Xailoun, who was amused with every
+new thing he saw, began to follow the fisherman, and, that he should not
+forget his lesson, continued to repeat, "Lentils, in the name of the
+Prophet!" Suddenly the fisherman made a pretence of spreading his net,
+in order to wring and dry it, and having folded in his hand the rope to
+which it was fastened, he took hold of the simpleton and struck him some
+furious blows with it, saying, "Vile sorcerer! cease to curse my
+fishing." Xailoun struggled, and at length disengaged himself. "I am no
+sorcerer," said he. "Well, if you are not," answered the fisherman, "why
+do you cause me bad luck by your words every time I throw my net?" "I
+didn't mean to bring you bad luck," said the noodle. "I only repeat what
+I was told to repeat." The fisherman then concluded that some of his
+enemies, who wished to do him an ill turn without exposing themselves,
+had prevailed upon this poor fellow to come and curse his fishing, so he
+said, "I am sorry, brother, for having beaten you, but you were wrong to
+pronounce the words you did, thereby bringing bad luck to me, who never
+did you any harm." Quoth the simpleton, "I only tried to say the words
+my wife told me not to forget." "Do you know them?" "Yes." "Well, place
+yourself beside me, and each time I cast my net you must say, 'In the
+name of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!'"
+But Xailoun thought what his wife had said was not so long as that.
+"Oh, yes, it was," said the fisherman; "and take care you don't miss a
+single word, and I shall give you some of the fish to take home with
+you." That he might not forget, Xailoun repeated it very loud, but as
+'he was afraid of the cord whenever he saw the fisherman drawing in his
+net, he ran away as fast as he could, but still repeating, "In the name
+of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!" These
+words he pronounced in the midst of a crowd of people, through which the
+corpse of the kází (magistrate, or judge) was being carried to the
+burying ground, and the mullahs who surrounded the bier, scandalised by
+what they thought a horrible imprecation, exclaimed, "How darest thou,
+wicked wretch, thus blaspheme? Is it not enough that Death has taken one
+of the greatest men of Baghdád?" The poor simpleton was skulking off in
+fear and trembling, when his sleeve was pulled by an aged slave, who
+told him that he ought to say, "May Allah preserve his body and save his
+soul!" So our noodle went on, repeating this new cry till he came to a
+street where a dead ass was being carted away. "May Allah preserve his
+body and save his soul!"' he exclaimed. "How he blasphemes!" said the
+folk, and they set upon him with their fists and sticks, and gave him a
+sound drubbing. At length he got clear of them, and by chance came to
+the house of his wife's mother, but he only ventured to stand at the
+door and peep within. He was recognised, however, and asked what he
+would have to eat--goat's flesh? rice? _pease?_ Yes, it was pease
+he wanted, and having got some, he hastened home, and after relating all
+his mishaps, informed his wife, that her sister was very sick. His wife,
+having prepared herself to go to her mother's house, tells the simpleton
+to rock the baby should it awake and cry; feed the hen that was sitting;
+if the ass was thirsty, give her to drink; shut the door, and take care
+not to go to sleep, lest robbers should come and plunder the house. The
+baby awakes, and Xailoun rocks it to sleep again; so far, well. The hen
+seems uneasy; he concludes she is troubled with insects, like himself.
+So he takes up the hen, and thinking the best way to kill the insects
+was to stick a pin into them, he unluckily kills the hen. This was a
+serious matter, and while he considers what he should do in the
+circumstances, the ass begins to bray. "Ah," says he, "I've no time to
+attend to you just now; but when I am on your back, you can carry me to
+the river." Then he opened the door and let out the ass and her colt.
+After this he sat down on the eggs, and took the baby in his arms. His
+wife returning, knocks at the door. "Let me in, you fool," she cries. "I
+can't, for I am nursing the baby and hatching the eggs." At length she
+contrived to force open the door, and running up to her idiot of a
+husband, fetched him a blow that caused him to crush all the
+half-hatched eggs. Luckily she had met the ass and her foal on the road,
+so the amount of mischief done by her stupid spouse in her absence was
+not so great, all things considered.[4]
+
+The misadventures of the Arabian idiot in his expedition to purchase
+pease present a close analogy to those of the typical English booby,
+only the latter end tragically:
+
+A woman sent her son one day to buy a sheep's head and pluck, and, lest
+he should forget his message, he kept bawling loudly as he went along,
+"Sheep's head and pluck! sheep's head and pluck!" In getting over a
+stile he fell and hurt himself, and forgot what he was sent for, so he
+stood a little to consider; and at last he thought he recollected it,
+and began to shout, "Liver and lights and gall and all!" which he was
+repeating when he came up to a man who was very sick. The man, thinking
+the booby was mocking him, laid hold of him, and after cuffing him, bade
+the booby cry, "Pray God, send no more up!" So he ran along uttering
+these words till he came to a field where a man was sowing wheat, who,
+on hearing what he took for a curse upon his labour, seized and thrashed
+him, and told him to repeat, "Pray God, send plenty more!" So the young
+jolterhead at once "changed his tune," and was loudly singing out these
+words when he met a funeral. The chief mourner punished him for what he
+thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to
+heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be
+hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his
+seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he
+and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating
+this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When
+the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave him many a good thump,
+and bade him say, "I wish you much joy!" This he was crying at the top
+of his voice when he came to a pit into which two labourers had fallen,
+and one of them, enraged at what he thought his mockery of their
+misfortune, exerted all his strength and scrambled out, then beat the
+poor simpleton, and told him to say, "The one is out; I wish the other
+was!" Glad to be set free, the booby went on shouting these words till
+he met with a one-eyed man, who, like the others, taking what he was
+crying for a personal insult, gave him another drubbing, and then bade
+him cry, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" So
+he adopted this new cry, and continued his adventurous journey till he
+came to a house, one side of which was on fire. The people, hearing him
+bawling, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" at
+once concluded that he had set the house a-blazing; so they put him in
+prison, and the end was, the judge put on the black cap and condemned
+him to be hanged![5]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the noodle is persuaded, as in the following case of a Sinhalese
+wittol, by a gang of thieves to join them in a plundering expedition,
+they have little reason to be pleased with him, for he does not make a
+good "cat's-paw." The Sinhalese noodle joined some thieves, took readily
+to their ways, and was always eager to accompany them on their marauding
+excursions. One night they took him with them, and boring a large hole
+in the wall of a house,[6] they sent him in, telling him to hand out the
+heaviest article he could lay hands upon. He readily went in, and seeing
+a large kurakkan-grinder,[7] thought that was the heaviest thing in the
+room, and attempted to remove it. But it proved too much for him alone,
+so he gently awoke a man who was sleeping in the room, and said to him,
+"My friend, pray help me to remove this kurakkan-grinder." The man
+immediately guessed that thieves had entered the house, and gave the
+alarm. The thieves, who were waiting outside quite expectant, rushed
+away, and the noodle somehow or other managed to escape with them.
+
+Next night they again took him along with them, and after boring a hole
+in the wall of another house, sent him in with strict injunctions not to
+make a noise or wake anybody. He crept in noiselessly and entered a
+large room, in which was an old woman, fast asleep by the fire, with
+wide-open mouth. An earthen chattie, a wooden spoon, and a small bag of
+pease were also placed by the fire. The noodle first proceeded to roast
+some pease in the chattie. When they were roasted to a nice brownish
+colour, and emitted a very tempting smell, he thought that the old woman
+might also enjoy a mouthful. He considered for a while how he might best
+offer some to her. He did not wish to wake her, as he was ordered not to
+wake anybody. Suddenly a bright idea struck him. Why should he not feed
+her? There she was sleeping with her mouth wide open. Surely it would be
+no difficult task to put some pease into her mouth. Taking some of the
+hot, smoking pease into the wooden spoon, he put the contents into her
+mouth. The woman awoke, screaming with all her might. The noise roused
+the other inmates of the house, who came rushing to the spot to see what
+was the matter. This time also the noodle managed to escape with the
+thieves; but in a subsequent adventure he, as well as the thieves, came
+to grief.[8]
+
+The silly son of Italian popular tales is represented as being sent by
+his mother to sell a piece of linen which she had woven, saying to him,
+"Now listen attentively to what I say: Walk straight along the road.
+Don't take less than such a price for this linen. Don't have any
+dealings with women who chatter. Whether you sell it to any one you meet
+on the way, or carry it into the market, offer it only to some quiet
+sort of body whom you may see standing apart and not gossiping or
+prating, for such as they will persuade you to take some sort of price
+that won't suit me at all." The booby answers, "Yes, mamma," and goes
+off on his errand, keeping straight on, instead of taking the turnings
+leading to villages. It happened, as he went along, that the wife of the
+syndic of the next town was driving out with her maids, and had got out
+of the carriage, to walk a short distance, as the day was fine. Her maid
+tells her that there goes the simple son of the poor widow by the brook.
+"What are you going to do, my good lad?" kindly asks the lady. "I'm not
+going to tell you," says the booby, "because you were chattering." "I
+see your mother has sent you to sell this linen," continues the lady; "I
+will buy it of you," and she offers to pay twice as much as his mother
+had said she wanted. "Can't sell it to you," replies he, "for you were
+chattering," and he continues his journey. Farther along he comes to a
+plaster statue by the roadside, so he says to himself, "Here's one who
+stands apart and doesn't chatter; this is the one to sell the linen to,"
+then aloud, "Will you buy my linen, good friend?" The statue maintained
+its usual taciturnity, and the booby concluded, as it did not speak, it
+was all right, so he said, "The price is so-and-so; have the money ready
+by the time I come back, as I have to go on and buy some yarn for
+mother." On he went accordingly, and bought the yarn, and then came back
+to the statue. Some one passing by had in the meantime taken the linen.
+Finding it gone, "It's all right," says he to himself; "she's taken it,"
+then aloud, "Where's the money I told you to have ready?" The statue
+remained silent. "If you don't give me the money, I'll hit you on the
+head," he exclaimed, and raising his stick, he knocked the head off, and
+found it filled with gold coin. "That's where you keep your money, is
+it? All right; I can pay myself." So saying, he filled his pockets with
+the coin and went home. When he handed his mother the money, and told
+her of his adventure with the quiet body by the roadside, she was afraid
+lest the neighbours should learn of her windfall if the booby knew its
+value, so she said to him, "You've only brought me a lot of rusty nails;
+but never mind: you'll know better what to do next time," and put the
+money in an earthen jar. In her absence, a ragman comes to the house,
+and the booby asks him, "Will you buy some rusty nails?" The man desires
+to see them. "Well," quoth he on beholding the treasure, "they're not
+much worth, but I'll give you twelve pauls for the lot," and having
+handed over the sum, went off with his prize. When his mother comes
+home, the booby tells her what a bargain he had made for the rusty
+nails. "Nails!" she echoes, in consternation. "Why, you foolish thing,
+they were gold coins!" "Can't help that now, mamma," he answers
+philosophically; "you told me they were old rusty nails." By another
+lucky adventure, however, the booby is enabled to make up his mother's
+loss, finding a treasure which a party of robbers had left behind them
+at the foot of a tree.
+
+The incident of a simpleton selling something to an inanimate object and
+discovering a hidden treasure occurs, in different forms, in the
+folk-tales of Asiatic as well as European countries. In a manuscript
+text of the _Arabian Nights_, brought from Constantinople by
+Wortley Montague, and now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a
+more elaborate version of the Italian booby's adventure with the statue
+is found, in the "Story of the Bang-eater and his Wife:"
+
+In former times there lived not far from Baghdad a half-witted fellow,
+who was much addicted to the use of bang. Being reduced to poverty, he
+was obliged to sell his cow, which he took to the market one day, but
+the animal being in such a poor condition, no one would buy it, and
+after waiting till he was weary he returned homeward. On the way he
+stopped to repose himself under a tree, and tied the cow to one of the
+branches, while he ate some bread, and drank an infusion of his bang,
+which he always carried with him. In a short time it began to operate,
+so as to bereave him of the little sense he had, and his head was filled
+with ridiculous reveries. While he was musing, a bird beginning to
+chatter from her nest in the tree, he fancied it was a human voice, and
+that some woman had offered to purchase his cow, upon which he said,
+"Reverend mother of Solomon,[9] dost thou wish to buy my cow?" The bird
+again chattered. "Well," replied he, "what wilt thou give? I will sell
+her a bargain." The bird repeated her noise. "Never mind," said the
+fool, "for though thou hast forgotten to bring thy purse, yet, as I
+daresay thou art an honest woman, and hast bidden me ten dinars, I will
+trust thee with the cow, and call on Friday for the money." The bird
+renewed her chattering; so, leaving the cow tied to a branch of the
+tree, he returned home, exulting in the good bargain he had made for the
+animal. When he entered the house, his wife inquired what he had got for
+the cow, and he replied that he had sold her to an honest woman, who had
+promised to pay him ten pieces of gold next Friday. The wife was
+contented; and when Friday arrived, her noodle of a husband having, as
+usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird
+chattering as before, said, "Well, good mother, hast thou brought the
+gold?" The bird croaked. The blockhead, supposing the imaginary woman
+refused to pay him, became angry, and threw up a stone, which
+frightening the bird, it flew from its nest in the tree and alighted on
+a heap of ruins at some little distance. He now concluded that the woman
+had desired him to take his money from the heap, into which he
+accordingly dug, and found a copper vessel full of coin. This discovery
+convinced him he was right, and being withal an honest fellow, he only
+took ten pieces; then replacing the soil, "May Allah requite thee for
+thy punctuality, good mother!" he exclaimed, and returned to his wife,
+to whom he gave the money, informing her at the same time of the great
+treasure his friend the imaginary old woman possessed, and where it was
+concealed.
+
+The wife waited till night, when she brought away the pot of gold, which
+her foolish husband observing, he said, "It is dishonest to rob one who
+has paid us so punctually; and if thou dost not return it to its place,
+I will inform the walí" (governor of the city). She laughed at his
+simplicity, but fearing that he would execute his threat, she planned a
+stratagem to render it of no avail. Going to market, she purchased some
+meat and fish ready cooked, which she brought privately home, and
+concealed in the house. At night, while her husband was sleeping off the
+effects of his favourite narcotic, she strewed the provisions she had
+brought outside the door, and then awakening him, cried out, "Dear
+husband, a most wonderful thing has occurred: there has been a violent
+storm while you slept, and, strange to tell, it has rained pieces of
+broiled meat and fish, which now lie at the door!" The blockhead got up,
+and seeing the food, was persuaded of the truth of his wife's story. The
+flesh and fish were gathered up, and he partook with much glee of the
+miraculous treat, but still said he would tell the walí of her having
+stolen the treasure of the honest old woman.
+
+In the morning he actually repaired to the walí, and informed him that
+his wife had stolen a pot of gold, which she had still in her
+possession. Upon this the walí had the woman apprehended. She denied the
+accusation, and was then threatened with death. "My lord," said she,
+"the power is in your hands; but I am an injured woman, as you will find
+by questioning my husband, who is deranged in his intellect. Ask him
+when I committed the theft." The walí did so, and the simpleton
+answered, "It was the evening of that night when it rained broiled fish
+and ready-cooked flesh." On hearing this, "Wretch!" exclaimed the walí
+in a fury, "dost thou dare to utter falsehoods before me? Who ever saw
+it rain anything but water?" "As I hope for life," replied the fool, "I
+speak the truth; for my wife and myself ate of the fish and flesh which
+fell from the clouds." The woman, being appealed to, denied the
+assertion of her husband. The walí, now convinced that the man was
+crazy, released the woman, and sent her husband to the madhouse, where
+he remained for some days, till his wife, pitying his condition,
+contrived to get him set at liberty. She visited her husband, and
+counselled him, should any one ask him if he had seen it rain fish and
+flesh, to answer, "No; who ever saw it rain anything but water?" Then
+she informed the keeper that he was come to his senses, and suggested he
+should question him; and on the poor fellow answering properly he was
+released.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a Russian variant, an old man had three sons, one of whom was a
+noodle. When the old man died, his property was shared between the
+brothers, but all that the simpleton received was one ox, which he took
+to the market to sell. On his way he chanced to pass an old birch-tree,
+which creaked and groaned in the wind. He thinks the tree is offering to
+buy his ox, and so he says, "Well, you shall have it for twenty
+roubles." But the tree only creaked and creaked, and he fancied it was
+asking the ox on credit. "Very good," says he. "You'll pay me tomorrow?
+I'll wait till then." So he ties the ox to the tree and goes home. His
+brothers question him about his ox, and he tells them he has sold it for
+twenty roubles and is to get the money to-morrow, at which they laugh;
+he is, they think; a greater fool than ever. Next morning he went to the
+birch-tree, and found the ox was gone, for, in truth, the wolves had
+eaten it. He demanded his money, but the tree only creaked and groaned,
+as usual. "You'll pay me to-morrow?" he exclaimed. "That's what you said
+yesterday. I'll have no more of your promises." So saying, he struck the
+old birch-tree with his hatchet and sent the chips flying about. Now the
+tree was hollow, and it soon split asunder from his blows; and in the
+hollow trunk he found a pot full of gold, which some robbers had hidden
+there. Taking some of the gold, he returns home, and shows it to his
+brothers, who ask him how he got so much money. "A neighbour," he
+replies, "gave it to me for my ox. But this is nothing like the whole of
+it. Come along, brothers, and let us get the rest." They go, and fetch
+the rest of the treasure, and on their way home they meet a diachok (one
+of the inferior members of the Russian clerical body, though not one of
+the clergy), who asks them what they are carrying. "Mushrooms," say the
+two clever brothers; but the noodle cries, "That's not true; we're
+carrying money: here, look at it." The diachok, with an exclamation,
+flung himself upon the gold and began stuffing it into his pockets. At
+this the noodle grew angry, dealt him a blow with his hatchet, and
+killed him on the spot. The brothers dragged the body to an empty
+cellar, and flung it in. Later in the evening the eldest said to the
+other, "This business is sure to turn out badly. When they look for the
+diachok, Simpleton will be sure to tell them all about it. So we had
+better hide the body in some other place, and kill a goat and bury it in
+the cellar." This they did accordingly. And after several days had
+passed the people asked the noodle if he had seen the diachok. "Yes," he
+answered. "I killed him some time ago with my hatchet, and my brothers
+carried him to the cellar." They seize upon him and compel him to go
+down into the cellar and bring out the body. He gets hold of the goat's
+head, and asks, "Was your diachok dark-haired?" "He was." "Had he a
+beard?" "Yes." "And horns?" "What horns are you talking of?" "Well, see
+for yourselves," said he, tossing up the head to them. They saw it was a
+goat's head, and went away home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reader cannot fail to remark the close resemblance there is between
+the first parts of the Arabian and Russian stories; and the second parts
+of both reappear in many tales of the Silly Son. The goat's carcase
+substituted for the dead man occurs, for instance, in the Norse story of
+Silly Matt; in the Sicilian story of Giufa; in M. Rivière's _Contes
+Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_; and "Foolish Sachúli," in
+Miss Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_. The incident of the pretended
+shower of broiled fish and flesh is found in Campbell's _Tales of the
+West Highlands_ (porridge and pancakes); in Rivière's Tales of the
+Kabaïl (fritters); "Foolish Sachúli" (sweetmeats); Giufà, the Sicilian
+Booby (figs and raisins); and in M. Leger's _Contes Populaires
+Slaves_, where, curiously enough, the trick is played by a husband
+upon his wife. It is perhaps worth while reproducing the Russian story
+from Leger, in a somewhat abridged form, as follows:
+
+In tilling the ground a labourer found a treasure, and carrying it home,
+said to his wife, "See! Heaven has sent us a fortune. But where can we
+conceal it?" She suggested he should bury it under the floor, which he
+did accordingly. Soon after this the wife went out to fetch water, and
+the labourer reflected that his wife was a dreadful gossip, and by
+to-morrow night all the village would know their secret.  So he removed
+the treasure from its hiding-place and buried it in his barn, beneath a
+heap of corn. When the wife came back from the well, he said to her
+quite gravely, "To-morrow we shall go to the forest to seek fish; they
+say there's plenty there at present." "What! fish in the forest?" she
+exclaimed. "Of course," he rejoined; "and you'll see them there." Very
+early next morning he got up, and took some fish, which he had concealed
+in a basket. He went to the grocer's and bought a quantity of sweet
+cakes. He also caught a hare and killed it. The fish and cakes he
+disposed of in different parts of the wood, and the hare he hooked on a
+fishing-line, and then threw it in the river. After breakfast he took
+his wife with him into the wood, which they had scarcely entered when
+she found a pike, then a perch, and then a roach, on the ground. With
+many exclamations of surprise, she gathered up the fish and put them in
+her basket. Presently they came to a pear-tree, from the branches of
+which hung sweet cakes. "See!" she cried. "Cakes on a pear-tree!" "Quite
+natural," replied he; "it has rained cakes, and some have remained on
+this tree; travellers have picked up the rest." Continuing their way to
+the village, they passed near a stream. "Wait a little," said the
+husband; "I set my line early this morning, and I'll look if anything is
+caught on it." He then pulled in the line, and behold, there was a hare
+hooked on to it! "How extraordinary!" cries the good wife--"a hare in
+the water!" "Why," says he, "don't you know there are hares in the water
+as well as rats?" "No, indeed, I knew it not." They now returned home,
+and the wife set about preparing all the nice eatables for supper. In a
+day or two the labourer found from the talk of his acquaintances that
+his finding the treasure was no secret in the village, and in less than
+a week he was summoned to the castle. "Is it true," said the lord, "that
+you have found a treasure?" "It is not true," was his reply. "But your
+wife has told me all." "My wife does not know what she says--she is mad,
+my lord." Hereupon the woman cries, "It is the truth, my lord; he has
+found a treasure and buried it beneath the floor of our cottage."
+"When?" "On the eve before the day we went into the forest to look for
+fish." "What do you say?" "Yes; it was on the day that it rained cakes;
+we gathered a basketful of them, and coming home, my husband fished a
+fine hare out of the river." My lord declared the woman to be an idiot;
+nevertheless he caused his servants to search under the labourer's
+cottage floor, but nothing was found there, and so the shrewd fellow
+secured his treasure.
+
+The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a
+number of fools' exploits are strung together and ascribed to one
+individual, as in the tale of "Foolish Sachúli;" but generally they are
+told as separate stories. The following adventure of Sachúli is also
+found, in varied form, in Beschi's _Gooroo Paramartan_: One day
+Sachúli climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting
+off the branch between the tree and himself. A man passing by called to
+him, saying, "What are you doing up there? You will be killed if you cut
+that branch off." "What do you say?" asked the booby, coming down. "When
+shall I die?" "How can I tell?" said the man. "Let me go." "I will not
+let you go until you tell me when I shall die." At last the man, in
+order to get rid of him, said, "When you find a scarlet thread on your
+jacket, then you will die." After this Sachúli went to the
+_bazaar_, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away
+shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes. "Now I shall die!"
+exclaimed the fool. "How do you know that?" the tailors inquired, when
+he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they
+all laughed. Nevertheless, Sachúli went and dug a grave in the jungle
+and lay down in it.
+
+Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of _ghi_, or clarified
+butter, which he engages Sachúli to carry for him, and the noodle, of
+course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to
+which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.
+
+The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated
+seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical
+Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-Dín, and there exist German, Saxon,
+and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon,
+and the following is a version from a Hindú work entitled _Bharataka
+Dwátrinsati_, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:
+
+In Elákapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named
+Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure
+a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and
+he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there
+came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, "O
+monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you
+yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will
+fall down and die." After saying this the travellers went their way. The
+monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut
+the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch
+broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, "Those
+travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened
+just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead." So he remained on
+the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he
+even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him
+up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could
+not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your
+associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks
+in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him
+up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had
+gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided
+itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others
+said, "It is to the right that we must go." Thus a dispute arose among
+them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The "dead" monk,
+who was borne on a bier, said, "Friends, quarrel not among yourselves;
+when I was alive, I always went by the left road." Then said some, "He
+always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple
+fact. Let us therefore take the left road." This was agreed upon, and as
+they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to
+be present said, "O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that
+ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive." They
+answered, "Nay, but he is dead." Then the bystanders said, "He cannot be
+dead, seeing that he yet speaks." They then set down the bier on the
+ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and
+related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the
+travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained
+quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka
+was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the
+bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in
+inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and
+went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.[11]
+
+A diverting story in the _Facetiæ_ of Poggius, entitled "Mortuus
+Loqueus," from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini
+and in our old collection _Tales and Quicke Answeres_, has a near
+affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of
+stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of
+his property. In the early English jest-book,[12] it is, in effect, as
+follows:
+
+There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party
+of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their
+plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was
+not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth
+the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way.
+Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if
+he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The
+poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was
+convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be
+in his bed--he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca
+stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague,"
+when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying
+man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he
+did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers
+came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his
+pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.[13] Then,
+standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking
+fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the
+ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast,
+and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though
+he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through
+the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were
+carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a
+taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the
+mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard
+himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you
+scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a
+false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set
+down the "body" and ran away--leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole
+affair to the marvelling multitude.[14]
+
+We read of another silly son, in the _Kathá Manjari_, whose father
+said to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem
+to have much sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go,
+therefore, to the tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad
+accordingly went to the tank, and having caused all the water--which was
+required for the irrigation of his father's fields--to run to waste, he
+picked up from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to
+his father, not a little proud of his exploit.--In the _Kathá Sarit
+Ságara_ it is related that a Bráhman told his foolish son one evening
+that he must send him to the village early on the morrow, and thither
+the lad went, without asking what he was to do. Returning home at night
+very tired, he said to his father, "I have been to the village." "Yes,"
+said the Bráhman, "you went thither without an object, and have done no
+good by it."--And in the Buddhist _Játakas_ we find what is
+probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled
+tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely.
+Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is
+a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear--drive it off."
+"Wait a bit, father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow."
+Then he took up an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking
+to kill the mosquito with the axe, he only killed his father.
+
+Among numerous variants is the story of the Sicilian booby, Giufà, who
+was annoyed by the flies, and complained of them to the judge, who told
+him that he was at liberty to kill a fly wherever he saw it: just then a
+fly happened to alight on the judge's nose, which Giufà observing, he
+immediately aimed at it so furious a blow with his fist, that he smashed
+his worship's nose!
+
+The hopelessness of attempting to impart instruction to the silly son is
+farther illustrated by the story in a Sinhalese collection: A gúrú was
+engaged in teaching one of his disciples, but whilst he was teaching the
+youth was watching the movements of a rat which was entering its hole.
+As soon as the gúrú had finished his teaching, he said, "Well, my son,
+has all entered in?" to which the youth replied, "Yes, all has entered
+in except the tail." And from the same work is the following choice
+example of "a happy family": A priest went one day to the house of one
+of his followers, and amongst other things he said, "Tell me now, which
+of your four children is the best-behaved?" The father replied, "Look,
+sir, at that boy who has climbed to the top of that thatched building,
+and is waving aloft a firebrand. Among them all, he is the divinely
+excellent one." Whereupon the priest placed his finger on his nose, drew
+a deep, deep sigh, and said, "Is it indeed so? What, then, must the
+other three be?"
+
+The Turkish romance of the Forty Vazírs--the plan of which is similar to
+that of the Book of Sindibád and its derivatives--furnishes us with two
+stories of the same class, one of which is as follows, according to my
+friend Mr. Gibb's complete translation (the first that has been made in
+English), recently published:[15]
+
+They have told that in bygone times there was a king, and he had a
+skilful minstrel. One day a certain person gave to the latter a little
+boy, that he might teach him the science of music. The boy abode a long
+time by him, and though the master instructed him, he succeeded not in
+learning, and the master could make nothing of him. He arranged a scale,
+and said, "Whatsoever thou sayest to me, say in this scale." So
+whatsoever the boy said he used to say in that scale. Now one day a
+spark of fire fell on the master's turban. The boy saw it and chanted,
+"O master, I see something; shall I say it or no?" and he went over the
+whole scale. Then the master chanted, "O boy, what dost thou see?
+Speak!" and he too went over all that the boy had gone over. Then the
+turn came to the boy, and he chanted, "O master, a spark has fallen on
+thy turban, and it is burning." The master straightway tore off his
+turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew
+out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said
+to the boy, "What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its
+own place," and he admonished him.[16]
+
+The other story tells how a king had a stupid son, and placed him in
+charge of a cunning master, learned in the sciences, who declared it
+would be easy for him to teach the boy discretion, and, before
+dismissing him, the king gave the sage many rich gifts. After the boy
+has been long under the tuition of his learned master, the latter,
+conceiving him to be well versed in all the sciences, takes him to the
+king, his father, who says to him, "O my son, were I to hold a certain
+thing hidden in my hand, couldst thou tell me what it is?" "Yes,"
+answers the youth. Upon this the king secretly slips the ring off his
+finger, and hides it in his hand, and then asks the boy, "What have I in
+my hand?" Quoth the clever youth, "O father, it first came from the
+hills." (The king thinks to himself, "He knows that mines are in the
+hills.") "And it is a round thing," continues he--"it must be a
+millstone." "Blockhead!" exclaims the irate king, "could a millstone be
+hidden in a man's hand?" Then addressing the learned man, "Take him
+away," he says, "and _teach_ him."
+
+Lastly, we have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the
+doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so
+ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits
+to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had
+been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to
+deny it;--you have been eating beans." On their way home, the
+apprentice, admiring his master's sagacity, begged to be informed how he
+knew that the patient had been eating beans. "Boy," said the doctor,
+loftily, "I drew an inference." "An inference!" echoed this youth of
+inquiring mind; "and what is an inference?" Quoth the doctor, "Listen:
+when we came to the door, I observed the shells of beans lying about,
+and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner."
+Another day it chanced that the doctor did not take his apprentice with
+him when he went his rounds, and in his absence a message came for him
+to visit a person who had been taken suddenly ill. "Here," thought the
+apprentice, "is a chance for my putting master's last lesson into
+practice;" so off he went to the sick man, and assuming as "knowing" an
+air as he could, he felt his pulse, and then said to him severely,
+"Don't deny it; I see by your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I
+shall send you some medicine." When the doctor returned home he inquired
+of his hopeful pupil, whether any person had called for him, upon which
+the wittol proudly told him of his own exploit. "Eaten a horse!"
+exclaimed the man of physic. "In the name of all that's wonderful, what
+induced you to say such a thing?" Quoth the youth, simpering, "Why, sir,
+I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer--I drew
+an inference." "You drew an inference, did you? And how did you draw the
+inference that the man had eaten a horse?" "Why, very readily, sir; for
+as I entered the house I saw a saddle hanging on the wall."[17]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Abridged from the story of "Silly Matt" in Sir George W. Dasent's
+_Tales from the Fjeld_.
+
+[2] Professor Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, p. 302. This actual
+throwing of eyes occurs in the folk-tales of Europe generally.
+
+[3] In _Le Cabinet des Fées, 1788_ (tome xxxviii., p. 337 ff.).--
+There can be no such name as Xailoun in Arabic; that of the noodle's
+wife, Oitba, may be intended for "Utba." Cazotte has so Frenchified the
+names of the characters in his tales as to render their identification
+with the Arabic originals (where he had any such) often impossible.
+Although this story is not found in any known Arabian text of the
+_Book of the Thousand and One Nights_, yet the incidents for the
+most part occur in several Eastern story-books.
+
+ [4] On a similar occasion Giufà, the Sicilian brother to the Arabian
+fool, did somewhat more mischief. Once his mother went to church and
+told him to make some porridge for his baby-sister. Giufà made a great
+pot of porridge and fed the baby with it, and burned her mouth so that
+she died. Another time his mother on leaving home told him to feed the
+hen that was sitting and put her back in the nest, so that the eggs
+should not get cold. Giufà stuffed the hen with food so that he killed
+her, and then sat on the eggs himself until his mother returned.--See
+Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 296-7.
+
+[5] Abridged and modified from a version in the _Folk-Lore Record_,
+vol. iii., pp. 153-5.
+
+[6] The usual mode by which in the East thieves break into houses, which
+are for the most part constructed of clay. See Job xxiv. 16.
+
+[7] Kurakkan is a species of grain.
+
+[8] _The Orientalist_, June, 1884, pp. 137-8.
+
+[9] Ummu Sulayman. In Arabia the mother is generally addressed in this
+way as a mark of respect for having borne children, and the eldest gives
+the title. Our bang-eater supposed he was addressing an old woman who
+had (or might have had) a son named Solomon.
+
+[10] See Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales._ [Transcriber's note:
+Footnote reference missing from original, p. 153]
+
+[11] From a paper on "Comparative Folk-lore," by W. Goonetilleke, in
+_The Orientalist_, i., p. 122.
+
+[12] _Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant
+to be Readde._ Imprinted at London by H. Wykes, 1567.
+
+[13] Thus, too, Scogin and his "chamber-fellow" successively declared to
+a rustic that the sheep he was driving were pigs. In Fortini's novels,
+in like manner, a simpleton is persuaded that the kid he offered for
+sale was a capon; and in the Spanish _El Conde Lucanor_, and the
+German _Tyl Eulenspiegel_, a countryman is cheated out of a piece
+of cloth. The original form of the incident is found in the
+_Hitopadesa_, where three sharpers persuade a Bráhman that the goat
+he is carrying for a sacrifice is a dog. This story of the Florentine
+noodle--or rather Poggio's version--may have been suggested by a tale in
+the _Gesta Romanorum_, in which the emperor's physician is made to
+believe that he had leprosy. See my _Popular Tales and Fictions_,
+where these and similar stories are compared in a paper entitled "The
+Sharpers and the Simpleton."
+
+[14] In Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_ (Second Series,
+p. 627), a woman makes her husband believe that he is dressed in fine
+clothes when he is naked; another persuades her husband that he is dead,
+and as he is being carried to the burying-ground, he perceives the naked
+man, who asserts that he is dressed, upon which he exclaims, "How I
+should laugh if I were not dead!" And in a _fabliau_ by Jean de
+Boves, "Le Villain de Bailleul; _aliàs_, Le Femme qui fit croire à
+son Mari qu'il était mort," the husband exclaims, "Rascal of a priest,
+you may well thank Heaven that I am dead, else I would belabour you
+soundly with my stick."--See M. Le Grand's _Fabliaux_, ed. 1781,
+tome v., pp. 192, 193.
+
+[5] _History of the Forty Viziers; or, The Forty Morns and Forty
+Eves._ Translated from the Turkish, by E.J.W. Gibb, M.R.A.S. London:
+G. Redway, 1886.
+
+[16] A variant of this is found in John Bromyard's _Summa
+Prædicantium_, A 26, 34, as follows:
+
+Quidam sedebat juxta igneum, cujus vestem ignis intrabat. Dixit socius
+suus, "Vis audire rumores?" "Ita," inquit, "bonos et non alios." Cui
+alius, "Nescio nisi malos." "Ergo," inquit, "nolo audire." Et quum bis
+aut ter ei hoc diceret, semper idem respondit. In fine, quum sentiret
+vestem combustam, iratus ait socio, "Quare non dixisti mihi?" "Quia
+(inquit) dixista quod noluisti audire rumores nisi placentes et illi non
+erant tales."
+
+[17] Under the title of "The Phisitian that bare his Paciente in honde
+that he had eaten an Asse" this jest occurs in _Merry Tales and Quicke
+Answeres_, and Professor Crane gives a Sicilian version in his
+_Italian Popular Tales_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BRÁHMANS.
+
+
+[As a sort of supplement to the sayings and doings of the silly son, the
+following highly diverting Indian tale is here inserted, from the Abbé
+Dubois' French rendering of the Tamil original, appended, with others,
+to his selections from the _Panchatantra_. The story is known in
+the north as well as in the south of India: in the Panjábi version there
+are, however, but three noodle-heroes. It will be seen that the third
+Bráhman's tale is another of the numerous silent couple class, and it
+may possibly be the original form.]
+
+
+_Introduction._
+
+In a certain district, proclamation had been made of a Samaradanam being
+about to be held.[1] Four Bráhmans, from different villages, going
+thither, fell in upon the road, and, finding that they were all upon the
+same errand, they agreed to proceed in company.  A soldier, happening to
+meet them, saluted them in the usual way, by touching hands and
+pronouncing the words always applied on such occasions to Bráhmans,
+"_Dandamarya_!" or "Health to my lord!" The four travellers made
+the customary return, "_Asirvadam!_" and going on, they came to a
+well, where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the
+shade of some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of
+conversation, one of them asked the others, whether they did not remark
+how particularly the soldier had distinguished him by his polite
+salutation. "You!" said another; "it was not you that he saluted, but
+me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for you may remember that
+when the soldier said, '_Dandamarya!_' he cast his eyes upon me."
+"Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was I only he saluted; otherwise,
+should I have answered him as I did, by saying, '_Asirvadam_'?"
+
+Each maintained his argument obstinately; and as none of them would
+yield, the dispute had nearly come to blows, when the least stupid of
+the four, seeing what was likely to happen, put an end to the brawl by
+the following advice: "How foolish it is in us," said he, "thus to put
+ourselves in a passion! After we have said all the ill of one another
+that we can invent--nay, after going stoutly to fisticuffs, like Sudra
+rabble, should we be at all nearer to the decision of our difference?
+The fittest person to determine the controversy, I think, would be the
+man who occasioned it. The soldier, who chose to salute one of us,
+cannot yet be far off: let us therefore run after him as quickly as we
+can, and we shall soon know for which of us he intended his salutation."
+
+This advice appeared wise to them all, and was immediately adopted. The
+whole of them set off in pursuit of the soldier, and at last overtook
+him, after running a league, and all out of breath. As soon as they came
+in sight of him, they cried out to him to stop; and before they had well
+approached him, they had put him in full possession of the nature of
+their dispute, and prayed him to terminate it, by saying to which of
+them he had directed his salutation. The soldier instantly perceiving
+the character of the people he had to do with, and being willing to
+amuse himself a little at their expense, coolly replied, that he
+intended his salutation for the greatest fool of all four, and then,
+turning on his heel, he continued his journey.
+
+The Bráhmans, confounded at this answer, turned back in silence. But all
+of them had deeply at heart the distinction of the salutation of the
+soldier, and the dispute was gradually renewed. Even the awkward
+decision of the warrior could not prevent each of them from arrogating
+to himself the pre-eminence of being noticed by him, to the exclusion of
+the others. The contention, therefore, now became, which of the four was
+the stupidest; and strange to say, it grew as warm as ever, and must
+have come to blows, had not the person who gave the former advice, to
+follow the soldier, interposed again with his wisdom, and spoken as
+follows: "I think myself the greatest fool of us all. Each of you thinks
+the same thing of himself. And after a fight, shall we be a bit nearer
+the decision of the question? Let us, therefore, have a little patience.
+We are within a short distance of Dharmapuri, where there is a choultry,
+at which all little causes are tried by the heads of the village; and
+let ours be judged among the rest."
+
+The others agreed in the soundness of this advice; and having arrived at
+the village, they eagerly entered the choultry, to have their business
+settled by the arbitrator. They could not have come at a better season.
+The chiefs of the district, Bráhmans and others, had already met in the
+choultry; and no other cause being brought forward, they proceeded
+immediately to that of the four Bráhmans, who advanced into the middle
+of the court, and stated that a sharp contest having arisen among them,
+they were come to have it decided with fairness and impartiality. The
+court desired them to proceed and explain the ground of their
+controversy. Upon this, one of them stood forward and related to the
+assembly all that had happened, from their meeting with the soldier to
+the present state of the quarrel, which rested on the superior degree of
+stupidity of one of their number. The detail created a general shout of
+laughter. The president, who was of a gay disposition, was delighted
+beyond measure to have fallen in with so diverting an incident. But he
+put on a grave face, and laid it down, as the peculiarity of the cause,
+that it could not be determined on the testimony of witnesses, and that,
+in fact, there was no other way of satisfying the minds of the judges
+than by each, in his turn, relating some particular occurrence of his
+life, on which he could best establish his claim to superior folly. He
+clearly showed that there could be no other means of determining to
+which of them the salutation of the soldier could with justice be
+awarded. The Bráhmans assented, and upon a sign being made to one of
+them to begin, and the rest to keep silence, the first thus spoke:
+
+_Story of the First Bráhman_.
+
+I am poorly provided with clothing, as you see; and it is not to-day
+only that I have been covered with rags. A rich and very charitable
+Bráhman merchant once made a present of two pieces of cloth to attire
+me--the finest that had ever been seen in our village. I showed them to
+the other Bráhmans of the village, who all congratulated me on so
+fortunate an acquisition. They told me it must be the fruit of some good
+deeds that I had done in a preceding generation. Before I should put
+them on, I washed them, according to the custom, in order to purify them
+from the soil of the weaver's touch, and hung them up to dry, with the
+ends fastened to two branches of a tree. A dog, then happening to come
+that way, ran under them, and I could not discover whether he was high
+enough to touch the clothes or not. I asked my children, who were
+present, but they said they were not quite certain. How, then, was I to
+discover the fact? I put myself upon all-fours, so as to be of the
+height of the dog, and in that posture I crawled under the clothing.
+"Did I touch it?" said I to the children, who were observing me. They
+answered, "No," and I was filled with joy at the news. But after
+reflecting a while, I recollected that the dog had a turned-up tail, and
+that by elevating it above the rest of his body, it might well have
+reached my cloth. To ascertain that, I fixed a leaf in my loin-cloth,
+turning upwards, and then, creeping again on all-fours, I passed a
+second time under the clothing. The children immediately cried out that
+the point of the leaf on my back had touched the cloth. This proved to
+me that the point of the dog's tail must have done so too, and that my
+garments were therefore polluted. In my rage I pulled down the beautiful
+raiment, and tore it in a thousand pieces, loading with curses both the
+dog and his master.
+
+When this foolish act was known, I became the laughing-stock of all the
+world, and I was universally treated as a madman. "Even if the dog had
+touched the cloth," said they, "and so brought defilement upon it, might
+not you have washed it a second time, and so have removed the stain? Or
+might you not have given it to some poor Sudra, rather than tear it in
+pieces? After such egregious folly, who will give you clothes another
+time?" This was all true; for ever since, when I have begged clothing of
+any one, the constant answer has been, that, no doubt, I wanted a piece
+of cloth to pull to pieces.
+
+He was going on, when a bystander interrupted him by remarking that he
+seemed to understand going on all-fours. "Exceedingly well," said he,
+"as you shall see;" and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the
+unbounded laughter of the spectators. "Enough! enough!" said the
+president. "What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his
+favour. But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in
+proof of his stupidity." The second accordingly began by expressing his
+confidence that if what they had just heard appeared to them to be
+deserving of the salutation of the soldier, what he had to say would
+change their opinion.
+
+ _Story of the Second Bráhman_.
+
+Having got my hair and beard shaven one day, in order to appear decent
+at a public festival of the Bráhmans, which had been proclaimed
+throughout the district, I desired my wife to give the barber a penny
+for his trouble. She heedlessly gave him a couple. I asked him to give
+me one of them back, but he refused. Upon that we quarrelled, and began
+to abuse each other; but the barber at length pacified me, by offering,
+in consideration of the double fee, to shave my wife also. I thought
+this a fair way of settling the difference between us. But my wife,
+hearing the proposal, and seeing the barber in earnest, tried to make
+her escape by flight. I took hold of her, and forced her to sit down,
+while he shaved her poll in the same manner as they serve widows.[2]
+During the operation she cried out bitterly; but I was inexorable,
+thinking it less hard that my wife should be close-shaven than that my
+penny should be given away for nothing. When the barber had finished, I
+let her go, and she retired immediately to a place of concealment,
+pouring down curses on me and the barber. He took his departure, and
+meeting my mother in his way, told her what he had done, which made her
+hasten to the house, to inquire into the outrage; and when she saw that
+it was all true she also loaded me with incivilities.
+
+The barber published everywhere what had happened at our house; and the
+villain added to the story that I had caught her with another man, which
+was the cause of my having her shaved; and people were no doubt
+expecting, according to our custom in such a case, to see her mounted on
+an ass, with her face turned towards the tail. They came running to my
+dwelling from all quarters, and actually brought an ass to make the
+usual exhibition in the streets. The report soon reached my
+father-in-law, who lived at a distance of ten or twelve leagues, and
+he, with his wife, came also to inquire into the affair. Seeing their
+poor daughter in that degraded state, and being apprised of the only
+reason, they reproached me most bitterly; which I patiently endured,
+being conscious that I was in the wrong. They persisted, however, in
+taking her with them, and keeping her carefully concealed from every eye
+for four whole years; when at length they restored her to me.
+
+This little accident made me lose the Samaradanam, for which I had been
+preparing by a fast of three days; and it was a great mortification to
+me to be excluded from it, as I understood it was a most splendid
+entertainment. Another Samaradanam was announced to be held ten days
+afterwards, at which I expected to make up for my loss. But I was
+received with the hisses of six hundred Bráhmans, who seized my person,
+and insisted on my giving up the accomplice of my wife, that he might be
+prosecuted and punished, according to the severe rules of the caste.
+
+I solemnly attested her innocence, and told the real cause of the
+shaving of her hair; when a universal burst of surprise took place,
+every one exclaiming, how monstrous it was that a married woman should
+be so degraded, without having committed the crime of infidelity.
+"Either this man," said they, "must be a liar, or he is the greatest
+fool on the face of the earth!" Such, I daresay, gentlemen, you will
+think me, and I am sure you will consider my folly [looking with great
+disdain on the first speaker] as being far superior to that of the
+render of body-clothing.
+
+The court agreed that the speaker had put in a very strong case; but
+justice required that the other two should also be heard. The third
+claimant was indeed burning with impatience for his turn, and as soon as
+he had permission, he thus spoke:
+
+ _Story of the Third Brahman_.
+
+My name was originally Anantya; now all the world call me Betel Anantya,
+and I will tell you how this nickname arose. My wife, having been long
+detained at her father's house, on account of her youth, had cohabited
+with me but about a month when, going to bed one evening, I happened to
+say (carelessly, I believe), that all women were babblers. She retorted,
+that she knew men who were not less babblers than women. I perceived at
+once that she alluded to myself; and being somewhat piqued at the
+sharpness of her retort, I said, "Now let us see which of us shall speak
+first." "Agreed," quoth she; "but what shall be the forfeit?" "A leaf of
+betel," said I. Our wager being thus made, we both addressed ourselves
+to sleep, without speaking another word.
+
+Next morning, as we did not appear at our usual hour, after some
+interval, they called us, but got no answer. They again called, and then
+roared stoutly at the door, but with no success. The alarm began to
+spread in the house. They began to fear that we had died suddenly. The
+carpenter was called with his tools. The door of our room was forced
+open, and when they got in they were not a little surprised to find both
+of us wide awake, in good health, and at our ease, though without the
+faculty of speech. My mother was greatly alarmed, and gave loud vent to
+her grief. All the Bráhmans in the village, of both sexes, assembled, to
+the number of one hundred; and after close examination, every one drew
+his own conclusion on the accident which was supposed to have befallen
+us. The greater number were of opinion that it could have arisen only
+from the malevolence of some enemy who had availed himself of magical
+incantations to injure us. For this reason, a famous magician was
+called, to counteract the effects of the witchcraft, and to remove it.
+As soon as he came, after steadfastly contemplating us for some time, he
+began to try our pulses, by putting his finger on our wrists, on our
+temples, on the heart, and on various other parts of the body; and after
+a great variety of grimaces, the remembrance of which excites my
+laughter, as often as I think of him, he decided that our malady arose
+wholly from the effect of malevolence. He even gave the name of the
+particular devil that possessed my wife and me and rendered us dumb. He
+added that the devil was very stubborn and difficult to allay, and that
+it would cost three or four pagodas for the offerings necessary for
+compelling him to fly.
+
+My relations, who were not very opulent, were astonished at the grievous
+imposition which the magician had laid on them. Yet, rather than we
+should continue dumb, they consented to give him whatsoever should be
+necessary for the expense of his sacrifice; and they farther promised
+that they would reward him for his trouble as soon as the demon by whom
+we were possessed should be expelled. He was on the point of commencing
+his magical operations, when a Bráhman, one of our friends, who was
+present, maintained, in opposition to the opinion of the magician and
+his assistants, that our malady was not at all the effect of witchcraft,
+but arose from some simple and ordinary cause, of which he had seen
+several instances, and he undertook to cure us without any expense.
+
+He took a chafing-dish filled with burning charcoal, and heated a small
+bar of gold very hot. This he took up with pincers, and applied to the
+soles of my feet, then to my elbows, and the crown of my head. I endured
+these cruel operations without showing the least symptom of pain, or
+making any complaint; being determined to bear anything, and to die, if
+necessary, rather than lose the wager I had laid.
+
+"Let us try the effect on the woman," said the doctor, astonished at my
+resolution and apparent insensibility. And immediately taking the bit of
+gold, well heated, he applied it to the sole of her foot. She was not
+able to endure the pain for a moment, but instantly screamed out,
+"Enough!" and turning to me, "I have lost my wager," she said; "there is
+your leaf of betel."  "Did I not tell you," said I, taking the leaf,
+"that you would be the first to speak out, and that you would prove by
+your own conduct that I was right in saying yesterday, when we went to
+bed, that women are babblers?"
+
+Every one was surprised at the proceeding; nor could any of them
+comprehend the meaning of what was passing between my wife and me; until
+I explained the kind of wager we had made overnight, before going to
+sleep. "What!" they exclaimed, "was it for a leaf of betel that you have
+spread this alarm through your own house and the whole village?--for a
+leaf of betel that you showed such constancy, and suffered burning from
+the feet to the head upwards? Never in the world was there seen such
+folly!" And so, from that time, I have been constantly known by the name
+of Betel Anantya.
+
+The narrative being finished, the court were of opinion that so
+transcendent a piece of folly gave him high pretensions in the depending
+suit; but it was necessary also to hear the fourth and last of the
+suitors, who thus addressed them:
+
+ _Story of the Fourth Bráhman_.
+
+The maiden to whom I was betrothed, having remained six or seven years
+at her father's house, on account of her youth, we were at last apprised
+that she was become marriageable; and her parents informed mine that she
+was in a situation to fulfil all the duties of a wife, and might
+therefore join her husband. My mother being at that time sick, and the
+house of my father-in-law being at the distance of five or six leagues
+from ours, she was not able to undertake the journey. She therefore
+committed to myself the duty of bringing home my wife, and counselled me
+so to conduct myself, in words and actions, that they might not see that
+I was only a brute. "Knowing thee as I do," said my mother, as I took
+leave of her, "I am very distrustful of thee." But I promised to be on
+my good behaviour; and so I departed.
+
+I was well received by my father-in-law, who gave a great feast to all
+the Bráhmans of the village on the occasion. He made me stay three days,
+during which there was nothing but festivity. At length the time of our
+departure having arrived, he suffered my wife and myself to leave him,
+after pouring out blessings on us both, and wishing us a long and happy
+life, enriched with a numerous progeny. When we took leave of him, he
+shed abundance of tears, as if he had foreseen the misery that awaited
+us.
+
+It was then the summer solstice, and the day was exceedingly hot. We had
+to cross a sandy plain of more than two leagues; and the sand, being
+heated by the burning sun, scorched the feet of my young wife, who,
+being brought up too tenderly in her father's house, was not accustomed
+to such severe trials. She began to cry, and being unable to go on, she
+lay down on the ground, saying she wished to die there. I was in
+dreadful trouble, and knew not what step to take; when a merchant came
+up, travelling the contrary way. He had a train of fifty bullocks,
+loaded with various kinds of merchandise. I ran to meet him, and told
+him the cause of my anxiety with tears in my eyes; and entreated him to
+aid me with his good advice in the distressing circumstances in which I
+was placed. He immediately answered, that a young and delicate woman,
+such as my wife was, could neither remain where she lay nor proceed on
+her journey, under a hot sun, without being exposed to certain death.
+Rather than that I should see her perish, and run the hazard of being
+suspected of having killed her myself, and being guilty of one of the
+five crimes which the Bráhmans consider as the most heinous, he advised
+me to give her to him, and then he would mount her on one of his cattle
+and take her along with him.  That I should be a loser, he admitted;
+but, all things considered, it was better to lose her, with the merit of
+having saved her life, than equally to lose her, under the suspicion of
+being her murderer. "Her trinkets," he said, "may be worth fifteen
+pagodas; take these twenty and give me your wife."
+
+The merchant's arguments appeared unanswerable; so I yielded to them,
+and delivered to him my wife, whom he placed on one of his best oxen,
+and continued his journey without delay. I continued mine also, and got
+home in the evening, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and with my feet
+almost roasted with the burning sand, over which I had walked the
+greater part of the day. Frightened to see me alone, "Where is your
+wife?" cried my mother. I gave her a full account of everything that had
+happened from the time I left her. I spoke of the agreeable and
+courteous manner in which my father-in-law had received me, and how, by
+some delay, we had been overtaken by the scorching heat of the sun at
+noon, so that my wife must have perished and myself suspected of having
+caused her death, had we proceeded; and that I had preferred to sell her
+to a merchant who met us for twenty pagodas. And I showed my mother the
+money.
+
+When I had done, my mother fell into an ecstasy of fury. She lifted up
+her voice against me with cries of rage, and overwhelmed me with
+imprecations and awful curses. Having given way to these first emotions
+of despair, she sank into a more moderate tone: "What hast thou done!
+Sold thy wife, hast thou! Delivered her to another man! A Bráhmanari is
+become the concubine of a vile merchant! Ah, what will her kindred and
+ours say when they hear the tale of this brutish stupidity--of folly so
+unexampled and degrading?"
+
+The relations of my wife were soon informed of the sad adventure that
+had befallen their unhappy girl. They came over to attack me, and would
+certainly have murdered me and my innocent mother, if we had not both
+made a sudden escape. Having no direct object to wreak their vengeance
+upon, they brought the matter before the chiefs of the caste, who
+unanimously fined me in two hundred pagodas, as a reparation to my
+father-in-law, and issued a proclamation against so great a fool being
+ever allowed to take another wife; denouncing the penalty of expulsion
+from the caste against any one who should assist me in such an attempt.
+I was therefore condemned to remain a widower all my life, and to pay
+dear for my folly. Indeed, I should have been excluded for ever from my
+caste, but for the high consideration in which the memory of my late
+father is still held, he having lived respected by all the world.
+
+Now that you have heard one specimen of the many follies of my life, I
+hope you will not consider me as beneath those who have spoken before
+me, nor my pretensions altogether undeserving of the salutation of the
+soldier.
+
+ _Conclusion_.
+
+The heads of the assembly, several of whom were convulsed with laughter
+while the Bráhmans were telling their stories, decided, after hearing
+them all, that each had given such absolute proofs of folly as to be
+entitled, in justice, to a superiority in his own way: that each of
+them, therefore, should be at liberty to call himself the greatest fool
+of all, and to attribute to himself the salutation of the soldier. Each
+of them having thus gained his suit, it was recommended to them all to
+continue their journey, if it were possible, in amity. The delighted
+Brahmans then rushed out of court, each exclaiming that he had gained
+his cause.
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] A Samaradanam is one of the public festivals given by pious people,
+and sometimes by those in power, to the Bráhmans, who on such occasions
+assemble in great numbers from all quarters.
+
+[2] In a Sinhalese story, referred to on ["p. 68" in original. This
+approximates to the reference to Chapter III, Footnote 5 in this
+e-text], it is, curiously enough, the woman herself "who has her head
+shaved, so as not to lose the services of the barber for the day when he
+came, and her husband was away from home." The story probably was
+introduced into Ceylon by the Tamils; both versions are equally good as
+noodle-stories.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES.
+
+
+Few folk-tales are more widely diffused than that of the man who set out
+in quest of as great noodles as those of his own household. The details
+may be varied more or less, but the fundamental outline is identical,
+wherever the story is found; and, whether it be an instance of the
+transmission of popular tales from one country to another, or one of
+those "primitive fictions" which are said to be the common heritage of
+the Aryans, its independent development by different nations and in
+different ages cannot be reasonably maintained.
+
+Thus, in one Gaelic version of this diverting story--in which our old
+friends the Gothamites reappear on the scene to enact their unconscious
+drolleries--a lad marries a farmer's daughter, and one day while they
+are all busily engaged in peat-cutting, she is sent to the house to
+fetch the dinner. On entering the house, she perceives the speckled
+pony's packsaddle hanging from the roof, and says to herself, "Oh, if
+that packsaddle were to fall and kill me, what should I do?" and here
+she began to cry, until her mother, wondering what could be detaining
+her, comes, when she tells the old woman the cause of her grief,
+whereupon the mother, in her turn, begins to cry, and when the old man
+next comes to see what is the matter with his wife and daughter, and is
+informed about the speckled pony's packsaddle, he, too, "mingles his
+tears" with theirs. At last the young husband arrives, and finding the
+trio of noodles thus grieving at an imaginary misfortune, he there and
+then leaves them, declaring his purpose not to return until he has found
+three as great fools as themselves. In the course of his travels he
+meets with some strange folks: men whose wives make them believe
+whatever they please--one, that he is dead; another, that he is clothed,
+when he is stark naked; a third, that he is not himself. He meets with
+the twelve fishers who always miscounted their number; the noodles who
+went to drown an eel in the sea; and a man trying to get his cow on the
+roof of his house, in order that she might eat the grass growing there.
+But the most wonderful incident was a man coming with a cow in a cart:
+and the people had found out that the man had stolen the cow, and that a
+court should be held upon him, and so they did; and the justice they did
+was to put the horse to death for carrying the cow.[1]
+
+In another Gaelic version a young husband had provided his house with a
+cradle, in natural anticipation that such an interesting piece of
+furniture would be required in due time. In this he was disappointed,
+but the cradle stood in the kitchen all the same. One day he chanced to
+throw something into the empty cradle, upon which his wife, his mother,
+and his wife's mother set up loud lamentations, exclaiming, "Oh, if
+_he_ had been there, he had been killed!" alluding to a potential
+son. The man was so much shocked at such an exhibition of folly that he
+left the country in search of three greater noodles. Among other
+adventures, he goes into a house and plays tricks on some people there,
+telling them his name is "_Saw ye ever my like_?" When the old man
+of the house comes home he finds his people tied upon tables, and asks,
+"What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye ever my like?" says the first. Then
+going to a second man, he asks, "What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye
+ever my like?" says the second. "I saw thy like in the kitchen," replies
+the old man, and then he goes to the third: "What's the reason of this?"
+"Saw ye ever my like?" says the third. "I have seen plenty of thy like,"
+quoth the old man; "but never before this day," and then he understood
+that some one had been playing tricks on his people.[2]
+
+In Russian variants the old parents of a youth named Lutonya weep over
+the supposititious death of a potential grandchild, thinking how sad it
+would have been if a log which the old woman had dropped had killed that
+hypothetical infant. The parents' grief appears to Lutonya so uncalled
+for that he leaves the house, declaring he will not return until he has
+met with people more foolish than they. He travels long and far, and
+sees several foolish doings. In one place a horse is being inserted into
+its collar by sheer force; in another, a woman is fetching milk from the
+cellar a spoonful at a time; and in a third place some carpenters are
+attempting to stretch a beam which is not long enough, and Lutonya earns
+their gratitude by showing them how to join a piece to it.[3]
+
+A well-known English version is to this effect: There was a young man
+who courted a farmer's daughter, and one evening when he came to the
+house she was sent to the cellar for beer. Seeing an axe stuck in a beam
+above her head, she thought to herself, "Suppose I were married and had
+a son, and he were to grow up, and be sent to this cellar for beer, and
+this axe were to fall and kill him--oh dear! oh dear!" and there she sat
+crying and crying, while the beer flowed all over the cellar-floor,
+until her old father and mother come in succession and blubber along
+with her about the hypothetical death of her imaginary grown-up son. The
+young man goes off in quest of three bigger fools, and sees a woman
+hoisting a cow on to the roof of her cottage to eat the grass that grew
+among the thatch, and to keep the animal from falling off, she ties a
+rope round its neck, then goes into the kitchen, secures at her waist
+the rope, which she had dropped down the chimney, and presently the cow
+stumbles over the roof, and the woman is pulled up the flue till she
+sticks half-way. In an inn he sees a man attempting to jump into his
+trousers--a favourite incident in this class of stories; and farther
+along he meets with a party raking the moon out of a pond.
+
+Another English variant relates that a young girl having been left alone
+in the house, her mother finds her in tears when she comes home, and
+asks the cause of her distress. "Oh," says the girl, "while you were
+away, a brick fell down the chimney, and I thought, if it had fallen on
+me I might have been killed!" The only novel adventure which the girl's
+betrothed meets with, in his quest of three bigger fools, is an old
+woman trying to drag an oven with a rope to the table where the dough
+lay.
+
+Several versions are current in Italy and Sicily, which present a close
+analogy to those of other European countries. The following is a
+translation of one in Bernoni's Venetian collection:
+
+Once upon a time there were a husband and a wife who had a son. This son
+grew up, and said one day to his mother, "Do you know, mother, I would
+like to marry?" "Very well, marry! Whom do you want to take?" He
+answered, "I want the gardener's daughter." "She is a good girl--take
+her; I am willing." So he went, and asked for the girl, and her parents
+gave her to him. They were married, and when they were in the midst of
+their dinner, the wine gave out. The husband said, "There is no more
+wine!" The bride, to show that she was a good housekeeper, said, "I will
+go and get some." She took the bottles and went to the cellar, turned
+the cock, and began to think, "Suppose I should have a son, and we
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die! Oh, how grieved I should
+be! oh, how grieved I should be!" And thereupon she began to weep and
+weep; and meanwhile the wine was running all over the cellar.
+
+When they saw that the bride did not return, the mother said, "I will go
+and see what the matter is." So she went into the cellar, and saw the
+bride, with the bottle in her hand, and weeping. "What is the matter
+with you that you are weeping?" "Ah, my mother, I was thinking that if I
+had a son, and should name him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" The mother, too, began to weep,
+and weep, and weep; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.
+
+When the people at the table saw that no one brought the wine, the
+groom's father said, "I will go and see what is the matter. Certainly
+something wrong has happened to the bride." He went and saw the whole
+cellar full of wine, and the mother and bride weeping. "What is the
+matter?" he said; "has anything wrong happened to you?"
+
+"No," said the bride; "but I was thinking that if I had a son, and
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I should grieve!
+oh, how I should grieve!" Then he, too, began to weep, and all three
+wept; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.
+
+When the groom saw that neither the bride, nor the mother, nor the
+father came back, he said, "Now I will go and see what the matter is
+that no one returns." He went into the cellar and saw all the wine
+running over the cellar. He hastened and stopped the cask, and then
+asked, "What is the matter that you are all weeping, and have let the
+wine run all over the cellar?" Then the bride said, "I was thinking that
+if I had a son and called him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" Then the groom said, "You
+stupid fools! Are you weeping at this and letting all the wine run into
+the cellar? Have you nothing else to think of? It shall never be said
+that I remained with you. I will roam about the world, and until I find
+three fools greater than you, I will not return home."
+
+He had a bread-cake made, took a bottle of wine, a sausage, and some
+linen, and made a bundle, which he put on a stick and carried over his
+shoulder. He journeyed and journeyed, but found no fool. At last he
+said, worn out, "I must turn back, for I see I cannot find a greater
+fool than my wife." He did not know what to do, whether to go on or turn
+back. "Oh," said he, "it is better to try and go a little farther." So
+he went on, and shortly saw a man in his shirt-sleeves at a well, all
+wet with perspiration, and water. "What are you doing, sir, that you are
+so covered with water and in such a sweat?" "Oh, let me alone," the man
+answered; "for I have been here a long time drawing water to fill this
+pail, and I cannot fill it." "What are you drawing the water in?" he
+asked him. "In this sieve," he said. "What are you thinking about, to
+draw water in that sieve? Just wait!" He went to a house near by and
+borrowed a bucket, with which he returned to the well and filled the
+pail. "Thank you, good man. God knows how long I should have had to
+remain here!"--"Here," thought he, "is one who is a greater fool than my
+wife."
+
+He continued his journey, and after a time he saw at a distance a man in
+his shirt, who was jumping down from a tree. He drew near, and saw a
+woman under the same tree, holding a pair of breeches. He asked them
+what they were doing, and they said that they had been there a long
+time, and that the man was trying on those breeches and did not know how
+to get into them. "I have jumped and jumped," said the man, "until I am
+tired out, and I cannot imagine how to get into those breeches." "Oh,"
+said the traveller, "you might stay here as long as you wished, for you
+would never get into them this way. Come down and lean against the
+tree." Then he took his legs and put them in the breeches, and after he
+had put them on, he said, "Is that right?" "Very good; bless you; for if
+it had not been for you, God knows how long I should have had to jump."
+Then the traveller said to himself, "I have seen two greater fools than
+my wife."
+
+Then he went his way, and as he approached a city, he heard a great
+noise. When he drew near he asked what it was, and was told it was a
+marriage, and that it was the custom in that city for the brides to
+enter the city gate on horseback, and that there was a great discussion
+on this occasion between the groom and the owner of the horse, for the
+bride was tall and the horse high, and they could not get through the
+gate; so that they must either cut off the bride's head or the horse's
+legs. The groom did not wish his bride's head cut off, and the owner of
+the horse did not wish his horse's legs cut off, and hence this
+disturbance. Then the traveller said, "Just wait," and came up to the
+bride and gave her a slap that made her lower her head, and then he gave
+the horse a kick, and so they passed through the gate and entered the
+city. The groom and the owner of the horse asked the traveller what he
+wanted, for he had saved the groom his bride and the owner of the horse
+his horse. He answered that he did not wish anything, and said to
+himself, "Two and one make three! that is enough. Now I will go home."
+He did so, and said to his wife, "Here I am, my wife; I have seen three
+greater fools than you;--now let us remain in peace, and think of
+nothing else." They renewed the wedding, and always remained in peace.
+After a time the wife had a son, whom they named Bastianelo, and
+Bastianelo did not die, but still lives with his father and mother.[4]
+
+There is (Professor Crane remarks) a Sicilian version in Pitré's
+collection, called "The Peasant of Larcàra," in which the bride's mother
+imagines that her daughter has a son who falls into the cistern. The
+groom--they are not yet married--is disgusted, and sets out on his
+travels with no fixed purpose of returning if he finds some fools
+greater than his mother-in-law, as in the Venetian tale. The first fool
+he meets is a mother, whose child, in playing the game called
+_nocciole_.[5] tries to get his hand out of the hole whilst his
+fist is full of stones. He cannot, of course, and the mother thinks they
+will have to cut off his hand. The traveller tells the child to drop the
+stones, and then he draws out his hand easily enough. Next he finds a
+bride who cannot enter the church because she is very tall and wears a
+high comb. The difficulty is settled as in the former story. After a
+while he comes to a woman who is spinning and drops her spindle. She
+calls out to the pig, whose name is Tony, to pick it up for her. The pig
+does nothing but grunt, and the woman in anger cries, "Well, you won't
+pick it up? May your mother die!" The traveller, who had overheard all
+this, takes a piece of paper, which he folds up like a letter, and then
+knocks at the door. "Who is there?" "Open the door, for I have a letter
+for you from Tony's mother, who is ill and wishes to see her son before
+she dies." The woman wonders that her imprecation has taken effect so
+soon, and readily consents to Tony's visit. Not only this, but she loads
+a mule with everything necessary for the comfort of the body and soul of
+the dying pig. The traveller leads away the mule with Tony, and returns
+home so pleased with having found that the outside world contains so
+many fools that he marries as he had first intended.[6]
+
+In other Italian versions, a man is trying to jump into his stockings;
+another endeavours to put walnuts into a sack with a fork; and a woman
+dips a knotted rope into a deep well, and then having drawn it up,
+squeezes the water out of the knots into a pail. The final adventure of
+the traveller in quest of the greatest noodles is thus related in Miss
+Busk's _Folk-lore of Rome_:
+
+Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage, where he knocked, and
+asked for a night's lodging. "I can't give you that," said a voice from
+the inside; "for I am a lone widow. I can't take a man in to sleep
+here." "But I am a pilgrim," replied he; "let me in at least to cook a
+bit of supper."
+
+"That I don't mind doing," said the good wife, and she opened the door.
+"Thanks, good friend," said the pilgrim, as he sat down by the stove.
+"Now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan." So she gave him a
+pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the
+six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan too. Presently,
+when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs
+swimming in the pan instead of two, she said, "Lack-a-day! you must
+surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know
+So-and-so?" naming her husband. "Oh yes," said he, enjoying the joke; "I
+know him very well: he lives just next to me." "Only to think of that!"
+replied the poor woman. "And, do tell me, how do you get on in the other
+world? What sort of a life is it?" "Oh, not so very bad; it depends what
+sort of a place you get. The part where we are is pretty good, except
+that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly
+starved." "No, really?" cried the good wife, clasping her hands. "Only
+fancy, my good husband starving out there, so fond as he was of a good
+dinner, too!" Then she added, coaxingly, "As you know him so well,
+perhaps you wouldn't mind doing him the charity of taking him a little
+somewhat, to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could
+easily send him." "Oh dear, no, not at all. I'll do so with pleasure,"
+answered he. "But I'm not going back till to-morrow, and if I don't
+sleep here I must go on farther, and then I shan't come by this way."
+"That's true," replied the widow. "Ah, well, I mustn't mind what the
+folks say; for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You
+must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning
+I'll load a donkey with provisions for my poor husband." "Oh, no,"
+replied the pilgrim, "you shan't be disturbed in your bed. Only let me
+sleep on the hearth--that will do for me; and as I am an early riser, I
+can be gone before any one's astir, so folks won't have anything to
+say."
+
+So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up, loading the
+donkey with the best of her stores--ham, macaroni, flour, cheese, and
+wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying, "You'll send the
+donkey back, won't you?" "Of course I would send him back," he replied;
+"he'd be of no use to me out there. But I shan't get out again myself
+for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won't find his way back
+alone, for it's no easy way to find." "To be sure not; I ought to have
+thought of that," replied the widow. "Ah, well, so as my poor husband
+gets a good meal, never mind the donkey." So the pretended pilgrim from
+the other world went his way. He hadn't gone a hundred yards before the
+widow called him back. "Ah, she's beginning to think better of it," said
+he to himself, and he continued his way, pretending not to hear. "Good
+pilgrim," shouted the widow, "I forgot one thing: would money be of any
+use to my poor husband?" "Oh dear, yes," said he, "all the use in the
+world. You can always get anything for money anywhere." "Oh, do come
+back, then, and I'll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him." He went
+back, willingly, for the hundred scudi, which the widow counted out to
+him. "There's no help for it," said he to himself as he went his way: "I
+must go back to those at home."
+
+From sunny Italy to bleak Norway is certainly a "far cry," yet the
+adventure of the "Pilgrim from Paradise" is also known to the Norse
+peasants, in connection with the quest of the greatest noodles: A goody
+goes to market, with a cow and a hen for sale. She wants five shillings
+for the cow and ten pounds for the hen. A butcher buys the cow, but
+doesn't want the hen. As she cannot find a buyer for the hen, she goes
+back to the butcher, who treats her to so much brandy that she gets
+dead-drunk, and in this condition the butcher tars and feathers her.
+When she awakes, she fancies that she must be some strange bird, and
+cries out, "Is this me, or is it not me? I'll go home, and if our dog
+barks, then it is not me." Thus far we have a variant of our favourite
+nursery rhyme:
+
+  There was an old woman, as I've heard tell,
+  She went to market her eggs for to sell;
+  She went to market, all on a market-day,
+  And she fell asleep on the king's highway.
+
+  There came a pedlar, whose name was Stout,
+  He cut her petticoats all round about;
+  He cut her petticoats up to the knees,
+  Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze.
+
+  When the little woman first did wake,
+  She began to shiver and she began to shake;
+  She began to wonder, and she began to cry,
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this is none of I!"
+
+  "But if this be I, as I do hope it be,
+  I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me;
+  If it be I, he'll wag his little tail,
+  And if it be not I, he loudly bark and wail."
+
+  Home went the little woman all in the dark,
+  Up got the little dog, and began to bark;
+  He began to bark, and she began to cry,
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this can't be I!"
+
+To return to the Norse tale. As in our nursery rhyme, when the goody
+reaches home, the dog barks at her; then she goes to the calves' house,
+but the calves, having sniffed the tar with which she was smeared, turn
+away from her in disgust. She is now fully convinced that she has been
+transformed into some outlandish bird, so she climbs on to the roof of a
+shed, and begins to flap her arms as if she were about to fly, when out
+comes her goodman, and seeing a suspicious-looking creature on the roof
+of the shed, he fetches his gun and is going to shoot at his goody, when
+he recognises her voice. Amazed at such a piece of folly, he resolves to
+leave her and not come back till he has found three goodies as silly. He
+meets with a female descendant of the Schildburgers, evidently, carrying
+into her cottage sunshine in a sieve, there being no window in the
+house: he cuts out a window for her and is well paid for his trouble. He
+next comes to a house where an old woman is thumping her goodman on the
+head with a beetle, in order to force over him a shirt without a slit
+for the neck, which she had drawn over his head: he cuts a slit in the
+shirt with a pair of scissors, and is amply rewarded for his ingenuity.
+His third adventure is similar to that of the "pilgrim" in the Italian
+version:
+
+At another house he informs the goody that he came from Paradise Place--
+which was the name of his own farm--and she asks him if he knew her
+second husband in paradise. (She had been married twice before she took
+her present husband, who was an old curmudgeon, and she liked her second
+husband best--she was sure he had gone to heaven.) He replies that he
+knew him very intimately, but, poor man, he was far from well off,
+having to go about begging from house to house. The goody gives him a
+cart-load of clothes and a box of shining dollars, for her dear second
+husband; for why should he go about begging in paradise when there was
+so much of everything in their house? So the stranger, jumps into the
+cart and drives off, as fast as possible. But Peter, the goody's third
+husband, sees him on the road, and recognising his own horse and cart,
+hastens home to his wife, and asks why a stranger has gone off with his
+property. She explains the whole affair, upon which he mounts a horse
+and gallops away after the rogue who had thus taken advantage of his
+wife's simplicity. The stranger, perceiving him approach, hides the
+horse and cart behind a high hedge, takes part of the horse's tail and
+hangs it on the branches of a birch-tree, and then lays himself down on
+his back and gazes up into the sky. When Peter comes up to him, he
+exclaims, still looking at the sky, "What a wonder! there is a man going
+straight to heaven on a black horse!" Peter can see no such thing. "Can
+you not?" says the stranger. "See, there is his tail, still on the
+birch-tree. You must lie down in this very spot, and look straight up,
+and don't for a moment take your eyes off the sky, and then you'll see--
+what you'll see." So Peter lies down and gazes up at the sky very
+intently, looking for the man going straight to heaven on a black horse.
+Meanwhile the traveller escapes, with the cart-load of clothes and the
+box of shining dollars, and the second horse besides. Peter, when he
+reaches home, tells his wife that he had given the man from paradise the
+other horse for her second husband to ride about on, for he was ashamed
+to confess that he had been cheated as well as herself.[7] As to our
+traveller, having found three goodies as great fools as his own, he
+returned home, and saw that all his fields had been ploughed and sown;
+so he asked his wife where she had got the seed from. "Oh," says she, "I
+have always heard that what a man sows he shall also reap, so I sowed
+the salt that our friends the north-countrymen laid up with us, and if
+we only have rain, I fancy it will come up nicely."[8] "Silly you are,"
+said her husband, "and silly you will be as long as you live. But that
+is all one now, for the rest are not a bit wiser than you;--_there is
+not a pin to choose between you_!"[9]
+
+Now, if it be "a far cry" from Italy to Norway, it is still farther from
+Norway to India; and yet it is in the southern provinces of our great
+Asiatic empire that a story is current among the people, which, strange
+as it may seem, is almost the exact counterpart of the Norse version of
+the pretended pilgrim from paradise, of which the above is an abstract.
+It is found in Pandit S.M. Natésa Sástrí's _Folk-lore in Southern
+India_, now in course of publication at Bombay; a work which, when
+completed, will be of very great value, to students of comparative
+folk-tales, as well as prove an entertaining story-book for general
+readers. After condensation in some parts, this story--which the Pandit
+entitles "The Good Wife and the Bad Husband"--runs thus:
+
+In a secluded village there lived a rich man, who was very miserly, and
+his wife, who was very kind-hearted and charitable, but a stupid little
+woman that believed everything she heard. And there lived in the same
+village a clever rogue, who had for some time watched for an opportunity
+for getting something from this simple woman during her husband's
+absence. So one day, when he had seen the old miser ride out to inspect
+his lands, this rogue of the first water came to the house, and fell
+down at the threshold as if overcome by fatigue. The woman ran up to him
+at once and inquired whence he came. "I am come from Kailása,"[10] said
+he; "having been sent down by an old couple living there, for news of
+their son and his wife." "Who are those fortunate dwellers in Siva's
+mountain?" she asked. And the rogue gave the names of her husband's
+deceased parents, which he had taken good care, of course, to learn from
+the neighbours. "Do you really come from them?" said the simple woman.
+"Are they doing well there? Dear old people! How glad my husband would
+be to see you, were he here! Sit down, please, and rest until he
+returns. How do they live there? Have they enough to eat and dress
+themselves withal?" These and a hundred other questions she put to the
+rogue, who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible,
+knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return
+while he was there. So he replied, "Mother, language has no words to
+describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have
+not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten
+nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see
+them." The rogue's pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly
+believed that he had come down from Kailása, a messenger from the old
+couple to herself. "Why should they so suffer," said she, "when their
+son has plenty to eat and clothe himself withal, and when their
+daughter-in-law wears all sorts of costly garments?" So saying, she went
+into the house, and soon came out again with two boxes containing all
+her own and her husband's clothes, which she handed to the rogue,
+desiring him to deliver them to the poor old couple in Kailása. She also
+gave him her jewel-box, to be presented to her mother-in-law. "But dress
+and jewels will not fill their hungry stomachs," said the rogue. "Very
+true; I had forgot: wait a moment," said the simple woman, going into
+the house once more. Presently returning with her husband's cash chest,
+she emptied its glittering contents into the rogue's skirt, who now took
+his leave in haste, promising to give everything to the good old couple
+in Kailása; and having secured all the booty in his upper garment, he
+made off at the top of his speed as soon as the silly woman had gone
+indoors.
+
+Shortly after this the husband returned home, and his wife's pleasure at
+what she had done was so great that she ran to meet him at the door, and
+told him all about the arrival of the messenger from Kailása, how his
+parents were without clothes and food, and how she had sent them clothes
+and jewels and store of money. On hearing this, the anger of the husband
+was great; but he checked himself, and inquired which road the messenger
+from Kailása had taken, saying that he wished to follow him with a
+further message for his parents. So she very readily pointed out the
+direction in which the rogue had gone. With rage in his heart at the
+trick played upon his stupid wife, he rode off in hot haste, and after
+having proceeded a considerable distance, he caught sight of the flying
+rogue, who, finding escape hopeless, climbed up into a _pipal_
+tree.
+
+The husband soon reached the foot of the tree, when he shouted to the
+rogue to come down. "No, I cannot," said he; "this is the way to
+Kailása," and then climbed to the very top of the tree. Seeing there was
+no chance of the rogue coming down, and there being no one near to whom
+he could call for help, the old miser tied his horse to a neighbouring
+tree, and began to climb up the _pípal_ himself. When the rogue
+observed this, he thanked all his gods most fervently, and having waited
+until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle
+of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached
+the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser's horse and with his
+bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be
+discovered. Being thus balked the miser came down the _pípal_ tree
+slowly cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover
+the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at
+leisure. His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a
+joyous countenance, and cried, "I thought as much: you have sent away
+your horse to Kailása, to be used by your old father." Vexed at his
+wife's words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his
+own folly.
+
+Through the Tamils it is probable this story reached Ceylon, where it
+exists in a slightly different form: A young girl, named Kaluhámi, had
+lately died, when a beggar came to the parents' house, and on being
+asked by the mother where he had come from, he said that he had just
+come from the other world to this world, meaning that he had only just
+recovered from severe illness. "Then," said the woman, "since you have
+come from the other world, you must have seen my daughter Kaluhámi
+there, who died but a few days ago. Pray tell me how she is." The
+beggar, seeing how simple she was, replied, "She is my wife, and lives
+with me at present, and she has sent me to you for her dowry." The woman
+at once gave him all the money and jewels that were in the house, and
+sent him away delighted with his unexpected good luck. Soon after, the
+woman's husband returned, and learning how silly she had been, mounted
+his horse and rode after the beggar. The rest of the story corresponds
+to the Tamil version, as above, with the exception that when the husband
+saw the beggar slide down the tree, get on his horse, and ride off, he
+cried out to him, "Hey, son-in-law, you may tell Kaluhámi that the money
+and jewels are from her mother, and that the horse is from me;" which is
+altogether inconsistent, since he is represented as the reverse of a
+simpleton in pursuing the beggar, on hearing what his wife had done. It
+is curious, also, to observe that in the Tamil version the man goes to
+the house with the deliberate purpose of deceiving the simple woman,
+while in the Sinhalese the beggar is evidently tempted by her mistaking
+the meaning of his words. But both present very close points of
+resemblance to the Norwegian story of the pretended pilgrim from
+paradise. There are indeed few instances of a story having travelled so
+far and lost so little of its original details, allowing for the
+inevitable local colouring.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. ii., pp.
+373-381. In a note to these adventures Campbell gives a story of some
+women who, as judges, doomed a horse to be hanged: the thief who stole
+the horse got off, because it was his first offence; the horse went back
+to the house of the thief, because he was the better master, and was
+condemned for stealing himself!
+
+[2]: Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. ii.,
+pp. 385--387.
+
+In a Northumberland popular tale a child in bed sees a little fairy come
+down the chimney, and the child tells the creature that his name is
+My-ainsel. They play together, and the little fairy is burnt with a
+cinder, and on its mother appearing when it cries, and asking it who had
+hurt it, the imp answers, "It was My-ainsel."--There is a somewhat
+similar story current in Finland: A man is moulding lead buttons, when
+the Devil appears, and asks him what he is doing. "Making eyes." "Could
+you make me new ones?" "Yes." So he ties the Devil to a bench, and, in
+reply to the fiend, tells him that his name is Myself _(Issi)_, and
+then pours lead into his eyes. The Devil starts up with the bench on his
+back, and runs off howling. Some people working in a field ask him who
+did it. Quoth the fiend, "Myself did it" (_Issi teggi_).
+
+Cf. the _Odyssey_, Book ix., where Ulysses informs the Cyclops that
+his name is No-man, and when the monster, after having had his eye put
+out in his sleep, awakes in agony, he roars to his comrades for help:
+
+  "Friends, No-man kills me, No-man, in the hour
+  Of sleep, oppresses me with fraudful power!"
+  "If no man hurt thee, but the hand divine
+  Inflict disease, it fits thee to resign;--
+  To Jove, or to thy father, Neptune, pray,"
+  The brethren cried, and instant strode away.
+
+[3] Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales_.
+
+[4] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 279--282.
+
+[5] A game played with peach-pits, which are thrown into holes made in
+the ground, and to which certain numbers are attached.
+
+[6] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 282-3.
+
+[7] The same story is told in Brittany, with no important variations.
+
+[8] Quite as literally did the rustic understand the priest's assurance,
+that whatsoever one gave in charity, for the love of God, should be
+repaid him twofold: next day he takes his cow to the priest, who accepts
+it as sent by Heaven--and the poor man did _not_ get two cows in
+return. The story is known in various forms all over Europe; it was a
+special favourite in mediæval times. See Le Grand's _Fabliaux_,
+tome iii., 376: "La Vache du Curé," by the trouvère Jean de Boves;
+Wright's _Latin Stories; Icelandic Legends_, etc.
+
+[9] Dasent's _Popular Tales from the Norse_.
+
+[10] "See note, p. 49" in original. This is Chapter II, Footnote 13 in
+this e-text.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+The idea of the old English jest-book, _Jacke of Dover His Quest of
+Inquirie, or His Privy Search for the Veriest Foole in England_
+(London: 1604), may perhaps have been suggested by such popular tales as
+those of the man going about in quest of three greater fools than his
+wife, father-in-law, and mother-in-law. It is, however, simply a
+collection of humorous anecdotes, not specially examples of folly or
+stupidity, most of which are found in earlier jest-books. The
+introduction is rather curious:
+
+"When merry Jacke of Dover had made his privy search for the Foole of
+all Fooles, and making his inquirie in most of the principal places in
+England, at his return home he was adjudged to be the fool himself; but
+now wearied with the motley coxcombe, he hath undertaken in some place
+or other to find a verier foole than himself. But first of all, coming
+to London, he went into Paul's Church, where walking very melancholy in
+the middle aisle with Captain Thingut and his fellowes, he was invited
+to dine at Duke Humphry's ordinary,[1] where, amongst other good
+stomachs that repaired to his bountiful feast, there came a whole jury
+of penniless poets, who being fellows of a merry disposition (but as
+necessary in a commonwealth as a candle in a straw bed), he accepted of
+their company, and as from poets cometh all kind of folly, so he hoped
+by their good directions to find out his Foole of Fooles, so long looked
+for. So, thinking to pass away the dinner-hour with some pleasant chat
+(lest, being overcloyed with too many dishes, they should surfeit), he
+discovered to them his merry meaning, who, being glad of so good an
+occasion of mirth, instead of a cup of sack and sugar for digestion,
+these men of little wit began to make inquiry and to search for the
+aforesaid fool, thinking it a deed of charity to ease him of so great a
+burden as his motley coxcomb was, and because such weak brains as are
+now resident almost in every place, might take benefit hereat. In this
+manner began the inquiry:
+
+_The Foole of Hereford._
+
+"'Upon a time (quoth one of the jury) it was my chance to be in the city
+of Hereford, when, lodging at an inn, I was told of a certain
+silly-witted gentleman there dwelling, that would assuredly believe all
+things that he heard for a truth; to whose house I went upon a
+sleeveless errand, and finding occasion to be acquainted with him, I was
+well entertained, and for three days' space had my bed and board in his
+house; where, amongst many other fooleries, I, being a traveller, made
+him believe that the steeple of Brentwood, in Essex, sailed in one night
+as far as Calais, in France, and afterwards returned again to its proper
+place. Another time I made him believe that in the forest of Sherwood,
+in Nottinghamshire, were seen five hundred of the King of Spain's
+galleys, which went to besiege Robin Hood's Well, and that forty
+thousand scholars with elder squirts performed such a piece of service
+as they were all in a manner taken and overthrown in the forest. Another
+time I made him believe that Westminster Hall, for suspicion of treason,
+was banished for ten years into Staffordshire. And last of all, I made
+him believe that a tinker should be baited to death at Canterbury for
+getting two and twenty children in a year; whereupon, to prove me a
+liar, he took his horse and rode thither, and I, to verify him a fool,
+took my horse and rode hither.'
+
+"'Well,' quoth Jacke of Dover, 'this in my mind was pretty foolery, but
+yet the Foole of all Fooles is not here found that I looked for.'
+
+_The Fool of Huntington._
+
+"'And it was my chance (quoth another of the jury) upon a time to be at
+Huntington, where I heard tell of a simple shoemaker there dwelling, who
+having two little boys whom he made a vaunt to bring up to learning, the
+better to maintain themselves when they were men; and having kept them a
+year or two at school, he examined them saying, "My good boy," quoth he
+to one of them, "what dost thou learn and where is thy lesson?" "O
+father," said the boy, "I am past grace." "And where art thou?" quoth he
+to the other boy, who likewise answered that he was at the devil and all
+his works. "Now Lord bless us," quoth the shoemaker, "whither are my
+children learning? The one is already past grace and the other at the
+devil and all his works!" Whereupon he took them both from school and
+set them to his own occupation.[2]'"
+
+A number of others of the jury of penniless poets having related their
+stories, at last it is agreed that if the Foole of all Fooles cannot be
+found among those before named, one of themselves must be the fool, for
+there cannot be a verier fool than a poet, "for poets have good wits,
+but cannot use them, great store of money, but cannot keep it," etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is doubtful what the name "Jack of Dover" imports, as that of the
+imaginary inquirer after fools. The author of the Cook's Tale of
+Gamelyn--which is generally considered as a spurious "Canterbury" tale--
+represents, in the prologue, mine host of the Tabard as saying to Roger
+the Cook:
+
+  "Full many a pastie hast thou lettin blode;
+  And many a jack of Dovyr hast thou sold,
+  That hath ben twicè hot and twicè cold."
+
+Dr. Brewer says--apparently on the strength of these lines--that a "Jack
+of Dover" is a fish that has been cooked a second time. But it may have
+been a name of a particular kind of fish caught in the waters off Dover.
+If, however, a "Jack of Dover" is a twice-cooked fish, the title of the
+jest-book is not inappropriate, since all the stories it comprises are
+at least "twice-told."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] To "dine with Duke Humphry" meant not to dine at all. See Brewer's
+_Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ for the origin of the expression.
+
+[2] The jest is thus told in some parts of Scotland: An old gentleman,
+walking in the country, met three small boys on their way home from
+school, and asked them how they progressed in their learning. The
+youngest--referring, of course, to the _Shorter Catechism_--replied
+that he was "in a state of sin and misery;" the second, that he was past
+"redemption;" and the eldest, that he was "in the pains of hell for
+ever."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Abdera, Man of, 6.
+
+Alewife and her Hens, 73.
+
+Alfonsus, Peter, 45.
+
+Arab and his Cow, 70.
+
+Arab Schoolmaster, 83.
+
+Arabian Idiot, 133.
+
+_Arabian Nights_, 81, 83, 133, 146.
+
+Arabian Noodles, 70,75,107, 147.
+
+Armstrong's, Archie, _Banquet of Jests_, 74.
+
+Ashton, John, xiv.
+
+Ass and the Two Sharpers, 81.
+
+Austwick, Carles of, 17,53,54.
+
+_Avadánas_, 53.
+
+
+Babrius, 53.
+
+Bakki, Brothers of, 32, 64.
+
+Bang-eater and his Wife, 147.
+
+Bang-eaters and the Dogs, 109.
+
+Barrett, F.T., 9.
+
+_Barrin' o' the Door_, 107.
+
+Belmont, Fools of, 55.
+
+_Beryn, Tale of_, 40.
+
+Beschi, Father, 29.
+
+_Bharataka Dwatrinsati_, 158.
+
+_Bizarrures of the Sieur Gaulard_, 8, 12, 20, 76.
+
+Bidpaï's Fables, 53.
+
+Birth-Stories--_see_ Játakas.
+
+Boccaccio's _Decameron_, 39.
+
+"Boiling" River, 30, 43.
+
+Bond, The Lord's, 17.
+
+Borde, Andrew, 23.
+
+Bráhmans, Four Simple, 171.
+
+Bromyard, John, 167.
+
+Buddha's Five Precepts, 69.
+
+Bull and the Gate, 54.
+
+Bull of Siva, 48.
+
+Burton's _Arabian Nights_, 83.
+
+Busk's _Folk-Lore of Rome_, 204.
+
+Butter eaten by a Dog, 18.
+
+Buzzard, The Gothamite's, 38.
+
+
+Cabbage-Tree, 47.
+
+Caftan on Tree, 90.
+
+Calf's Head in a Pot, 89.
+
+Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, 32, 33, 34, 35,
+36, 154, 193.
+
+Cat and old Woman, 65.
+
+Cat, Men of Schilda's, 61.
+
+Cazotte's _New Arabian Nights_, 133.
+
+Ceylon--_see_ Sinhalese Noodles.
+
+Chamberlain, B.H., 130.
+
+Cheese, The Gothamite's, 34.
+
+Cheese on the Highway, 40.
+
+Cheese, The Stolen, 91.
+
+Chinese Noodles, 93, 94.
+
+Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, 120.
+
+Colombo, Michele, 81.
+
+Countryman and Dog, 79.
+
+Cozens, F.W., 9.
+
+Council-House, Dark, 57.
+
+Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, 117, 128, 139, 202, 204.
+
+Cuckoo, Hedging in the, 26.
+
+Cumeans and the bath, 4;
+  and the father's corpse,15;
+  and the fig-tree, 10;
+  and the pot of honey, 19;
+  and the stolen clothes, 4.
+
+Dark Council-House, 57.
+
+Dasent's _Norse Tales_, 126, 212.
+
+Dekker's _Gul's Horn Book_, 26.
+
+Devil in the Meadow, 42.
+
+_Disciplina Clericalis_, 45.
+
+Doctor and Patients, 5.
+
+Doctor's Apprentice, 168.
+
+Dog that ate Honey, 18.
+
+Door, Taking Care of the, 97, 98.
+
+Dreams, The Good, 92, 93.
+
+Dubois, Abbé, 171.
+
+
+Ear, Biting one's own, 86.
+
+Eberhard's _Hieraclis_, 3.
+
+Eel, Drowning the, 33.
+
+_El Conde Lucanor_, 162.
+
+English typical booby, 139.
+
+
+_Fabliaux_, Le Grand's, 39,163.
+
+Family, Best of the, 165.
+
+Farmer and his Pigs, 54.
+
+Fisher, Indian Silly Son as, 163.
+
+Fishers, Gothamite, 28.
+
+Fleas, Bit by, 14.
+
+_Folk-Lore in Southern India_, 212.
+
+Fool and the aloes-wood, 98;
+  and the birch-tree, 151;
+  and the cotton, 99;
+  and the cup lost in the sea, 99;
+  and the elephant-driver, 51;
+  and his porridge, 119;
+  and the _Ramayana_, 70;
+  and the sack of meal, 19, 25, 68;
+  and the shopkeeper, 100;
+  at his fireside, 119;
+  kicked by his mule, 119;
+  of Hereford, 221;
+  of Huntingdon, 222.
+
+Fools and the buffalo, 101;
+  and the Bull of Siva, 48;
+  and their inheritance, 118;
+  and the mosquitoes, 95;
+  and the palm-trees, 96;
+  and the trunks, 96.
+
+Fortini's Italian Novels, 162.
+
+Fuller, Thomas, on the Gothamites, 20.
+
+Fumivall, F.J., 23.
+
+
+Gaulard, The Sieur, 8, 12, 20, 76.
+
+Geese and Tortoise, 52.
+
+_Gesta Romanorum_, 117,163.
+
+Gibb's _Forty. Vazírs_, 109, 166, 167.
+
+Giufà, the Sicilian Booby, 97, 130, 165.
+
+Goat and Old Woman, 66.
+
+_Gooroo Paramartan_, 29, 37, 157.
+
+Gossips and their late Husbands, 74.
+
+Gossips at the Alehouse, 43.
+
+_Gotham, Tales of the Mad Men of_, xiii., 20, 24-44.
+
+Grazzini's Florentine Fool, 161.
+
+Grecian Noodles, 1-15.
+
+
+Halliwell-Phillipps, J.O., xiii., 13, 22, 27, 53.
+
+Hama and Hums, Men of, 75.
+
+Hazlitt, W.C., xiii., 12.
+
+Heaven, Sorry he has gone to, 74.
+
+Herdsman, The Foolish, 106.
+
+Herodotus, Stephens' _Apology_ for, 119.
+
+Hierokles, Jests of, 2.
+
+_Hitopadesa_, 162.
+
+Honey, Pot of, 6, 18.
+
+Hunter's Dream of a Boar, 4.
+
+
+Icelandic Noodles, 32, 64, 163.
+
+Indian Noodles, 29, 37, 44, 48, 51, 70, 96, 97-106, 111,
+1l8, 158, l6l, 163, 170, 212.
+
+Italian Noodles, 115, 127, 143, 160, 197, 202, 204.
+
+Irish Labourer and Farmer, 8.
+
+Irishman and his ass, 119.
+
+Irishman and his hens, 120.
+
+Irishman and lost shovel, 99.
+
+Irishmen and mosquitoes, 14.
+
+Irishman's Dream, 92.
+
+
+Jack of Dover's Quest, 219.
+
+Japanese Noodle, 130.
+
+Jatakas (Buddhist Birth-Stories), 52, 65, 95, 164.
+
+_Jests of Scogin_, 162.
+
+Joe Miller's Jest-Book, 1, 2.
+
+Judge and Thieves, 87.
+
+
+Kabaïl Tales, 37, 154.
+
+Kashmírí Tales, 65, 89, 111.
+
+_Katha Manjari_, 11, 70, 100, 163.
+
+_Katha Sarit Sagara_, 48, 53, 120, 164.
+
+Kerchief, The, 90.
+
+Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, 89.
+
+King's Stupid Son, The, 167.
+
+Knite, 'The Gothamites', 53.
+
+Knowles, J.H., 66, 113.
+
+
+_Laird of Logan_, 13.
+
+Leger's _Contes Populaires Slaves_, 128, 154.
+
+
+Marie de France, 46.
+
+_Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres_, 161.
+
+Miller's Jest-Book, 1, 2.
+
+Millstone of the Schildburgers, 59.
+
+Minstrel and Pupil, 166.
+
+Monk Transformed, 81.
+
+Moon a green cheese, 44.
+
+Moon in the well, 92.
+
+Moon swallowed by an ass, 46.
+
+"Mortuus Loquens," 160.
+
+Mummy, The, 15.
+
+
+Nasr-ed-Din Khoja, 89.
+
+Natesa Sastri Pandit, 212.
+
+Needham's _Hieroclis_, 3.
+
+Noodles, The Three Great, 191.
+
+Norfolk Noodles, 17.
+
+Norse Noodles, 123, 207.
+
+Notts Bridge, 24.
+
+
+_Orientalist, The_, 69, 87, 114, 143, 160.
+
+
+_Pancha Tantra_, 67, 171.
+
+Paradise, Man who came from, 204, 210, 212, 217.
+
+Pedant, bald man, and barber, 6;
+  and the lost book, 13;
+  and his dream, 5,6;
+  and the jar of feathers, 5;
+  and his jar of wine, 9;
+  and the mirror, 9;
+  and the two slave-boys, 4;
+  and his slave who died, 8;
+  and the sparrows, 5;
+  and the twin-brothers, 12;
+  and his tomb, 8.
+
+Persian Noodle, 7.
+
+Persian Tales, 7, 66, 79.
+
+_Philotimus_, 27.
+
+Poet and the Dogs, 79.
+
+Poggius' _Facetiæ_ 160, 162.
+
+Priest of Gotham, 42.
+
+Princess caused to grow, 102.
+
+Pupil, The Attentive, 165.
+
+
+Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales,_ 48, 153.
+
+Relic-hunter, 95.
+
+Rents of Gothamites, 27.
+
+Right Hand or Left, 91.
+
+River, "Boiling," 30, 43.
+
+Riviere's _Contes Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_,
+37, 154.
+
+Russian Noodles, 47, 128, 151, 154, 195
+
+Rustic and the Dog, 79.
+
+
+_Sacke Full of Newes_, 46, 97.
+
+Sa'dí's _Gulistán_, xi, 79.
+
+Schilda, The Men of, 56.
+
+Schoolmaster's Lady-love, 83.
+
+Sesame, Roasted, 120.
+
+Sheep's Eyes, Casting, 41, 126, 127.
+
+Sicilian Boobies, 97, 116, 139, 165.
+
+Silent Noodles, 107-117.
+
+Silly Matt, 123.
+
+Silly Son, The, 121.
+
+Simple Simon, 121, 122.
+
+Simpleton and Sharpers, 81.
+
+_Sindibád Náma_, 66.
+
+Sinhalese Noodles, 67-69, 87, 89, 113, 141, 165, 179, 217.
+
+Smith, Alexander, 9.
+
+Spade, The Stolen, 94.
+
+Spinning-Wheel, The, 36.
+
+Stephens, Henry, Tales by, 119.
+
+Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_, 154.
+
+_Summa Praædicantium_, The, 167.
+
+
+Tabourot, Etienne, 8.
+
+_Tales and Quicke Answeres_, 161.
+
+Tawney, C.H., 48.
+
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_, 9, 10, 74, 78.
+
+Thief on a Tree, 11.
+
+Thoms, W.J., xii., 56.
+
+Thoroton's _History of Nottinghamshire_, 21.
+
+Three Greatest Noodles, 191.
+
+Treasure Trove, 144, 151, 154.
+
+Trivet, The Gothamite's, 36.
+
+Turkish Noodles, 11, 86, 90, 93, 109, 166, 167.
+
+Twelve Fishers, The, 28.
+
+Twin Brothers, 12.
+
+
+Vives, Ludovicus, 46.
+
+
+Warton's _History of English Poetry_, 22.
+
+Washerman and his young Ass, 103.
+
+Wasp's Nest, 40.
+
+"Whittle to the Tree," 53.
+
+Widows, The Two, 74.
+
+Wiltshire Noodles, 17, 54.
+
+Wither's _Abuses Whipt and Stript_, 26.
+
+Wolf's Tail, The, 91.
+
+Wood, Anthony, on the Gotham Tales, 23.
+
+Worsted Balls, The, 35.
+
+Wrestler and the Wag, 7.
+
+Wrong Man wakened, 6, 7.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Noodles, by W. A. Clouston
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13032 ***
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+  <title>The Book of Noodles</title></head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13032 ***</div>
+
+<h1 align="center">THE</h1>
+
+  <h1 align="center">BOOK OF NOODLES:</h1>
+
+  <h2><i>STORIES OF SIMPLETONS; OR,<br/>
+     FOOLS AND THEIR FOLLIES.</i></h2>
+
+  <h3>BY</h3>
+
+  <h3>W. A. CLOUSTON,</h3>
+
+  <h4><i>Author of &quot;Popular Tales and Fictions: their Migrations and<br/>
+   Transformations</i></h4>
+
+  <h3>&quot;Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling when all<br/>
+   is done.&quot;-<i>-Twelfth Night.</i></h3>
+
+  <h4>LONDON:<br/>
+   ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.<br/>
+   1888.<br/></h4>
+
+
+
+<p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h4>Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-24351</h4>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>TO MY DEAR FRIEND</h3>
+
+  <h3>DAVID ROSS, LL.D., M.A., B.Sc.,</h3>
+
+   <h3>PRINCIPAL OF THE<br/>
+   CHURCH OF SCOTLAND TRAINING COLLEGE,<br/>
+   GLASGOW,</h3>
+
+  <h3>THIS COLLECTION OF FACETIÆ<br/>
+   IS DEDICATED.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter"> <img src="images/image001.png" alt="Preface divider"/></div>
+
+
+<h2><i>PREFACE</i>.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img border="0" src="images/image002.png" width="96" height="94" alt="L"/><i>IKE popular tales in general, the original sources of stories of
+simpletons are for the most part not traceable. The old Greek jests of
+this class had doubtless been floating about among different peoples
+long before they were reduced to writing. The only tales and apologues
+of noodles or stupid folk to which an approximate date can be assigned
+are those found in the early Buddhist books, especially in the
+"Játakas," or Birth-stories, which are said to have been related to his
+disciples by Gautama, the illustrious founder of Buddhism, as incidents
+which occurred to himself and others in former births, and were
+afterwards put into a literary form by his followers. Many of the
+"Játakas" relate to silly men and women, and also to stupid animals, the
+latter being, of course, men re-born as beasts, birds, or reptiles. But
+it is not to be supposed that all are of Buddhist invention; some had
+doubtless been current for ages among the Hindus before Gautama
+promulgated his mild doctrines. Scholars are, however, agreed that these
+fictions date at latest from a century prior to the Christian era.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Of European noodle-stories, as of other folk-tales, it may be said
+that, while they are numerous, yet the elements of which they are
+composed are comparatively very few. The versions domiciled in different
+countries exhibit little originality, farther than occasional
+modifications in accordance with local manners and customs. Thus for the
+stupid Brahman of Indian stories the blundering, silly son is often
+substituted in European variants; for the brose in Norse and Highland
+tales we find polenta or macaroni in Italian and Sicilian versions. The
+identity of incidents in the noodle-stories of Europe with those in what
+are for us their oldest forms, the Buddhist and Indian books, is very
+remarkable, particularly so in the case of Norse popular fictions,
+which, there is every reason to believe, were largely introduced through
+the Mongolians; and the similarity of Italian and West Highland stories
+to those of Iceland and Norway would seem to indicate the influence of
+the Norsemen in the Western Islands of Scotland and in the south of
+Europe.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It were utterly futile to attempt to trace the literary history of
+most of the noodle-stories which appear to have been current throughout
+European countries for many generations, since they have practically
+none. Soon after the invention of printing collections of facetiæ were
+rapidly multiplied, the compilers taking their material from oral as
+well as written sources, amongst others, from mediæval collections of
+"exempla" designed for the use of preachers and the writings of the
+classical authors of antiquity. With the exception of those in Buddhist
+works, it is more than probable that the noodle-stories which are found
+among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere
+amusement. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the "witless devices" of
+the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction? Only the monkish
+writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if
+reproduced in these days, must be "printed for private circulation"!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Yet may the typical noodle of popular tales "point a moral," after a
+fashion. Poor fellow! he follows his instructions only too literally,
+and with a firm conviction that he is thus doing a very clever thing.
+But the consequence is almost always ridiculous. He practically shows
+the fallacy of the old saw that "fools learn by experience," for his
+next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every
+caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does
+everything, like the man in the play, "with the best intentions." His
+mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time; but to
+that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw: he cannot
+be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it;
+and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however,
+which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster
+to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to unexpected good fortune.
+He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet Sádí alludes when he
+says, in his charming "Gulistán," or Rose Garden, "The alchemist died of
+grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin."
+Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood"'; the
+noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries.
+In brief, he is&mdash;in stories, at least&mdash;a standing illustration of the
+"vanity of human life"!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And now a few words as to the history and design of the following work.
+  When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the late Mr. W.J.
+  <a name="thoms"></a>Thoms, who was one of the leading men in its formation,
+  promised to edit for the Society the "Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham,"
+  furnishing notes of analogous stories, a task which he was peculiarly qualified
+  to perform. As time passed on, however, the infirmities of old age doubtless
+  rendered the purposed work less and less attractive to him, and his death, after
+  a long, useful, and honourable career, left it still undone. What particular
+  plan he had sketched out for himself I do not know; but there can be no doubt
+  that had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And, since
+  he did not perform his self-allotted task, his death is surely a great loss,
+  perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of comparative folk-lore.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set
+about the work, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape
+of Oriental noodle-stories; but from a remark in his reply I feared
+there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That
+fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered
+as a humble substitute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is
+displaced by a more worthy one.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Since the "Tales of the Men of Gotham" ceased to be reproduced in
+chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840,
+with an introduction by Mr. J.O. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillipps);
+and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies
+themselves: the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the
+Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the
+"Shakespeare Jest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew
+Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John
+Ashton's "Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century" (1882).</i></p>
+<a name="ashton"></a>
+<p><i>It did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite
+analogues or variants of the Gothamite Tales; nor, on the other hand,
+was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the
+Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet
+all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be
+found in the chapters entitled "Gothamite Drolleries," of which they
+form, indeed, but a small portion.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources,
+many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers,
+the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing
+Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are
+current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be
+thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been
+omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an
+amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of
+popular fictions from country to country. In this design I was assisted
+by Captain R.C. Temple, one of the editors of the "Indian Antiquary,"
+and one of the authors of "Wide-awake Stories," from the Punjab and
+Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some
+curious Oriental parallels to European stories of simpletons.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>W.A.C.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>*.* <i>While my "Popular Tales and Fictions" was passing through the
+press, in 1886, I made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present
+work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has
+had unavoidably to defer its publication till now.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>W.A.C</i>.</p>
+
+<p>GLASGOW, <i>March</i>, 1888.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+  <p align="center"><b>CONTENTS.</b></p>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapItitle">CHAPTER I.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES . . . 1-15</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapIItitle">CHAPTER II.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES:</p>
+
+
+  <p>Reputed communities of stupids in different countries--The noodles of Norfolk:
+    their lord&#39;s bond; the dog and the honey; the fool and his sack of meal--Tales
+    of the Mad Men of Gotham: Andrew Borde not the author--The two Gothamites
+    at Notts Bridge--The hedging of the cuckoo--How the men of Gotham paid their
+    rents--The twelve fishers and the courtier--The <i>Gúrú Paramartan</i>--The
+    brothers of Bakki--Drowning the eel--The Gothamite and his cheese--The trivet--The
+    buzzard--The gossips at the alehouse--The cheese on the highway--The wasp&#39;s
+    nest--Casting sheep&#39;s eyes--The devil in the meadow--The priest of Gotham--The &quot;boiling&quot; river--The
+    moon a green cheese--The &quot;carles of Austwick&quot;--The Wiltshire farmer and his pigs . . . 16-55</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapIIItitle">CHAPTER III.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p align="left">GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (<i>continued</i>):</p>
+
+    <p align="justify">The men of Schilda: the dark council-house; the mill-stone; the cat--Sinhalese noodles: the man
+    who observed Buddha&#39;s five precepts--The fool and the <i>Rámáyana</i>--The two Arabian noodles-- The alewife
+    and her hens--&quot;Sorry he has gone to heaven&quot;--The man of Hama and the man of Hums--<i>Bizarrures</i> of
+    the Sieur Gaulard--The rustic and the dog . . . 56-80</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapIVtitle">CHAPTER IV.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p align="left">GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (<i>continued</i>):</p>
+
+    <p>The simpleton and the sharpers--The schoolmaster&#39;s lady-love--The judge and the thieves--The calf s
+    head--The Kashmírí and his store of rice--The Turkish noodle: the kerchief; the caftan; the wolfs tail; the right
+    hand and the left; the stolen cheese; the moon in the well--The good dreams--Chinese noodles: the lady and her
+    husband; the stolen spade; the relic-hunter--Indian noodles: the fools and the mosquitoes; the fools and the
+    palm-trees; the servants and the trunks; taking care of the door; the fool and the aloes-wood; the fool and the
+    cotton; the cup lost in the sea; the fool and the thieves; the simpletons who ate the buffalo; the princess who was
+    made to grow; the washerman&#39;s ass transformed; the foolish herdsman--Noodle-stories moralised--The brothers and
+    their heritage--Sowing roasted sesame . . . 81-120</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapVtitle">CHAPTER V.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p align="left">THE SILLY SON:</p>
+
+    <p align="left">Simple Simon--The Norse booby--The Russian booby--The
+    Japanese noodle--The Arabian idiot--The English silly son--The Sinhalese
+    noodle with the robbers--The Italian booby--The Arab simpleton and his
+    cow--The Russian fool and the birch-tree--The silly wife deceived by her husband--The Indian fool on the
+    tree-branch--The Indian monk who believed he was dead--The Florentine fool
+    and the young men--The Indian silly son as a fisher; as a messenger; killing
+    a mosquito; as a pupil--The best of the family--The doctor's apprentice . .
+    . 121-170</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapVItitle">CHAPTER VI.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>THE FOUR SIMPLE BRÁHMANS:</p>
+
+    <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="90%" summary="Page numbers for sections in this chapter">
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Introduction</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">171</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the first Bráhman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">176</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the second Bráhman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">178</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the third Bráhman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">181</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the fourth Bráhman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">185</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Conclusion</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">190</td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapVIItitle">CHAPTER VII.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>THE THREE GREAT NOODLES . . 191-218</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#appendix">APPENDIX.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>JACK OF DOVER&#39;S QUEST OF THE FOOL OF ALL FOOLS ...... 219</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#chindex">INDEX</a> . . . . . 225</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>THE BOOK OF NOODLES.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image003.png" width="482" height="91" alt="Chapter Header"/></div><a name="chapItitle"></a>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I.<br/>
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"<img border="0" src="images/image004.png" width="96" height="94" alt="O"/>LD as the days of Hierokles!" is the exclamation of the "classical"
+reader on hearing a well-worn jest; while, on the like occasion, that of
+the "general" reader&mdash;a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies
+one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"&mdash;is, that it is "a Joe
+Miller;" both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in
+<i>joke-ology</i> to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him
+as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of
+Hierokles are <i>old</i> there can be no doubt whatever; that they were
+collected by the Alexandrian sage of that name is more than doubtful;
+while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in
+which he flourished, namely, the fifth century: it is very possible that
+some may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians! It
+is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the
+comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which
+his name is associated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's
+trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and
+cranks, and quiddities," <i>Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade
+Mecum</i>. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Miller," he
+should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it
+is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller"
+are, at least, "as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the
+man who trained his horse to live on a straw <i>per diem</i>, when it
+suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about
+a brick as a specimen of it.</p>
+
+<p>The collection of facetiæ ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it was
+made, is composed of very short anecdotes of the sayings and doings of
+pedants, who are represented as noodles, or simpletons. In their
+existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the
+ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular facetiæ of Europe
+through the churchmen of the Middle Ages, and, after having circulated
+long orally, passed into literature, whence, like other kinds of tales,
+they once more returned to the people. We find in them the indirect
+originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times
+been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also,
+perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type: as brave men lived
+before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very
+ancient pedigree! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now
+pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in
+ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which
+utterly fail to tickle our "sense of humour" in these double-distilled
+days. Of the [Greek: Asteia], or facetiæ, of Hierokles, twenty-eight
+only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of
+his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, and
+published at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with
+other Greek jests&mdash;of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, Cumæ, etc.&mdash;has
+been edited by Eberhard, under the title of <i>Philogelos Hieraclis el
+Philagrii Facetia</i> which was published at Berlin in 1869.</p>
+<a name="p4"></a>
+<p>In attempting to classify the best of these relics of ancient wit&mdash;or
+witlessness, rather&mdash;it is often difficult to decide whether a
+particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an
+example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles
+or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to
+place the story of the men of Cumæ, who were expecting shortly to be
+visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they
+filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order
+that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.</p>
+
+<p>But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on
+going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen
+years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you
+one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his
+father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done
+me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's
+estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred
+years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.</p>
+<a name="p5"></a>
+<p>Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was the hunter who was constantly
+disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep
+with him. Another, surely, was the man of Cumæ who wished to sell some
+clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should
+not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of
+Abdera who punished a runaway ass for having got into the gymnasium and
+upset the olive oil. Having brought all the asses of the town together,
+as a caution, they flogged the delinquent ass before his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the jests of Hierokles may be considered either as witticisms or
+witless sayings of noodles; for example, the story of the man who
+recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and
+afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor
+whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should
+not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of the pedant who
+said to the doctor, "Pardon me for not having been sick so long;" or
+this, "I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night:" quoth the
+other, "By the gods, I was so busy, I did not hear you."</p>
+
+<p>But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some
+sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe,
+and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like
+ripe fruit again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he
+had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after
+stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the
+cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to
+him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You
+may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and
+again, in the man of <a name="p06"></a>Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the rope
+broke, and he hurt his head; but after having the wound dressed by the
+doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a
+trace of them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had
+pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up; when he told a
+friend of his mishap, he said, "Why do you sleep barefooted?"</p>
+
+<p>The following jest is spread&mdash;<i>mutatis mutandis</i>&mdash;over all Europe:
+A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in company, agreed
+to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He
+propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time
+came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, "What a fool is
+this barber," he cried, "for he has roused the bald man instead of me!"</p>
+<a name="p07"></a>
+<p>A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the
+heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro.
+Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when
+he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up,
+he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a
+rage, "Tuts, tuts! The silly body has waukened the wrang man."</p>
+
+<p>In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a
+Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in
+forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew
+near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, "I
+shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I
+have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a
+pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young
+wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to
+spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the
+pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In
+the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his
+companion's leg, he called to him, "Hey! get up, for I am perplexed in
+my mind. Who am I, and who are you? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin
+on your leg? And if you are yourself, why is the pumpkin not on my leg?"</p>
+<a name="p8"></a>
+<p>Modern counterparts of the following jest are not far to seek: Quoth a man
+  to a pedant, "The slave I bought of you has died." Rejoined the other, "By the
+  gods, I do assure you that he never once played me such a trick while I had
+  him." The old Greek pedant is transformed into an Irishman, in our collections
+  of facetiæ, who applied to a farmer for work. "I'll have nothing to do with
+  you," said the farmer, "for the last five Irishmen I had all died on my hands."
+  Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen
+  I've worked for that I never did such a thing." And the jest is thus told in
+  an old translation of <i>Les Contes Facetieux de Sieur Gaulard</i>: "Speaking
+  of one of his Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said,
+  Truly it was one of the handsomest and best Curtails in all the Country; he
+  neuer shewed me such a trick before in all his life."<sup><a href="#chapI01">1</a></sup></p>
+<a name="p09"></a>
+<p>Equally familiar is the jest of the pedant who was looking out for a
+place to prepare a tomb for himself, and on a friend indicating what he
+thought to be a suitable spot, "Very true," said the pedant, "but it is
+unhealthy." And we have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the
+following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it
+below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his
+wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had
+communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor
+had not been drawn off from below. "Why, you fool," said he, "it is not
+the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off."</p>
+
+<p>It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that
+he might know how he looked when asleep&mdash;a jest which reappears in
+Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i> in this form: <a name="p10"></a>"A wealthy monsieur in
+France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his
+man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry
+with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be
+true; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so,
+except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes; and therefore
+I will have a great Looking glasse at my bed's feet for the purpose to
+try whether thou art a lying knaue or not."<a href="#chapI02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Not unlike some of our "Joe Millers" is the following: A citizen of
+Cumæ, on an ass, passed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree
+loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the ass went on,
+leaving him suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him
+what he did there. The man replied, "I fell off the ass."&mdash;An analogue
+to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, entitled <i>Katha
+Manjari</i>: One day a thief climbed up a cocoa-nut tree in a garden to
+steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running
+from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the
+tree. "Why were you up that tree?" asked the gardener. The thief
+replied, "My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf." "Ha! ha!
+is there grass, then, on a cocoa-nut tree?" said the gardener. "No,"
+quoth the thief; "but I did not know; therefore I came down again."&mdash;And
+we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went
+into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of
+vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom.
+The gardener, coming suddenly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said,
+"What are you seeking here?" The simpleton replied, "For some days past
+a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither." "But who
+pulled up these vegetables?" "As the wind blew very violently, it cast
+me here and there; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving
+myself remained in my hands." "Ah," said the gardener, "but who filled
+this sack with them?" "Well, that is the very question I was about to
+ask myself when you came up."</p>
+<a name="p12"></a>
+<p>The propensity with which Irishmen are credited of making ludicrous
+bulls is said to have its origin, not from any lack of intelligence, but
+rather in the fancy of that lively race, which often does not wait for
+expression until the ideas have taken proper verbal form. Be this as it
+may, a considerable portion of the bulls popularly ascribed to Irishmen
+are certainly "old as the jests of Hierokles," and are, moreover,
+current throughout Europe. Thus in Hierokles we read that one of
+twin-brothers having recently died, a pedant, meeting the survivor,
+asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased.&mdash;Taylor has
+this in his <i>Wit and Mirth</i>, and he probably heard it from some one
+who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard: "A nobleman of
+France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he
+said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remember I haue often seene
+thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore
+tenants, and my name is T.J. I remember better now (said my Lord); there
+were two brothers of you, but one is dead; I pray, which of you doth
+remaine alive?"&mdash;Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the notes to his edition of
+Taylor's collection <i>(Shakespeare Jest Books</i>, Third Series), cites
+a Scotch parallel from <i>The Laird of Logan</i>: "As the Paisley
+steamer came alongside the quay<a href="#chapI03"><sup>3</sup></a> at the city of the Seestus,<a href="#chapI04"><sup>4</sup></a> a
+denizen of St. Mirren's hailed one of the passengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu
+hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the
+old nursery rhyme,&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Ho, Master Teague, what is your story?<br/>
+  I went to the wood, and killed a tory;<a href="#chapI05"><sup>5</sup></a><br/>
+  I went to the wood, and killed another:<br/>
+  Was it the same, or was it his brother?"<a href="#chapI06"><sup>6</sup></a>
+</blockquote>
+<p>We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and
+sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating
+lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards
+meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to
+him, "Don't grieve; buy some lettuces; eat them at a corner; turn round
+it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there
+anything like this in "Joe Miller"?&mdash;Two lazy fellows were sleeping
+together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with
+it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up,
+and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead,"
+replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster,
+and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?&mdash;A pedant's
+little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom
+he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."</p>
+<a name="p14"></a>
+<p>An epigram in the <i>Anthologia</i> may find a place among noodle
+stories:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light,<br/>
+  And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"</blockquote>
+
+<p>This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two
+Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept
+their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did
+not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus
+puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the
+other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his
+bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's
+one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"</p>
+<a name="p15"></a>
+<p>Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the
+old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cumæ having died at Alexandria,
+the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at
+the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of
+bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any
+peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol
+replied, "He had a cough."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"> <img src="images/image005.png" width="156" height="84" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI01"><sup>1</sup></a> Etienne Tabourot, the author of this amusing little book,
+who was born at Dijon in 1549 and died in 1590, is said to have written
+the tales in ridicule of the inhabitants of Franche Comte, who were then
+the subjects of Spain, and reputed to be stupid and illiterate. From a
+manuscript translation, entitled <i>Bizarrures; or, The Pleasant and
+Witlesse and Simple Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy</i>,
+purporting to be made by "J.B., of Charterhouse," probably about the
+year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London,
+fifty copies, edited, with a preface, by "A.S." (Alexander Smith), were
+printed at Glasgow in 1884. I am indebted to the courtesy of my friend
+Mr. F.T. Barrett, Librarian of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for
+directing my attention to this curious work, a copy of which is among
+the treasures of that already important institution.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI02"><sup>2</sup></a> "<i>Wit and Mirth</i>. Chargeably collected out of Taverns,
+Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Allyes, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops,
+Highwayes, and Water-passages. Made up and fashioned into Clinches,
+Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips, and Jerkes. Apothegmatically bundled vp
+and garbled at the request of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635)&mdash;such is the
+elaborate title of the collection of jests made by John Taylor, the
+Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The
+above story had, however, been told previously in the <i>Bizarrures</i>
+of the Sieur Gaulard: "His cousine Dantressesa reproued him one day that
+she had found him sleeping in an ill posture with his mouth open, to
+order which for the tyme to come he commanded his seruant to hang a
+looking glasse upon the curtaine at his Bed's feet, that he might
+henceforth see if he had a good posture in his sleep."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI03"><sup>3</sup></a> Only a Liliputian steamer could go up the "river" Cart!</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI04"><sup>4</sup></a> "Seestu" is a nickname for Paisley, the good folks of that busy town
+being in the habit of frequently interjecting, "Seestu?"&mdash;<i>i.e.,</i>
+"Seest thou?"&mdash;in their familiar colloquies.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI05"><sup>5</sup></a> "Tory" is said to be the Erse term for a robber.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI06"><sup>6</sup></a> Halliwell's <i>Nursery Rhymes of England</i>,
+  vol. iv. of Percy Society's publications.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image006.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+<p><a name="chapIItitle"></a></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.<br/>
+  GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES, WITH VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES.</h2>
+<img border="0" src ="images/image007.png" width="96" height="94" alt="I"/>T seems
+to have been common to most countries, from very ancient times, for the inhabitants
+of a particular district, town, or village to be popularly regarded as pre-eminently
+foolish, arrant noodles or simpletons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly
+sayings and doings of the people of Bæotia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs
+the folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The Kabaïl,
+or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad as little better
+than idiots. The Schildburgers are the noodles of German popular tales. In Switzerland
+the townsmen of Belmont, near Lausanne, are typical blockheads. <a name="p17"></a>And
+England has her "men of Gotham"&mdash;a village in Nottinghamshire&mdash;who are
+credited with most of the noodle stories which have been current among the people
+for centuries past, though other places share to some extent in their not very
+enviable reputation: in Yorkshire the "carles" of Austwick, in Craven; some villages
+near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire; and in the counties of Sutherland and Ross,
+the people of Assynt.
+<p>But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a
+similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we
+learn from a curious Latin poem, <i>Descriptio Norfolciensium</i>,
+written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of
+Peterborough, which is printed in Wright's <i>Early Mysteries and Other
+Latin Poems</i>. This poem sets out with stating that Cæsar having
+despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were
+bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the
+most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other
+peoples. Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of
+Norfolk is the following: Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a
+large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future
+burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of
+green wax. To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk.
+When it became dark, they had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure
+one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should
+use the wax seal of the bond for a candle&mdash;they should still have the
+words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate; so they made
+the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their
+merry-making. This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he
+reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice,
+at the same time producing the bond. The lord calls a clerk to examine
+the document, who pronounces it to be null and void in the absence of
+the lord's seal, and so their oppression continues.</p>
+<a name="p18"></a> <a name="p19"></a>
+<p>Another story is of a man of Norfolk who put some honey in a jar, and in
+his absence his dog came and ate it all up. When he returned home and
+was told of this, he took the dog and forced him to disgorge the honey,
+put it back into the jar, and took it to market. A customer having
+examined the honey, declared it to be putrid. "Well," said the
+simpleton, "it was in a vessel that was not very clean."&mdash;Wright has
+pointed out that this reappears in an English jest-book of the
+seventeenth century. "A cleanly woman of Cambridgeshire made a good
+store of butter, and whilst she went a little way out of the town about
+some earnest occasions, a neighbour's dog came in in the meantime, and
+eat up half the butter. Being come home, her maid told her what the dog
+had done, and that she had locked him up in the dairy-house. So she took
+the dog and hang'd him up by the heels till she had squeez'd all the
+butter out of his throat again, whilst she, pretty, cleanly soul, took
+and put it to the rest of the butter, and made it up for Cambridge
+market. But her maid told her she was ashamed to see such a nasty trick
+done. 'Hold your peace, you fool!' says she; ''tis good enough for
+schollards. Away with it to market!'"<a name="chapII1"></a><a href="#chapII01"><sup>1</sup></a>&mdash;Perhaps the original form is
+found in the <i>Philogelos Hieraclis et Philagrii Facetiæ</i>, edited by
+Eberhard. A citizen of Cumæ was selling honey. Some one came up and
+tasted it, and said that it was all bad. He replied, "If a mouse had not
+fallen into it, I would not sell it."</p>
+
+<p>The well-known Gothamite jest of the man who put a sack of meal on his
+own shoulders to save his horse, and then got on the animal's back and
+rode home, had been previously told of a man of Norfolk, thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Ad foram ambulant diebus singulis;<br/>
+  Saccum de lolio portant in humeris,<br/>
+  Jumentis ne noccant: bene fatuis,<br/>
+  Ut prolocutiis sum acquantur bestiis."</blockquote>
+<a name="p20"></a>
+<p>It reappears in the <i>Bizarrures</i> of the Sieur Gaulard:<a href="#chapII02"><sup>2</sup></a> "Seeing
+one day his mule charged with a verie great Portmantle, [he] said to his
+groome that was upon the back of the mule, thou lasie fellowe, hast thou
+no pitie upon that poore Beast? Take that portmantle upon thine owne
+shoulders to ease the poore Beast." And in our own time it is told of an
+Irish exciseman with a keg of smuggled whisky.</p>
+
+<p>How such stories came to be transferred to the men of Gotham, it were
+fruitless to inquire.<a href="#chapII03"><sup>3</sup></a> Similar jests have been long current in other
+countries of Europe and throughout Asia, and accident or malice may have
+fixed the stigma of stupidity on any particular spot. There is probably
+no ground whatever for crediting the tale of the origin of the proverb,
+"As wise as the men of Gotham," although it is reproduced in Thoroton's
+<i>Nottinghamshire</i>, i. 42-3:</p>
+
+<p>"King John, intending to pass through this place, towards Nottingham,
+was prevented by the inhabitants, they apprehending that the ground over
+which a king passed was for ever after to become a public road. The
+King, incensed at their proceedings, sent from his court soon afterwards
+some of his servants to inquire of them the reason of their incivility
+and ill-treatment, that he might punish them. The villagers, hearing of
+the approach of the King's servants, thought of an expedient to turn
+away his Majesty's displeasure from them. When the messengers arrived at
+Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to
+drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts
+upon a large barn to shade the wood from the sun; and others were
+engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush.
+In short, they were all employed in some foolish way or other, which
+convinced the King's servants that it was a village of fools."</p>
+
+<p>The fooleries ascribed to the men of Gotham were probably first
+collected and printed in the sixteenth century; but that jests of the
+"fools of Gotham" were current among the people long before that period
+is evident from a reference to them in the <i>Widkirk Miracle Plays</i>,
+the only existing MS. of which was written about the reign of Henry VI.:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Foles al sam;<br/>
+  Sagh I never none so fare<br/>
+  Bote the soles of Gotham."</blockquote>
+<a name="p22"></a>
+<p>The oldest known copy of the <i>Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam</i>
+was printed in 1630, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
+Warton, in his <i>History of English Poetry</i>, mentions an edition,
+which he says was printed about 1568, by Henry Wikes, but he had never
+seen it. But Mr. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillips), in his <i>Notices
+of Popular English Histories</i>, cites one still earlier, which he
+thinks was probably printed between 1556 and 1566: "Merie Tales of the
+Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A.B., of Phisike Doctour.
+[colophon:] Imprinted at London, in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at
+the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n.d. 12°, black
+letter." The book is mentioned in <i>A Briefe and Necessary
+Introduction</i>, etc., by E.D. (8vo, 1572), among a number of other
+folk-books: "Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, Arthur of the Round
+Table, Huon of Bourdeaux, Oliver of the Castle, <a name="p23"></a>The Four Sonnes of
+Amond, The Witles Devices of Gargantua, Howleglas, Esop, Robyn Hoode,
+Adam Bell, Frier Rushe, The Fooles of Gotham, and a thousand such
+other."<a href="#chapII04"><sup>4</sup></a> And Anthony à Wood, in his <i>Athenæ Oxonienses</i> (1691-2),
+says it was "printed at London in the time of K. Hen. 8, in whose reign
+and after it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by scholars and
+gentlemen. Afterwards being often printed, [it] is now sold only on the
+stalls of ballad-singers." It is likely that the estimation in which the
+book was held "by scholars and gentlemen" was not a little due to the
+supposition that "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," by whom the tales were said
+to have been "gathered together," was none other than Andrew Borde, or
+Boorde, a Carthusian friar before the Reformation, one of the physicians
+to Henry VIII., a great traveller, even beyond the bounds of
+Christendom, "a thousand or two and more myles," a man of great
+learning, withal "of fame facete." For to Borde have the <i>Merie Tales
+of the Mad Men of Gotham</i> been generally ascribed down to our own
+times. There is, however, as Dr. F.J. Furnivall justly remarks, "no good
+external evidence that the book was written by Borde, while the internal
+evidence is against his authorship."<a href="#chapII05"><sup>5</sup></a> In short, the ascription of its
+compilation to "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," was clearly a device of the
+printer to sell the book.<a href="#chapII06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p24"></a>
+<p>The <i>Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham</i> continued to be printed as a
+chap-book down to the close of the first quarter of the present century;
+and much harmless mirth they must have caused at cottage firesides in
+remote rural districts occasionally visited by the ubiquitous pedlar, in
+whose well-filled pack of all kinds of petty merchandise such drolleries
+were sure to be found. Unlike other old collections of facetiæ, the
+little work is remarkably free from objectionable stories; some are
+certainly not very brilliant, having, indeed, nothing in them
+particularly "Gothamite," and one or two seem to have been adapted from
+the Italian novelists. Of the twenty tales comprised in the collection,
+the first is certainly one of the most humorous:</p>
+
+<p>There were two men of Gotham, and one of them was going to the market at
+Nottingham to buy sheep, and the other was coming from the market, and
+both met on Nottingham bridge. "Well met!" said the one to the other.
+"Whither are you a-going?" said he that came from Nottingham. "Marry,"
+said he that was going thither, "I am going to the market to buy sheep."
+"Buy sheep!" said the other. "And which way will you bring them home?"
+"Marry," said the other, "I will bring them over this bridge." "By Robin
+Hood," said he that came from Nottingham, "but thou shalt not." "By Maid
+Marian," said he that was going thither, "but I will." "Thou shalt not,"
+said the one. "I will," said the other. Then they beat their staves
+against the ground, one against the other, as if there had been a
+hundred sheep betwixt them. "Hold them there," said the one. "Beware of
+the leaping over the bridge of my sheep," said the other. "They shall
+all come this way," said one. "But they shall not," said the other. And
+as they were in contention, another wise man that belonged to Gotham
+came from the market, with a sack of meal upon his horse; and seeing and
+hearing his neighbours at strife about sheep, and none betwixt them,
+said he, "Ah, fools, will you never learn wit? Then help me," said he
+that had the meal,<a name="p26"></a> "and lay this sack upon my shoulder." They did so,
+and he went to the one side of the bridge and unloosed the mouth of the
+sack, and did shake out all the meal into the river. Then said he, "How
+much meal is there in the sack, neighbours?" "Marry," answered they,
+"none." "Now, by my faith," answered this wise man, "even so much wit is
+there in your two heads to strive for the thing which you have not." Now
+which was the wisest of these three persons, I leave you to judge.</p>
+
+<p>Allusions to these tales are of frequent occurrence in our literature of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dekker, in his <i>Gul's Horn
+Book</i> (1609), says, "It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy
+head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, but rather set it
+on faster, bestowing upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise
+men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should
+not be able to compare with thine;" and Wither, in his <i>Abuses</i>,
+says,</p>
+
+<blockquote>"And he that tryes to doe it might have bin<br/>
+  One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,"</blockquote>
+
+<p>alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols:</p>
+
+<p>On a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she
+should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge
+round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it,
+and said, "Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor
+drink." The cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself encompassed within
+the hedge, flew away. "A vengeance on her!" said they. "We made not our
+hedge high enough."</p>
+<a name="p27"></a>
+<p>The tales had, however, attained popular favour much earlier. Mr.
+Halliwell-Phillipps has pointed out that in <i>Philotimus</i> (1583) the
+men of Gotham are remembered as having "tied their rentes in a purse
+about an hare's necke, and bade her to carrie it to their landlord," an
+excellent plan, which is thus described:</p>
+
+<p>On a time the men of Gotham had forgotten to pay their rent to their
+landlord. The one said to the other, "To-morrow is our payday, and what
+remedy shall we find to send our money to our lord?" The one said, "This
+day I have taken a quick [i.e., live] hare, and she shall carry it, for
+she is light of foot." "Be it so," said all. "She shall have a letter
+and a purse to put in our money, and we shall direct her the ready way."
+<a name="p28"></a>And when the letters were written, and the money put in a purse, they
+did tie them about the hare's neck, saying, "First thou must go to
+Loughborough, and then to Leicester; and at Newark there is our lord,
+and commend us to him, and there is his duty [i.e., due]." The hare, as
+soon as she was out of their hands, she did run a clean contrary way.
+Some cried to her, saying, "Thou must go to Loughborough first." Some
+said, "Let the hare alone; she can tell a nearer way than the best of us
+all do: let her go." Another said, "It is a noble hare; let her alone;
+she will not keep the highway for fear of the dogs."</p>
+
+<p>The well-worn "Joe Miller" of the Irishman who tried to count the party
+to which he belonged, and always forgot to count himself, which is also
+known in Russia and in the West Highlands of Scotland, is simply a
+variant of this drollery:</p>
+
+<p>On a certain day there were twelve men of Gotham that went to fish, and
+some stood on dry land; and in going home one said to the other, "We
+have ventured wonderfully in wading: I pray God that none of us come
+home and be drowned." "Nay, marry," said one to the other, "let us see
+that; for there did twelve of us come out." Then they told (i.e.,
+counted) themselves, and every one told eleven. Said one to the other,
+"There is one of us drowned." They went back to the brook where they had
+been fishing, and sought up and down for him that was wanting, making
+great lamentation. A courtier, coming by, asked what it was they sought
+for, and why they were sorrowful. "Oh," said they, "this day we went to
+fish in the brook; twelve of us came out together, and one is drowned."
+Said the courtier, "Tell [count] how many there be of you." One of them
+said, "Eleven," and he did not tell himself. "Well," said the courtier,
+"what will you give me, and I will find the twelfth man?" "Sir," said
+they, "all the money we have got." "Give me the money," said the
+courtier, and began with the first, and gave him a stroke over the
+shoulders with his whip, which made him groan, saying, "Here is one,"
+and so served them all, and they all groaned at the matter. When he came
+to the last, he paid him well, saying, "Here is the twelfth man." "God's
+blessing on thy heart," said they, "for thus finding our dear brother!"</p>
+<a name="p29"></a>
+<p>This droll adventure is also found in the <i>Gooroo Paramartan</i>, a
+most amusing work, written in the Tamil language by Beschi, an Italian
+Jesuit, who was missionary in India from 1700 till his death, in 1742.
+The Gooroo (teacher) and his five disciples, who are, like himself,
+noodles, come to a river which they have to cross, and which, as the
+Gooroo informs them, is a very dangerous stream. To ascertain whether it
+is at present "asleep," one of them dips his lighted cheroot in the
+water, which, of course, extinguishes it, upon which he returns to the
+Gooroo and reports that the river is still in a dangerous mood. So they
+all sit down, and begin to tell stories of the destructive nature of
+this river. One relates how his grandfather and another man were
+journeying together, driving two asses laden with bags of salt, and
+coming to this river, they resolved to bathe in it, and the asses,
+tempted by the coolness of the water, at the same time knelt down in it.
+When the men found that their salt had disappeared, they congratulated
+themselves on their wonderful escape from the devouring stream, which
+had eaten up all their salt without even opening the bags. Another
+disciple relates a story similar to the so-called Æsopian fable of the
+dog and his shadow, this river being supposed to have devoured a piece
+of meat which the dog had dropped into it. At length the river is found
+to be quiescent, a piece of charred wood having been plunged into it
+without producing any effect like that of the former experiment; and
+they determine to ford it, but with great caution. Arrived on the other
+side, they count their number, like the men of Gotham, and discover that
+one is not present. A traveller, coming up, finds the missing man by
+whacking each of them over the shoulder. The Gooroo, while gratified
+that the lost one was found, was grumbling at his sore bones&mdash;for the
+traveller had struck pretty hard&mdash;when an old woman, on learning of
+their adventure, told them that, in her young days, she and her female
+companions were once returning home from a grand festival, and adopted
+another plan for ascertaining if they were all together. Gathering some
+of the cattle-droppings, they kneaded them into a cake, in which they
+each made a mark with the tip of the nose, and then counted the marks&mdash;a
+plan which the Gooroo and his disciples should make use of on future
+occasions.</p>
+
+<p>The Abbé Dubois has given a French translation of the Adventures of the
+Gooroo Paramartan among the <i>Contes Divers</i> appended to his not
+very valuable selection of tales and apologues from Tamil, Telegu, and
+Cannada versions of the <i>Panchatantra</i> (Five Chapters, not "Cinq
+Ruses," as he renders it), a Sanskrit form of the celebrated Fables of
+Bidpaï, or Pilpay. An English rendering of Beschi's work, by Babington,
+forms one of the publications of the Oriental Translation Fund. Dubois
+states that he found the tales of the Gooroo current in Indian countries
+where Beschi's name was unknown, and he had no doubt of their Indian
+origin. However this may be, the work was probably designed, as
+Babington thinks, to satirise the Bráhmans, as well as to furnish a
+pleasing vehicle of instruction to those Jesuits in India whose duties
+required a knowledge of the Tamil language.</p>
+<a name="p32"></a>
+<p>A story akin to that of the Gothamite fishers, if not, indeed, an older
+form of it, is told in Iceland of the Three Brothers of Bakki, who came
+upon one of the hot springs which abound in that volcanic island, and
+taking off their boots and stockings, put their feet into the water and
+began to bathe them. When they would rise up, they were perplexed to
+know each his own feet, and so they sat disconsolate, until a wayfarer
+chanced to pass by, to whom they told their case, when he soon relieved
+their minds by striking the feet of each, for which important service
+they gave him many thanks.<a href="#chapII07"><sup>7</sup></a> This story reappears, slightly modified,
+in Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>: A party of
+masons, engaged in building a dyke, take shelter during a heavy shower,
+and when it has passed, they continue sitting, because their legs had
+got mixed together, and none knew his own, until they were put right by
+a traveller with a big stick. We have here an evident relic of the
+Norsemen's occupation of the Hebrides.</p>
+<a name="p33"></a>
+<p>Several of the tales of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in
+Gaelic. That of the twelve fishers has been already mentioned, and here
+is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in
+similar terms in his <i>Tales of the West Highlands</i>:</p>
+
+<p>When that Good Friday was come, the men of Gotham did cast their heads
+together what to do with their white herring, their red herring, their
+sprats, and salt fish. One consulted with the other, and agreed that
+such fish should be cast into a pond or pool (the which was in the
+middle of the town), that it might increase the next year; and every man
+did cast them into the pool. The one said, "I have thus many white
+herrings;" another said, "I have thus many sprats;" another said, "I
+have thus many salt fishes; let us all go together into the pool, and we
+shall fare like lords the next Lent." At the beginning of next Lent the
+men did draw the pond, to have their fish, and there was nothing but a
+great eel. "Ah," said they all, "a mischief on this eel, for he hath eat
+up all our fish!" "What shall we do with him?" said the one to the
+other. "Kill him!" said one of them. "Chop him all to pieces!" said
+another. "Nay, not so," said the other; "let us drown him." "Be it so,"
+said all. They went to another pool, and did cast the eel into the
+water. "Lie there," said they, "and shift for thyself, for no help thou
+shalt have of us;" and there they left the eel to be drowned.</p>
+<a name="p34"></a>
+<p>Campbell's Gaelic story differs so little from the above that we must
+suppose it to have been derived directly from the English chap-book.
+Oral tradition always produces local variations from a written story, of
+which we have an example in a Gaelic version of this choice exploit:</p>
+
+<p>There was a man of Gotham who went to the market of Nottingham to sell
+cheese; and as he was going down the hill to Nottingham Bridge, one of
+his cheeses fell out of his wallet and ran down the hill. "Ah," said the
+fellow, "can you run to the market alone? I will now send one after the
+other;" then laying down the wallet and taking out the cheeses, he
+tumbled them down the hill one after the other; and some ran into one
+bush, and some into another; so at last he said, "I do charge you to
+meet me in the market-place." <a name="p35"></a>And when the man came into the market to
+meet the cheeses, he stayed until the market was almost done, then went
+and inquired of his neighbours and other men if they did see his cheeses
+come to market. "Why, who should bring them?" said one of the
+neighbours. "Marry, themselves," said the fellow; "they knew the way
+well enough," said he: "a vengeance on them! For I was afraid to see my
+cheeses run so fast, that they would run beyond the market. I am
+persuaded that they are at this time almost as far as York." So he
+immediately takes a horse and rides after them to York; but to this day
+no man has ever heard of the cheeses.</p>
+
+<p>In one Gaelic variant a woman is going to Inverness with a basket filled
+with balls of worsted of her own spinning, and going down a hill, one of
+the balls tumbles out and rolls along briskly, upon which she sends the
+others after it, holding the ends of each in her hand; and when she
+reaches the town, she finds a "ravelled hank" instead of her neat balls
+of worsted. In another version a man goes to market with two bags of
+cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. After waiting at
+the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his
+misfortune. She goes to the foot of the hill and finds all the cheese.</p>
+<a name="p36"></a>
+<p>The next Gothamite tale also finds its counterpart in the Gaelic
+stories: There was a man of Gotham who bought at Nottingham a trivet, or
+brandiron, and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the
+carriage thereof, and he set it down; and seeing that it had three feet,
+he said, "Ha! hast thou three feet, and I but two? Thou shalt bear me
+home, if thou wilt," and set himself down thereupon, and said to the
+trivet, "Bear me as long as I have borne thee; but if thou do not, thou
+shalt stand still for me." The man of Gotham did see that his trivet
+would not go farther. "Stand still, in the mayor's name," said he, "and
+follow me if thou wilt. I will tell thee right the way to my home." When
+he did come to his house, his wife said, "Where is my trivet?" The man
+said, "He hath three legs, and I have but two; and I did teach him the
+way to my house. Let him come home if he will." "Where left ye the
+trivet?" said the woman. "At Gotham hill," said the man. His wife did
+run and fetch home the trivet her own self, or else she had lost it
+through her husband's wit.</p>
+
+<p>In Campbell's version a man having been sent by his wife with her
+spinning-wheel to get mended, as he was returning home with it the wind
+set the wheel in motion, so he put it down, and bidding it go straight
+to his house, set off himself. When he reached home, he asked his wife
+if the spinning-wheel had arrived yet, and on her replying that it had
+not, "I thought as much," quoth he, "for I took the shorter way."</p>
+<a name="p37"></a>
+<p>A somewhat similar story is found in Rivière's French collection of
+tales of the Kabaïl, Algeria, to this effect: The mother of a youth of
+the Beni-Jennad clan gave him a hundred reals to buy a mule; so he went
+to market, and on his way met a man carrying a water-melon for sale.
+"How much for the melon?" he asks. "What will you give?" says the man.
+"I have only got a hundred reals," answered the booby; "had I more, you
+should have it." "Well," rejoined the man, "I'll take them." Then the
+youth took the melon and handed over the money. "But tell me," says he,
+"will its young one be as green as it is?" "Doubtless," answered the
+man, "it will be green." As the booby was going home, he allowed the
+melon to roll down a slope before him. It burst on its way, when up
+started a frightened hare. "Go to my house, young one," he shouted.
+"Surely a green animal has come out of it." And when he got home, he
+inquired of his mother if the young one had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Gooroo Paramartan</i> there is a parallel incident to this
+last. The noodles are desirous of providing their Gooroo with a horse,
+and a man sells them a pumpkin, telling them it is a mare's egg, which
+only requires to be sat upon for a certain time to produce a fine young
+horse. The Gooroo himself undertakes to hatch the mare's egg, since his
+disciples have all other matters to attend to; but as they are carrying
+it through a jungle, it falls down and splits into pieces; just then a
+frightened hare runs before them; and they inform the Gooroo that, a
+fine young colt came out of the mare's egg, with very long ears, and ran
+off with the speed of the wind. It would have proved a fine horse for
+their revered Gooroo, they add; but he consoles himself for the loss by
+reflecting that such an animal would probably have run away with him.</p>
+<a name="p38"></a>
+<p>A number of the Gothamite tales in the printed collection are not only inferior
+  to those which are preserved orally, but can be considered in no sense examples
+  of preeminent folly. Three consist of tricks played by women upon their husbands,
+  such as are found in the ordinary jest-books of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+  centuries. In one a man, who had taken a buzzard, invites some friends to dine
+  with him. His wife, with two of her gossips, having secretly eaten the buzzard,
+  kills and cooks an old goose, and sets it before him and his guests; the latter
+  call him a knave to mock them thus with an old goose, and go off in great anger.
+  The husband, resolved to put himself right with his friends, stuffs the buzzard's
+  feathers into a sack, in order to show them that they were mistaken in thinking
+  he had tried to deceive them with an old goose instead of a fine fat buzzard.
+  But before he started on this business, his wife contrived to substitute the
+  goose's feathers, which he exhibited to his friends as those of the buzzard,
+  and was soundly cudgelled for what they believed to be a second attempt to mock
+  them.&mdash;Two other stories seem to be derived from the Italian novelists: of the
+  man who intended cutting off his wife's hair<a href="#chapII08"><sup>8</sup></a>
+  and of the man who defied his wife to cuckold him. Two others turn upon wrong
+  responses at a christening and a marriage, which have certainly nothing Gothamite
+  in them. Another is a dull story of a Scotchman who employed a carver to make
+  him as a sign of his inn a boar's head, the tradesman supposing from his northern
+  pronunciation that he meant <i>bare</i> head.&mdash;In the nineteenth tale,
+  a party of gossips are assembled at the alehouse, and each relates in what manner
+  she is profitable to her husband: one saves candles by sending all her household
+  to bed in daylight; another, like the old fellow and Tib his wife in <i>Jolly
+  Good Ale and Old</i>, eats little meat, but can swig a gallon or two of ale,
+  and so forth.</p>
+<a name="p40"></a>
+<p>We have, however, our Gothamite once more in the story of him who,
+seeing a fine cheese on the ground as he rode along the highway, tried
+to pick it up with his sword, and finding his sword too short, rode back
+to fetch a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found
+the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this
+sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also
+in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch
+of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down
+the smithy&mdash;a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a
+moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place of
+the honest Gothamite!<a href="#chapII09"><sup>9</sup></a><a name="chapII9"></a></p>
+
+<p>The following properly belongs to stories of the "silly son" class:
+There was a young man of Gotham the which should go wooing to a fair
+maid. His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, "When thou dost look
+upon her, cast a sheep's-eye, and say, 'How do ye, sweet pigsnie?'" The
+fellow went to the butcher's and bought seven or eight sheep's eyes; and
+when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a
+sheep's eye, saying, "How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?" "How do I?"
+said the wench. "Swine's-face, why dost thou cast the sheep's eye upon
+me?" "O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" "I defy thee,
+Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What,
+sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou
+wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live
+till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool."</p>
+<a name="p42"></a>
+<p>It is very evident that the men of Gotham were of "honest" Jack
+Falstaff's opinion that the better part of valour is discretion: On a
+time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great
+grasshopper. He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his
+neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in
+the grass. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with
+halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper. When
+they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one
+to the other, "Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will
+not meddle with him." And so they returned again, and said, "We were all
+blessed this day that we went no farther." "Ah, cowards," said he that
+had his scythe in the mead, "help me to fetch my scythe." "No," said
+they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin: better it is to lose thy
+scythe than to mar us all."</p>
+
+<p>There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed
+collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednesday the
+priest said to the men of Gotham, "If I should enjoin you to prayer,
+there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too
+old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not
+eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour
+all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will
+come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he
+did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after
+another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might
+have part of his meat. "And as for alms," said the priest, "ye be
+beggars all, except one or two; therefore bestow alms on yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>Among the numerous stories of the Gothamites preserved orally, but not
+found in the collection of "A.B., of Phisicke Doctour," is the
+following, which seems to be of Indian extraction:</p>
+<a name="p43"></a>
+<p>One day some men of Gotham were walking by the riverside, and came to a
+place where the contrary currents caused the water to boil as in a
+whirlpool. "See how the water boils!" says one. "If we had plenty of
+oatmeal," says another, "we might make enough porridge to serve all the
+village for a month." So it was resolved that part of them should go to
+the village and fetch their oatmeal, which was soon brought and thrown
+into the river. But there presently arose the question of how they were
+to know when the porridge was ready. This difficulty was overcome by the
+offer of one of the company to jump in, and it was agreed that if he
+found it ready for use, he should signify the same to his companions.
+<a name="p44"></a>The man jumped in, and found the water deeper than he expected. Thrice
+he rose to the surface, but said nothing. The others, impatient at his
+remaining so long silent, and seeing him smack his lips, took this for
+an avowal that the porridge was good, and so they all jumped in after
+him and were drowned.</p>
+
+<p>Another traditional Gothamite story is related of a villager coming home
+at a late hour and, seeing the reflection of the moon in a horse-pond,
+believed it to be a green cheese, and roused all his neighbours to help
+him to draw it out. They raked and raked away until a passing cloud sank
+the cheese, when they returned to their homes grievously
+disappointed.<a href="#chapII10"><sup>10</sup></a>&mdash;This is also related of the villagers near the
+Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire, and the <i>sobriquet</i> of
+"moon-rakers," applied to Wiltshire folk in general, is said to have had
+its origin in the incident; but they assert that it was a keg of
+smuggled brandy, which had been sunk in a pond, that the villagers were
+attempting to fish up, when the exciseman coming suddenly upon the
+scene, they made him believe they were raking the reflection of the
+moon, thinking it a green cheese, an explanation which is on a par with
+the apocryphal tale of the Gothamites and the messengers of King John.</p>
+<a name="p45"></a>
+<p>The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable
+antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is
+referred to by Rabelais, and was doubtless the subject of a popular
+French tale in his time. In the twenty-second story of the <i>Disciplina
+Clericalis</i> of Peter Alfonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was baptised in
+1106, a fox leaves a wolf in a well, looking after a supposed cheese,
+made by the image of the moon in the water; and the same fable had been
+told by the Talmudists in the fifth century.<a href="#chapII11"><sup>11</sup></a> The well-known "Joe
+Miller" of the party of Irishmen who endeavoured to reach a "green
+cheese" in the river by hanging one by another's legs finds its parallel
+in a Mecklenburg story, in which some men by the same contrivance tried
+to get a stone from the bottom of a well, and the incident is thus
+related in the old English jest-book entitled <i>The Sacke Full of
+Newes</i>:</p>
+<a name="p47"></a>
+<p>There were three young men going to Lambeth along by the waterside, and
+one played with the other, and they cast each other's caps into the
+water in such sort as they could not get their caps again. But over the
+place where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did
+cover a great deal of the water. One of them said to the rest, "Sirs, I
+have found a notable way to come by them. First I will make myself fast
+by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is
+with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take
+hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands
+he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand." And so they
+did; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he
+that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, "Soft, sirs! My girdle
+slacketh." "Make it fast quickly," said they. But as he was untying it
+to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well
+washed for their pains.</p>
+
+<p>Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who
+planted a cabbage-head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage,
+and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky. He climbs up the
+cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky. There he sees a mill, which gives
+a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the
+top. The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill; then he lies down to
+sleep. By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.</p>
+<a name="p48"></a>
+<p>He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him
+to take her with him. She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in
+his teeth and begins to climb up. The old woman, becoming tired, asked
+him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, "Not much
+farther," the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman
+fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr.
+Ralston's most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian
+folk-tales), but observe the very close resemblance which it bears to
+the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the
+<i>Kathá Sarit Ságara</i> (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand
+collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh
+century, from a similar work entitled <i>Vrihat Kathá</i> (Great Story),
+written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century:<a href="#chapII12"><sup>12</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was
+the greatest fool of the lot. He once heard in a treatise on law, which
+was being read aloud, that a man who has a tank made gains a great
+reward in the next world. Then, as he had a large fortune, he had made a
+large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent. One
+day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and
+perceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature. The next
+day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part
+of the tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, "I will
+watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and
+I will find out what creature it is that does this." After he had formed
+this resolution, he came there early next morning, and watched, until at
+last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its
+horns. He thought, "This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to
+heaven with it?" And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands
+laid hold of the tail behind. Then the holy bull lifted up, with the
+utmost force, the foolish man who was clinging to its tail, and carried
+him in a moment to its home in Kailása.<a href="#chapII13"><sup>13</sup></a> There the foolish man lived
+for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties,
+sweetmeats, and other things which he obtained. And seeing that the bull
+kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny,
+thought, "I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my
+friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return
+in the same way." Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung
+to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned
+to the surface of the earth. When he entered the convent, the other
+blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been,
+and he told them. Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of
+his adventures, made this petition to him: "Be kind, and take us also
+there; enable us also to feast on sweetmeats." He consented, and told
+them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the
+tank, and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail of
+the bull with his two hands, and another took hold of his feet, and a
+third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by
+hanging on to one another's feet, the bull flew rapidly up into the air.
+And while the bull was going along, with all the fools clinging to its
+tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool,
+<a name="p51"></a>"Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats
+which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in
+heaven?" Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in
+hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and
+exclaimed in answer, "So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the
+bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were
+killed; and the bull returned to Kailása; but the people who saw it were
+much amused.<a href="#chapII14"><sup>14</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>"Thus," remarks the story-teller, "fools do themselves injury by asking
+questions and giving answers without reflection"; he then proceeds to
+relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that "association with
+fools brings prosperity to no man":</p>
+<a name="p52"></a>
+<p>A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when
+he asked the way, the people said to him, "Take the path that goes up by
+the tree on the bank of the river." Then the fool went and got on the
+trunk of that tree, and said to himself, "The men told me that my way
+lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the
+bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to
+avoid falling by clinging to it. While he was clinging to it, there came
+that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on
+his back. And the fool called to him, saying, "Great sir, take me down."
+The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to
+take him down from the tree. Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the
+driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fool, who was clinging
+to the end of the tree. Then said the fool to the driver, "Sing
+something, in order that the people may hear, and come at once and take
+us down." So the elephant-driver, thus appealed to, began to sing, and
+he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased; and in his desire to
+applaud him, he forgot what he was about, let go his hold of the tree,
+and prepared to clap him with both his hands; and immediately he and the
+elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned.</p>
+
+<p>The germ of all stories of this class is perhaps found in the
+<i>Játakas</i>, or Buddhist Birth Stories: A pair of geese resolve to
+migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise,
+their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills,
+and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth.  As they are
+flying over Bánáres, the people exclaim in wonder to one another at such
+a strange sight, and the tortoise, unable to maintain silence, opens his
+mouth to rebuke them, and by so doing falls to the ground, and is dashed
+into pieces. This fable is also found in Babrius. (115); in the <i>Kathá
+Sarit Ságara</i>; in the several versions of the Fables of Bidpaï; and
+in the <i>Avadánas</i>, translated into French from the Chinese by
+Stanislas Julien.</p>
+<a name="p53"></a>
+<hr />
+
+<p>To return to Gothamite stories. According to one of those which are
+current orally, the men of Gotham had but one knife among them, which
+was stuck in a tree in the middle of the village for their common use,
+and many amusing incidents, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, arose out of
+their disputes for the use of this knife. The "carles" of Austwick, in
+Yorkshire, are said also to have had but one knife, or "whittle," which
+was deposited under a tree, and if it was not found there when wanted,
+the "carle" requiring it called out, "Whittle to the tree!" This plan
+did very well for some years, until it was taken one day by a party of
+labourers to a neighbouring moor, to be used for cutting their bread and
+cheese. When the day's labour was done, they resolved to leave the knife
+at the place, to save themselves the trouble of carrying it back, as
+they should want it again next day; so they looked about for some object
+to mark the spot, and stuck it into the ground under a black cloud that
+happened to be the most remarkable object in sight. But next day, when
+they returned to the place, the cloud was gone, and the "whittle" was
+never seen again.</p>
+<a name="p54"></a>
+<p>When an Austwick "carle" comes into any of the larger towns of
+Yorkshire, it is said he is greeted with the question, "Who tried to
+lift the bull over the gate?" in allusion to the following story: An
+Austwick farmer, wishing to get a bull out of a field&mdash;how the animal
+got into it, the story does not inform us&mdash;procured the assistance of
+nine of his neighbours to lift the animal over the gate. After trying in
+vain for some hours, they sent one of their number to the village for
+more help. In going out he opened the gate, and after he had gone away,
+it occurred to one of those who remained that the bull might be allowed
+to go out in the same manner.</p>
+
+<p>Another Austwick farmer had to take a wheelbarrow to a certain town,
+and, to save a hundred yards by going the ordinary road, he went through
+the fields, and had to lift the barrow over twenty-two stiles.</p>
+
+<p>It was a Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined
+to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the
+branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted
+up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck
+broken, until at last there were none left.&mdash;And quite as witless,
+surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired to move
+their church three yards farther westward, so they carefully marked the
+exact distance by leaving their coats on the ground. Then they set to
+work to push with all their might against the eastern wall. In the
+meantime a thief had gone round to the west side and stolen their coats.
+"Diable!" exclaimed they on finding that their coats were gone, "we have
+pushed too far!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image008.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII01"><sup>1</sup></a> <i>Coffee House Jests</i>. Fifth edition. London. 1688. P. 36.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII02"><sup>2</sup></a> <a href="#chapI01">See <i>ante</i>, p.
+  8, note [1].</a></p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII03"><sup>3</sup></a> Fuller, while admitting that "an hundred fopperies are forged and
+fathered on the townsfolk of Gotham," maintains that "Gotham doth breed
+as wise people as any which laugh at their simplicity."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII04"><sup>4</sup></a> Collier's <i>Bibliographical Account</i>, etc., vol. i., p. 327.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII05"><sup>5</sup></a> Forewords to Borde's <i>Introduction of Knowledge</i>, etc., edited,
+for the Early English Text Society, by F.J. Furnivall.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII06"><sup>6</sup></a> It is equally certain that Borde had no hand either in the <i>Jests
+of Scogin</i> or <i>The Mylner of Abyngton</i>, the latter an imitation
+of Chaucer's <i>Reve's Tale</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII07"><sup>7</sup></a> Powell and Magnusson's <i>Legends of Iceland</i>, Second Series.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII08"><sup>8</sup></a> An imitation of Boccaccio, <i>Decameron</i>, Day vii., nov. 8, who
+perhaps borrowed the story from Guerin's <i>fabliau</i> "De la Dame qui
+fit accroire a son Mari qu'il avait rêve; <i>alias</i>, Les Cheveux
+Coupés" (Le Grand's <i>Fabliaux</i>, ed. 1781, tome ii., 280).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII09"><sup>9</sup></a> A slightly different version occurs in the <i>Tale of Beryn</i>,
+which is found in a unique MS. of Chaucer's <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, and
+which forms the first part of the old French romance of the <i>Chevalier
+Berinus</i>. In the English poem Beryn, lamenting his misfortunes, and
+that he had disinherited himself, says:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"But I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies]<br/>
+  He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies,<br/>
+  And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase,<br/>
+  Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase<br/>
+  Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was,<br/>
+  And kissid so the evese, that brent was al the plase."</blockquote>
+
+<p>It is certain that the author of the French original of the <i>Tale of
+Beryn</i> did not get this story out of our jests of the men of Gotham.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII10"><sup>10</sup></a> There is an analogous Indian story of a youth who went to a tank to
+drink, and observing the reflection of a golden-crested bird that was
+sitting on a tree, he thought it was gold in the water, and entered the
+tank to take it up, but he could not lay hold of it as it appeared and
+disappeared in the water. But as often as he ascended the bank he again
+saw it in the water, and again he entered the tank to lay hold of it,
+and still he got nothing. At length his father saw and questioned him,
+then drove away the bird, and explaining the matter to him, took the
+foolish fellow home.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen that the men of Abdera (p. 5) flogged an ass before
+its fellows for upsetting a jar of olive oil, but what is that compared
+with the story of the ass that drank up the moon? According to Ludovicus
+Vives, a learned Spanish writer, certain townspeople imprisoned an ass
+for drinking up the moon, whose reflection, appearing in the water, was
+covered with a cloud while the ass was drinking. Next day the poor beast
+was brought to the bar to be sentenced according to his deserts. After
+the grave burghers had discussed the affair for some time, one at length
+rose up and declared that it was not fit the town should lose its moon,
+but rather that the ass should be cut open and the moon he had swallowed
+taken out of him, which, being cordially approved by the others, was
+done accordingly.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII11"><sup>11</sup></a> This is also one of the Fables of Marie de France (thirteenth
+century).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII12"><sup>12</sup></a> A complete translation of the <i>Kathá Sarit Ságara</i>, by
+Professor C.H. Tawney, with notes of variants, which exhibit his wide
+acquaintance with the popular fictions of all lands, has been recently
+published at Calcutta (London agents, Messrs. Trübner and Co.), a work
+which must prove invaluable to every English student of comparative
+folk-lore.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII13"><sup>13</sup></a> Siva's paradise, according to Hindu mythology, is on Mount Kailása,
+in the Himályas, north of Mánasa.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII14"><sup>14</sup></a> Tawney's translation, which is used throughout
+  this work.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapIIItitle"></a><img src="images/image009.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.<br/>
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (<i>continued</i>).</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image010.png" alt="T"/>HE Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gothamites of
+Germany, and the stories of their stupidity, after being orally current
+for years among the people, were collected near the close of the
+sixteenth century, the earliest known edition being that of 1597. In a
+most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances"
+(<i>Foreign Quarterly Review</i>, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms
+has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from
+which the following particulars and tales are extracted: "There have
+been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from
+one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally
+gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils
+of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their
+circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and
+then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered
+affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity,
+and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as
+to prove 'plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this
+strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the
+Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and
+receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and
+signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn
+themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the
+Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by
+which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on
+which some of their descendants, who may be known by their
+characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."</p>
+<a name="p57"></a>
+<p>Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows.
+When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, "saw
+they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a
+state of things; and having in vain gone outside and examined the
+building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to hold a
+council upon the subject on the following day. At the time appointed
+they assembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating
+himself, he stuck in his hat. After much discussion, one genius,
+brighter than the rest, decided that they could not see for want of
+daylight, and that they ought on the morrow to carry in as much of it as
+possible. Accordingly, the next day, when the sun shone, all the sacks,
+bags, boxes, baskets, tubs, pans, etc. of the village were filled with
+its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied
+there, but with no good effect. After this they removed the roof, by the
+advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion. This
+plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter
+fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, they found the house
+just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in
+their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting
+the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell
+through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had
+never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get
+daylight in by making a window.</p>
+
+<p>Another tale relates how the boors of Schilda contrived to get their
+millstone twice down from a high mountain:</p>
+
+<p>The boors of Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour
+they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the
+summit of a high mountain; and when the stone was finished, they carried
+it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the
+bottom, it occurred to one of them that they might have spared
+themselves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down.
+"Verily," said he, "we are the stupidest of fools to take these
+extraordinary pains to do that which we might have done with so little
+trouble. We will carry it up, and then let it roll down the hill by
+itself, as we did before with the tree which we felled for the
+council-house."</p>
+
+<p>This advice pleased them all, and with greater labour they carried the
+stone to the top of the mountain again, and were about to roll it down,
+when one of them said, "But how shall we know where it runs to? Who will
+be able to tell us aught about it?" "Why," said the bailiff, who had
+advised the stone being carried up again, "this is very easily managed.
+One of us must stick in the hole [for the millstone, of course, had a
+hole in the middle], and run down with it." This was agreed to, and one
+of them, having been chosen for the purpose, thrust his head through the
+hole, and ran down the hill with the millstone. Now at the bottom of the
+mountain was a deep fish-pond, into which the stone rolled, and the
+simpleton with it, so that the Schildburgers lost both stone and man,
+and not one among them knew what had become of them. And they felt
+sorely angered against their old companion who had run down the hill
+with the stone, for they considered that he had carried it off for the
+purpose of disposing of it. So they published a notice in all the
+neighbouring boroughs, towns, and villages, calling on them, that "if
+any one come there with a millstone round his neck, they should treat
+him as one who had stolen the common goods, and give him to justice."
+But the poor fellow lay in the pond, dead. Had he been able to speak, he
+would have been willing to tell them not to worry themselves on his
+account, for he would give them their own again. But his load pressed so
+heavily upon him, and he was so deep in the water, that he, after
+drinking water enough&mdash;more, indeed, than was good for him&mdash;died; and he
+is dead at the present day, and dead he will, shall, and must remain!</p>
+
+<p>The forty-seventh chapter recounts "How the Schildburgers purchased a
+mouser, and with it their own ruin":</p>
+<a name="p61"></a>
+<p>Now it happened that there were no cats in Schilda, and so many mice
+that nothing was safe, even in the bread-basket, for whatsoever they put
+there was sure to be gnawed or eaten; and this grieved them sorely. And
+upon a time there came a traveller into the village, carrying a cat in
+his arms, and he entered the hostel. The host asked him, "What sort of a
+beast is that?" Said he, "It is a mouser." Now the mice at Schilda were
+so quiet and so tame that they never fled before the people, but ran
+about all day long, without the slightest fear. So the traveller let the
+cat run, who, in the sight of the host, soon caught numbers of mice. Now
+when the people were told this by the host, they asked the man whether
+the mouser was to be sold, for they would pay him well for it. He said,
+"It certainly was not to be sold; but seeing that it would be so useful
+to them, he would let them have it if they would pay him what was
+right," and he asked a hundred florins for it. The boors were glad to
+find that he asked so little, and concluded a bargain with him, he
+agreeing to take half the money down, and to come again in six months to
+fetch the rest. As soon as the bargain was struck on both sides, they
+gave the traveller the half of the money, and he carried the mouser into
+the granary, where they kept their corn, for there were most mice there.
+The traveller went off with the money at full speed, for he feared
+greatly lest they should repent them of the bargain, and want their
+money back again; and as he went along he kept looking behind him to see
+that no one was following him. Now the boors had forgotten to ask what
+the cat was to be fed upon, so they sent one after him in haste to ask
+him the question. But when he with the gold saw that some one was
+following him, he hastened so much the more, so that the boor could by
+no means overtake him, whereupon he called out to him from afar off,
+"What does it eat?" "What you please! What you please!" quoth the
+traveller. But the peasant understood him to say, "Men and beasts! Men
+and beasts!" Therefore he returned home in great affliction, and said as
+much to his worthy masters.</p>
+
+<p>On learning this they became greatly alarmed, and said, "When it has no
+more mice to eat, it will eat our cattle; and when they are gone, it
+will eat us! To think that we should lay out our good money in buying
+such a thing!" And they held counsel together and resolved that the cat
+should be killed. But no one would venture to lay hold of it for that
+purpose, whereupon it was determined to burn the granary, and the cat in
+it, seeing that it was better they should suffer a common loss than all
+lose life and limb. So they set fire to the granary. But when the cat
+smelt the fire, it sprang out of a window and fled to another house, and
+the granary was burned to the ground. Never was there sorrow greater
+than that of the Schildburgers when they found that they could not kill
+the cat. They counselled with one another, and purchased the house to
+which the cat had fled, and burned that also. But the cat sprang out
+upon the roof, and sat there, washing itself and putting its paws behind
+its ears, after the manner of cats; and the Schildburgers understood
+thereby that the cat lifted up its hands and swore an oath that it would
+not leave their treatment of it unrevenged. Then one of them took a long
+pole and struck at the cat, but the cat caught hold of the pole, and
+began to clamber down it, whereupon all the people grew greatly alarmed
+and ran away, and left the fire to burn as it might. And because no one
+regarded the fire, nor sought to put it out, the whole village was
+burned to a house, and notwithstanding that, the cat escaped. And the
+Schildburgers fled with their wives and children to a neighbouring
+forest. And at this time was burned their chancery and all the papers
+therein, which is the reason why their history is not to be found
+described in a more regular manner.</p>
+<a name="p64"></a>
+<p>Thus ended the career of the Schildburgers as a community, according to
+the veracious chronicle of their marvellous exploits, the first of
+which, their carrying sunshine into the council-house, is a favourite
+incident in the noodle-stories of many countries, and has its parallel
+in the Icelandic story of the Three Brothers of Bakki: They had observed
+that in winter the weather was colder than in summer, also that the
+larger the windows of a house were the colder it was. All frost and
+sharp cold, therefore, they thought sprang from the fact that houses had
+windows in them. So they built themselves a house on a new plan, without
+windows in it at all. It followed, of course, that there was always
+pitch darkness in it. They found that this was rather a fault in the
+house, but comforted themselves with the certainty that in winter it
+would be very warm; and as to light, they thought they could contrive
+some easy means of getting the house lighted. One fine day in the middle
+of summer, when the sunshine was brightest, they began to carry the
+darkness out of the house in their caps, and emptied it out when they
+came into the sunshine, which they then carried into the dark room. Thus
+they worked hard the whole day, but in the evening, when they had done
+all their best, they were not a little disappointed to find that it was
+as dark as before, so much so that they could not tell one hand from the
+other.<a href="#chapIII01"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p65"></a>
+<p>There is a Kashmírí story which bears a slight resemblance to the
+exploit of the Schildburgers with the cat. A poor old woman used to beg
+her food by day and cook it at night. Half of the food she would eat in
+the morning, and the other half in the evening. After a while a cat got
+to know of this arrangement, and came and ate the meal for her. The old
+woman was very patient, but at last could no longer endure the cat's
+impudence, and so she laid hold of it. She argued with herself as to
+whether she should kill it or not. "If I slay it," she thought, "it will
+be a sin; but if I keep it alive, it will be to my heavy loss." So she
+determined only to punish it. She procured some cotton wool and some
+oil, and soaking the one in the other, tied it on to the cat's tail and
+then set it on fire. Away rushed the cat across the yard, up the side of
+the window, and on to the roof, where its flaming tail ignited the
+thatch and set the whole house on fire. The flames soon spread to other
+houses, and the whole village was destroyed.<a href="#chapIII02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p66"></a>
+<p>An older form of this incident is found in the introduction to a Persian
+poetical version of the Book of Sindibád (<i>Sindibád Náma</i>), of
+which a unique MS. copy, very finely illuminated, but imperfect, is
+preserved in the Library of the India Office:<a href="#chapIII03"><sup>3</sup></a> In a village called
+Buzina-Gird (i.e., Monkey Town) there was a goat that was in the habit
+of butting at a certain old woman whenever she came into the street. One
+day the old woman had been to ask fire from a neighbour, and on her
+return the goat struck her so violently with his horns when she was off
+her guard as to draw blood. Enraged at this, she applied the fire which
+she held to the goat's fleece, which kindled, and the animal ran to the
+stables of the elephant-keeper, and rubbed his sides against the reeds
+and willows. They caught fire, which the wind soon spread, and the heads
+and faces of the warlike elephants were scorched. With the sequel&mdash;how
+the king caused all the monkeys to be slaughtered, as their fat was
+required to cure the scorched elephants&mdash;we have no concern at
+present.<a href="#chapIII04"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p67"></a>
+<p>In Ceylon whole districts, such as Tumpane, in the central province,
+Morora Korle, in the southern province, and Rayigam Korle, in the
+western province, are credited with being the abode of fools. A learned
+writer on the proverbial sayings of the Sinhalese states that these
+often refer to "popular stories of stupid people to which foolish
+actions are likened. The stories of the Tumpane villagers who tried to
+unearth and carry off a well because they saw a bees' nest reflected in
+the water; of the Morora Korle boatmen who mistook a bend in the river
+for the sea, left their cargo there, and returned home; of the Rayigam
+Korle fools who threw stones at the moon to frighten her off one fine
+moonlight night when they thought she was coming too near, and that
+there was danger of her burning their crops, are well known, and it is
+customary to ask a man if he was born in one of these places if he has
+done anything particularly foolish. The story of the double-fool&mdash;i.e.,
+of the man who tried to lighten the boat by carrying his pingo load over
+his shoulders;<a href="#chapIII05"><sup>5</sup></a> <a name="chapIII5"></a>of the man who stretched out his hands to be warmed by
+the fire on the other side of the river; of the rustic's wife who had
+her own head shaved, so as not to lose the barber's services for the day
+when he came, and her husband was away from home; of the villagers who
+tied up their mortars in the village in the belief that the elephant
+tracks in the rice fields were caused by the mortars wandering about at
+night; of the man who would not wash his body in order to spite the
+river; of the people who flogged the elk-skin at home to avenge
+themselves on the deer that trespassed in the fields at night; and of
+the man who performed the five precepts&mdash;all these are popular stories
+of foolish people which have passed into proverbs."<a href="#chapIII06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p69"></a>
+<p>The last of the stories referred to in the above extract is as follows:
+A woman once rebuked her husband for not performing the five (Buddhist)
+precepts. "I don't know what they are," he replied. "Oh, it's very
+easy," she said; "all you have to do is to go to the priest and repeat
+what he says after him." "Is that all?" he answered. "Then I'll go and
+do it at once." Off he went, and as he neared the temple the priest saw
+him and called out, "Who are you?" to which he replied, "Who are you?"
+"What do you want?" demands the priest. "What do you want?" the
+blockhead answers dutifully. "Are you mad?" roared the priest. "Are you
+mad?" returned the rustic. "Here," said the priest to his attendants,
+"take and beat him well;" and notwithstanding that he carefully repeated
+the words again, taken and thoroughly well thrashed he was, after which
+he crawled back to his wife and said, "What a wonderful woman you are!
+You manage to repeat the five precepts every day, and are strong and
+healthy, while I, who have only said them once, am nearly dead with
+fever from the bruises."<a href="#chapIII07"><sup>7</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>To this last may be added a story in the <i>Kathá Manjari</i>, a
+Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the <i>Rámáyana</i>, one
+of the two great Hindú epics: One day a man was reading the
+<i>Rámáyana</i> in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might
+be instructed by hearing it, sent him there. He went, and stood leaning
+on his crook&mdash;for he was a shepherd&mdash;when presently a practical joker,
+seeing his simplicity, jumped upon his shoulders, and he stood with the
+man on his back until the discourse was concluded. When he reached home,
+his wife asked him how he liked the <i>Rámáyana</i>. "Alas!" said he,
+"it was not easy; it was a man's load."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The race of Gothamites is indeed found everywhere&mdash;in popular tales, if
+not in actual life; and their sayings and doings are not less diverting
+when husband and wife are well mated, as in the following story:</p>
+<a name="p70"></a>
+<p>An Arab observing one morning that his house was ready to tumble about
+his ears from decay, and being without the means of repairing it, went
+with a long face to his wife, and informed her of his trouble. She said,
+"Why, my dear, need you distress yourself about so small a matter? You
+have a cow worth thirty dirhams; take her to the market and sell her for
+that sum. I have some thread, which I will dispose of to-day, and I
+warrant you that between us both we shall manage very well." The man at
+once drove the cow to the market, and gave her over for sale to the
+appraiser of cattle. The salesman showed her to the bystanders, directed
+their attention to all her good points, expatiated on all her good
+qualities, and, in short, passed her off as a cow of inestimable value.
+To all this the simpleton listened with delight and astonishment; he
+heard his cow praised for qualities that no other cow ever possessed,
+and determined in his own mind not to lose so rare a bargain, but
+purchase her himself and balk the chapmen. He therefore called out to
+the appraiser, and asked him what she was going at. The salesman
+replied, "At fifteen dirhams and upwards." "By the head of the Prophet,"
+exclaimed the wittol, "had I known that my cow was such a prodigy of
+excellence, you should not have caught me in the market with her for
+sale." Now it happened that he had just fifteen dirhams, and no more,
+and these he thrust upon the broker, exclaiming, "The cow is mine; I
+have the best claim to her." He then seized the cow and drove her home,
+exulting all the way as if he had found a treasure. On reaching home he
+inquired eagerly for his wife, to inform her of his adventure, but was
+told she was not returned from market. He waited impatiently for her
+return, when he sprang up to meet her, crying, "Wife, I have done
+something to-day that will astonish you. I have performed a marvellous
+exploit!" "Patience!" says his wife. "Perhaps I have done something
+myself to match it. But hear my story, and then talk of cleverness, if
+you please." The husband desired her to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>"When I went to market," says she, "I found a man in want of thread. I
+showed him mine, which he approved of, and having bargained for it, he
+agreed to pay me according to the weight. I told him it weighed so much,
+which he seemed to discredit, and weighed it himself. Observing it to
+fall short of the weight I had mentioned, and fearing I should lose the
+price I at first expected, I requested him to weigh it over again, and
+make certain. In the meantime, taking an opportunity unobserved, I
+stripped off my silver bracelets and put them slily into the scale with
+my thread. The scale, of course, now preponderated, and I received the
+full price I had demanded." Having finished her story, she cried out,
+"Now, what do you think of your wife?" "Amazing! amazing!" said he.
+"Your capacity is supernatural. And now, if you please, I will give you
+a specimen of mine," and he related his adventure at the market. "O
+husband," she exclaimed when he had told his story, "had we not
+possessed such consummate wisdom and address, how could we have
+contrived means to repair our old house? In future vex not yourself
+about domestic concerns, since by the exercise of our talents we need
+never want for anything!"</p>
+<a name="p73"></a>
+<p>The exploits of that precious pair may be compared with the following:
+An alewife went to the market with a brood of chickens and an old black
+hen. For the hen and one chicken she could not find a purchaser; so,
+before leaving the town, she called upon a surgeon, to try to effect a
+sale. He bought the chicken, but declined taking the hen. She then asked
+him if he would draw a tooth for it. The tooth was drawn, and he
+expressed his surprise on finding it was perfectly sound. "Oh," said
+she, "I knew it was sound; but it was worth while having it drawn for
+the old hen." She then called upon another surgeon, and had a second
+tooth drawn, as sound as the other. "What's to pay?" she inquired. "A
+shilling," said the surgeon. "Very well," rejoined the hostess, with a
+chuckle; "you left a shilling due in my house the other night, and now
+we are quits." "Certainly we are," responded the perplexed tooth-drawer,
+and the delighted old woman returned to her hostelry, to acquaint all
+her gossips of how cleverly she had outwitted the doctors.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Ferrier says, in his <i>Illustrations of Sterne</i>, that the facetious
+tales of the Sieur Gaulard laid the foundation of some of the jests in
+our old English collections. A few of them found their way somehow into
+Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i>, and this is one: A monsieur chanced to
+meet a lady of his acquaintance, and asked her how she did and how her
+good husband fared, at which she wept, saying that her husband was in
+heaven. "In heaven!" quoth he. "It is the first time that I heard of it,
+and I am sorry for it with all my heart."</p>
+
+<p>Similar in its point is a story in <i>Archie Armstrong's Banquet of
+Jests</i>:<a href="#chapIII08"><sup>8</sup></a> <a name="p74"></a>Sitting over a cup of ale in a winter night, two widows
+entered into discourse of their dead husbands, and after ripping up
+their good and bad qualities, saith one of them to the maid, "I prithee,
+wench, reach us another light, for my husband (God rest his soul!) above
+all things loved to see good lights about the house. God grant him light
+everlasting!" "And I pray you, neighbour," said the other, "let the maid
+lay on some more coals or stir up the fire, for my husband in his
+lifetime ever loved to see a good fire. God grant him fire everlasting!"</p>
+<a name="p75"></a>
+<p>This seems cousin-german to the Arabian story of two men, one of whom
+hailed from the town of Hama (ancient Hamath), the other from Hums
+(ancient Emessa). Those towns are not far apart, but the people of the
+former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the
+latter are proverbially as stupid. (And for the proper understanding of
+the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb <i>hama</i>
+means to "protect" or "defend," the verb <i>hamasa</i> to "roast" or
+"toast.") These men had some business of importance with the nearest
+magistrate, and set out together on their journey. The man of Hums,
+conscious of his own ignorance, begged his companion to speak first in
+the audience, in order that he might get a hint as to how such a formal
+matter should be conducted. Accordingly, when they came into the pasha's
+presence, the man of Hama went forward, and the pasha asked him, "Where
+are you from?" "Your servant is from Hama," said he. "May Allah PROTECT
+(<i>hama</i>) your excellency!" The pasha then turned to the other man,
+and asked, "And where are you from?" to which he answered, "Your servant
+is from Hums. May Allah ROAST <i>(hamasa)</i> your excellency!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p76"></a>
+<p>Not a few of the <i>Bizarrures</i> of the Sieur Gaulard are the
+prototypes of bulls and foolish sayings of the typical Irishman, which
+go their ceaseless round in popular periodicals, and are even
+audaciously reproduced as original in our "comic" journals&mdash;save the
+mark! To cite some examples:</p>
+
+<p>A friend one day told M. Gaulard that the Dean of Besançon was dead.
+"Believe it not," said he; "for had it been so he would have told me
+himself, since he writes to me about everything."</p>
+
+<p>M. Gaulard asked his secretary one evening what hour it was. "Sir,"
+replied the secretary, "I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun
+is set." "Well," quoth M. Gaulard, "and can you not see by the candle?"</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion the Sieur called from his bed to a servant desiring
+him to see if it was daylight yet. "There is no sign of daylight," said
+the servant. "I do not wonder," rejoined the Sieur, "that thou canst not
+see day, great fool as thou art. Take a candle and look with it out at
+the window, and thou shalt see whether it be day or not."</p>
+
+<p>In a strange house, the Sieur found the walls of his bedchamber full of
+great holes. "This," exclaimed he in a rage, "is the cursedest chamber
+in all the world. One may see day all the night through."</p>
+
+<p>Travelling in the country, his man, to gain the fairest way, rode
+through a field sowed with pease, upon which M. Gaulard cried to him,
+"Thou knave, wilt thou burn my horse's feet? Dost thou not know that
+about six weeks ago I burned my mouth with eating pease, they were so
+hot?"</p>
+
+<p>A poor man complained to him that he had had a horse stolen from him.
+"Why did you not mark his visage," asked M. Gaulard, "and the clothes he
+wore?" "Sir," said the man, "I was not there when he was stolen." Quoth
+the Sieur, "You should have left somebody to ask him his name, and in
+what place he resided."</p>
+
+<p>M. Gaulard felt the sun so hot in the midst of a field at noontide in
+August that he asked of those about him, "What means the sun to be so
+hot? How should it not keep its heat till winter, when it is cold
+weather?"</p>
+
+<p>A proctor, discoursing with M. Gaulard, told him that a dumb, deaf, or
+blind man could not make a will but with certain additional forms. "I
+pray you," said the Sieur, "give me that in writing, that I may send it
+to a cousin of mine who is lame."</p>
+
+<p>One day a friend visited the Sieur and found him asleep in his chair. "I
+slept," said he, "only to avoid idleness; for I must always be doing
+something."</p>
+
+<p>The Abbé of Poupet complained to him that the moles had spoiled a fine
+meadow, and he could find no remedy for them. "Why, cousin," said M.
+Gaulard, "it is but paving your meadow, and the moles will no more
+trouble you."</p>
+
+<p>M. Gaulard had a lackey belonging to Auvergne, who robbed him of twelve
+crowns and ran away, at which he was very angry, and said he would have
+nothing that came from that country. So he ordered all that was from
+Auvergne to be cast out of the house, even his mule; and to make the
+animal more ashamed, he caused his servants to take off its shoes and
+its saddle and bridle.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p79"></a>
+<p>Although Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i> is the most "original" of our old
+English jest-books&mdash;that is to say, it contains very few stories in
+common with preceding collections&mdash;yet some of the diverting tales he
+relates are traceable to very distant sources, more especially the
+following:</p>
+
+<p>A country fellow (that had not walked much in streets that were paved)
+came to London, where a dog came suddenly out of a house, and furiously
+ran at him. The fellow stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the dog,
+and finding them all fast rammed or paved in the ground, quoth he, "What
+a strange country am I in, where the people tie up the stones and let
+the dogs loose!"</p>
+
+<p>Three centuries and a half before the Water Poet heard this exquisitely
+humorous story, the great Persian poet Sa'dí related it in his
+<i>Gulistán</i> (or Rose-garden), which was written A.D. 1278:</p>
+
+<p>A poor poet presented himself before the chief of a gang of robbers, and
+recited some verses in his praise. The robber-chief, however, instead of
+rewarding him, as he fondly expected, ordered him to be stripped of his
+clothes and expelled from the village. The dogs attacking him in the
+rear, the unlucky bard stooped to pick up a stone to throw at them, and
+finding the stones frozen in the ground, he exclaimed, "What a vile set
+of men are these, who set loose the dogs and fasten the stones!"</p>
+
+<p>Now here we have a very curious instance of the migration of a popular
+tale from Persia&mdash;perchance it first set out on its travels from India
+&mdash;in the thirteenth century, when grave and reverend seigniors wagged
+their beards and shook their portly sides at its recital, to London in
+the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed "the wisest fool
+in Christendom"!), when Taylor, the Water Poet, probably heard it told,
+in some river-side tavern, amidst the clinking of beer-cans and the
+fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado, and "put it in his book!"
+How it came into England it would be interesting to ascertain. It may
+have been brought to Europe by the Venetian merchants, who traded
+largely in the Levant and with the Moors in Northern Africa.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image011.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII01"><sup>1</sup></a> Powell and Magnusson's <i>Legends of Iceland</i>, Second Series, p.
+626.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII02"><sup>2</sup></a> <i>Dictionary of Kashmírí Proverbs and Sayings</i>. Explained and
+illustrated from the rich and interesting folk-lore of the Valley. By
+the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles. Bombay: 1885.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII03"><sup>3</sup></a> This work was composed A.H. 776 (A.D. 1374-5), as the anonymous
+author takes care to inform us in his opening verses.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII04"><sup>4</sup></a> A still older form of the story occurs in the <i>Pancha Tantra</i>
+(Five Sections), a Sanskrit version of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai,
+in which a gluttonous ram is in the habit of going to the king's kitchen
+and devouring all food within his reach. One of the cooks beat him with
+a burning log of wood, and the ram rushed off with his blazing fleece
+and set the horses' stables on fire, and so forth. The story is most
+probably of Buddhist extraction.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII05"><sup>5</sup></a> A Sinhalese variant of the exploit of
+  the man of Norfolk and of the man of Gotham with the sack of meal. "See <i>ante</i>,
+  p. 19." [Transcriber's note: this approximates to the text reference for <a href="#chapII1">Chapter II
+  Footnote 1</a> in this etext.]</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII06"><sup>6</sup></a>  Mr. C.J.R. le Mesurier in <i>The Orientalist</i> (Kandy, Ceylon:
+1884), pp. 233-4.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII07"><sup>7</sup></a> <i>The Orientalist</i>, 1884, p. 234. A much fuller version, with
+subsequent incidents, is given in the same excellent periodical, pp.
+36-38.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII08"><sup>8</sup></a> Archie Armstrong was Court jester to James I. of England. It is
+needless, perhaps, to say that he had no hand in this book of facetiæ,
+which is composed for the most part of jests taken out of earlier
+collections.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapIVtitle"></a><img src="images/image012.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.<br/>
+  GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES <i>(continued)</i>.</h2>
+
+<p><img src="images/image013.png" width="94" height="96" alt="T"/>ALES of sharpers' tricks upon simpletons do not quite fall within the scope
+  of the present series of papers, but there is one, in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>&mdash;not
+  found, however, in our common English version of that fascinating story-book&mdash;which
+  deserves a place among noodle-stories, since it is so diverting, is not very
+  generally known, and is probably the original of the early Italian novel of
+  the <i>Monk Transformed</i>, which is ascribed to Michele Colombo:</p>
+
+<p>A rustic simpleton was walking homeward dragging his ass after him by
+the halter, which a brace of sharpers observing, one said to his fellow,
+"Come with me, and I will take the ass from that man." He then quietly
+advanced to the ass, unloosed it from the halter, and gave the animal to
+his companion, who went off with it, after which he put the halter over
+his own head, and allowed the rustic to drag him for some little
+distance, until he with the ass was fairly out of sight, when he
+suddenly stopped, and the man having tugged at the halter several times
+without effect, looked round, and, amazed to see a human being in place
+of his beast, exclaimed, "Who art thou?" The sharper answered, "I was
+thy ass; but hear my story, for it is wonderful. I had a good and pious
+mother, and one day I came home intoxicated. Grieved to see me in such a
+state, she gently reproved me, but I, instead of being penetrated with
+remorse, beat her with a stick, whereupon she prayed to Allah, and, in
+answer to her supplication, lo! I was transformed into an ass. In that
+shape I have continued until this day, when my mother, as it appears,
+has interceded for my restoration to human form, as before." The
+simpleton, believing every word of this strange story, raised his eyes
+to heaven, saying, "Of a truth there is no power but from Allah! But,
+pray, forgive me for having used thee as I have done." The sharper
+readily granted his forgiveness, and went off to rejoin his companion
+and dispose of the ass; while the simpleton returned home, and showing
+his wife the bridle, told her of the marvellous transformation which had
+occurred. His wife, in hopes of propitiating Heaven, gave alms and
+offered up many prayers to avert evil from them, on account of their
+having used a human being as an ass. At length the simpleton, having
+remained idle at home for some time, went one day to the market to
+purchase another ass, and on entering the place where all the animals
+were fastened, he saw with astonishment his old ass offered for sale.
+Putting his mouth to its ear, he whispered, "Woe to thee, unlucky!
+Doubtless thou hast again been intoxicated; but, by Allah, I will never
+buy thee!"</p>
+<a name="p83"></a>
+<p>Another noodle-story, of a different class, in the <i>Arabian
+Nights</i>, may be here cited in full from Sir R.F. Burton's
+translation of that delightful work, privately printed for the
+subscribers, and it will serve, moreover, as a fair specimen of the
+admirable manner in which that ripe scholar has represented in English
+the quaint style of his original:</p>
+
+<p>[Quoth one of the learned,] I passed once by a school wherein a
+schoolmaster was teaching children; so I entered, finding him a
+good-looking man, and a well-dressed, when he rose to me and made me sit
+with him. Then I examined him in the Koran, and in syntax and prosody,
+and lexicography; and behold, he was perfect in all required of him; and
+I said to him, "Allah strengthen thy purpose! Thou art indeed versed in
+all that is requisite." Thereafter I frequented him a while, discovering
+daily some new excellence in him, and quoth I to myself, "This is indeed
+a wonder in any dominie; for the wise are agreed upon a lack of wit in
+children's teachers."<a href="#chapIV01"><sup>1</sup></a> Then I separated myself from him, and sought
+him and visited him only every few days, till coming to see him one day,
+as of wont, I found the school shut, and made inquiry of his neighbours,
+who replied, "Some one is dead in his house." So I said in my mind, "It
+behoveth me to pay him a visit of condolence," and going to his house,
+knocked at the door, when a slave-girl came out to me and asked, "What
+dost thou want?" and I answered, "I want thy master." She replied, "He
+is sitting alone mourning;" and I rejoined, "Tell him that his friend
+So-and-so seeketh to console him." She went in and told him; and he
+said, "Admit him." So she brought me in to him, and I found him seated
+alone, and his head bound with mourning fillets. So I said to him,
+"Allah requite thee amply! This is a path all must perforce tread, and
+it behoveth thee to take patience," adding, "but who is dead unto thee?"
+He answered, "One who was dearest of the folk to me, and best beloved."
+"Perhaps thy father?" "No." "Thy brother?" "No." "One of thy kindred?"
+"No." Then asked I, "What relation was the dead to thee?" and he
+answered, "My lover." Quoth I to myself, "This is the first proof to
+swear by of his lack of wit." So I said to him, "Assuredly there be
+others than she, and fairer;" and he made answer, "I never saw her that
+I might judge whether or no there be others fairer than she." Quoth I to
+myself, "This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, "And how
+couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied,
+"Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo! there passed
+by a man, singing the following distich:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"'Umm Amr', thy boons Allah repay!<br/>
+  Give back my heart, be't where it may!'"</blockquote>
+
+<p>The schoolmaster continued, "When I heard the man humming these words as
+he passed along the street, I said to myself, 'Except this Umm Amru were
+without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and
+canzon.' So I fell in love with her; but two days after, the same man
+passed, singing the following couplet:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"'Ass and Umm Amr' went their way,<br/>
+  Nor she nor ass returned for aye.'</blockquote>
+
+<p>Thereupon I knew that she was dead, and mourned for her. This was three
+days ago, and I have been mourning ever since." So I left him and fared
+forth, having assured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinder's
+wit<a href="#chapIV02"><sup>2</sup></a>.</p>
+<a name="p86"></a>
+<p>Here, surely, was the very Father of Folly, but what shall we say of
+judges and magistrates being sometimes (represented as) equally witless?
+Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish Kází, that two
+men came before him one of whom complained that the other had almost bit
+his ear off. The accused denied this, and declared that the fellow had
+bit his own ear. After pondering the matter for some time, the judge
+told them to come again two hours later. Then he went into his private
+room, and attempted to bring his ear and his mouth together; but all he
+did was to fall backwards and break his head. Wrapping a cloth round his
+head, he returned to court, and the two men coming in again presently,
+he thus decided the question: "No man can bite his own ear, but in
+trying to do so he may fall down and break his head."</p>
+
+<p>A Sinhalese story, which is also well known in various forms in India,
+furnishes a still more remarkable example of forensic sagacity. It is
+thus related by the able editor of <i>The Orientalist</i>, vol. i., p.
+191:</p>
+
+<p>One night some thieves broke into the house of a rich man, and carried
+away all his valuables. The man complained to the justice of the peace,
+who had the robbers captured, and when brought before him, inquired of
+them whether they had anything to say in their defence. "Sir," said
+they, "we are not to blame in this matter; the robbery was entirely due
+to the mason who built the house; for the walls were so badly made, and
+gave way so easily, that we were quite unable to resist the temptation
+of breaking in." Orders were then given to bring the mason to the
+court-house. On his arrival he was informed of the charge brought
+against him. "Ah," said he, "the fault is not mine, but that of the
+coolie, who made mortar badly." When the coolie was brought, he laid the
+blame on the potter, who, he said, had sold him a cracked chattie, in
+which he could not carry sufficient water to mix the mortar properly.
+Then the potter was brought before the judge, and he explained that the
+blame should not be laid upon him, but upon a very pretty woman, who, in
+a beautiful dress, was passing at the time he was making the chattie,
+and had so riveted his attention, that he forgot all about the work.
+When the woman appeared, she protested that the fault was not hers, for
+she would not have been in that neighbourhood at all had the goldsmith
+sent home her earrings at the proper time; the charge, she argued,
+should properly be brought against him. The goldsmith was brought, and
+as he was unable to offer any reasonable excuse, he was condemned to be
+hanged. Those in the court, however, begged the judge to spare the
+goldsmith's life; "for," said they, "he is very sick and ill-favoured,
+and would not make at all a pretty spectacle." "But," said the judge,
+"somebody must be hanged." Then they drew the attention of the court to
+the fact that there was a fat Moorman in a shop opposite, who was a much
+fitter subject for an execution, and asked that he might be hanged in
+the goldsmith's stead. The learned judge, considering that this
+arrangement would be very satisfactory, gave judgment accordingly.</p>
+<a name="p89"></a>
+<p>If some of the last-cited stories are not precisely Gothamite
+drolleries, though all are droll enough in their way, there can be no
+doubt whatever that we have a Sinhalese brother to the men of Gotham in
+the following: A villager in Ceylon, whose calf had got its head into a
+pot and could not get it out again, sent for a friend, celebrated for
+his wisdom, to release the poor animal. The sagacious friend, taking in
+the situation at a glance, cut off the calf's head, broke the pot, and
+then delivered the head to the owner of the calf, saying, "What will you
+do when I am dead and gone?"&mdash;And we have another Gothamite in the
+Kashmírí who bought as much rice as he thought would suffice for a
+year's food, and finding he had only enough for eleven months, concluded
+it was better to fast the other month right off, which he did
+accordingly; but he died just before the month was completed, leaving
+eleven months' rice in his house.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p90"></a>
+<p>The typical noodle of the Turks, the Khoja Nasru-'d-Dín, is said to have
+been a subject of the independent prince of Karaman, at whose capital,
+Konya, he resided, and he is represented as a contemporary of Timúr
+(Tamerlane), in the middle of the fourteenth century. The pleasantries
+which are ascribed to him are for the most part common to all countries,
+but some are probably of genuine Turkish origin. To cite a few
+specimens: The Khoja's wife said to him one day, "Make me a present of a
+kerchief of red Yemen silk, to put on my head." The Khoja stretched out
+his arms and said, "Like that? Is that large enough?" On her replying in
+the affirmative he ran off to the bazaar, with his arms still stretched
+out, and meeting a man on the road, he bawled to him, "Look where you
+are going, O man, or you will cause me to lose my measure!"</p>
+
+<p>Another day the Khoja's wife washed his caftan and spread it upon a tree
+in the garden of the house. That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he
+sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. "Give
+me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he
+shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into
+the house. Next morning, when he discovered that it was his own caftan
+he had shot at, he exclaimed, "By Allah, had I happened to be in it, I
+should have killed myself!"</p>
+<a name="p91"></a>
+<p>The Ettrick Shepherd's well-known story of the two Highlanders and the
+wild boar has its exact parallel in the Turkish jest-book, as follows:
+One day the Khoja went with his friend Sheragh Ahmed to the den of a
+wolf, in order to take the cubs. Said the Khoja to Ahmed, "Do you go in,
+and I will watch without;" and Ahmed went in, to take the cubs in the
+absence of the old wolf. But she came back presently, and had got
+half-way into her den when the Khoja seized hold of her tail. The wolf
+in her struggles cast up a great dust into the eyes of Ahmed, who called
+out to the Khoja, "Hallo! what does all this dust mean?" The Khoja
+replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks, you will soon know what the dust
+means!"</p>
+
+<p>Several of the jests closely resemble "Joe Millers" told of Irishmen,
+such as this: It happened one night, after the Khoja and a guest had
+lain down to sleep, that the taper went out. "O Khoja Effendi," said the
+guest, "the taper is gone out. But there is a taper at your right side.
+Pray bring it and let us light it." Quoth the Khoja, "You must surely be
+a fool to think that I should know my right hand in the dark." And this:
+A thief having stolen a piece of salted cheese from the Khoja, he ran
+immediately and seated himself on the border of a fountain. Said the
+people to him, "O Khoja, what have you come here to look for in such a
+hurry?" The Khoja replied, "The thief will certainly come here to drink
+as soon as he has eaten my salted cheese; I always do so myself."</p>
+<a name="p92"></a>
+<p>And here is one of the Gothamite class: One evening the Khoja went to
+the well to draw water, and seeing the moon reflected in the water, he
+exclaimed, "The moon has fallen into the well; I must pull it out." So
+he let down the rope and hook, and the hook became fastened to a stone,
+whereupon he exerted all his strength, and the rope broke, and he fell
+upon his back. Looking into the sky, he saw the moon, and cried out
+joyfully, "Praise be to Allah! I am sorely bruised, but the moon has got
+into its place again."</p>
+
+<p>There is a well-worn jest of an Irishman who, being observed by a friend
+to look exceedingly blank and perplexed, was asked what ailed him. He
+replied that he had had a dream. "Was it a good or a bad dream?"
+"Faith," said he, "it was a little of both; but I'll tell ye. I dreamt
+that I was with the Pope, who was the finest gentleman in the whole
+district; and after we had conversed a while, his Holiness axed me,
+Would I drink? Thinks I to myself, 'Would a duck swim?' So, seeing the
+whisky and the lemons and the sugar on the side-board, I said, I didn't
+mind if I took a drop of punch. 'Cold or hot?' says his Holiness. 'Hot,
+your Holiness,' says I. So on that he steps down to the kitchen for the
+boiling water, but, bedad, before he came back, I woke straight up; and
+now it's distressing me that I didn't take it cold!"</p>
+<a name="p93"></a>
+<p>We have somewhat of a parallel to this in a Turkish jest: The Khoja
+dreamt that some one gave him nine pieces of money, but he was not
+content, and said, "Make it ten." Then he awoke and found his hands
+empty. Instantly closing his eyes again, and holding out his hand, he
+said, "I repent; give me the nine pieces<a href="#chapIV03"><sup>3</sup></a>."</p>
+
+<p>But the Chinese relate the very counterpart of our Irishman's story. A
+confirmed drunkard dreamt that he had been presented with a cup of
+excellent wine, and set it by the fire to warm<a href="#chapIV04"><sup>4</sup></a>, that he should better
+enjoy the flavour of it; but just as he was about to drink off the
+delicious draught he awoke. "Fool that I am," he cried, "why was I not
+content to drink it cold?"<a href="#chapIV05"><sup>5</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p94"></a>
+<p>The Chinese seem to have as keen a sense of humour as any other people.
+They tell a story, for instance, of a lady who had been recently
+married, and on the third day saw her husband returning home, so she
+slipped quietly behind him and gave him a hearty kiss. The husband was
+annoyed, and said she offended all propriety. "Pardon! pardon!" said
+she. "I did not know it was you." Thus the excuse may sometimes be worse
+than the offence. There is exquisite humour in the following
+noodle-story: Two brothers were tilling the ground together. The elder,
+having prepared dinner, called his brother, who replied in a loud voice,
+"Wait till I have hidden my spade, and I shall at once be with you."
+When he joined his elder brother, the latter mildly reproached him,
+saying, "When one hides anything, one should keep silence, or at least
+should not cry aloud about it, for it lays one open to be robbed."
+Dinner over, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his
+spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and
+<i>whispered</i> mysteriously in his ear, "My spade is stolen!"&mdash;The
+passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed: A man who was
+fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false,
+expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the
+lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor
+Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he
+carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in
+the streets, "Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Taï-Koung."</p>
+<a name="p95"></a>
+<hr />
+
+<p>Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest
+extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the <i>Játakas</i>,
+or Buddhist Birth-stories. Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad
+men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes
+when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to <i>Játaka</i>
+44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon
+the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every
+one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and
+injured one another. <a name="p96"></a>And nothing more foolish is recorded of the
+Schildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his <i>Kathá Sarit Ságara</i>,
+of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees: Being required to furnish
+the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was
+very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself,
+they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and
+having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up
+and planted them again, thinking they would grow.</p>
+
+<p>In illustration of the apothegm that "fools who attend only to the words
+of an order, and do not understand the meaning, cause much detriment,"
+is the story of the servants who kept the rain off the trunks: The camel
+of a merchant gave way under its load on a journey. He said to his
+servants, "I will go and buy another camel to carry the half of this
+camel's load. And you must remain here, and take particular care that if
+it clouds over the rain does not wet the leather of these trunks, which
+are full of clothes." With these words the merchant left the servants by
+the side of the camel and went off, and suddenly a cloud came up and
+began to discharge rain. Then the fools said, "Our master told us to
+take care that the rain did not touch the leather of the trunks;" and
+after they had made this sage reflection they dragged the clothes out of
+<a name="p97"></a>the trunks and wrapped them round the leather. The consequence was that
+the rain spoiled the clothes. Then the merchant returned, and in a rage
+said to his servants, "You rascals! Talk of water! Why, the whole stock
+of clothes is spoiled by the rain!" And they answered him, "You told us
+to keep the rain off the leather of the trunks. What fault have we
+committed?" He answered, "I told you that if the leather got wet the
+clothes would be spoiled. I told you so in order to save the clothes,
+not the leather."</p>
+
+<p>The story of the servant who looked after the door is a farther
+illustration of the same maxim. A merchant said to his foolish servant,
+"Take care of the door of my shop; I am going home for a short time."
+After his master was gone, the fool took the shop-door on his shoulder
+and went off to see an actor perform. As he was returning his master met
+him, and gave him a scolding, and he answered, "I have taken care of
+this door, as you told me."</p>
+
+<p>This jest had found its way into Europe three centuries ago. It is
+related of Giufa, the typical Sicilian booby, and probably came to
+England from Italy. This is how it is told in the <i>Sacke Full of
+Newes</i>, <a name="p98"></a>a jest-book originally printed in the sixteenth century: "In
+the countrey dwelt a Gentlewoman who had a French man dwelling with her,
+and he did ever use to go to Church with her; and upon a time he and his
+mistresse were going to church, and she bad him pull the doore after him
+and follow her to the church; and so he took the doore betweene his
+armes, and lifted it from the hooks, and followed his mistresse with it.
+But when she looked behinde her and saw him bring the doore upon his
+back, 'Why, thou foolish knave,' qd she, 'what wilt thou do with the
+door?' 'Marry, mistresse,' qd he, 'you bad me pull the doore after me.'
+'Why, fool,' qd she, 'I did command thee that thou shouldest make fast
+the doore after thee, and not bring it upon thy back after me.' But
+after this there was much good sport and laughing at his simplicity and
+foolishnesse therein."</p>
+
+<p>In the capacity of a merchant the simpleton does very wonderful things,
+and plumes himself on his sagacity, as we have already seen in the case
+of the Arab and his cow. And here are a brace of similar stories: A
+foolish man once went to the island of Katáha to trade, and among his
+wares was a quantity of fragrant aloes-wood. After he had sold his other
+goods, he could not find any one to take the aloes-wood off his hands,
+for the people who live there are not acquainted with that article of
+commerce. Then seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, he burnt
+his stock of aloes-wood <a name="p99"></a>and reduced it to charcoal. He sold it for the
+price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his
+cleverness, and became the laughing-stock of everybody.&mdash;Another
+blockhead went to the market to sell cotton, but no one would buy it
+from him, because it was not properly cleaned. In the meanwhile he saw
+in the bazaar a goldsmith selling gold which he had purified by heating
+it, and he saw it taken by a customer. Seeing that, he threw his cotton
+into the fire in order to purify it, and it was all burned to ashes.</p>
+
+<p> There must be few who have not heard of the Irishman who was hired by a
+Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship. As the vessel was about to
+sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, "Captain, I lost your shovel
+overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern,
+just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back."&mdash;A
+similar story is told of an Indian simpleton. He was sailing in a ship
+when he let a silver cup fall from his hand into the water. Having taken
+notes of the spot by observing the eddies and other signs in the water,
+he said to himself, "I will bring it up from the bottom when I return."
+As he was recrossing the sea, he saw the eddies and other signs, and
+thinking he recognised the spot, he plunged into the water again and
+again, to recover his cup, but he only got well laughed at for his
+pains.</p>
+<a name="p100"></a>
+<p>We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that "distress is sure to
+come from being in the company of fools" in the following, from the
+Canarese story-book entitled <i>Kathé Manjari</i>: A foolish fellow
+travelled with a shopkeeper. When it became dark, the fool lay down in
+the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree.
+Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet
+against the fool's legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions,
+"What is this? Is it a piece of wood?" The fool was angry, and said, "Go
+away! go away! Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the
+loins of a plank in your house?" The thieves then seized him, and took
+away his annas. As they were moving off, they asked if the money was
+good or bad, to which the noodle replied, "Ha! ha! is it of my money you
+speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad? Look&mdash;
+there is a shopkeeper in that tree," pointing with his finger&mdash;"show it
+to him." Then the thieves went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of
+two hundred pagodas.</p>
+<a name="p101"></a>
+<p>In our next story, of the villagers who ate the buffalo, is exemplified
+the fact that "fools, in the conceit of their folly, while they deny
+what need not be denied, reveal what it is their interest to suppress,
+in order to get themselves believed." Some villagers took a buffalo
+belonging to a certain man, and killed it in an enclosure outside the
+village, under a banyan tree, and dividing the flesh, ate it up. The
+owner of the buffalo went and complained to the king, and he had the
+villagers who had eaten the animal brought before him. The proprietor of
+the buffalo said before the king, in their presence, "These men took my
+buffalo under a banyan tree near the tank, and killed and ate it before
+my eyes," whereupon an old fool among the villagers said, "There is no
+tank or banyan tree in our village. He says what is not true; where did
+we kill his buffalo or eat it?" When the man heard this, he replied,
+"What! are there not a banyan tree and a tank on the east side of the
+village? Moreover, you ate my buffalo on the eighth day of the lunar
+month." The old fool then said, "There is no east side or eighth day in
+our village." On hearing this, the king laughed, and said, to encourage
+the fool, "You are a truthful person; you never say anything false; so
+tell me the truth: did you eat that buffalo, or did you not?" The old
+fool answered, "I was born three years after my father died, and he
+taught me skill in speaking. So I never say what is untrue, my king. It
+is true that we ate his buffalo, but all the rest that he alleges is
+false." When the king heard this, he and his courtiers could not
+restrain their laughter; but he restored the price of the buffalo to the
+man, and fined the villagers.</p>
+<a name="p102"></a>
+<p>But sometimes even kings have been arrant noodles, and their credulity
+quite as amusing&mdash;or amazing&mdash;as that of their subjects. Once on a time
+there was a king who had a handsome daughter, and he summoned his
+physicians, and said to them, "Make some preparation of salutary drugs,
+which will cause my daughter to grow up quickly, so that she may be
+married to a good husband." The physicians, wishing to get a living out
+of this royal fool, replied, "There is a medicine which will do this,
+but it can only be procured in a distant country; and while we are
+sending for it, we must shut up your daughter in concealment, for this
+is the treatment laid down in such cases." The king having consented,
+they placed his daughter in concealment for several years, pretending
+that they were engaged in procuring the medicine; and when she was grown
+up, they presented her to the king, saying that she had been made to
+grow by the preparation; so the king was highly pleased, and gave them
+much wealth.</p>
+<a name="p103"></a>
+<p>Between an Indian rájá and an Indian dhobie, or washerman, there is the
+greatest possible difference socially, but individually&mdash;when both are
+noodles&mdash;there may be sometimes very little to choose; indeed, of the
+two, all things considered, the difference, if any, is perhaps in favour
+of the humble cleanser of body-clothes. A favourite story in various
+parts of India, near akin to that last cited, is of a poor washerman and
+his young ass. This simpleton one day, passing a school kept by a
+mullah, or Muhammedan doctor of laws, heard him scolding his pupils,
+exclaiming that they were still asses, although he had done so much to
+make them men. The washerman thought that here was a rare chance, for he
+happened to have the foal of the ass that carried his bundles of
+clothes, which, since he had no child, he should get the learned mullah
+to change into a boy. Thus thinking, he goes next day to the mullah, and
+asks him to admit his foal into his school, in order that it should be
+changed into the human form and nature. The preceptor, seeing the poor
+fellow's simplicity, answered that the task was very laborious, and he
+must have a fee of a hundred rupís. So the washerman went home, and soon
+returned leading his foal, which, with the money, he handed over to the
+teacher, who told him to come again on such a day and hour, when he
+should find that the change he desired had been effected. But the
+washerman was so impatient that he went to the teacher several times
+before the day appointed, and was informed that the foal was beginning
+to learn manners, that its ears were already become very much shorter,
+and, in short, that it was making satisfactory progress.</p>
+
+<p>It happened, when the day came on which he was to receive his young ass
+transformed into a fine, well-educated boy, the simpleton was kept busy
+with his customers' clothes, but on the day following he found time to
+go to the teacher, who told him it was most unfortunate he had not come
+at the appointed hour, since the youth had quitted the school yesterday,
+refusing to submit any longer to authority; but the teacher had just
+learned that he had been made kází (or judge) in Cawnpore. At first the
+washerman was disposed to be angry, but reflecting that, after all, the
+business was better even than he anticipated, he thanked the preceptor
+for all his care and trouble, and returned home. Having informed his
+wife of his good luck, they resolved to visit their quondam young foal,
+and get him to make them some allowance out of his now ample means. So,
+shutting up their house, they travelled to Cawnpore, which they reached
+in safety. Being directed to the kází's court, the washerman, leaving
+his wife outside, entered, and discovered the kází seated in great
+dignity, and before him were the pleaders, litigants, and officers of
+the court. He had brought a bridle in one hand and a wisp of hay in the
+other; but being unable, on account of the crowd, to approach the kází,
+he got tired of waiting, so, holding up the bridle and the hay, he cried
+out, "Khoor! khoor! khoor!" as he used to do in calling his donkeys,
+thinking this would induce the kází to come to him. But, instead of
+this, he was seized by the kází's order and locked up for creating a
+disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>When the business of the court was over, the kází, pitying the supposed
+madman, sent for him to learn the reason of his strange behaviour, and
+in answer to his inquiries the simpleton said, "You don't seem to know
+me, sir, nor recognise this bridle, which has been in your mouth so
+often. <a name="p106"></a>You appear to forget that you are the foal of one of my asses,
+that I got changed into a man, for the fee of a hundred rupis, by a
+learned mullah who transforms asses into educated men. You forget what
+you were, and, I suppose, will be as little submissive to me as you were
+to the mullah when you ran away from him." All present were convulsed
+with laughter: such a "case" was never heard of before. But the kází,
+seeing how the mullah had taken advantage of the poor fellow's
+simplicity, gave him a present of a hundred rupis, besides sufficient
+for the expenses of his journey home, and so dismissed him.</p>
+
+<p> A party of rogues once found as great a blockhead in a rich Indian
+herdsman, to whom they said, "We have asked the daughter of a wealthy
+inhabitant of the town in marriage for you, and her father has promised
+to give her." He was much pleased to hear this, and gave them an ample
+reward for their trouble. After a few days they came again and told him
+that his marriage had taken place. Again he gave them rich presents for
+their good news. Some more days having passed, they said to him, "A son
+has been born to you," at which he was in ecstacies and gave them all
+his remaining wealth; but the next day, when he began to lament, saying,
+"I am longing to see my son," the people laughed at him on account of
+his having been cheated by the rogues, as if he had acquired the
+stupidity of cattle from having so much to do with them.</p>
+<a name="p107"></a>
+<p>It is not generally known that the incident which forms the subject of
+the droll Scotch song "The Barring of the Door," which also occurs in
+the <i>Nights</i> of Straparola, is of Eastern origin. In an Arabian
+tale, a blockhead, having married his pretty cousin, gave the customary
+feast to their relations and friends. When the festivities were over, he
+conducted his guests to the door, and from absence of mind neglected to
+shut it before returning to his wife. "Dear cousin," said his wife to
+him when they were alone, "go and shut the street door." "It would be
+strange indeed," he replied, "if I did such a thing. Am I just made a
+bridegroom, clothed in silk, wearing a shawl and a dagger set with
+diamonds, and am I to go and shut the door? Why, my dear, you are crazy.
+Go and shut it yourself." "Oh, indeed!" exclaimed the wife. "Am I,
+young, robed in a dress, with lace and precious stones&mdash;am I to go and
+shut the street door? No, indeed! It is you who are become crazy, and
+not I. Come, let us make a bargain," she continued; "and let the first
+who speaks go and fasten the door." "Agreed," said the husband, and
+immediately he became mute, and the wife too was silent, while they both
+sat down, dressed as they were in their nuptial attire, looking at each
+other and seated on opposite sofas. Thus they remained for two hours.
+Some thieves happened to pass by, and seeing the door open, entered and
+laid hold of whatever came to their hands. The silent couple heard
+footsteps in the house, but opened not their mouths. The thieves came
+into the room and saw them seated motionless and apparently indifferent
+to all that might take place. They continued their pillage, therefore,
+collecting together everything valuable, and even dragging away the
+carpets from beneath them; they laid hands on the noodle and his wife,
+taking from their persons every article of jewellery, while they, in
+fear of losing the wager, said not a word. Having thus cleared the
+house, the thieves departed quietly, but the pair continued to sit,
+uttering not a syllable. Towards morning a police officer came past on
+his tour of inspection, and seeing the door open, walked in. After
+searching all the rooms and finding no person, he entered their
+apartment, and inquired the meaning of what he saw. Neither of them
+would condescend to reply. The officer became angry, and ordered their
+heads to be cut off. The executioner's sword was about to perform its
+office, when the wife cried out, "Sir, he is my husband. Do not kill
+him!" "Oh, oh," exclaimed the husband, overjoyed and clapping his hands,
+"you have lost the wager; go and shut the door." He then explained the
+whole affair to the police officer, who shrugged his shoulders and went
+away.<a href="#chapIV06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p109"></a>
+<p>A party of noodles are substituted for the husband and wife in a Turkish
+version of the tale, in the <i>History of the Forty Vazirs. </i> Some
+bang-eaters,<a href="#chapIV07"><sup>7</sup></a> while out walking, found a sequin. They said, "Let us go
+to a cook, and buy food and eat." So they went and entered a cook's shop
+and said, "Master, give us a sequin's worth of food." The cook prepared
+all kinds of food, and loaded a porter with it; and the bang-eaters took
+him without the city, where there was a ruined tomb, which they entered
+and sat down in, and the porter deposited the food and went away. The
+bang-eaters began to partake of the food, when suddenly one of them
+said, "The door is open; do one of you shut it, else some other
+bang-eaters will come in and annoy us: even though they be friends, they
+will do the deeds of foes." One of them replied, "Go thou and shut the
+door," and they fell a-quarrelling. At length one said, "Come, let us
+agree that whichever of us speaks or laughs shall rise and fasten the
+door." They all agreed to this proposal, and left the food and sat quite
+still. Suddenly a great number of dogs came in; not one of the
+bang-eaters stirred or spoke, for if one spoke he would have to rise and
+shut the door, so they spoke not. The dogs made an end of the food, and
+ate it all up. Just then another dog leapt in from without, but no food
+remained. <a name="p111"></a>Now one of the bang-eaters had partaken of everything, and
+some of the food remained about his mouth and on his beard. That newly
+come dog licked up the particles of food that were on the bang-eater's
+breast, and while he was licking up those about his mouth, he took his
+lip for a piece of meat and bit it. The bang-eater did not stir, for he
+said within himself, "They will tell me to shut the door." But to ease
+his soul he cried, "Ough!" inwardly cursing the dog. When the other
+bang-eaters heard him make that noise, they said, "Rise, fasten the
+door." He replied, "After loss, attention! Now that the food is gone,
+and my lip is wounded, what is the use of shutting that door?" and
+crying, "Woe! alas!" they each went in a different direction.<a href="#chapIV08"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>A similar story is known in Kashmir: Five friends chanced to meet, and
+all having leisure, they decided to go to the bazaar and purchase a
+sheep's head, and have a great feast in the house of one of the party,
+each of whom subscribed four annas. The head was bought, but while they
+were returning to the house it was remembered that there was not any
+butter. On this one of the five proposed that the first of them that
+should break silence by speaking should go for the butter. Now it was no
+light matter to have to retrace one's steps back to the butter-shop, as
+the way was long and the day was very hot. So they all five kept strict
+silence. Pots were cleaned, the fire was prepared, and the head laid
+thereon. Now and then one would cough, and another would groan, but
+never a tongue uttered a word, though the fire was fast going out, and
+the head was getting burnt, owing to there being no fat or butter
+wherewith to grease the pot. Thus matters were when a policeman passed
+by, and, attracted by the smell of cooking, looked in at the window, and
+saw these five men perfectly silent and sitting around a burnt sheep's
+head. Not knowing the arrangement, he supposed that these men were
+either mad or were thieves, and so he inquired how they came there, and
+how they obtained the head. Not a word was uttered in reply. "Why are
+you squatting there in that stupid fashion?" shouted the policeman.
+Still no reply. Then the policeman, full of rage that these wretched men
+should thus mock at his authority, took them all off straight to the
+police inspectors office. On arrival the inspector asked them the reason
+of their strange behaviour, but he also got no reply. This rather tried
+the patience and temper of the man of authority, who was generally
+feared, and flattered, and bribed. So he ordered one of the five to be
+immediately flogged. The poor fool bore it bravely, and uttered never a
+sound; but when the blows repeatedly fell on the same wounded parts, he
+could endure no longer, and cried out, "Oh! oh! Why do you beat me?
+Enough, enough! Is it not enough that the sheep's head has been
+spoiled?"</p>
+
+<p>His four associates now cried out, "Go to the bazaar and fetch the
+butter."<a href="#chapIV09"><sup>9</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p113"></a>
+<p>There is quite as droll a version current among the people of Ceylon, to
+the following effect: A gentleman once had in his employment twenty-five
+idiots. In the old times it was customary with Sinhalese high families
+not to allow their servants to eat from plates, but every day they were
+supplied with plantain leaves, from which they took their food. After
+eating, they were accustomed to shape the leaf into the form of a cup
+and drink out of it. Now in this gentleman's house the duty of providing
+the leaves devolved upon the twenty-five idiots, who were scarcely fit
+for any other work. One day, when they had gone into the garden to cut
+the leaves, they spoke among themselves and said, "Why should we, every
+one of us, trouble ourselves to fetch plantain leaves, when one only
+could very easily do it? Let us therefore lie down on the ground and
+sleep like dead men, and let him who first utters a sound or opens his
+eyes undertake the work." It was no sooner said than done. The men lay
+in a heap like so many logs. At breakfast-time that day the hungry
+servants went to the kitchen for their rice, only to be disappointed. No
+leaves were forthcoming on which to distribute the food, and a complaint
+was made to the master that the twenty-five idiots had not returned to
+the house since they went out in the morning. Search was at once made,
+and they were found fast asleep in the garden. After vainly endeavouring
+to rouse them, the master concluded that they were dead, and ordered his
+servants to dig a deep hole and bury them. A grave was then dug, and the
+idiots were, one by one, thrown into it, but still there was no noise or
+motion on their part. At length, when they were all put into the grave,
+and were being covered up, a tool employed by one of the servants hit
+sharply by accident against the leg of one of the idiots, who then
+involuntarily moaned. Thereupon all the others exclaimed, "You were the
+first to utter a sound; therefore from henceforth you must take upon
+yourself the duty of providing the plantain leaves."<a href="#chapIV10"><sup>10</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p115"></a>
+<p>It has already been remarked that a literary Italian version of the
+Silent Couple is found in the <i>Nights</i> of Straparola, but there are
+other variants orally current among the common people in different parts
+of Italy. This is one from Venice: There were once a husband and a wife.
+The former said one day to the latter, "Let us have some fritters." She
+replied, "What shall we do for a frying-pan?" "Go and borrow one from my
+godmother." "You go and get it; it is only a little way off." "Go
+yourself, and I will take it back when we are done with it." So she went
+and borrowed the pan, and when she returned said to her husband, "Here
+is the pan, but you must carry it back." So they cooked the fritters,
+and after they had eaten, the husband said, "Now let us go to work, both
+of us, and the one who speaks first shall carry back the pan." Then she
+began to spin, and he to draw his thread&mdash;for he was a shoemaker&mdash;and
+all the time keeping silence, except that when he drew his thread he
+said, "Leulerò! leulerò!" and she, spinning, answered, "Picicì! picicì!
+piciciò!" And they said not another word. Now there happened to pass
+that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any
+shoemaker in that street. She said there was one near by, and took him
+to the house. The, soldier asked the shoemaker to come and cut his horse
+a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but "Leulerò!
+leulerò!" and his wife "Picicì! picicì! piciciò!" Then the soldier said,
+"Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." The
+shoemaker only answered, "Leulerò! leulerò!" and his wife "Picicì!
+picicì! piciciò!" Then the soldier began to grow angry, and seized his
+sword, and said to the shoemaker, "Either come and cut my horse a girth,
+or I will cut your head off." But to no purpose. The shoemaker did not
+wish to be the first one to speak, and only replied, "Leulerò! leulerò!"
+and his wife "Picicì! picicì! piciciò!" Then the soldier got mad in good
+earnest, seized the shoemaker's head, and was going to cut it off. When
+his wile saw that, she cried out, "Ah, don't, for mercy's sake!" "Good!"
+exclaimed her husband, "good! Now you go and carry the pan back to my
+godmother, and I will go and cut the horse's girth."</p>
+<a name="p116"></a>
+<p>In a Sicilian version the man and wife fry some fish, and then set about
+their respective work&mdash;shoemaking and spinning&mdash;and the one who finishes
+first the piece of work begun is to eat the fish. While they are singing
+and whistling at their work, a friend comes along, who knocks at the
+door, but receives no answer. Then he enters and speaks to them, but
+still no reply. Finally, in anger, he sits down at the table, and eats
+up all the fish himself.<a href="#chapIV11"><sup>11</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Thus, it will be observed, the droll incident which forms the subject of
+the old Scotch song of "The Barring of the Door" is of world-wide
+celebrity.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p117"></a>
+<p>Gothamite stories appear to have been familiar throughout Europe during
+the later Middle Ages, if we may judge from a chapter of the <i>Gesta
+Romanorum</i> in which the monkish compiler has curiously "moralised"
+the actions of three noodles:</p>
+
+<p>We read in the "Lives of the Fathers" that an angel showed to a certain
+holy man three men labouring under a triple fatuity. The first made a
+faggot of wood, and because it was too heavy for him to carry, he added
+to it more wood, hoping by such means to make it light.  The second drew
+water with great labour from a very deep well with a sieve, which he
+incessantly filled.  The third carried a beam in his chariot, and,
+wishing to enter his house, whereof the gate was so narrow and low that
+it would not admit him, he violently whipped his horse until they both
+fell together into a deep well. Having shown this to the holy man, the
+angel said, "What think you of these three men?" "That they are fools,"
+answered he. "Understand, however," returned the angel, "that they
+represent the sinners of this world. The first describes that kind of
+men who from day to day do add new sins to the old, because they cannot
+bear the weight of those which they already have. The second man
+represents those who do good, but do it sinfully, and therefore it is of
+no benefit. And the third person is he who would enter the kingdom of
+heaven with all his world of vanities, but is cast down into hell."</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p119"></a>
+<p>And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite class to
+conclude the present section. In Málava there were two Bráhman brothers,
+and the wealth inherited from their father was left jointly between
+them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one
+having too little and one having too much, and they made a teacher
+learned in the Vedas arbitrator, and he said to them, "You must divide
+everything your father left into two halves, so that you may not quarrel
+about the inequality of the division." When the two fools heard this,
+they divided every single thing into two equal parts&mdash;house, beds, in
+fact, all their property, including their cattle. Henry Stephens (Henri
+Estienne), in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,<a href="#chapIV11"><sup>12</sup></a> relates
+some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his shins
+before the fire, and not having wit enough to go back from it, sent for
+masons to remove the chimney; of the fool who ate the doctor's
+prescription, because he was told to "take it;" of another wittol who,
+having seen one spit upon iron to try whether it was hot, did likewise
+with his porridge; and, best of all, he tells of a fellow who was hit on
+the back with a stone as he rode upon his mule, and cursed the animal
+for kicking him. This last exquisite jest has its analogue in that of
+the Irishman who was riding on an ass one fine day, when the beast, by
+kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet
+entangled in the stirrup, whereupon the rider dismounted, saying,
+"Faith, if you're going to get up, it's time I was getting down."</p>
+<a name="p120"></a>
+<p>The poet Ovid alludes to the story of Ino persuading the women of the
+country to roast the wheat before it was sown, which may have come to
+India through the Greeks, since we are told in the <i>Kathá Sarit
+Ságara</i> of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds,
+and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quantity of roasted
+seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in
+Coelho's <i>Contes Portuguezes</i>, and is probably of Buddhistic
+origin. And an analogous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens
+hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs!</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image014.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV01"><sup>1</sup></a> This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to
+have been entertained from ancient times, and to be still prevalent in
+the East; the so-called jests of Hierokles are all at the expense of
+pedants; and the Turkish typical noodle is Khoja <i>(i.e.,</i> Teacher)
+Nasru-'d-Dín, some of whose "witless devices" shall be cited presently.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV02"><sup>2</sup></a> <i>Elf Laylawa Layla</i>, or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a
+Night. Translated, with Introduction, Notes on the Manners and Customs
+of Moslem Men, and a Terminal Essay on the History of <i>The Nights</i>,
+by R.F. Burton. Vol. v.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV03"><sup>3</sup></a> The Khoja, however, was not such a fool as we might conclude from
+the foregoing examples of his sayings and doings; for, being asked one
+day what musical instrument he liked best, he answered, "I am very fond
+of the music of plates and saucepans."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV04"><sup>4</sup></a> In China wine is almost invariably taken hot, according to Davis, in
+his work on the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV05"><sup>5</sup></a> This and the following specimens of Chinese stories of simpletons
+are from "Contes et Bon Mots extraits d'un livre chinois intitule
+<i>Siao li Siao</i>, traduit par M. Stanislas Julien," (<i>Journal
+Asiatique</i>, tom. iv., 1824).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV06"><sup>6</sup></a> In another Arabian version, the man desires his wife to moisten some
+stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an
+altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and
+moisten the bread.  A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds
+the couple dumb; he kisses the wife, but the man says nothing; he gives
+the man a blow, but still he says nothing; he has the man taken before
+the kází, but even yet he says nothing; the kází orders him to be
+hanged, and he is led off to execution, when the wife rushes up and
+cries out, "Oh, save my poor husband!"  "You wretch," says the man, "go
+home and moisten the bread!"</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV07"><sup>7</sup></a>  Bang is a preparation of hemp and coarse opium.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV08"><sup>8</sup></a> From Mr. E.J.W. Gibb's translation of the <i>Forty Vazirs</i>
+(London: 1886).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV09"><sup>9</sup></a> Knowles' <i>Dictionary of Kashmírí Proverbs and Sayings</i>, pp.
+197-8. The article bought by the five men is called a <i>hir</i>, which
+Mr. Knowles says "is the head of any animal used for food," and a
+<i>sheep's</i> head were surely fitting food for such noodles. Mr.
+Knowles makes it appear that the whole affair of keeping silence was a
+mere jest, but we have before seen that it is decidedly meant for a
+noodle-story.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV10"><sup>10</sup></a> <i>The Orientalist</i>, 1884, p. 136.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV11"><sup>11</sup></a> Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 284-5.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV12"><sup>12</sup></a> A separate work from the <i>Apologie pour Herodote</i> Such was the
+exasperation of the French clerics at the bitter truths set forth in it,
+that the author had to flee the country. An English translation,
+entitled "<i>A World of Wonders;</i> or, an introduction to a Treatise
+tovching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a
+Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,'" etc., was
+published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio.
+The <i>Apologie pour Herodote</i> was printed at the Hague.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapVtitle"></a><img src="images/image015.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.<br/>
+
+THE SILLY SON.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image016.png" width="94" height="94" alt="A"/>MONG the favourite jests
+  of all peoples, from Iceland to Japan, from India to England, are the droll
+  adventures and mishaps of the silly son, who contrives to muddle everything
+  he is set to do. In vain does his poor mother try to direct him in "the way
+  he should go": she gets him a wife, as a last resource; but a fool he is still,
+  and a fool he will always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny
+  chap-books and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how</p>
+
+<blockquote>Simple Simon went a-fishing<br/>
+    For to catch a whale,<br/>
+  But all the water he had got<br/>
+    Was in his mother's pail?</blockquote>
+
+<p>an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still
+more celebrated prototypes:</p>
+
+<blockquote>Three men of Gotham<br/>
+  Went to sea in a bowl;<br/>
+  If the bowl had been stronger,<br/>
+  My tale had been longer.</blockquote>
+<a name="p122"></a>
+<p>Then there is the prose history of <i>Simple Simon's Misfortunes; or,
+his Wife Marjory's Outrageous Cruelty</i>, which tells (1) of Simon's
+wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his
+roast-meat clothes <i>(i.e., </i> Sunday clothes) the very next morning
+after he was married; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a
+basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him
+look like a red herring; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was
+going to the mill to have it ground; (4) how Simon went to market with a
+basket of eggs, but broke them by the way: also how he was put into the
+stocks; (5) how Simon's wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money
+for the eggs; (6) how Simon lost his wife's pail and burnt the bottom of
+her kettle; (7) how Simon's wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but
+going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river: also how a
+ragman ran away with his clothes. No wonder if, after this crowning
+misfortune, poor Simon "drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as
+being weary of his life"!</p>
+<a name="p123"></a>
+<p>Again, we have <i>The Unfortunate Son; or, a Kind Wife is worth Gold,
+being full of Mirth and Pastime</i>, which commences thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote>There was a man but one son had,<br/>
+    And he was all his joy;<br/>
+  But still his fortune was but bad,<br/>
+    Though he was a pretty boy.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>His father sent him forth one day<br/>
+    To feed a flock of sheep,<br/>
+  And half of them were stole away<br/>
+    While he lay down asleep!</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>Next day he went with one Tom Goff<br/>
+    To reap as he was seen,<br/>
+  When he did cut his fingers off,<br/>
+    The sickle was so keen!</blockquote>
+
+<p>Another of the chap-book histories of noodles is that of <i>Simple John
+and his Twelve Misfortunes</i>, an imitation of <i>Simple Simon</i>; it
+was still popular amongst the rustics of Scotland fifty years ago.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The adventures of Silly Matt, the Norwegian counterpart of our typical
+English booby, as related in Asbjornson's collection of Norse
+folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular
+fictions:</p>
+
+<p>The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge across
+  the river and take toll of every one who wished to go over it; so he sets to
+  work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at one end&mdash;"at
+  the receipt of custom." Three men come up with loads of hay, and Matt demands
+  toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay. Next comes a pedlar, with
+  all sorts of small wares in his pack, and Matt gets from him two needles. On
+  his return home his mother asks him what he has got that day. "Hay and needles,"
+  says Matt. Well! and what had he done with the hay? "I put some of it in my
+  mouth," quoth he, "and as it tasted like grass, I threw it into the river."
+  She says he ought to have spread it on the byre-floor. "Very good," replies
+  the dutiful Matt; "I'll remember that next time." And what had he done with
+  the needles? He stuck them into the hay. "Ah," says the mother, "you should
+  rather have stuck them in and out of your cap, and brought them home to me."
+  Well! well! Matt will not forget to do so next time. The following day a man
+  comes to the bridge with a sack of meal and gives Matt a pound of it; then comes
+  a smith, who gives him a gimlet: the meal he spread on the byre-floor, and the
+  gimlet he stuck in and out of his cap. His mother tells him he should have come
+  home for a bucket to hold the meal, and the gimlet he should have put up his
+  sleeve. Very good! Matt will not forget next time. Another day some men come
+  to the bridge with kegs of brandy, of which Matt gets a pint, and pours it into
+  his sleeve; next comes a man driving some goats and their young ones, and gives
+  Matt a kid, which he treads down into a bucket. His mother says he should have
+  led the goat home with a cord round its neck, and put the brandy in a pail.
+  Next day he gets a pat of butter and drags it home with a string. After this
+  his mother despairs of his improvement, till it occurs to her that he might
+  not be such a noodle if he had a wife. So she bids him go and see whether he
+  cannot find some lass who will take him for a husband. Should he meet any folk
+  on his way, he ought to say to them, "God's peace!" Matt accordingly sets off
+  in quest of a wife, and meets a she-wolf and her seven cubs. "God's peace!"
+  says Matt, and then returns home. When his mother learns of this, she tells
+  him he should have cried, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" Next day he goes off again,
+  and meeting a bridal party, he cries, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" and goes back
+  to his mother and acquaints her of this fresh adventure. "O you great silly!"
+  says she; "you should have said, 'Ride happily, bride and bridegroom!'" Once
+  more Matt sets out to seek a wife, and seeing on the road a bear taking a ride
+  on a horse, he exclaims joyfully, "Ride happily, bride and bridegroom!" and
+  then returns home. His mother, on hearing of this new piece of folly, tells
+  him he should have cried, "To the devil with you!" Again he sets out, and meeting
+  a funeral procession, he roars, "To the devil with you!" His mother says he
+  should have cried, "May your poor soul have mercy!" and sends him off for the
+  fifth time to look for a lass. On the road he sees some gipsies busy skinning
+  a dead dog, upon which he piously exclaims, "May your poor soul have mercy!"
+  His mother now goes herself to get him a wife, finds a lass that is willing
+  to marry him, and invites her to dinner. She privately tells Matt how he should
+  comport himself in the presence of his sweetheart; he should cast an eye at
+  her now and then. Matt understands her instruction most literally:<a name="p126"></a>
+  stealing into the sheepfold, he plucks out the eyes of all the sheep and goats,
+  and puts them in his pocket. When he is seated beside his sweetheart, he casts
+  a "sheep's eye" at her, which hits her on the nose.<a href="#chapV01"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>This last incident, as we have seen, occurs in the <i>Tales of the Men
+of Gotham ("ante</i>, p. 41" in original. This section is to be found
+immediately after the reference to <a href="#chapII9">Chapter II, Footnote 9</a> in this
+e-text), and it is also found in a Venetian story (Bernoni,
+<i>Fiabe</i>, No. 11) entitled "The Fool," of which the following is the
+first part:</p>
+<a name="p127"></a>
+<p>Once upon a time there was a mother who had a son with little brains.
+One morning she said, "We must get up early, for we have to make bread."
+So they both rose early, and began to make bread. The mother made the
+loaves, but took no pains to make them the same size. Her son said to
+her finally, "How small you have made this loaf, mother." "Oh," said
+she, "it does not matter whether they are big or little, for the proverb
+says, 'Large and small, all must go to mass.'" "Good! good!" said her
+son. When the bread was made, instead of taking it to the baker's, the
+son took it to the church, for it was the hour for mass, saying, "My
+mother said that, 'large and small, all must go to mass.'" So he threw
+the loaves down in the middle of the church. Then he went home to his
+mother, and said, "I have done what you told me to do," "Good! Did you
+take the bread to the baker's?" "O mother, if you had seen how they all
+looked at me!" "You might also have cast an eye on them in return," said
+his mother. "Wait; wait. I will cast an eye at them too," he exclaimed,
+and went to the stable and cut out the eyes of all the animals, and
+putting them in a handkerchief, went to the church, and when any man or
+woman looked at him, he threw an eye at them.<a href="#chapV02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p128"></a>
+<p>Silly Matt has a brother in Russia, according to M. Leger's <i>Contes
+Populaires Slaves</i>, published at Paris in 1882: An old man and his
+wife had a son, who was about as great a noodle as could be. One day his
+mother said to him, "My son, thou shouldst go about among people, to get
+thyself sharpened and rubbed down a little." "Yes, mother," says he;
+"I'm off this moment." So he went to the village, and saw two men
+threshing pease. He ran up to them, and rubbed himself now on one and
+then on the other. "No nonsense!" cried the men. "Get away." But he
+continued to rub himself on them, till at last they would stand it no
+longer, and beat him with their flails so lustily that he could hardly
+crawl home. "What art thou crying about, child?" asked his mother. He
+related his misfortune. "Ah, my child," said she, "how silly thou art!
+Thou shouldst have said to them, 'God aid you, good men! Do you wish me
+to help you to thresh?' and then they would have given thee some pease
+for thy trouble, and we should have had them to cook and eat." On
+another occasion the noodle again went through the village, and met some
+people carrying a dead man. "May God aid you, good men!" he exclaimed.
+"Do you wish me to help you to thresh?" But he got himself well thrashed
+once more for this ill-timed speech. When he reached home, he howled,
+"They've felled me to the ground, beaten me, and plucked my beard and
+hair!" and told of his new mishap. "Ah, noodle!" said his mother, "thou
+shouldst have said, 'God give peace to his soul!' Thou shouldst have
+taken off thy bonnet, wept, and fallen upon thy knees. They would then
+have given thee meat and drink." Again he went to the village, and met a
+marriage procession. So he took off his bonnet, and cried with all his
+might, "God grant peace to his soul!" and then burst into tears. "What
+brute is this?" said the wedding company. "We laugh and amuse ourselves,
+and he laments as if he were at a funeral." So they leaped out of the
+carriages, and beat him soundly on the ribs. Home he returned, crying,
+"They've beaten me, thrashed me, and torn my beard and hair!" and
+related what had happened. "My son," said his mother, "thou shouldst
+have leaped and danced with them." The next time he went to the village
+he took his bagpipe under his arm.<a name="p130"></a> At the end of the street a cart-shed
+was on fire. The noodle ran to the spot, and began to play on his
+bagpipe and to dance and caper about, for which he was abused as before.
+Going back to his mother in tears, he told her how he had fared. "My
+son," said she, "thou shouldst have carried water and thrown it on the
+fire, like the other folks." Three days later, when his ribs were well
+again, the noodle went through the village once more, and seeing a man
+roasting a little pig, he seized a vessel of water, ran up with it, and
+threw the water on the fire. This time also he was beaten, and when he
+got home, and told his mother of his ill-luck, she resolved never again
+to allow him to go abroad; so he remains by the fireside, as great a
+fool as ever.</p>
+
+<p> This species of noodle is also known in Japan. He is the hero of a
+farce entitled <i>Hone Kaha</i>, or Ribs and Skin, which has been done
+into English by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in his <i>Classical Poetry
+of the Japanese</i>. The rector of a Buddhist temple tells his curate
+that he feels he is now getting too old for the duties of his office,
+and means to resign the benefice in his favour. Before retiring to his
+private chamber, he desires the curate to let him know if any persons
+visit the temple, and bids him, should he be in want of information
+regarding any matter, to come to him. A parishioner calls to borrow an
+umbrella. The curate lends him a new one, and then goes to the rector
+and informs him of this visitor. "You have done wrong," says the rector.
+"You ought to have said that you should have been happy to comply with
+such a small request, but, unfortunately, the rector was walking out
+with it the other day, when, at a place where four roads meet, a sudden
+gust of wind blew the skin to one side and the ribs to another; we have
+tied the ribs and skin together in the middle, and hung it from the
+ceiling. Something like that," adds the rector, "something with an air
+of truth about it, is what you should have said." Next comes another
+parishioner, who wishes to borrow a horse. The curate replies with great
+politeness, "The request with which you honour me is a mere trifle, but
+the rector took it out with him a few days since, and coming to the
+junction of four cross roads, a gust of wind blew the ribs to one side
+and the skin to another, and we have tied them together, and hung them
+from the ceiling; so I fear it would not suit your purpose." "It is a
+horse I want," said the man. "Precisely&mdash;a horse: I am aware of it,"
+quoth the curate, and the man went off, not a little perplexed, after
+which the curate reports this new affair to the rector, who says it was
+to an umbrella, not to a horse, that such a story was applicable. Should
+any one come again to borrow a horse, he ought to say, "I much regret
+that I cannot comply with your request. The fact is, we lately turned
+him out to grass, and becoming frolicsome, he dislocated his thigh, and
+is now lying, covered with straw, in a corner of the stable." "Something
+like that," adds the rector, "something with an air of truth about it,
+is what you should say." A third parishioner comes to invite the rector
+and the curate to a feast at his house. "For myself," says the curate,
+"I promise to come; but I fear it will not be convenient for the rector
+to accompany me." "I presume then," says the man, "that he has some
+particular business on hand?" "No, not any particular business," answers
+the curate; "but the truth is, we lately turned him out to grass, and
+becoming frisky, he dislocated his thigh, and now lies in a corner of
+the stable, covered with straw." "I spoke of the rector," says the
+parishioner. "Yes, of the rector. I quite understand," responds the
+curate, very complaisantly, upon which the man goes away, not knowing
+what to make of such a strange account of the rector's condition. This
+last affair puts the rector into a fury, and he cuffs his intended
+successor, exclaiming, "When was I ever frisky, I should like to know?"</p>
+<a name="p133"></a>
+<p> As great a jolterhead as any of the foregoing was the hero of a story
+in Cazotte's "Continuation" of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, entitled
+"L'Imbécille; ou, L'Histoire de Xailoun,"<a href="#chapV03"><sup>3</sup></a> This noodle's wife said to
+him one day, "Go and buy some pease, and don't forget that it is pease
+you are to buy; continually repeat 'Pease!' till you reach the
+market-place." So he went off, with "Pease! pease!" always in his mouth.
+He passed the corner of a street where a merchant who had pearls for
+sale was proclaiming his wares in a loud voice, saying, "In the name of
+the Prophet, pearls!" Xailoun's attention was at once attracted by the
+display of pearls, and at the same time he was occupied in retaining the
+lesson his wife had taught him, and putting his hand in the box of
+pearls, he cried out, "Pease! pease!" The merchant, supposing Xailoun
+played upon him and depreciated his pearls by wishing to make them pass
+for false ones, struck him a severe blow. "Why do you strike me?" said
+Xailoun. "Because you insult me," answered the merchant. "Do you suppose
+I am trying to deceive people?" "No," said the noodle. "But what must I
+say, then?" "If you will cry properly, say as I do, 'Pearls, in the name
+of the Prophet!'" He next passed by the shop of a merchant from whom
+some pearls had been stolen, and his manner of crying, "Pearls!" etc.,
+which was not nearly so loud as usual, appeared to the merchant very
+suspicious. "The man who has stolen my pearls," thought he, "has
+probably recognised me, and when he passes my shop lowers his voice in
+crying the goods." Upon this suspicion he ran after Xailoun, and
+stopping him, said, "Show me your pearls." The poor fool was in great
+confusion, and the merchant thought he had got the thief. The supposed
+seller of pearls was soon surrounded by a great crowd, and the merchant
+at last discovered that he was a perfect simpleton. "Why," said he, "do
+you cry that you sell pearls?" "What should I say, then?" asked Xailoun.
+"It is not true," said the merchant, not listening to him.  "It is not
+true," exclaimed the noodle. "Let me repeat, 'It is not true,' that I
+may not forget it;" and as he went on he kept crying, "It is not true."
+His way led him towards a place where a man was proclaiming, "In the
+name of the Prophet, lentils!" Xailoun, induced by curiosity, went up to
+the man, his mouth full of the last words he remembered, and putting his
+hand into the sack, cried, "It is not true." The sturdy villager gave
+him a blow that caused him to stagger, saying, "What d'ye mean by giving
+me the lie about my goods, which I both sowed and reaped myself?" Quoth
+the noodle, "I have only tried to say what I ought to say." "Well,
+then," rejoined the dealer, "you ought to say, as I do, 'Lentils, in the
+name of the Prophet!'" So our noodle at once took up this new cry, and
+proceeded on his way till he came to the bank of the river, where a
+fisherman had been casting his net for hours, and had frequently changed
+his place, without getting any fish. Xailoun, who was amused with every
+new thing he saw, began to follow the fisherman, and, that he should not
+forget his lesson, continued to repeat, "Lentils, in the name of the
+Prophet!" Suddenly the fisherman made a pretence of spreading his net,
+in order to wring and dry it, and having folded in his hand the rope to
+which it was fastened, he took hold of the simpleton and struck him some
+furious blows with it, saying, "Vile sorcerer! cease to curse my
+fishing." Xailoun struggled, and at length disengaged himself. "I am no
+sorcerer," said he. "Well, if you are not," answered the fisherman, "why
+do you cause me bad luck by your words every time I throw my net?" "I
+didn't mean to bring you bad luck," said the noodle. "I only repeat what
+I was told to repeat." The fisherman then concluded that some of his
+enemies, who wished to do him an ill turn without exposing themselves,
+had prevailed upon this poor fellow to come and curse his fishing, so he
+said, "I am sorry, brother, for having beaten you, but you were wrong to
+pronounce the words you did, thereby bringing bad luck to me, who never
+did you any harm." Quoth the simpleton, "I only tried to say the words
+my wife told me not to forget." "Do you know them?" "Yes." "Well, place
+yourself beside me, and each time I cast my net you must say, 'In the
+name of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!'"
+But Xailoun thought what his wife had said was not so long as that.
+"Oh, yes, it was," said the fisherman; "and take care you don't miss a
+single word, and I shall give you some of the fish to take home with
+you." That he might not forget, Xailoun repeated it very loud, but as
+'he was afraid of the cord whenever he saw the fisherman drawing in his
+net, he ran away as fast as he could, but still repeating, "In the name
+of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!" These
+words he pronounced in the midst of a crowd of people, through which the
+corpse of the kází (magistrate, or judge) was being carried to the
+burying ground, and the mullahs who surrounded the bier, scandalised by
+what they thought a horrible imprecation, exclaimed, "How darest thou,
+wicked wretch, thus blaspheme? Is it not enough that Death has taken one
+of the greatest men of Baghdád?" The poor simpleton was skulking off in
+fear and trembling, when his sleeve was pulled by an aged slave, who
+told him that he ought to say, "May Allah preserve his body and save his
+soul!" So our noodle went on, repeating this new cry till he came to a
+street where a dead ass was being carted away. "May Allah preserve his
+body and save his soul!"' he exclaimed. "How he blasphemes!" said the
+folk, and they set upon him with their fists and sticks, and gave him a
+sound drubbing. At length he got clear of them, and by chance came to
+the house of his wife's mother, but he only ventured to stand at the
+door and peep within. He was recognised, however, and asked what he
+would have to eat&mdash;goat's flesh? rice? <i>pease?</i> Yes, it was pease
+he wanted, and having got some, he hastened home, and after relating all
+his mishaps, informed his wife, that her sister was very sick. His wife,
+having prepared herself to go to her mother's house, tells the simpleton
+to rock the baby should it awake and cry; feed the hen that was sitting;
+if the ass was thirsty, give her to drink; shut the door, and take care
+not to go to sleep, lest robbers should come and plunder the house. The
+baby awakes, and Xailoun rocks it to sleep again; so far, well. The hen
+seems uneasy; he concludes she is troubled with insects, like himself.
+So he takes up the hen, and thinking the best way to kill the insects
+was to stick a pin into them, he unluckily kills the hen. This was a
+serious matter, and while he considers what he should do in the
+circumstances, the ass begins to bray. "Ah," says he, "I've no time to
+attend to you just now; but when I am on your back, you can carry me to
+the river." Then he opened the door and let out the ass and her colt.
+After this he sat down on the eggs, and took the baby in his arms. His
+wife returning, knocks at the door. "Let me in, you fool," she cries. "I
+can't, for I am nursing the baby and hatching the eggs." <a name="p139"></a>At length she
+contrived to force open the door, and running up to her idiot of a
+husband, fetched him a blow that caused him to crush all the
+half-hatched eggs. Luckily she had met the ass and her foal on the road,
+so the amount of mischief done by her stupid spouse in her absence was
+not so great, all things considered.<a href="#chapV04"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The misadventures of the Arabian idiot in his expedition to purchase
+pease present a close analogy to those of the typical English booby,
+only the latter end tragically:</p>
+
+<p>A woman sent her son one day to buy a sheep's head and pluck, and, lest
+he should forget his message, he kept bawling loudly as he went along,
+"Sheep's head and pluck! sheep's head and pluck!" In getting over a
+stile he fell and hurt himself, and forgot what he was sent for, so he
+stood a little to consider; and at last he thought he recollected it,
+and began to shout, "Liver and lights and gall and all!" which he was
+repeating when he came up to a man who was very sick. The man, thinking
+the booby was mocking him, laid hold of him, and after cuffing him, bade
+the booby cry, "Pray God, send no more up!" So he ran along uttering
+these words till he came to a field where a man was sowing wheat, who,
+on hearing what he took for a curse upon his labour, seized and thrashed
+him, and told him to repeat, "Pray God, send plenty more!" So the young
+jolterhead at once "changed his tune," and was loudly singing out these
+words when he met a funeral. The chief mourner punished him for what he
+thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to
+heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be
+hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his
+seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he
+and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating
+this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When
+the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave him many a good thump,
+and bade him say, "I wish you much joy!" This he was crying at the top
+of his voice when he came to a pit into which two labourers had fallen,
+and one of them, enraged at what he thought his mockery of their
+misfortune, exerted all his strength and scrambled out, then beat the
+poor simpleton, and told him to say, "The one is out; I wish the other
+was!" Glad to be set free, the booby went on shouting these words till
+he met with a one-eyed man, who, like the others, taking what he was
+crying for a personal insult, gave him another drubbing, and then bade
+him cry, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" So
+he adopted this new cry, and continued his adventurous journey till he
+came to a house, one side of which was on fire. The people, hearing him
+bawling, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" at
+once concluded that he had set the house a-blazing; so they put him in
+prison, and the end was, the judge put on the black cap and condemned
+him to be hanged!<a href="#chapV05"><sup>5</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p141"></a>
+<p>When the noodle is persuaded, as in the following case of a Sinhalese
+wittol, by a gang of thieves to join them in a plundering expedition,
+they have little reason to be pleased with him, for he does not make a
+good "cat's-paw." The Sinhalese noodle joined some thieves, took readily
+to their ways, and was always eager to accompany them on their marauding
+excursions. One night they took him with them, and boring a large hole
+in the wall of a house,<a href="#chapV06"><sup>6</sup></a> they sent him in, telling him to hand out the
+heaviest article he could lay hands upon. He readily went in, and seeing
+a large kurakkan-grinder,<a href="#chapV07"><sup>7</sup></a> thought that was the heaviest thing in the
+room, and attempted to remove it. But it proved too much for him alone,
+so he gently awoke a man who was sleeping in the room, and said to him,
+"My friend, pray help me to remove this kurakkan-grinder." The man
+immediately guessed that thieves had entered the house, and gave the
+alarm. The thieves, who were waiting outside quite expectant, rushed
+away, and the noodle somehow or other managed to escape with them.</p>
+
+<p>Next night they again took him along with them, and after boring a hole
+in the wall of another house, sent him in with strict injunctions not to
+make a noise or wake anybody. He crept in noiselessly and entered a
+large room, in which was an old woman, fast asleep by the fire, with
+wide-open mouth. An earthen chattie, a wooden spoon, and a small bag of
+pease were also placed by the fire. The noodle first proceeded to roast
+some pease in the chattie. When they were roasted to a nice brownish
+colour, and emitted a very tempting smell, he thought that the old woman
+might also enjoy a mouthful. He considered for a while how he might best
+offer some to her. He did not wish to wake her, as he was ordered not to
+wake anybody. Suddenly a bright idea struck him. Why should he not feed
+her? There she was sleeping with her mouth wide open. Surely it would be
+no difficult task to put some pease into her mouth. Taking some of the
+hot, smoking pease into the wooden spoon, he put the contents into her
+mouth. The woman awoke, screaming with all her might. The noise roused
+the other inmates of the house, who came rushing to the spot to see what
+was the matter. This time also the noodle managed to escape with the
+thieves; but in a subsequent adventure he, as well as the thieves, came
+to grief.<a href="#chapV08"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p144"></a>
+<p>The silly son of Italian popular tales is represented as being sent by
+his mother to sell a piece of linen which she had woven, saying to him,
+"Now listen attentively to what I say: Walk straight along the road.
+Don't take less than such a price for this linen. Don't have any
+dealings with women who chatter. Whether you sell it to any one you meet
+on the way, or carry it into the market, offer it only to some quiet
+sort of body whom you may see standing apart and not gossiping or
+prating, for such as they will persuade you to take some sort of price
+that won't suit me at all." The booby answers, "Yes, mamma," and goes
+off on his errand, keeping straight on, instead of taking the turnings
+leading to villages. It happened, as he went along, that the wife of the
+syndic of the next town was driving out with her maids, and had got out
+of the carriage, to walk a short distance, as the day was fine. Her maid
+tells her that there goes the simple son of the poor widow by the brook.
+"What are you going to do, my good lad?" kindly asks the lady. "I'm not
+going to tell you," says the booby, "because you were chattering." "I
+see your mother has sent you to sell this linen," continues the lady; "I
+will buy it of you," and she offers to pay twice as much as his mother
+had said she wanted. "Can't sell it to you," replies he, "for you were
+chattering," and he continues his journey. Farther along he comes to a
+plaster statue by the roadside, so he says to himself, "Here's one who
+stands apart and doesn't chatter; this is the one to sell the linen to,"
+then aloud, "Will you buy my linen, good friend?" The statue maintained
+its usual taciturnity, and the booby concluded, as it did not speak, it
+was all right, so he said, "The price is so-and-so; have the money ready
+by the time I come back, as I have to go on and buy some yarn for
+mother." On he went accordingly, and bought the yarn, and then came back
+to the statue. Some one passing by had in the meantime taken the linen.
+Finding it gone, "It's all right," says he to himself; "she's taken it,"
+then aloud, "Where's the money I told you to have ready?" The statue
+remained silent. "If you don't give me the money, I'll hit you on the
+head," he exclaimed, and raising his stick, he knocked the head off, and
+found it filled with gold coin. "That's where you keep your money, is
+it? All right; I can pay myself." So saying, he filled his pockets with
+the coin and went home. When he handed his mother the money, and told
+her of his adventure with the quiet body by the roadside, she was afraid
+lest the neighbours should learn of her windfall if the booby knew its
+value, so she said to him, "You've only brought me a lot of rusty nails;
+but never mind: you'll know better what to do next time," and put the
+money in an earthen jar. In her absence, a ragman comes to the house,
+and the booby asks him, "Will you buy some rusty nails?" The man desires
+to see them. "Well," quoth he on beholding the treasure, "they're not
+much worth, but I'll give you twelve pauls for the lot," and having
+handed over the sum, went off with his prize. When his mother comes
+home, the booby tells her what a bargain he had made for the rusty
+nails. "Nails!" she echoes, in consternation. "Why, you foolish thing,
+they were gold coins!" "Can't help that now, mamma," he answers
+philosophically; "you told me they were old rusty nails." By another
+lucky adventure, however, the booby is enabled to make up his mother's
+loss, finding a treasure which a party of robbers had left behind them
+at the foot of a tree.</p>
+<a name="p146"></a>
+<p>The incident of a simpleton selling something to an inanimate object and
+discovering a hidden treasure occurs, in different forms, in the
+folk-tales of Asiatic as well as European countries. In a manuscript
+text of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, brought from Constantinople by
+Wortley Montague, and now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a
+more elaborate version of the Italian booby's adventure with the statue
+is found, in the "Story of the Bang-eater and his Wife:"</p>
+<a name="p147"></a>
+<p>In former times there lived not far from Baghdad a half-witted fellow,
+who was much addicted to the use of bang. Being reduced to poverty, he
+was obliged to sell his cow, which he took to the market one day, but
+the animal being in such a poor condition, no one would buy it, and
+after waiting till he was weary he returned homeward. On the way he
+stopped to repose himself under a tree, and tied the cow to one of the
+branches, while he ate some bread, and drank an infusion of his bang,
+which he always carried with him. In a short time it began to operate,
+so as to bereave him of the little sense he had, and his head was filled
+with ridiculous reveries. While he was musing, a bird beginning to
+chatter from her nest in the tree, he fancied it was a human voice, and
+that some woman had offered to purchase his cow, upon which he said,
+"Reverend mother of Solomon,<a href="#chapV09"><sup>9</sup></a> dost thou wish to buy my cow?" The bird
+again chattered. "Well," replied he, "what wilt thou give? I will sell
+her a bargain." The bird repeated her noise. "Never mind," said the
+fool, "for though thou hast forgotten to bring thy purse, yet, as I
+daresay thou art an honest woman, and hast bidden me ten dinars, I will
+trust thee with the cow, and call on Friday for the money." The bird
+renewed her chattering; so, leaving the cow tied to a branch of the
+tree, he returned home, exulting in the good bargain he had made for the
+animal. When he entered the house, his wife inquired what he had got for
+the cow, and he replied that he had sold her to an honest woman, who had
+promised to pay him ten pieces of gold next Friday. The wife was
+contented; and when Friday arrived, her noodle of a husband having, as
+usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird
+chattering as before, said, "Well, good mother, hast thou brought the
+gold?" The bird croaked. The blockhead, supposing the imaginary woman
+refused to pay him, became angry, and threw up a stone, which
+frightening the bird, it flew from its nest in the tree and alighted on
+a heap of ruins at some little distance. He now concluded that the woman
+had desired him to take his money from the heap, into which he
+accordingly dug, and found a copper vessel full of coin. This discovery
+convinced him he was right, and being withal an honest fellow, he only
+took ten pieces; then replacing the soil, "May Allah requite thee for
+thy punctuality, good mother!" he exclaimed, and returned to his wife,
+to whom he gave the money, informing her at the same time of the great
+treasure his friend the imaginary old woman possessed, and where it was
+concealed.</p>
+
+<p>The wife waited till night, when she brought away the pot of gold, which
+her foolish husband observing, he said, "It is dishonest to rob one who
+has paid us so punctually; and if thou dost not return it to its place,
+I will inform the walí" (governor of the city). She laughed at his
+simplicity, but fearing that he would execute his threat, she planned a
+stratagem to render it of no avail. Going to market, she purchased some
+meat and fish ready cooked, which she brought privately home, and
+concealed in the house. At night, while her husband was sleeping off the
+effects of his favourite narcotic, she strewed the provisions she had
+brought outside the door, and then awakening him, cried out, "Dear
+husband, a most wonderful thing has occurred: there has been a violent
+storm while you slept, and, strange to tell, it has rained pieces of
+broiled meat and fish, which now lie at the door!" The blockhead got up,
+and seeing the food, was persuaded of the truth of his wife's story. The
+flesh and fish were gathered up, and he partook with much glee of the
+miraculous treat, but still said he would tell the walí of her having
+stolen the treasure of the honest old woman.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning he actually repaired to the walí, and informed him that
+his wife had stolen a pot of gold, which she had still in her
+possession. Upon this the walí had the woman apprehended. She denied the
+accusation, and was then threatened with death. "My lord," said she,
+"the power is in your hands; but I am an injured woman, as you will find
+by questioning my husband, who is deranged in his intellect. Ask him
+when I committed the theft." The walí did so, and the simpleton
+answered, "It was the evening of that night when it rained broiled fish
+and ready-cooked flesh." On hearing this, "Wretch!" exclaimed the walí
+in a fury, "dost thou dare to utter falsehoods before me? Who ever saw
+it rain anything but water?" "As I hope for life," replied the fool, "I
+speak the truth; for my wife and myself ate of the fish and flesh which
+fell from the clouds." The woman, being appealed to, denied the
+assertion of her husband.<a name="p151"></a>The walí, now convinced that the man was
+crazy, released the woman, and sent her husband to the madhouse, where
+he remained for some days, till his wife, pitying his condition,
+contrived to get him set at liberty. She visited her husband, and
+counselled him, should any one ask him if he had seen it rain fish and
+flesh, to answer, "No; who ever saw it rain anything but water?" Then
+she informed the keeper that he was come to his senses, and suggested he
+should question him; and on the poor fellow answering properly he was
+released.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In a Russian variant, an old man had three sons, one of whom was a
+noodle. When the old man died, his property was shared between the
+brothers, but all that the simpleton received was one ox, which he took
+to the market to sell. On his way he chanced to pass an old birch-tree,
+which creaked and groaned in the wind. He thinks the tree is offering to
+buy his ox, and so he says, "Well, you shall have it for twenty
+roubles." But the tree only creaked and creaked, and he fancied it was
+asking the ox on credit. "Very good," says he. "You'll pay me tomorrow?
+I'll wait till then." So he ties the ox to the tree and goes home. His
+brothers question him about his ox, and he tells them he has sold it for
+twenty roubles and is to get the money to-morrow, at which they laugh;
+he is, they think; a greater fool than ever. Next morning he went to the
+birch-tree, and found the ox was gone, for, in truth, the wolves had
+eaten it. He demanded his money, but the tree only creaked and groaned,
+as usual. "You'll pay me to-morrow?" he exclaimed. "That's what you said
+yesterday. I'll have no more of your promises." So saying, he struck the
+old birch-tree with his hatchet and sent the chips flying about. Now the
+tree was hollow, and it soon split asunder from his blows; and in the
+hollow trunk he found a pot full of gold, which some robbers had hidden
+there. Taking some of the gold, he returns home, and shows it to his
+brothers, who ask him how he got so much money. "A neighbour," he
+replies, "gave it to me for my ox. But this is nothing like the whole of
+it. Come along, brothers, and let us get the rest." They go, and fetch
+the rest of the treasure, and on their way home they meet a diachok (one
+of the inferior members of the Russian clerical body, though not one of
+the clergy), who asks them what they are carrying. "Mushrooms," say the
+two clever brothers; but the noodle cries, "That's not true; we're
+carrying money: here, look at it." The diachok, with an exclamation,
+flung himself upon the gold and began stuffing it into his pockets. At
+this the noodle grew angry, dealt him a blow with his hatchet, and
+killed him on the spot. The brothers dragged the body to an empty
+cellar, and flung it in. Later in the evening the eldest said to the
+other, "This business is sure to turn out badly. When they look for the
+diachok, Simpleton will be sure to tell them all about it. So we had
+better hide the body in some other place, and kill a goat and bury it in
+the cellar." This they did accordingly. And after several days had
+passed the people asked the noodle if he had seen the diachok. "Yes," he
+answered. "I killed him some time ago with my hatchet, and my brothers
+carried him to the cellar." They seize upon him and compel him to go
+down into the cellar and bring out the body. He gets hold of the goat's
+head, and asks, "Was your diachok dark-haired?" "He was." "Had he a
+beard?" "Yes." "And horns?" "What horns are you talking of?" "Well, see
+for yourselves," said he, tossing up the head to them. They saw it was a
+goat's head, and went away home.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p154"></a>
+<p>The reader cannot fail to remark the close resemblance there is between
+the first parts of the Arabian and Russian stories; and the second parts
+of both reappear in many tales of the Silly Son. The goat's carcase
+substituted for the dead man occurs, for instance, in the Norse story of
+Silly Matt; in the Sicilian story of Giufa; in M. Rivière's <i>Contes
+Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura</i>; and "Foolish Sachúli," in
+Miss Stokes' <i>Indian Fairy Tales</i>. The incident of the pretended
+shower of broiled fish and flesh is found in Campbell's <i>Tales of the
+West Highlands</i> (porridge and pancakes); in Rivière's Tales of the
+Kabaïl (fritters); "Foolish Sachúli" (sweetmeats); Giufà, the Sicilian
+Booby (figs and raisins); and in M. Leger's <i>Contes Populaires
+Slaves</i>, where, curiously enough, the trick is played by a husband
+upon his wife. It is perhaps worth while reproducing the Russian story
+from Leger, in a somewhat abridged form, as follows:</p>
+
+<p>In tilling the ground a labourer found a treasure, and carrying it home,
+said to his wife, "See! Heaven has sent us a fortune. But where can we
+conceal it?" She suggested he should bury it under the floor, which he
+did accordingly. Soon after this the wife went out to fetch water, and
+the labourer reflected that his wife was a dreadful gossip, and by
+to-morrow night all the village would know their secret.  So he removed
+the treasure from its hiding-place and buried it in his barn, beneath a
+heap of corn. When the wife came back from the well, he said to her
+quite gravely, "To-morrow we shall go to the forest to seek fish; they
+say there's plenty there at present." "What! fish in the forest?" she
+exclaimed. "Of course," he rejoined; "and you'll see them there." Very
+early next morning he got up, and took some fish, which he had concealed
+in a basket. He went to the grocer's and bought a quantity of sweet
+cakes. He also caught a hare and killed it. The fish and cakes he
+disposed of in different parts of the wood, and the hare he hooked on a
+fishing-line, and then threw it in the river. After breakfast he took
+his wife with him into the wood, which they had scarcely entered when
+she found a pike, then a perch, and then a roach, on the ground. With
+many exclamations of surprise, she gathered up the fish and put them in
+her basket. Presently they came to a pear-tree, from the branches of
+which hung sweet cakes. "See!" she cried. "Cakes on a pear-tree!" "Quite
+natural," replied he; "it has rained cakes, and some have remained on
+this tree; travellers have picked up the rest." Continuing their way to
+the village, they passed near a stream. "Wait a little," said the
+husband; "I set my line early this morning, and I'll look if anything is
+caught on it." He then pulled in the line, and behold, there was a hare
+hooked on to it! "How extraordinary!" cries the good wife&mdash;"a hare in
+the water!" "Why," says he, "don't you know there are hares in the water
+as well as rats?" "No, indeed, I knew it not." They now returned home,
+and the wife set about preparing all the nice eatables for supper. In a
+day or two the labourer found from the talk of his acquaintances that
+his finding the treasure was no secret in the village, and in less than
+a week he was summoned to the castle. "Is it true," said the lord, "that
+you have found a treasure?" "It is not true," was his reply. "But your
+wife has told me all." "My wife does not know what she says&mdash;she is mad,
+my lord." Hereupon the woman cries, "It is the truth, my lord; he has
+found a treasure and buried it beneath the floor of our cottage."
+"When?" "On the eve before the day we went into the forest to look for
+fish." "What do you say?" "Yes; it was on the day that it rained cakes;
+we gathered a basketful of them, and coming home, my husband fished a
+fine hare out of the river." My lord declared the woman to be an idiot;
+nevertheless he caused his servants to search under the labourer's
+cottage floor, but nothing was found there, and so the shrewd fellow
+secured his treasure.</p>
+<a name="p157"></a>
+<p>The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a
+number of fools' exploits are strung together and ascribed to one
+individual, as in the tale of "Foolish Sachúli;" but generally they are
+told as separate stories. The following adventure of Sachúli is also
+found, in varied form, in Beschi's <i>Gooroo Paramartan</i>: One day
+Sachúli climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting
+off the branch between the tree and himself. A man passing by called to
+him, saying, "What are you doing up there? You will be killed if you cut
+that branch off." "What do you say?" asked the booby, coming down. "When
+shall I die?" "How can I tell?" said the man. "Let me go." "I will not
+let you go until you tell me when I shall die." At last the man, in
+order to get rid of him, said, "When you find a scarlet thread on your
+jacket, then you will die." After this Sachúli went to the
+<i>bazaar</i>, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away
+shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes. "Now I shall die!"
+exclaimed the fool. "How do you know that?" the tailors inquired, when
+he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they
+all laughed. Nevertheless, Sachúli went and dug a grave in the jungle
+and lay down in it.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of <i>ghi</i>, or clarified
+butter, which he engages Sachúli to carry for him, and the noodle, of
+course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to
+which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.</p>
+
+<p>The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated
+seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical
+Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-Dín, and there exist German, Saxon,
+and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon,
+and the following is a version from a Hindú work entitled <a name="p158"></a><i>Bharataka
+Dwátrinsati</i>, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:</p>
+
+<p>In Elákapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named
+Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure
+a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and
+he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there
+came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, "O
+monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you
+yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will
+fall down and die." After saying this the travellers went their way. The
+monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut
+the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch
+broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, "Those
+travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened
+just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead." So he remained on
+the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he
+even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him
+up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could
+not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your
+associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks
+in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him
+up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had
+gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided
+itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others
+said, "It is to the right that we must go." Thus a dispute arose among
+them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The "dead" monk,
+who was borne on a bier, said, "Friends, quarrel not among yourselves;
+when I was alive, I always went by the left road." Then said some, "He
+always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple
+fact. Let us therefore take the left road." This was agreed upon, and as
+they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to
+be present said, "O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that
+ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive." They
+answered, "Nay, but he is dead." Then the bystanders said, "He cannot be
+dead, seeing that he yet speaks." They then set down the bier on the
+ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and
+related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the
+travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained
+quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka
+was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the
+bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in
+inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and
+went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.<a href="#chapV11"><sup>11</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>A diverting story in the <i>Facetiæ</i> of Poggius, entitled "Mortuus
+Loqueus," from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini
+and in our old collection <i>Tales and Quicke Answeres</i>, has a near
+affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of
+stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of
+his property. In the early English jest-book,<a href="#chapV12"><sup>12</sup></a> it is, in effect, as
+follows:</p>
+<a name="p161"></a>
+<p>There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party
+of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their
+plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was
+not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth
+the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way.
+Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if
+he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The
+poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was
+convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be
+in his bed&mdash;he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca
+stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague,"
+when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying
+man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he
+did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers
+came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his
+pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.<a href="#chapV13"><sup>13</sup></a> Then,
+standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking
+fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the
+ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast,
+and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though
+he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through
+the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were
+carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a
+taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the
+mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard
+himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you
+scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a
+false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set
+down the "body" and ran away&mdash;leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole
+affair to the marvelling multitude.<a href="#chapV14"><sup>14</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p163"></a>
+<p>We read of another silly son, in the <i>Kathá Manjari</i>, whose father said
+  to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem to have much
+  sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go, therefore, to the
+  tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad accordingly went to the tank,
+  and having <a name="p164"></a>caused all the water&mdash;which was required
+  for the irrigation of his father's fields&mdash;to run to waste, he picked up
+  from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to his father, not
+  a little proud of his exploit.&mdash;In the <i>Kathá Sarit Ságara</i> it is
+  related that a Bráhman told his foolish son one evening that he must send him
+  to the village early on the morrow, and thither the lad went, without asking
+  what he was to do. Returning home at night very tired, he said to his father,
+  "I have been to the village." "Yes," said the Bráhman, "you went thither without
+  an object, and have done no good by it."&mdash;And in the Buddhist <i>Játakas</i>
+  we find what is probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping
+  a felled tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely.
+  Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is a mosquito
+  stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear&mdash;drive it off." "Wait a bit,
+  father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow." Then he took up
+  an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking to kill the mosquito
+  with the axe, he only killed his father.</p>
+<a name="p165"></a>
+<p>Among numerous variants is the story of the Sicilian booby, Giufà, who
+was annoyed by the flies, and complained of them to the judge, who told
+him that he was at liberty to kill a fly wherever he saw it: just then a
+fly happened to alight on the judge's nose, which Giufà observing, he
+immediately aimed at it so furious a blow with his fist, that he smashed
+his worship's nose!</p>
+
+<p>The hopelessness of attempting to impart instruction to the silly son is
+farther illustrated by the story in a Sinhalese collection: A gúrú was
+engaged in teaching one of his disciples, but whilst he was teaching the
+youth was watching the movements of a rat which was entering its hole.
+As soon as the gúrú had finished his teaching, he said, "Well, my son,
+has all entered in?" to which the youth replied, "Yes, all has entered
+in except the tail." And from the same work is the following choice
+example of "a happy family": A priest went one day to the house of one
+of his followers, and amongst other things he said, "Tell me now, which
+of your four children is the best-behaved?" The father replied, "Look,
+sir, at that boy who has climbed to the top of that thatched building,
+and is waving aloft a firebrand. Among them all, he is the divinely
+excellent one." Whereupon the priest placed his finger on his nose, drew
+a deep, deep sigh, and said, "Is it indeed so? What, then, must the
+other three be?"</p>
+<a name="p166"></a>
+<p>The Turkish romance of the Forty Vazírs&mdash;the plan of which is similar to
+that of the Book of Sindibád and its derivatives&mdash;furnishes us with two
+stories of the same class, one of which is as follows, according to my
+friend Mr. Gibb's complete translation (the first that has been made in
+English), recently published:<a href="#chapV15"><sup>15</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>They have told that in bygone times there was a king, and he had a
+skilful minstrel. One day a certain person gave to the latter a little
+boy, that he might teach him the science of music. The boy abode a long
+time by him, and though the master instructed him, he succeeded not in
+learning, and the master could make nothing of him. He arranged a scale,
+and said, "Whatsoever thou sayest to me, say in this scale." So
+whatsoever the boy said he used to say in that scale. Now one day a
+spark of fire fell on the master's turban. The boy saw it and chanted,
+"O master, I see something; shall I say it or no?" and he went over the
+whole scale. Then the master chanted, "O boy, what dost thou see?
+Speak!" and he too went over all that the boy had gone over. Then the
+turn came to the boy, and he chanted, "O master, a spark has fallen on
+thy turban, and it is burning." The master straightway tore off his
+turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew
+out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said
+to the boy, "What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its
+own place," and he admonished him.<a href="#chapV16"><sup>16</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p167"></a>
+<p>The other story tells how a king had a stupid son, and placed him in
+charge of a cunning master, learned in the sciences, who declared it
+would be easy for him to teach the boy discretion, and, before
+dismissing him, the king gave the sage many rich gifts. After the boy
+has been long under the tuition of his learned master, the latter,
+conceiving him to be well versed in all the sciences, takes him to the
+king, his father, who says to him, "O my son, were I to hold a certain
+thing hidden in my hand, couldst thou tell me what it is?" "Yes,"
+answers the youth. Upon this the king secretly slips the ring off his
+finger, and hides it in his hand, and then asks the boy, "What have I in
+my hand?" Quoth the clever youth, "O father, it first came from the
+hills." (The king thinks to himself, "He knows that mines are in the
+hills.") "And it is a round thing," continues he&mdash;"it must be a
+millstone." "Blockhead!" exclaims the irate king, "could a millstone be
+hidden in a man's hand?" Then addressing the learned man, "Take him
+away," he says, "and <i>teach</i> him."</p>
+<a name="p168"></a>
+<p>Lastly, we have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the
+doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so
+ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits
+to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had
+been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to
+deny it;&mdash;you have been eating beans." On their way home, the
+apprentice, admiring his master's sagacity, begged to be informed how he
+knew that the patient had been eating beans. "Boy," said the doctor,
+loftily, "I drew an inference." "An inference!" echoed this youth of
+inquiring mind; "and what is an inference?" Quoth the doctor, "Listen:
+when we came to the door, I observed the shells of beans lying about,
+and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner."
+Another day it chanced that the doctor did not take his apprentice with
+him when he went his rounds, and in his absence a message came for him
+to visit a person who had been taken suddenly ill. "Here," thought the
+apprentice, "is a chance for my putting master's last lesson into
+practice;" so off he went to the sick man, and assuming as "knowing" an
+air as he could, he felt his pulse, and then said to him severely,
+"Don't deny it; I see by your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I
+shall send you some medicine." When the doctor returned home he inquired
+of his hopeful pupil, whether any person had called for him, upon which
+the wittol proudly told him of his own exploit. "Eaten a horse!"
+exclaimed the man of physic. "In the name of all that's wonderful, what
+induced you to say such a thing?" Quoth the youth, simpering, "Why, sir,
+I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer&mdash;I drew
+an inference." "You drew an inference, did you? And how did you draw the
+inference that the man had eaten a horse?" "Why, very readily, sir; for
+as I entered the house I saw a saddle hanging on the wall."<a href="#chapV17"><sup>17</sup></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image017.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV01"><sup>1</sup></a> Abridged from the story of "Silly Matt" in Sir George W. Dasent's
+<i>Tales from the Fjeld</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV02"><sup>2</sup></a> Professor Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, p. 302. This actual
+throwing of eyes occurs in the folk-tales of Europe generally.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV03"><sup>3</sup></a> In <i>Le Cabinet des Fées, 1788</i> (tome xxxviii., p. 337 ff.).&mdash;
+There can be no such name as Xailoun in Arabic; that of the noodle's
+wife, Oitba, may be intended for "Utba." Cazotte has so Frenchified the
+names of the characters in his tales as to render their identification
+with the Arabic originals (where he had any such) often impossible.
+Although this story is not found in any known Arabian text of the
+<i>Book of the Thousand and One Nights</i>, yet the incidents for the
+most part occur in several Eastern story-books.</p>
+
+<p> <a name="chapV04"><sup>4</sup></a> On a similar occasion Giufà, the Sicilian brother to the Arabian
+fool, did somewhat more mischief. Once his mother went to church and
+told him to make some porridge for his baby-sister. Giufà made a great
+pot of porridge and fed the baby with it, and burned her mouth so that
+she died. Another time his mother on leaving home told him to feed the
+hen that was sitting and put her back in the nest, so that the eggs
+should not get cold. Giufà stuffed the hen with food so that he killed
+her, and then sat on the eggs himself until his mother returned.&mdash;See
+Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 296-7.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV05"><sup>5</sup></a> Abridged and modified from a version in the <i>Folk-Lore Record</i>,
+vol. iii., pp. 153-5.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV06"><sup>6</sup></a> The usual mode by which in the East thieves break into houses, which
+are for the most part constructed of clay. See Job xxiv. 16.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV07"><sup>7</sup></a> Kurakkan is a species of grain.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV08"><sup>8</sup></a> <i>The Orientalist</i>, June, 1884, pp. 137-8.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV09"><sup>9</sup></a> Ummu Sulayman. In Arabia the mother is generally addressed in this
+way as a mark of respect for having borne children, and the eldest gives
+the title. Our bang-eater supposed he was addressing an old woman who
+had (or might have had) a son named Solomon.</p>
+
+<p><sup><a name="ralston"></a>10</sup> See Ralston's <i>Russian Folk-Tales.</i>
+  [Transcriber's note: Footnote reference missing from original, p. 153]</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV11"><sup>11</sup></a> From a paper on "Comparative Folk-lore," by W. Goonetilleke, in
+<i>The Orientalist</i>, i., p. 122.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV12"><sup>12</sup></a> <i>Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant
+to be Readde.</i> Imprinted at London by H. Wykes, 1567.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV13"><sup>13</sup></a> Thus, too, Scogin and his "chamber-fellow" successively declared to
+a rustic that the sheep he was driving were pigs. In Fortini's novels,
+in like manner, a simpleton is persuaded that the kid he offered for
+sale was a capon; and in the Spanish <i>El Conde Lucanor</i>, and the
+German <i>Tyl Eulenspiegel</i>, a countryman is cheated out of a piece
+of cloth. The original form of the incident is found in the
+<i>Hitopadesa</i>, where three sharpers persuade a Bráhman that the goat
+he is carrying for a sacrifice is a dog. This story of the Florentine
+noodle&mdash;or rather Poggio's version&mdash;may have been suggested by a tale in
+the <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>, in which the emperor's physician is made to
+believe that he had leprosy. See my <i>Popular Tales and Fictions</i>,
+where these and similar stories are compared in a paper entitled "The
+Sharpers and the Simpleton."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV14"><sup>14</sup></a> In Powell and Magnusson's <i>Legends of Iceland</i> (Second Series,
+p. 627), a woman makes her husband believe that he is dressed in fine
+clothes when he is naked; another persuades her husband that he is dead,
+and as he is being carried to the burying-ground, he perceives the naked
+man, who asserts that he is dressed, upon which he exclaims, "How I
+should laugh if I were not dead!" And in a <i>fabliau</i> by Jean de
+Boves, "Le Villain de Bailleul; <i>aliàs</i>, Le Femme qui fit croire à
+son Mari qu'il était mort," the husband exclaims, "Rascal of a priest,
+you may well thank Heaven that I am dead, else I would belabour you
+soundly with my stick."&mdash;See M. Le Grand's <i>Fabliaux</i>, ed. 1781,
+tome v., pp. 192, 193.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV15"><sup>15</sup></a> <i>History of the Forty Viziers; or, The Forty Morns and Forty
+Eves.</i> Translated from the Turkish, by E.J.W. Gibb, M.R.A.S. London:
+G. Redway, 1886.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV16"><sup>16</sup></a> A variant of this is found in John Bromyard's <i>Summa
+Prædicantium</i>, A 26, 34, as follows:</p>
+
+<p>Quidam sedebat juxta igneum, cujus vestem ignis intrabat. Dixit socius
+suus, "Vis audire rumores?" "Ita," inquit, "bonos et non alios." Cui
+alius, "Nescio nisi malos." "Ergo," inquit, "nolo audire." Et quum bis
+aut ter ei hoc diceret, semper idem respondit. In fine, quum sentiret
+vestem combustam, iratus ait socio, "Quare non dixisti mihi?" "Quia
+(inquit) dixista quod noluisti audire rumores nisi placentes et illi non
+erant tales."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV17"><sup>17</sup></a> Under the title of "The Phisitian that bare his Paciente in honde
+that he had eaten an Asse" this jest occurs in <i>Merry Tales and Quicke
+Answeres</i>, and Professor Crane gives a Sicilian version in his
+<i>Italian Popular Tales</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapVItitle"></a><img src="images/image018.png" width="465" height="75" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.<br/>
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BRÁHMANS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>[As a sort of supplement to the sayings and doings of the silly son, the
+following highly diverting Indian tale is here inserted, from the Abbé
+Dubois' French rendering of the Tamil original, appended, with others,
+to his selections from the <i>Panchatantra</i>. The story is known in
+the north as well as in the south of India: in the Panjábi version there
+are, however, but three noodle-heroes. It will be seen that the third
+Bráhman's tale is another of the numerous silent couple class, and it
+may possibly be the original form.]</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Introduction.</i></p>
+
+<p><img src="images/image019.png" width="95" height="97" alt="I"/>N a certain district, proclamation
+  had been made of a Samaradanam being about to be held.<a href="#chapVI01"><sup>1</sup></a>
+  Four Bráhmans, from different villages, going thither, fell in upon the road,
+  and, finding that they were all upon the same errand, they agreed to proceed
+  in company. A soldier, happening to meet them, saluted them in the usual way,
+  by touching hands and pronouncing the words always applied on such occasions
+  to Bráhmans, "<i>Dandamarya</i>!" or "Health to my lord!" The four travellers
+  made the customary return, "<i>Asirvadam!</i>" and going on, they came to a
+  well, where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the shade of
+  some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of conversation, one
+  of them asked the others, whether they did not remark how particularly the soldier
+  had distinguished him by his polite salutation. "You!" said another; "it was
+  not you that he saluted, but me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for
+  you may remember that when the soldier said, '<i>Dandamarya!</i>' he cast his
+  eyes upon me." "Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was I only he saluted;
+  otherwise, should I have answered him as I did, by saying, '<i>Asirvadam</i>'?"</p>
+
+<p>Each maintained his argument obstinately; and as none of them would
+yield, the dispute had nearly come to blows, when the least stupid of
+the four, seeing what was likely to happen, put an end to the brawl by
+the following advice: "How foolish it is in us," said he, "thus to put
+ourselves in a passion! After we have said all the ill of one another
+that we can invent&mdash;nay, after going stoutly to fisticuffs, like Sudra
+rabble, should we be at all nearer to the decision of our difference?
+The fittest person to determine the controversy, I think, would be the
+man who occasioned it. The soldier, who chose to salute one of us,
+cannot yet be far off: let us therefore run after him as quickly as we
+can, and we shall soon know for which of us he intended his salutation."</p>
+
+<p>This advice appeared wise to them all, and was immediately adopted. The
+whole of them set off in pursuit of the soldier, and at last overtook
+him, after running a league, and all out of breath. As soon as they came
+in sight of him, they cried out to him to stop; and before they had well
+approached him, they had put him in full possession of the nature of
+their dispute, and prayed him to terminate it, by saying to which of
+them he had directed his salutation. The soldier instantly perceiving
+the character of the people he had to do with, and being willing to
+amuse himself a little at their expense, coolly replied, that he
+intended his salutation for the greatest fool of all four, and then,
+turning on his heel, he continued his journey.</p>
+
+<p>The Bráhmans, confounded at this answer, turned back in silence. But all
+of them had deeply at heart the distinction of the salutation of the
+soldier, and the dispute was gradually renewed. Even the awkward
+decision of the warrior could not prevent each of them from arrogating
+to himself the pre-eminence of being noticed by him, to the exclusion of
+the others. The contention, therefore, now became, which of the four was
+the stupidest; and strange to say, it grew as warm as ever, and must
+have come to blows, had not the person who gave the former advice, to
+follow the soldier, interposed again with his wisdom, and spoken as
+follows: "I think myself the greatest fool of us all. Each of you thinks
+the same thing of himself. And after a fight, shall we be a bit nearer
+the decision of the question? Let us, therefore, have a little patience.
+We are within a short distance of Dharmapuri, where there is a choultry,
+at which all little causes are tried by the heads of the village; and
+let ours be judged among the rest."</p>
+
+<p>The others agreed in the soundness of this advice; and having arrived at
+the village, they eagerly entered the choultry, to have their business
+settled by the arbitrator. They could not have come at a better season.
+The chiefs of the district, Bráhmans and others, had already met in the
+choultry; and no other cause being brought forward, they proceeded
+immediately to that of the four Bráhmans, who advanced into the middle
+of the court, and stated that a sharp contest having arisen among them,
+they were come to have it decided with fairness and impartiality. The
+court desired them to proceed and explain the ground of their
+controversy. Upon this, one of them stood forward and related to the
+assembly all that had happened, from their meeting with the soldier to
+the present state of the quarrel, which rested on the superior degree of
+stupidity of one of their number. The detail created a general shout of
+laughter. The president, who was of a gay disposition, was delighted
+beyond measure to have fallen in with so diverting an incident. But he
+put on a grave face, and laid it down, as the peculiarity of the cause,
+that it could not be determined on the testimony of witnesses, and that,
+in fact, there was no other way of satisfying the minds of the judges
+than by each, in his turn, relating some particular occurrence of his
+life, on which he could best establish his claim to superior folly. He
+clearly showed that there could be no other means of determining to
+which of them the salutation of the soldier could with justice be
+awarded. The Bráhmans assented, and upon a sign being made to one of
+them to begin, and the rest to keep silence, the first thus spoke:</p>
+
+<p><i>Story of the First Bráhman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I am poorly provided with clothing, as you see; and it is not to-day
+only that I have been covered with rags. A rich and very charitable
+Bráhman merchant once made a present of two pieces of cloth to attire
+me&mdash;the finest that had ever been seen in our village. I showed them to
+the other Bráhmans of the village, who all congratulated me on so
+fortunate an acquisition. They told me it must be the fruit of some good
+deeds that I had done in a preceding generation. Before I should put
+them on, I washed them, according to the custom, in order to purify them
+from the soil of the weaver's touch, and hung them up to dry, with the
+ends fastened to two branches of a tree. A dog, then happening to come
+that way, ran under them, and I could not discover whether he was high
+enough to touch the clothes or not. I asked my children, who were
+present, but they said they were not quite certain. How, then, was I to
+discover the fact? I put myself upon all-fours, so as to be of the
+height of the dog, and in that posture I crawled under the clothing.
+"Did I touch it?" said I to the children, who were observing me. They
+answered, "No," and I was filled with joy at the news. But after
+reflecting a while, I recollected that the dog had a turned-up tail, and
+that by elevating it above the rest of his body, it might well have
+reached my cloth. To ascertain that, I fixed a leaf in my loin-cloth,
+turning upwards, and then, creeping again on all-fours, I passed a
+second time under the clothing. The children immediately cried out that
+the point of the leaf on my back had touched the cloth. This proved to
+me that the point of the dog's tail must have done so too, and that my
+garments were therefore polluted. In my rage I pulled down the beautiful
+raiment, and tore it in a thousand pieces, loading with curses both the
+dog and his master.</p>
+
+<p>When this foolish act was known, I became the laughing-stock of all the
+world, and I was universally treated as a madman. "Even if the dog had
+touched the cloth," said they, "and so brought defilement upon it, might
+not you have washed it a second time, and so have removed the stain? Or
+might you not have given it to some poor Sudra, rather than tear it in
+pieces? After such egregious folly, who will give you clothes another
+time?" This was all true; for ever since, when I have begged clothing of
+any one, the constant answer has been, that, no doubt, I wanted a piece
+of cloth to pull to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>He was going on, when a bystander interrupted him by remarking that he
+seemed to understand going on all-fours. "Exceedingly well," said he,
+"as you shall see;" and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the
+unbounded laughter of the spectators. "Enough! enough!" said the
+president. "What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his
+favour. But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in
+proof of his stupidity." The second accordingly began by expressing his
+confidence that if what they had just heard appeared to them to be
+deserving of the salutation of the soldier, what he had to say would
+change their opinion.</p>
+
+<p> <i>Story of the Second Bráhman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Having got my hair and beard shaven one day, in order to appear decent
+at a public festival of the Bráhmans, which had been proclaimed
+throughout the district, I desired my wife to give the barber a penny
+for his trouble. She heedlessly gave him a couple. I asked him to give
+me one of them back, but he refused. Upon that we quarrelled, and began
+to abuse each other; but the barber at length pacified me, by offering,
+in consideration of the double fee, to shave my wife also. I thought
+this a fair way of settling the difference between us. But my wife,
+hearing the proposal, and seeing the barber in earnest, tried to make
+her escape by flight. I took hold of her, and forced her to sit down,
+while he shaved her poll in the same manner as they serve widows.<a href="#chapVI02"><sup>2</sup></a>
+During the operation she cried out bitterly; but I was inexorable,
+thinking it less hard that my wife should be close-shaven than that my
+penny should be given away for nothing. When the barber had finished, I
+let her go, and she retired immediately to a place of concealment,
+pouring down curses on me and the barber. He took his departure, and
+meeting my mother in his way, told her what he had done, which made her
+hasten to the house, to inquire into the outrage; and when she saw that
+it was all true she also loaded me with incivilities.</p>
+
+<p>The barber published everywhere what had happened at our house; and the
+villain added to the story that I had caught her with another man, which
+was the cause of my having her shaved; and people were no doubt
+expecting, according to our custom in such a case, to see her mounted on
+an ass, with her face turned towards the tail. They came running to my
+dwelling from all quarters, and actually brought an ass to make the
+usual exhibition in the streets. The report soon reached my
+father-in-law, who lived at a distance of ten or twelve leagues, and
+he, with his wife, came also to inquire into the affair. Seeing their
+poor daughter in that degraded state, and being apprised of the only
+reason, they reproached me most bitterly; which I patiently endured,
+being conscious that I was in the wrong. They persisted, however, in
+taking her with them, and keeping her carefully concealed from every eye
+for four whole years; when at length they restored her to me.</p>
+
+<p>This little accident made me lose the Samaradanam, for which I had been
+preparing by a fast of three days; and it was a great mortification to
+me to be excluded from it, as I understood it was a most splendid
+entertainment. Another Samaradanam was announced to be held ten days
+afterwards, at which I expected to make up for my loss. But I was
+received with the hisses of six hundred Bráhmans, who seized my person,
+and insisted on my giving up the accomplice of my wife, that he might be
+prosecuted and punished, according to the severe rules of the caste.</p>
+
+<p>I solemnly attested her innocence, and told the real cause of the
+shaving of her hair; when a universal burst of surprise took place,
+every one exclaiming, how monstrous it was that a married woman should
+be so degraded, without having committed the crime of infidelity.
+"Either this man," said they, "must be a liar, or he is the greatest
+fool on the face of the earth!" Such, I daresay, gentlemen, you will
+think me, and I am sure you will consider my folly [looking with great
+disdain on the first speaker] as being far superior to that of the
+render of body-clothing.</p>
+
+<p>The court agreed that the speaker had put in a very strong case; but
+justice required that the other two should also be heard. The third
+claimant was indeed burning with impatience for his turn, and as soon as
+he had permission, he thus spoke:</p>
+
+<p> <i>Story of the Third Brahman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>My name was originally Anantya; now all the world call me Betel Anantya,
+and I will tell you how this nickname arose. My wife, having been long
+detained at her father's house, on account of her youth, had cohabited
+with me but about a month when, going to bed one evening, I happened to
+say (carelessly, I believe), that all women were babblers. She retorted,
+that she knew men who were not less babblers than women. I perceived at
+once that she alluded to myself; and being somewhat piqued at the
+sharpness of her retort, I said, "Now let us see which of us shall speak
+first." "Agreed," quoth she; "but what shall be the forfeit?" "A leaf of
+betel," said I. Our wager being thus made, we both addressed ourselves
+to sleep, without speaking another word.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, as we did not appear at our usual hour, after some
+interval, they called us, but got no answer. They again called, and then
+roared stoutly at the door, but with no success. The alarm began to
+spread in the house. They began to fear that we had died suddenly. The
+carpenter was called with his tools. The door of our room was forced
+open, and when they got in they were not a little surprised to find both
+of us wide awake, in good health, and at our ease, though without the
+faculty of speech. My mother was greatly alarmed, and gave loud vent to
+her grief. All the Bráhmans in the village, of both sexes, assembled, to
+the number of one hundred; and after close examination, every one drew
+his own conclusion on the accident which was supposed to have befallen
+us. The greater number were of opinion that it could have arisen only
+from the malevolence of some enemy who had availed himself of magical
+incantations to injure us. For this reason, a famous magician was
+called, to counteract the effects of the witchcraft, and to remove it.
+As soon as he came, after steadfastly contemplating us for some time, he
+began to try our pulses, by putting his finger on our wrists, on our
+temples, on the heart, and on various other parts of the body; and after
+a great variety of grimaces, the remembrance of which excites my
+laughter, as often as I think of him, he decided that our malady arose
+wholly from the effect of malevolence. He even gave the name of the
+particular devil that possessed my wife and me and rendered us dumb. He
+added that the devil was very stubborn and difficult to allay, and that
+it would cost three or four pagodas for the offerings necessary for
+compelling him to fly.</p>
+
+<p>My relations, who were not very opulent, were astonished at the grievous
+imposition which the magician had laid on them. Yet, rather than we
+should continue dumb, they consented to give him whatsoever should be
+necessary for the expense of his sacrifice; and they farther promised
+that they would reward him for his trouble as soon as the demon by whom
+we were possessed should be expelled. He was on the point of commencing
+his magical operations, when a Bráhman, one of our friends, who was
+present, maintained, in opposition to the opinion of the magician and
+his assistants, that our malady was not at all the effect of witchcraft,
+but arose from some simple and ordinary cause, of which he had seen
+several instances, and he undertook to cure us without any expense.</p>
+
+<p>He took a chafing-dish filled with burning charcoal, and heated a small
+bar of gold very hot. This he took up with pincers, and applied to the
+soles of my feet, then to my elbows, and the crown of my head. I endured
+these cruel operations without showing the least symptom of pain, or
+making any complaint; being determined to bear anything, and to die, if
+necessary, rather than lose the wager I had laid.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us try the effect on the woman," said the doctor, astonished at my
+resolution and apparent insensibility. And immediately taking the bit of
+gold, well heated, he applied it to the sole of her foot. She was not
+able to endure the pain for a moment, but instantly screamed out,
+"Enough!" and turning to me, "I have lost my wager," she said; "there is
+your leaf of betel."  "Did I not tell you," said I, taking the leaf,
+"that you would be the first to speak out, and that you would prove by
+your own conduct that I was right in saying yesterday, when we went to
+bed, that women are babblers?"</p>
+
+<p>Every one was surprised at the proceeding; nor could any of them
+comprehend the meaning of what was passing between my wife and me; until
+I explained the kind of wager we had made overnight, before going to
+sleep. "What!" they exclaimed, "was it for a leaf of betel that you have
+spread this alarm through your own house and the whole village?&mdash;for a
+leaf of betel that you showed such constancy, and suffered burning from
+the feet to the head upwards? Never in the world was there seen such
+folly!" And so, from that time, I have been constantly known by the name
+of Betel Anantya.</p>
+
+<p>The narrative being finished, the court were of opinion that so
+transcendent a piece of folly gave him high pretensions in the depending
+suit; but it was necessary also to hear the fourth and last of the
+suitors, who thus addressed them:</p>
+
+<p> <i>Story of the Fourth Bráhman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The maiden to whom I was betrothed, having remained six or seven years
+at her father's house, on account of her youth, we were at last apprised
+that she was become marriageable; and her parents informed mine that she
+was in a situation to fulfil all the duties of a wife, and might
+therefore join her husband. My mother being at that time sick, and the
+house of my father-in-law being at the distance of five or six leagues
+from ours, she was not able to undertake the journey. She therefore
+committed to myself the duty of bringing home my wife, and counselled me
+so to conduct myself, in words and actions, that they might not see that
+I was only a brute. "Knowing thee as I do," said my mother, as I took
+leave of her, "I am very distrustful of thee." But I promised to be on
+my good behaviour; and so I departed.</p>
+
+<p>I was well received by my father-in-law, who gave a great feast to all
+the Bráhmans of the village on the occasion. He made me stay three days,
+during which there was nothing but festivity. At length the time of our
+departure having arrived, he suffered my wife and myself to leave him,
+after pouring out blessings on us both, and wishing us a long and happy
+life, enriched with a numerous progeny. When we took leave of him, he
+shed abundance of tears, as if he had foreseen the misery that awaited
+us.</p>
+
+<p>It was then the summer solstice, and the day was exceedingly hot. We had
+to cross a sandy plain of more than two leagues; and the sand, being
+heated by the burning sun, scorched the feet of my young wife, who,
+being brought up too tenderly in her father's house, was not accustomed
+to such severe trials. She began to cry, and being unable to go on, she
+lay down on the ground, saying she wished to die there. I was in
+dreadful trouble, and knew not what step to take; when a merchant came
+up, travelling the contrary way. He had a train of fifty bullocks,
+loaded with various kinds of merchandise. I ran to meet him, and told
+him the cause of my anxiety with tears in my eyes; and entreated him to
+aid me with his good advice in the distressing circumstances in which I
+was placed. He immediately answered, that a young and delicate woman,
+such as my wife was, could neither remain where she lay nor proceed on
+her journey, under a hot sun, without being exposed to certain death.
+Rather than that I should see her perish, and run the hazard of being
+suspected of having killed her myself, and being guilty of one of the
+five crimes which the Bráhmans consider as the most heinous, he advised
+me to give her to him, and then he would mount her on one of his cattle
+and take her along with him.  That I should be a loser, he admitted;
+but, all things considered, it was better to lose her, with the merit of
+having saved her life, than equally to lose her, under the suspicion of
+being her murderer. "Her trinkets," he said, "may be worth fifteen
+pagodas; take these twenty and give me your wife."</p>
+
+<p>The merchant's arguments appeared unanswerable; so I yielded to them,
+and delivered to him my wife, whom he placed on one of his best oxen,
+and continued his journey without delay. I continued mine also, and got
+home in the evening, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and with my feet
+almost roasted with the burning sand, over which I had walked the
+greater part of the day. Frightened to see me alone, "Where is your
+wife?" cried my mother. I gave her a full account of everything that had
+happened from the time I left her. I spoke of the agreeable and
+courteous manner in which my father-in-law had received me, and how, by
+some delay, we had been overtaken by the scorching heat of the sun at
+noon, so that my wife must have perished and myself suspected of having
+caused her death, had we proceeded; and that I had preferred to sell her
+to a merchant who met us for twenty pagodas. And I showed my mother the
+money.</p>
+
+<p>When I had done, my mother fell into an ecstasy of fury. She lifted up
+her voice against me with cries of rage, and overwhelmed me with
+imprecations and awful curses. Having given way to these first emotions
+of despair, she sank into a more moderate tone: "What hast thou done!
+Sold thy wife, hast thou! Delivered her to another man! A Bráhmanari is
+become the concubine of a vile merchant! Ah, what will her kindred and
+ours say when they hear the tale of this brutish stupidity&mdash;of folly so
+unexampled and degrading?"</p>
+
+<p>The relations of my wife were soon informed of the sad adventure that
+had befallen their unhappy girl. They came over to attack me, and would
+certainly have murdered me and my innocent mother, if we had not both
+made a sudden escape. Having no direct object to wreak their vengeance
+upon, they brought the matter before the chiefs of the caste, who
+unanimously fined me in two hundred pagodas, as a reparation to my
+father-in-law, and issued a proclamation against so great a fool being
+ever allowed to take another wife; denouncing the penalty of expulsion
+from the caste against any one who should assist me in such an attempt.
+I was therefore condemned to remain a widower all my life, and to pay
+dear for my folly. Indeed, I should have been excluded for ever from my
+caste, but for the high consideration in which the memory of my late
+father is still held, he having lived respected by all the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now that you have heard one specimen of the many follies of my life, I
+hope you will not consider me as beneath those who have spoken before
+me, nor my pretensions altogether undeserving of the salutation of the
+soldier.</p>
+
+<p> <i>Conclusion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The heads of the assembly, several of whom were convulsed with laughter
+while the Bráhmans were telling their stories, decided, after hearing
+them all, that each had given such absolute proofs of folly as to be
+entitled, in justice, to a superiority in his own way: that each of
+them, therefore, should be at liberty to call himself the greatest fool
+of all, and to attribute to himself the salutation of the soldier. Each
+of them having thus gained his suit, it was recommended to them all to
+continue their journey, if it were possible, in amity. The delighted
+Brahmans then rushed out of court, each exclaiming that he had gained
+his cause.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image020.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVI01"><sup>1</sup></a> A Samaradanam is one of the public festivals given by pious people,
+and sometimes by those in power, to the Bráhmans, who on such occasions
+assemble in great numbers from all quarters.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVI02"><sup>2</sup></a> In a Sinhalese story, referred to on ["p. 68" in original. This
+approximates to the text reference to <a href="#chapIII5">Chapter III, Footnote 5</a> in this
+e-text], it is, curiously enough, the woman herself "who has her head
+shaved, so as not to lose the services of the barber for the day when he
+came, and her husband was away from home." The story probably was
+introduced into Ceylon by the Tamils; both versions are equally good as
+noodle-stories.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapVIItitle"></a><img src="images/image121.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.<br/>
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image122.png" width="95" height="95" alt="F"/>EW folk-tales are more widely
+  diffused than that of the man who set out in quest of as great noodles as those
+  of his own household. The details may be varied more or less, but the fundamental
+  outline is identical, wherever the story is found; and, whether it be an instance
+  of the transmission of popular tales from one country to another, or one of
+  those "primitive fictions" which are said to be the common heritage of the Aryans,
+  its independent development by different nations and in different ages cannot
+  be reasonably maintained.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in one Gaelic version of this diverting story&mdash;in which our old
+friends the Gothamites reappear on the scene to enact their unconscious
+drolleries&mdash;a lad marries a farmer's daughter, and one day while they
+are all busily engaged in peat-cutting, she is sent to the house to
+fetch the dinner. On entering the house, she perceives the speckled
+pony's packsaddle hanging from the roof, and says to herself, "Oh, if
+that packsaddle were to fall and kill me, what should I do?" and here
+she began to cry, until her mother, wondering what could be detaining
+her, comes, when she tells the old woman the cause of her grief,
+whereupon the mother, in her turn, begins to cry, and when the old man
+next comes to see what is the matter with his wife and daughter, and is
+informed about the speckled pony's packsaddle, he, too, "mingles his
+tears" with theirs. At last the young husband arrives, and finding the
+trio of noodles thus grieving at an imaginary misfortune, he there and
+then leaves them, declaring his purpose not to return until he has found
+three as great fools as themselves. In the course of his travels he
+meets with some strange folks: men whose wives make them believe
+whatever they please&mdash;one, that he is dead; another, that he is clothed,
+when he is stark naked; a third, that he is not himself. He meets with
+the twelve fishers who always miscounted their number; the noodles who
+went to drown an eel in the sea; and a man trying to get his cow on the
+roof of his house, in order that she might eat the grass growing there.
+But the most wonderful incident was a man coming with a cow in a cart:
+and the people had found out that the man had stolen the cow, and that a
+court should be held upon him, and so they did; and the justice they did
+was to put the horse to death for carrying the cow.<a href="#chapVII01"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In another Gaelic version a young husband had provided his house with a
+cradle, in natural anticipation that such an interesting piece of
+furniture would be required in due time. In this he was disappointed,
+but the cradle stood in the kitchen all the same. One day he chanced to
+throw something into the empty cradle, upon which his wife, his mother,
+and his wife's mother set up loud lamentations, exclaiming, "Oh, if
+<i>he</i> had been there, he had been killed!" alluding to a potential
+son. The man was so much shocked at such an exhibition of folly that he
+left the country in search of three greater noodles. Among other
+adventures, he goes into a house and plays tricks on some people there,
+telling them his name is "<i>Saw ye ever my like</i>?" When the old man
+of the house comes home he finds his people tied upon tables, and asks,
+"What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye ever my like?" says the first. Then
+going to a second man, he asks, "What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye
+ever my like?" says the second. "I saw thy like in the kitchen," replies
+the old man, and then he goes to the third: "What's the reason of this?"
+"Saw ye ever my like?" says the third. "I have seen plenty of thy like,"
+quoth the old man; "but never before this day," and then he understood
+that some one had been playing tricks on his people.<a href="#chapVII02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p195"></a>
+<p>In Russian variants the old parents of a youth named Lutonya weep over
+the supposititious death of a potential grandchild, thinking how sad it
+would have been if a log which the old woman had dropped had killed that
+hypothetical infant. The parents' grief appears to Lutonya so uncalled
+for that he leaves the house, declaring he will not return until he has
+met with people more foolish than they. He travels long and far, and
+sees several foolish doings. In one place a horse is being inserted into
+its collar by sheer force; in another, a woman is fetching milk from the
+cellar a spoonful at a time; and in a third place some carpenters are
+attempting to stretch a beam which is not long enough, and Lutonya earns
+their gratitude by showing them how to join a piece to it.<a href="#chapVII03"><sup>3</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>A well-known English version is to this effect: There was a young man
+who courted a farmer's daughter, and one evening when he came to the
+house she was sent to the cellar for beer. Seeing an axe stuck in a beam
+above her head, she thought to herself, "Suppose I were married and had
+a son, and he were to grow up, and be sent to this cellar for beer, and
+this axe were to fall and kill him&mdash;oh dear! oh dear!" and there she sat
+crying and crying, while the beer flowed all over the cellar-floor,
+until her old father and mother come in succession and blubber along
+with her about the hypothetical death of her imaginary grown-up son. The
+young man goes off in quest of three bigger fools, and sees a woman
+hoisting a cow on to the roof of her cottage to eat the grass that grew
+among the thatch, and to keep the animal from falling off, she ties a
+rope round its neck, then goes into the kitchen, secures at her waist
+the rope, which she had dropped down the chimney, and presently the cow
+stumbles over the roof, and the woman is pulled up the flue till she
+sticks half-way. In an inn he sees a man attempting to jump into his
+trousers&mdash;a favourite incident in this class of stories; and farther
+along he meets with a party raking the moon out of a pond.</p>
+
+<p>Another English variant relates that a young girl having been left alone
+in the house, her mother finds her in tears when she comes home, and
+asks the cause of her distress. "Oh," says the girl, "while you were
+away, a brick fell down the chimney, and I thought, if it had fallen on
+me I might have been killed!" The only novel adventure which the girl's
+betrothed meets with, in his quest of three bigger fools, is an old
+woman trying to drag an oven with a rope to the table where the dough
+lay.</p>
+<a name="p197"></a>
+<p>Several versions are current in Italy and Sicily, which present a close
+analogy to those of other European countries. The following is a
+translation of one in Bernoni's Venetian collection:</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time there were a husband and a wife who had a son. This son
+grew up, and said one day to his mother, "Do you know, mother, I would
+like to marry?" "Very well, marry! Whom do you want to take?" He
+answered, "I want the gardener's daughter." "She is a good girl&mdash;take
+her; I am willing." So he went, and asked for the girl, and her parents
+gave her to him. They were married, and when they were in the midst of
+their dinner, the wine gave out. The husband said, "There is no more
+wine!" The bride, to show that she was a good housekeeper, said, "I will
+go and get some." She took the bottles and went to the cellar, turned
+the cock, and began to think, "Suppose I should have a son, and we
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die! Oh, how grieved I should
+be! oh, how grieved I should be!" And thereupon she began to weep and
+weep; and meanwhile the wine was running all over the cellar.</p>
+
+<p>When they saw that the bride did not return, the mother said, "I will go
+and see what the matter is." So she went into the cellar, and saw the
+bride, with the bottle in her hand, and weeping. "What is the matter
+with you that you are weeping?" "Ah, my mother, I was thinking that if I
+had a son, and should name him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" The mother, too, began to weep,
+and weep, and weep; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.</p>
+
+<p>When the people at the table saw that no one brought the wine, the
+groom's father said, "I will go and see what is the matter. Certainly
+something wrong has happened to the bride." He went and saw the whole
+cellar full of wine, and the mother and bride weeping. "What is the
+matter?" he said; "has anything wrong happened to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the bride; "but I was thinking that if I had a son, and
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I should grieve!
+oh, how I should grieve!" Then he, too, began to weep, and all three
+wept; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.</p>
+
+<p>When the groom saw that neither the bride, nor the mother, nor the
+father came back, he said, "Now I will go and see what the matter is
+that no one returns." He went into the cellar and saw all the wine
+running over the cellar. He hastened and stopped the cask, and then
+asked, "What is the matter that you are all weeping, and have let the
+wine run all over the cellar?" Then the bride said, "I was thinking that
+if I had a son and called him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" Then the groom said, "You
+stupid fools! Are you weeping at this and letting all the wine run into
+the cellar? Have you nothing else to think of? It shall never be said
+that I remained with you. I will roam about the world, and until I find
+three fools greater than you, I will not return home."</p>
+
+<p>He had a bread-cake made, took a bottle of wine, a sausage, and some
+linen, and made a bundle, which he put on a stick and carried over his
+shoulder. He journeyed and journeyed, but found no fool. At last he
+said, worn out, "I must turn back, for I see I cannot find a greater
+fool than my wife." He did not know what to do, whether to go on or turn
+back. "Oh," said he, "it is better to try and go a little farther." So
+he went on, and shortly saw a man in his shirt-sleeves at a well, all
+wet with perspiration, and water. "What are you doing, sir, that you are
+so covered with water and in such a sweat?" "Oh, let me alone," the man
+answered; "for I have been here a long time drawing water to fill this
+pail, and I cannot fill it." "What are you drawing the water in?" he
+asked him. "In this sieve," he said. "What are you thinking about, to
+draw water in that sieve? Just wait!" He went to a house near by and
+borrowed a bucket, with which he returned to the well and filled the
+pail. "Thank you, good man. God knows how long I should have had to
+remain here!"&mdash;"Here," thought he, "is one who is a greater fool than my
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>He continued his journey, and after a time he saw at a distance a man in
+his shirt, who was jumping down from a tree. He drew near, and saw a
+woman under the same tree, holding a pair of breeches. He asked them
+what they were doing, and they said that they had been there a long
+time, and that the man was trying on those breeches and did not know how
+to get into them. "I have jumped and jumped," said the man, "until I am
+tired out, and I cannot imagine how to get into those breeches." "Oh,"
+said the traveller, "you might stay here as long as you wished, for you
+would never get into them this way. Come down and lean against the
+tree." Then he took his legs and put them in the breeches, and after he
+had put them on, he said, "Is that right?" "Very good; bless you; for if
+it had not been for you, God knows how long I should have had to jump."
+Then the traveller said to himself, "I have seen two greater fools than
+my wife."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went his way, and as he approached a city, he heard a great
+noise. When he drew near he asked what it was, and was told it was a
+marriage, and that it was the custom in that city for the brides to
+enter the city gate on horseback, and that there was a great discussion
+on this occasion between the groom and the owner of the horse, for the
+bride was tall and the horse high, and they could not get through the
+gate; so that they must either cut off the bride's head or the horse's
+legs. The groom did not wish his bride's head cut off, and the owner of
+the horse did not wish his horse's legs cut off, and hence this
+disturbance. Then the traveller said, "Just wait," and came up to the
+bride and gave her a slap that made her lower her head, and then he gave
+the horse a kick, and so they passed through the gate and entered the
+city. The groom and the owner of the horse asked the traveller what he
+wanted, for he had saved the groom his bride and the owner of the horse
+his horse. He answered that he did not wish anything, and said to
+himself, "Two and one make three! that is enough. Now I will go home."
+He did so, and said to his wife, "Here I am, my wife; I have seen three
+greater fools than you;&mdash;now let us remain in peace, and think of
+nothing else." They renewed the wedding, and always remained in peace.
+After a time the wife had a son, whom they named Bastianelo, and
+Bastianelo did not die, but still lives with his father and mother.<a href="#chapVII04"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p202"></a>
+<p>There is (Professor Crane remarks) a Sicilian version in Pitré's
+collection, called "The Peasant of Larcàra," in which the bride's mother
+imagines that her daughter has a son who falls into the cistern. The
+groom&mdash;they are not yet married&mdash;is disgusted, and sets out on his
+travels with no fixed purpose of returning if he finds some fools
+greater than his mother-in-law, as in the Venetian tale. The first fool
+he meets is a mother, whose child, in playing the game called
+<i>nocciole</i>.<a href="#chapVII05"><sup>5</sup></a> tries to get his hand out of the hole whilst his
+fist is full of stones. He cannot, of course, and the mother thinks they
+will have to cut off his hand. The traveller tells the child to drop the
+stones, and then he draws out his hand easily enough. Next he finds a
+bride who cannot enter the church because she is very tall and wears a
+high comb. The difficulty is settled as in the former story. After a
+while he comes to a woman who is spinning and drops her spindle. She
+calls out to the pig, whose name is Tony, to pick it up for her. The pig
+does nothing but grunt, and the woman in anger cries, "Well, you won't
+pick it up? May your mother die!" The traveller, who had overheard all
+this, takes a piece of paper, which he folds up like a letter, and then
+knocks at the door. "Who is there?" "Open the door, for I have a letter
+for you from Tony's mother, who is ill and wishes to see her son before
+she dies." The woman wonders that her imprecation has taken effect so
+soon, and readily consents to Tony's visit. Not only this, but she loads
+a mule with everything necessary for the comfort of the body and soul of
+the dying pig. The traveller leads away the mule with Tony, and returns
+home so pleased with having found that the outside world contains so
+many fools that he marries as he had first intended.<a href="#chapVII06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In other Italian versions, a man is trying to jump into his stockings;
+another endeavours to put walnuts into a sack with a fork; and a woman
+dips a knotted rope into a deep well, and then having drawn it up,
+squeezes the water out of the knots into a pail. The final adventure of
+the traveller in quest of the greatest noodles is thus related in Miss
+Busk's <i>Folk-lore of Rome</i>:</p>
+<a name="p204"></a>
+<p>Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage, where he knocked, and
+asked for a night's lodging. "I can't give you that," said a voice from
+the inside; "for I am a lone widow. I can't take a man in to sleep
+here." "But I am a pilgrim," replied he; "let me in at least to cook a
+bit of supper."</p>
+
+<p>"That I don't mind doing," said the good wife, and she opened the door.
+"Thanks, good friend," said the pilgrim, as he sat down by the stove.
+"Now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan." So she gave him a
+pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the
+six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan too. Presently,
+when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs
+swimming in the pan instead of two, she said, "Lack-a-day! you must
+surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know
+So-and-so?" naming her husband. "Oh yes," said he, enjoying the joke; "I
+know him very well: he lives just next to me." "Only to think of that!"
+replied the poor woman. "And, do tell me, how do you get on in the other
+world? What sort of a life is it?" "Oh, not so very bad; it depends what
+sort of a place you get. The part where we are is pretty good, except
+that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly
+starved." "No, really?" cried the good wife, clasping her hands. "Only
+fancy, my good husband starving out there, so fond as he was of a good
+dinner, too!" Then she added, coaxingly, "As you know him so well,
+perhaps you wouldn't mind doing him the charity of taking him a little
+somewhat, to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could
+easily send him." "Oh dear, no, not at all. I'll do so with pleasure,"
+answered he. "But I'm not going back till to-morrow, and if I don't
+sleep here I must go on farther, and then I shan't come by this way."
+"That's true," replied the widow. "Ah, well, I mustn't mind what the
+folks say; for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You
+must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning
+I'll load a donkey with provisions for my poor husband." "Oh, no,"
+replied the pilgrim, "you shan't be disturbed in your bed. Only let me
+sleep on the hearth&mdash;that will do for me; and as I am an early riser, I
+can be gone before any one's astir, so folks won't have anything to
+say."</p>
+
+<p>So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up, loading the
+donkey with the best of her stores&mdash;ham, macaroni, flour, cheese, and
+wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying, "You'll send the
+donkey back, won't you?" "Of course I would send him back," he replied;
+"he'd be of no use to me out there. But I shan't get out again myself
+for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won't find his way back
+alone, for it's no easy way to find." "To be sure not; I ought to have
+thought of that," replied the widow. "Ah, well, so as my poor husband
+gets a good meal, never mind the donkey." So the pretended pilgrim from
+the other world went his way. He hadn't gone a hundred yards before the
+widow called him back. "Ah, she's beginning to think better of it," said
+he to himself, and he continued his way, pretending not to hear. "Good
+pilgrim," shouted the widow, "I forgot one thing: would money be of any
+use to my poor husband?" "Oh dear, yes," said he, "all the use in the
+world. You can always get anything for money anywhere." "Oh, do come
+back, then, and I'll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him." He went
+back, willingly, for the hundred scudi, which the widow counted out to
+him. "There's no help for it," said he to himself as he went his way: "I
+must go back to those at home."</p>
+<a name="p207"></a>
+<p>From sunny Italy to bleak Norway is certainly a "far cry," yet the
+adventure of the "Pilgrim from Paradise" is also known to the Norse
+peasants, in connection with the quest of the greatest noodles: A goody
+goes to market, with a cow and a hen for sale. She wants five shillings
+for the cow and ten pounds for the hen. A butcher buys the cow, but
+doesn't want the hen. As she cannot find a buyer for the hen, she goes
+back to the butcher, who treats her to so much brandy that she gets
+dead-drunk, and in this condition the butcher tars and feathers her.
+When she awakes, she fancies that she must be some strange bird, and
+cries out, "Is this me, or is it not me? I'll go home, and if our dog
+barks, then it is not me." Thus far we have a variant of our favourite
+nursery rhyme:</p>
+
+<blockquote>There was an old woman, as I've heard tell,<br/>
+  She went to market her eggs for to sell;<br/>
+  She went to market, all on a market-day,<br/>
+  And she fell asleep on the king's highway.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>There came a pedlar, whose name was Stout,<br/>
+  He cut her petticoats all round about;<br/>
+  He cut her petticoats up to the knees,<br/>
+  Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>When the little woman first did wake,<br/>
+  She began to shiver and she began to shake;<br/>
+  She began to wonder, and she began to cry,<br/>
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this is none of I!"</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>"But if this be I, as I do hope it be,<br/>
+  I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me;<br/>
+  If it be I, he'll wag his little tail,<br/>
+  And if it be not I, he loudly bark and wail."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>Home went the little woman all in the dark,<br/>
+  Up got the little dog, and began to bark;<br/>
+  He began to bark, and she began to cry,<br/>
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this can't be I!"</blockquote>
+
+<p>To return to the Norse tale. As in our nursery rhyme, when the goody
+reaches home, the dog barks at her; then she goes to the calves' house,
+but the calves, having sniffed the tar with which she was smeared, turn
+away from her in disgust. She is now fully convinced that she has been
+transformed into some outlandish bird, so she climbs on to the roof of a
+shed, and begins to flap her arms as if she were about to fly, when out
+comes her goodman, and seeing a suspicious-looking creature on the roof
+of the shed, he fetches his gun and is going to shoot at his goody, when
+he recognises her voice. Amazed at such a piece of folly, he resolves to
+leave her and not come back till he has found three goodies as silly. He
+meets with a female descendant of the Schildburgers, evidently, carrying
+into her cottage sunshine in a sieve, there being no window in the
+house: he cuts out a window for her and is well paid for his trouble. He
+next comes to a house where an old woman is thumping her goodman on the
+head with a beetle, in order to force over him a shirt without a slit
+for the neck, which she had drawn over his head: he cuts a slit in the
+shirt with a pair of scissors, and is amply rewarded for his ingenuity.
+His third adventure is similar to that of the "pilgrim" in the Italian
+version:</p>
+<a name="p210"></a>
+<p>At another house he informs the goody that he came from Paradise Place&mdash;
+which was the name of his own farm&mdash;and she asks him if he knew her
+second husband in paradise. (She had been married twice before she took
+her present husband, who was an old curmudgeon, and she liked her second
+husband best&mdash;she was sure he had gone to heaven.) He replies that he
+knew him very intimately, but, poor man, he was far from well off,
+having to go about begging from house to house. The goody gives him a
+cart-load of clothes and a box of shining dollars, for her dear second
+husband; for why should he go about begging in paradise when there was
+so much of everything in their house? So the stranger, jumps into the
+cart and drives off, as fast as possible. But Peter, the goody's third
+husband, sees him on the road, and recognising his own horse and cart,
+hastens home to his wife, and asks why a stranger has gone off with his
+property. She explains the whole affair, upon which he mounts a horse
+and gallops away after the rogue who had thus taken advantage of his
+wife's simplicity. The stranger, perceiving him approach, hides the
+horse and cart behind a high hedge, takes part of the horse's tail and
+hangs it on the branches of a birch-tree, and then lays himself down on
+his back and gazes up into the sky. When Peter comes up to him, he
+exclaims, still looking at the sky, "What a wonder! there is a man going
+straight to heaven on a black horse!" Peter can see no such thing. "Can
+you not?" says the stranger. "See, there is his tail, still on the
+birch-tree. You must lie down in this very spot, and look straight up,
+and don't for a moment take your eyes off the sky, and then you'll see&mdash;
+what you'll see." So Peter lies down and gazes up at the sky very
+intently, looking for the man going straight to heaven on a black horse.
+Meanwhile the traveller escapes, with the cart-load of clothes and the
+box of shining dollars, and the second horse besides. Peter, when he
+reaches home, tells his wife that he had given the man from paradise the
+other horse for her second husband to ride about on, for he was ashamed
+to confess that he had been cheated as well as herself.<a href="#chapVII07"><sup>7</sup></a> As to our
+traveller, having found three goodies as great fools as his own, he
+returned home, and saw that all his fields had been ploughed and sown;
+so he asked his wife where she had got the seed from. "Oh," says she, "I
+have always heard that what a man sows he shall also reap, so I sowed
+the salt that our friends the north-countrymen laid up with us, and if
+we only have rain, I fancy it will come up nicely."<a href="#chapVII08"><sup>8</sup></a> "Silly you are,"
+said her husband, "and silly you will be as long as you live. But that
+is all one now, for the rest are not a bit wiser than you;&mdash;<i>there is
+not a pin to choose between you</i>!"<a href="#chapVII09"><sup>9</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p212"></a>
+<p>Now, if it be "a far cry" from Italy to Norway, it is still farther from
+Norway to India; and yet it is in the southern provinces of our great
+Asiatic empire that a story is current among the people, which, strange
+as it may seem, is almost the exact counterpart of the Norse version of
+the pretended pilgrim from paradise, of which the above is an abstract.
+It is found in Pandit S.M. Natésa Sástrí's <i>Folk-lore in Southern
+India</i>, now in course of publication at Bombay; a work which, when
+completed, will be of very great value, to students of comparative
+folk-tales, as well as prove an entertaining story-book for general
+readers. After condensation in some parts, this story&mdash;which the Pandit
+entitles "The Good Wife and the Bad Husband"&mdash;runs thus:</p>
+
+<p>In a secluded village there lived a rich man, who was very miserly, and
+his wife, who was very kind-hearted and charitable, but a stupid little
+woman that believed everything she heard. And there lived in the same
+village a clever rogue, who had for some time watched for an opportunity
+for getting something from this simple woman during her husband's
+absence. So one day, when he had seen the old miser ride out to inspect
+his lands, this rogue of the first water came to the house, and fell
+down at the threshold as if overcome by fatigue. The woman ran up to him
+at once and inquired whence he came. "I am come from Kailása,"<a href="#chapVII10"><sup>10</sup></a> said
+he; "having been sent down by an old couple living there, for news of
+their son and his wife." "Who are those fortunate dwellers in Siva's
+mountain?" she asked. And the rogue gave the names of her husband's
+deceased parents, which he had taken good care, of course, to learn from
+the neighbours. "Do you really come from them?" said the simple woman.
+"Are they doing well there? Dear old people! How glad my husband would
+be to see you, were he here! Sit down, please, and rest until he
+returns. How do they live there? Have they enough to eat and dress
+themselves withal?" These and a hundred other questions she put to the
+rogue, who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible,
+knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return
+while he was there. So he replied, "Mother, language has no words to
+describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have
+not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten
+nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see
+them." The rogue's pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly
+believed that he had come down from Kailása, a messenger from the old
+couple to herself. "Why should they so suffer," said she, "when their
+son has plenty to eat and clothe himself withal, and when their
+daughter-in-law wears all sorts of costly garments?" So saying, she went
+into the house, and soon came out again with two boxes containing all
+her own and her husband's clothes, which she handed to the rogue,
+desiring him to deliver them to the poor old couple in Kailása. She also
+gave him her jewel-box, to be presented to her mother-in-law. "But dress
+and jewels will not fill their hungry stomachs," said the rogue. "Very
+true; I had forgot: wait a moment," said the simple woman, going into
+the house once more. Presently returning with her husband's cash chest,
+she emptied its glittering contents into the rogue's skirt, who now took
+his leave in haste, promising to give everything to the good old couple
+in Kailása; and having secured all the booty in his upper garment, he
+made off at the top of his speed as soon as the silly woman had gone
+indoors.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this the husband returned home, and his wife's pleasure at
+what she had done was so great that she ran to meet him at the door, and
+told him all about the arrival of the messenger from Kailása, how his
+parents were without clothes and food, and how she had sent them clothes
+and jewels and store of money. On hearing this, the anger of the husband
+was great; but he checked himself, and inquired which road the messenger
+from Kailása had taken, saying that he wished to follow him with a
+further message for his parents. So she very readily pointed out the
+direction in which the rogue had gone. With rage in his heart at the
+trick played upon his stupid wife, he rode off in hot haste, and after
+having proceeded a considerable distance, he caught sight of the flying
+rogue, who, finding escape hopeless, climbed up into a <i>pipal</i>
+tree.</p>
+
+<p>The husband soon reached the foot of the tree, when he shouted to the
+rogue to come down. "No, I cannot," said he; "this is the way to
+Kailása," and then climbed to the very top of the tree. Seeing there was
+no chance of the rogue coming down, and there being no one near to whom
+he could call for help, the old miser tied his horse to a neighbouring
+tree, and began to climb up the <i>pípal</i> himself. When the rogue
+observed this, he thanked all his gods most fervently, and having waited
+until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle
+of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached
+the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser's horse and with his
+bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be
+discovered. Being thus balked the miser came down the <i>pípal</i> tree
+slowly cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover
+the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at
+leisure. His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a
+joyous countenance, and cried, "I thought as much: you have sent away
+your horse to Kailása, to be used by your old father." Vexed at his
+wife's words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his
+own folly.</p>
+<a name="p217"></a>
+<p>Through the Tamils it is probable this story reached Ceylon, where it
+exists in a slightly different form: A young girl, named Kaluhámi, had
+lately died, when a beggar came to the parents' house, and on being
+asked by the mother where he had come from, he said that he had just
+come from the other world to this world, meaning that he had only just
+recovered from severe illness. "Then," said the woman, "since you have
+come from the other world, you must have seen my daughter Kaluhámi
+there, who died but a few days ago. Pray tell me how she is." The
+beggar, seeing how simple she was, replied, "She is my wife, and lives
+with me at present, and she has sent me to you for her dowry." The woman
+at once gave him all the money and jewels that were in the house, and
+sent him away delighted with his unexpected good luck. Soon after, the
+woman's husband returned, and learning how silly she had been, mounted
+his horse and rode after the beggar. The rest of the story corresponds
+to the Tamil version, as above, with the exception that when the husband
+saw the beggar slide down the tree, get on his horse, and ride off, he
+cried out to him, "Hey, son-in-law, you may tell Kaluhámi that the money
+and jewels are from her mother, and that the horse is from me;" which is
+altogether inconsistent, since he is represented as the reverse of a
+simpleton in pursuing the beggar, on hearing what his wife had done. It
+is curious, also, to observe that in the Tamil version the man goes to
+the house with the deliberate purpose of deceiving the simple woman,
+while in the Sinhalese the beggar is evidently tempted by her mistaking
+the meaning of his words. But both present very close points of
+resemblance to the Norwegian story of the pretended pilgrim from
+paradise. There are indeed few instances of a story having travelled so
+far and lost so little of its original details, allowing for the
+inevitable local colouring.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image123.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII01"><sup>1</sup></a> Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>, vol. ii., pp.
+373-381. In a note to these adventures Campbell gives a story of some
+women who, as judges, doomed a horse to be hanged: the thief who stole
+the horse got off, because it was his first offence; the horse went back
+to the house of the thief, because he was the better master, and was
+condemned for stealing himself!</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII02"><sup>2</sup></a>: Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>, vol. ii.,
+pp. 385&mdash;387.</p>
+
+<p>In a Northumberland popular tale a child in bed sees a little fairy come
+down the chimney, and the child tells the creature that his name is
+My-ainsel. They play together, and the little fairy is burnt with a
+cinder, and on its mother appearing when it cries, and asking it who had
+hurt it, the imp answers, "It was My-ainsel."&mdash;There is a somewhat
+similar story current in Finland: A man is moulding lead buttons, when
+the Devil appears, and asks him what he is doing. "Making eyes." "Could
+you make me new ones?" "Yes." So he ties the Devil to a bench, and, in
+reply to the fiend, tells him that his name is Myself <i>(Issi)</i>, and
+then pours lead into his eyes. The Devil starts up with the bench on his
+back, and runs off howling. Some people working in a field ask him who
+did it. Quoth the fiend, "Myself did it" (<i>Issi teggi</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Cf. the <i>Odyssey</i>, Book ix., where Ulysses informs the Cyclops that
+his name is No-man, and when the monster, after having had his eye put
+out in his sleep, awakes in agony, he roars to his comrades for help:</p>
+
+<p class="i2">"Friends, No-man kills me, No-man, in the hour
+  Of sleep, oppresses me with fraudful power!"
+  "If no man hurt thee, but the hand divine
+  Inflict disease, it fits thee to resign;&mdash;
+  To Jove, or to thy father, Neptune, pray,"
+  The brethren cried, and instant strode away.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII03"><sup>3</sup></a> Ralston's <i>Russian Folk-Tales</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII04"><sup>4</sup></a> Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 279&mdash;282.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII05"><sup>5</sup></a> A game played with peach-pits, which are thrown into holes made in
+the ground, and to which certain numbers are attached.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII06"><sup>6</sup></a> Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 282-3.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII07"><sup>7</sup></a> The same story is told in Brittany, with no important variations.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII08"><sup>8</sup></a> Quite as literally did the rustic understand the priest's assurance,
+that whatsoever one gave in charity, for the love of God, should be
+repaid him twofold: next day he takes his cow to the priest, who accepts
+it as sent by Heaven&mdash;and the poor man did <i>not</i> get two cows in
+return. The story is known in various forms all over Europe; it was a
+special favourite in mediæval times. See Le Grand's <i>Fabliaux</i>,
+tome iii., 376: "La Vache du Curé," by the trouvère Jean de Boves;
+Wright's <i>Latin Stories; Icelandic Legends</i>, etc.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII09"><sup>9</sup></a> Dasent's <i>Popular Tales from the Norse</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII10"><sup>10</sup></a> "See note, p. 49" in original. This is <a href="#chapII13">Chapter II, Footnote 13</a> in
+this e-text.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="appendix"></a><img src="images/image124.png" alt="Appendix Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image125.png" width="99" height="97" alt="T"/>HE idea of the old
+  English jest-book, <i>Jacke of Dover His Quest of Inquirie, or His Privy Search
+  for the Veriest Foole in England</i> (London: 1604), may perhaps have been suggested
+  by such popular tales as those of the man going about in quest of three greater
+  fools than his wife, father-in-law, and mother-in-law. It is, however, simply
+  a collection of humorous anecdotes, not specially examples of folly or stupidity,
+  most of which are found in earlier jest-books. The introduction is rather curious:</p>
+
+<p>"When merry Jacke of Dover had made his privy search for the Foole of
+all Fooles, and making his inquirie in most of the principal places in
+England, at his return home he was adjudged to be the fool himself; but
+now wearied with the motley coxcombe, he hath undertaken in some place
+or other to find a verier foole than himself. But first of all, coming
+to London, he went into Paul's Church, where walking very melancholy in
+the middle aisle with Captain Thingut and his fellowes, he was invited
+to dine at Duke Humphry's ordinary,<a href="#appendix01"><sup>1</sup></a> where, amongst other good
+stomachs that repaired to his bountiful feast, there came a whole jury
+of penniless poets, who being fellows of a merry disposition (but as
+necessary in a commonwealth as a candle in a straw bed), he accepted of
+their company, and as from poets cometh all kind of folly, so he hoped
+by their good directions to find out his Foole of Fooles, so long looked
+for. So, thinking to pass away the dinner-hour with some pleasant chat
+(lest, being overcloyed with too many dishes, they should surfeit), he
+discovered to them his merry meaning, who, being glad of so good an
+occasion of mirth, instead of a cup of sack and sugar for digestion,
+these men of little wit began to make inquiry and to search for the
+aforesaid fool, thinking it a deed of charity to ease him of so great a
+burden as his motley coxcomb was, and because such weak brains as are
+now resident almost in every place, might take benefit hereat. In this
+manner began the inquiry:</p>
+
+<p><i><a name="p221"></a>The Foole of Hereford.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'Upon a time (quoth one of the jury) it was my chance to be in the city
+of Hereford, when, lodging at an inn, I was told of a certain
+silly-witted gentleman there dwelling, that would assuredly believe all
+things that he heard for a truth; to whose house I went upon a
+sleeveless errand, and finding occasion to be acquainted with him, I was
+well entertained, and for three days' space had my bed and board in his
+house; where, amongst many other fooleries, I, being a traveller, made
+him believe that the steeple of Brentwood, in Essex, sailed in one night
+as far as Calais, in France, and afterwards returned again to its proper
+place. Another time I made him believe that in the forest of Sherwood,
+in Nottinghamshire, were seen five hundred of the King of Spain's
+galleys, which went to besiege Robin Hood's Well, and that forty
+thousand scholars with elder squirts performed such a piece of service
+as they were all in a manner taken and overthrown in the forest. Another
+time I made him believe that Westminster Hall, for suspicion of treason,
+was banished for ten years into Staffordshire. And last of all, I made
+him believe that a tinker should be baited to death at Canterbury for
+getting two and twenty children in a year; whereupon, to prove me a
+liar, he took his horse and rode thither, and I, to verify him a fool,
+took my horse and rode hither.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' quoth Jacke of Dover, 'this in my mind was pretty foolery, but
+yet the Foole of all Fooles is not here found that I looked for.'</p>
+
+<p><i><a name="p222"></a>The Fool of Huntington.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'And it was my chance (quoth another of the jury) upon a time to be at
+Huntington, where I heard tell of a simple shoemaker there dwelling, who
+having two little boys whom he made a vaunt to bring up to learning, the
+better to maintain themselves when they were men; and having kept them a
+year or two at school, he examined them saying, "My good boy," quoth he
+to one of them, "what dost thou learn and where is thy lesson?" "O
+father," said the boy, "I am past grace." "And where art thou?" quoth he
+to the other boy, who likewise answered that he was at the devil and all
+his works. "Now Lord bless us," quoth the shoemaker, "whither are my
+children learning? The one is already past grace and the other at the
+devil and all his works!" Whereupon he took them both from school and
+set them to his own occupation.<a href="#appendix02"><sup>2</sup></a>'"</p>
+
+<p>A number of others of the jury of penniless poets having related their
+stories, at last it is agreed that if the Foole of all Fooles cannot be
+found among those before named, one of themselves must be the fool, for
+there cannot be a verier fool than a poet, "for poets have good wits,
+but cannot use them, great store of money, but cannot keep it," etc.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It is doubtful what the name "Jack of Dover" imports, as that of the
+imaginary inquirer after fools. The author of the Cook's Tale of
+Gamelyn&mdash;which is generally considered as a spurious "Canterbury" tale&mdash;
+represents, in the prologue, mine host of the Tabard as saying to Roger
+the Cook:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Full many a pastie hast thou lettin blode;<br/>
+  And many a jack of Dovyr hast thou sold,<br/>
+  That hath ben twicè hot and twicè cold."</blockquote>
+
+<p>Dr. Brewer says&mdash;apparently on the strength of these lines&mdash;that a "Jack
+of Dover" is a fish that has been cooked a second time. But it may have
+been a name of a particular kind of fish caught in the waters off Dover.
+If, however, a "Jack of Dover" is a twice-cooked fish, the title of the
+jest-book is not inappropriate, since all the stories it comprises are
+at least "twice-told."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image126.png" alt="Appendix Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="appendix01"><sup>1</sup></a> To "dine with Duke Humphry" meant not to dine at all. See Brewer's
+<i>Dictionary of Phrase and Fable</i> for the origin of the expression.</p>
+
+<p><a name="appendix02"><sup>2</sup></a> The jest is thus told in some parts of Scotland: An old gentleman,
+walking in the country, met three small boys on their way home from
+school, and asked them how they progressed in their learning. The
+youngest&mdash;referring, of course, to the <i>Shorter Catechism</i>&mdash;replied
+that he was "in a state of sin and misery;" the second, that he was past
+"redemption;" and the eldest, that he was "in the pains of hell for
+ever."</p>
+
+<a name="chindex"></a><div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image127.png" alt="Index Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h3>INDEX.</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Abdera, Man of, <a href="#p06">6.</a></p>
+
+<p>Alewife and her Hens, <a href="#p73">73.</a></p>
+
+<p>Alfonsus, Peter, <a href="#p57">45.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arab and his Cow, <a href="#p70">70.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arab Schoolmaster, <a href="#p83">83.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arabian Idiot, <a href="#p133">133.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Arabian Nights</i>, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81,</a> <a href="#p83">83,</a> <a href="#p133">133,</a> <a href="#p146">146.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arabian Noodles, <a href="#p70">70,</a> <a href="#p75">75,</a> <a href="#p146">146.</a> <a href="#p147">147.</a></p>
+
+<p>Armstrong's, Archie, <i>Banquet of Jests</i>, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Ashton, John, <a href="#ashton">xiv</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ass and the Two Sharpers, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p>Austwick, Carles of, <a href="#p17">17,</a> <a href="#p53">53,</a> <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Avadánas</i>, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Babrius, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bakki, Brothers of, <a href="#p32">32,</a> <a href="#p64">64.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bang-eater and his Wife, <a href="#p147">147.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bang-eaters and the Dogs, <a href="#p109">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Barrett, F.T., <a href="#p109">9.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Barrin' o' the Door</i>, <a href="#p107">107.</a></p>
+
+<p>Belmont, Fools of, <a href="#chapIIItitle">55.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Beryn, Tale of</i>, <a href="#chapII09">40.</a></p>
+
+<p>Beschi, Father,<a href="#p29"> 29.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Bharataka Dwatrinsati</i>, <a href="#p158">158.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Bizarrures of the Sieur Gaulard</i>,<a href="#p8"> 8,</a> <a href="#p12">12,</a>
+  <a href="#p20">20,</a> <a href="#p76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bidpaï's Fables, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Birth-Stories&mdash;<i>see</i> <a href="#jatakas">Játakas.</a></p>
+
+<p>Boccaccio's <i>Decameron</i>, <a href="#chapII08">39</a>.</p>
+
+<p>"Boiling" River, <a href="#p29">30,</a> <a href="#p43">43.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bond, The Lord's, <a href="#p17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Borde, Andrew,<a href="#p23"> 23</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bráhmans, Four Simple, <a href="#chapVItitle">171</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bromyard, John, <a href="#chapV16">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha's Five Precepts, <a href="#p69">69.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bull and the Gate, <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bull of Siva, <a href="#p48">48</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Burton's <i>Arabian Nights</i>, <a href="#p83">83.</a> </p>
+
+<p>Busk's <i>Folk-Lore of Rome</i>, <a href="#p204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Butter eaten by a Dog, <a href="#p18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Buzzard, The Gothamite's, <a href="#p38">38</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Cabbage-Tree, <a href="#p47">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Caftan on Tree,<a href="#p90"> 90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Calf's Head in a Pot, <a href="#p89">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>, <a href="#p32">32</a>,
+  <a href="#p33">33</a>, <a href="#p34">34</a>, <a href="#p35">35</a>, <a href="#p36">36</a>,
+  <a href="#p154">154,</a> <a href="#chapVII01">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cat and old Woman, <a href="#p65">65</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cat, Men of Schilda's, <a href="#p61">61</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cazotte's <i>New Arabian Nights</i>, <a href="#p133">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ceylon&mdash;<i>see</i> <a href="#sinhal">Sinhalese Noodles</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chamberlain, B.H., <a href="#p130">130</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cheese, The Gothamite's, <a href="#p34">34</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cheese on the Highway, <a href="#p40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cheese, The Stolen, <a href="#p91">91</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chinese Noodles, <a href="#p93">93</a>, <a href="#p94">94</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Coelho's <i>Contes Portuguezes</i>, <a href="#p120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Colombo, Michele, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p>Countryman and Dog,<a href="#p79"> 79</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cozens, F.W.,<a href="#chapI01"> 9</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Council-House, Dark,<a href="#p57"> 57</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, <a href="#chapIV11">117</a>, <a href="#chapV02">128</a>,
+  <a href="#chapV04">139</a>, <a href="#chapVII04">202</a>, <a href="#p204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cuckoo, Hedging in the, <a href="#p26">26</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cumeans and the bath, <a href="#p4">4</a>;<br/>
+  and the father's corpse,<a href="#p15">15</a>;<br/>
+  and the fig-tree, <a href="#p10">10</a>;<br/>
+  and the pot of honey, <a href="#p19">19</a>;<br/>
+  and the stolen clothes, <a href="#p4">4</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dark Council-House, <a href="#p57">57</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dasent's <i>Norse Tales</i>, <a href="#chapV01">126</a>, <a href="#chapVII09">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dekker's <i>Gul's Horn Book</i>,<a href="#p26"> 26</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Devil in the Meadow, <a href="#p42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Disciplina Clericalis</i>, <a href="#p45">45</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor and Patients, <a href="#p5">5</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor's Apprentice, <a href="#p168">168</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dog that ate Honey, <a href="#p18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Door, Taking Care of the, <a href="#p97">97</a>, <a href="#p98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dreams, The Good, <a href="#p92">92</a>, <a href="#p93">93</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dubois, Abbé, <a href="#chapVItitle">171</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Ear, Biting one's own, <a href="#p86">86</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Eberhard's <i>Hieraclis</i>, <a href="#p4">3</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Eel, Drowning the, <a href="#p33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>El Conde Lucanor</i>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>English typical booby, <a href="#p139">139</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Fabliaux</i>, Le Grand's, <a href="#chapII08">39</a>,<a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Family, Best of the, <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Farmer and his Pigs, <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p>Fisher, Indian Silly Son as, <a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fishers, Gothamite, <a href="#p28">28</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fleas, Bit by, <a href="#p14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Folk-Lore in Southern India</i>, <a href="#p212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fool and the aloes-wood, <a href="#p98">98;</a><br/>
+  and the birch-tree, <a href="#p151">151</a>;<br/>
+  and the cotton, <a href="#p99">99</a>;<br/>
+  and the cup lost in the sea, <a href="#p99">99</a>;<br/>
+  and the elephant-driver, <a href="#p51">51</a>;<br/>
+  and his porridge, <a href="#p119">119</a>;<br/>
+  and the <i>Ramayana</i>, <a href="#p70">70</a>;<br/>
+  and the sack of meal, <a href="#p19">19</a>, <a href="#p26">25</a>, <a href="#chapIII05">68</a>;<br/>
+  and the shopkeeper, <a href="#p100">100</a>;<br/>
+  at his fireside, <a href="#p119">119</a>;<br/>
+  kicked by his mule, <a href="#p119">119</a>;<br/>
+  of Hereford, <a href="#p221">221</a>;<br/>
+  of Huntingdon, <a href="#p222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fools and the buffalo, <a href="#p101">101</a>;<br/>
+  and the Bull of Siva, <a href="#p48">48</a>;<br/>
+  and their inheritance, <a href="#p119">118</a>;<br/>
+  and the mosquitoes, <a href="#p95">95</a>;<br/>
+  and the palm-trees, <a href="#p96">96</a>;<br/>
+  and the trunks, <a href="#p96">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fortini's Italian Novels, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fuller, Thomas, on the Gothamites, <a href="#p20">20</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fumivall, F.J., <a href="#p23">23</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Gaulard, The Sieur,<a href="#p8"> 8,</a> <a href="#p12">12</a>, <a href="#p20">20,</a>
+  <a href="#p76">76.</a></p>
+
+<p>Geese and Tortoise, <a href="#p52">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gesta Romanorum</i>, <a href="#p117">117</a>,<a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gibb's <i>Forty. Vazírs</i>, <a href="#p109">109</a>, <a href="#p166">166</a>,
+  <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Giufà, the Sicilian Booby, <a href="#p97">97</a>, <a href="#p130">130</a>,
+  <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Goat and Old Woman, <a href="#p66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gooroo Paramartan</i>, <a href="#p29">29</a>, <a href="#p37">37</a>, <a href="#p157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gossips and their late Husbands, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Gossips at the Alehouse, <a href="#p43">43</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gotham, Tales of the Mad Men of</i>, <a href="#ashton">xiii</a>., <a href="#p20">20</a>,
+  <a href="#p24">24</a>-<a href="#p44">44</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Grazzini's Florentine Fool, <a href="#p161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Grecian Noodles, <a href="#chapItitle">1</a>-<a href="#p15">15</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Halliwell-Phillipps, J.O., <a href="#ashton">xiii</a>., <a href="#chapI06">13</a>,
+  <a href="#p22">22</a>, <a href="#p27">27</a>, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Hama and Hums, Men of, <a href="#p75">75.</a></p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt, W.C., <a href="#ashton">xiii</a>., <a href="#p12">12</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven, Sorry he has gone to, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Herdsman, The Foolish, <a href="#p106">106</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Herodotus, Stephens' <i>Apology</i> for, <a href="#chapIV12">Footnote</a>,
+  <a href="#p119">119</a> </p>
+
+<p>Hierokles, Jests of, <a href="#chapItitle">2</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hitopadesa</i>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Honey, Pot of, <a href="#p06">6,</a> <a href="#p18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hunter's Dream of a Boar, <a href="#p4">4</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Icelandic Noodles, <a href="#p32">32</a>, <a href="#p64">64</a>, <a href="#chapV14">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Indian Noodles, <a href="#p29">29</a>, <a href="#p37">37</a>, <a href="#chapII10">44</a>,
+  <a href="#p48">48</a>, <a href="#p51">51</a>, <a href="#p70">70</a>, <a href="#p96">96</a>,
+  <a href="#p97">97</a>-<a href="#p106">106</a>, <a href="#p111">111</a>, <a href="#p119">118</a>,
+  <a href="#p158">158</a>, <a href="#p161">l6l</a>, <a href="#p163">163</a>, <a href="#p168">170</a>,
+  <a href="#p212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Italian Noodles, <a href="#p115">115</a>, <a href="#p127">127</a>, <a href="#p144">143</a>,
+  <a href="#p161">160</a>, <a href="#p197">197</a>, <a href="#p202">202</a>, <a href="#p204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irish Labourer and Farmer, <a href="#p8">8</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman and his ass, <a href="#p119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman and his hens, <a href="#p120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman and lost shovel, <a href="#p99">99</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishmen and mosquitoes, <a href="#p14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman's Dream, <a href="#p92">92</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Jack of Dover's Quest, <a href="#appendix">219</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Japanese Noodle, <a href="#p130">130</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="jatakas"></a>Jatakas (Buddhist Birth-Stories), <a href="#p52">52</a>,
+  <a href="#p65">65</a>, <a href="#p95">95</a>, <a href="#p164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jests of Scogin</i>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Miller's Jest-Book, <a href="#chapItitle">1, 2</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Judge and Thieves, <a href="#p86">87</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Kabaïl Tales, <a href="#p37">37</a>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p>Kashmírí Tales, <a href="#p65">65</a>, <a href="#p89">89</a>, <a href="#p111">111</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Katha Manjari</i>, <a href="#p10">11</a>, <a href="#p70">70</a>, <a href="#p100">100</a>,
+  <a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Katha Sarit Sagara</i>, <a href="#p48">48</a>, <a href="#p53">53,</a> <a href="#p120">120</a>,
+  <a href="#p164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Kerchief, The, <a href="#p90">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, <a href="#p89">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>King's Stupid Son, The, <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Knite, 'The Gothamites', <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Knowles, J.H., <a href="#chapIII02">66</a>, <a href="#chapIV09">113</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Laird of Logan</i>, <a href="#p12">13</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Leger's <i>Contes Populaires Slaves</i>, <a href="#p128">128</a>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Marie de France, <a href="#chapII11">46</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres</i>, <a href="#p161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Miller's Jest-Book, <a href="#chapItitle">1, 2</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Millstone of the Schildburgers, <a href="#p57">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Minstrel and Pupil, <a href="#p166">166</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Monk Transformed, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p>Moon a green cheese, <a href="#p44">44</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Moon in the well, <a href="#p92">92</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Moon swallowed by an ass, <a href="#p45">46</a>.</p>
+
+<p>"Mortuus Loquens," <a href="#p161">160</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mummy, The, <a href="#p15">15</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Nasr-ed-Din Khoja, <a href="#p89">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Natesa Sastri Pandit, <a href="#p212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Needham's <i>Hieroclis</i>, <a href="#p4">3</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Noodles, The Three Great, <a href="#chapVIItitle">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Norfolk Noodles, <a href="#p17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Norse Noodles, <a href="#p123">123</a>, <a href="#p207">207</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Notts Bridge, <a href="#p24">24</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Orientalist, The</i>, <a href="#chapIII07">69</a>, <a href="#p86">87</a>,
+  <a href="#chapIV10">114</a>, <a href="#chapV08">143</a>, <a href="#chapV11">160</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Pancha Tantra</i>, <a href="#chapIII04">67</a>, <a href="#chapVItitle">171</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise, Man who came from, <a href="#p204">204</a>, <a href="#p210">210</a>,
+  <a href="#p212">212</a>, <a href="#p217">217</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pedant, bald man, and barber, <a href="#p06">6</a>;<br/>
+  and the lost book, <a href="#p12">13</a>;<br/>
+  and his dream, <a href="#p5">5</a>,<a href="#p06">6;</a><br/>
+  and the jar of feathers, <a href="#p53">5</a>;<br/>
+  and his jar of wine, <a href="#p09">9</a>;<br/>
+  and the mirror, <a href="#p09">9</a>;<br/>
+  and the two slave-boys, <a href="#p4">4</a>;<br/>
+  and his slave who died, <a href="#p8">8</a>;<br/>
+  and the sparrows, <a href="#p5">5</a>;<br/>
+  and the twin-brothers, <a href="#p12">12</a>;<br/>
+  and his tomb, <a href="#p8">8</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Persian Noodle, <a href="#p07">7</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Persian Tales, <a href="#p07">7</a>, <a href="#p66">66</a>, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Philotimus</i>, <a href="#p27">27</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Poet and the Dogs, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Poggius' <i>Facetiæ</i> <a href="#p161">160</a>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Priest of Gotham, <a href="#p42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Princess caused to grow, <a href="#p102">102</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pupil, The Attentive, <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Ralston's <i>Russian Folk-Tales,</i> <a href="#p48">48</a>, <a href="#ralston">153</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Relic-hunter, <a href="#p95">95</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Rents of Gothamites, <a href="#p27">27</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Right Hand or Left, <a href="#p91">91</a>.</p>
+
+<p>River, "Boiling," <a href="#p29">30</a>, <a href="#p43">43</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Riviere's <i>Contes Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura</i>, <a href="#p37">37</a>,
+  <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p>Russian Noodles, <a href="#p47">47</a>, <a href="#p128">128</a>, <a href="#p151">151</a>,
+  <a href="#p154">154,</a> <a href="#p195">195</a></p>
+
+<p>Rustic and the Dog, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Sacke Full of Newes</i>, <a href="#p45">46</a>, <a href="#p97">97</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sa'dí's <i>Gulistán</i>, xi, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Schilda, The Men of, <a href="#chapIIItitle">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Schoolmaster's Lady-love, <a href="#p83">83.</a></p>
+
+<p>Sesame, Roasted, <a href="#p120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sheep's Eyes, Casting, <a href="#chapII9">41</a>, <a href="#p126">126</a>,
+  <a href="#p127">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sicilian Boobies, <a href="#p97">97</a>, <a href="#p116">116</a>, <a href="#p139">139</a>,
+  <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Silent Noodles, <a href="#p107">107</a>-<a href="#p117">117</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Silly Matt, <a href="#p123">123</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Silly Son, The, <a href="#chapVtitle">121.</a></p>
+
+<p>Simple Simon, <a href="#chapVtitle">121,</a> <a href="#p122">122</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Simpleton and Sharpers, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Sindibád Náma</i>, <a href="#p66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="sinhal"></a>Sinhalese Noodles, <a href="#p67">67-69</a>, <a href="#p86">87</a>,
+  <a href="#p89">89</a>, <a href="#p113">113</a>, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>,
+  <a href="#chapVI02">179</a>, <a href="#p217">217</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Smith, Alexander, <a href="#chapI01">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spade, The Stolen, <a href="#p94">94</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spinning-Wheel, The, <a href="#p36">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stephens, Henry, Tales by, <a href="#p119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stokes' <i>Indian Fairy Tales</i>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Summa Praædicantium</i>, The, <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Tabourot, Etienne, <a href="#chapI01">8</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tales and Quicke Answeres</i>, <a href="#p161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Tawney, C.H., <a href="#chapII12">48</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i>, <a href="#p09">9</a>, <a href="#p10">10</a>,
+  <a href="#p74">74,</a> <a href="#p79">78</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thief on a Tree, <a href="#p10">11</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thoms, W.J., <a href="#thoms">xii</a>.,<a href="#chapIIItitle"> 56</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thoroton's <i>History of Nottinghamshire</i>, <a href="#p20">21</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Three Greatest Noodles, <a href="#chapVIItitle">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Treasure Trove, <a href="#p144">144</a>, <a href="#p151">151</a>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p>Trivet, The Gothamite's, <a href="#p36">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Turkish Noodles, 11, <a href="#p86">86</a>, <a href="#p90">90</a>, <a href="#p93">93</a>,
+  <a href="#p109">109</a>, <a href="#p166">166</a>, <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve Fishers, The, <a href="#p28">28</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Twin Brothers, <a href="#p12">12</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Vives, Ludovicus, <a href="#chapII10">46</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Warton's <i>History of English Poetry</i>, <a href="#p22">22</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Washerman and his young Ass, <a href="#p103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wasp's Nest, <a href="#p40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p>"Whittle to the Tree," <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Widows, The Two, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Wiltshire Noodles, <a href="#p17">17</a>, <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p>Wither's <i>Abuses Whipt and Stript</i>, <a href="#p26">26</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wolf's Tail, The, <a href="#p91">91</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wood, Anthony, on the Gotham Tales, <a href="#p23">23</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Worsted Balls, The, <a href="#p35">35</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wrestler and the Wag, <a href="#p07">7</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wrong Man wakened, <a href="#p06">6</a>, <a href="#p07">7</a>.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image128.png" alt="Index Footer"/></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13032 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Noodles, by W. A. Clouston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Book of Noodles
+       Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies
+
+Author: W. A. Clouston
+
+Release Date: July 26, 2004 [EBook #13032]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF NOODLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bob Jones, Frank van Drogen, Carol David and PG
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BOOK OF NOODLES:
+
+_STORIES OF SIMPLETONS; OR,
+FOOLS AND THEIR FOLLIES_.
+
+BY
+W.A. CLOUSTON,
+
+_Author of "Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and
+Transformations_"
+
+"Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling when all
+is done."--_Twelfth Night_.
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
+
+1888.
+
+
+
+
+Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-24351
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND
+
+DAVID ROSS, LL.D., M.A., B.Sc.,
+
+PRINCIPAL OF THE
+CHURCH OF SCOTLAND TRAINING COLLEGE,
+GLASGOW,
+
+THIS COLLECTION OF FACETI�
+
+IS DEDICATED.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PREFACE_.
+
+
+_Like popular tales in general, the original sources of stories of
+simpletons are for the most part not traceable. The old Greek jests of
+this class had doubtless been floating about among different peoples
+long before they were reduced to writing. The only tales and apologues
+of noodles or stupid folk to which an approximate date can be assigned
+are those found in the early Buddhist books, especially in the
+"J�takas," or Birth-stories, which are said to have been related to his
+disciples by Gautama, the illustrious founder of Buddhism, as incidents
+which occurred to himself and others in former births, and were
+afterwards put into a literary form by his followers. Many of the
+"J�takas" relate to silly men and women, and also to stupid animals, the
+latter being, of course, men re-born as beasts, birds, or reptiles. But
+it is not to be supposed that all are of Buddhist invention; some had
+doubtless been current for ages among the Hindus before Gautama
+promulgated his mild doctrines. Scholars are, however, agreed that these
+fictions date at latest from a century prior to the Christian era._
+
+_Of European noodle-stories, as of other folk-tales, it may be said
+that, while they are numerous, yet the elements of which they are
+composed are comparatively very few. The versions domiciled in different
+countries exhibit little originality, farther than occasional
+modifications in accordance with local manners and customs. Thus for the
+stupid Brahman of Indian stories the blundering, silly son is often
+substituted in European variants; for the brose in Norse and Highland
+tales we find polenta or macaroni in Italian and Sicilian versions. The
+identity of incidents in the noodle-stories of Europe with those in what
+are for us their oldest forms, the Buddhist and Indian books, is very
+remarkable, particularly so in the case of Norse popular fictions,
+which, there is every reason to believe, were largely introduced through
+the Mongolians; and the similarity of Italian and West Highland stories
+to those of Iceland and Norway would seem to indicate the influence of
+the Norsemen in the Western Islands of Scotland and in the south of
+Europe._
+
+_It were utterly futile to attempt to trace the literary history of
+most of the noodle-stories which appear to have been current throughout
+European countries for many generations, since they have practically
+none. Soon after the invention of printing collections of faceti� were
+rapidly multiplied, the compilers taking their material from oral as
+well as written sources, amongst others, from medi�val collections of
+"exempla" designed for the use of preachers and the writings of the
+classical authors of antiquity. With the exception of those in Buddhist
+works, it is more than probable that the noodle-stories which are found
+among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere
+amusement. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the "witless devices" of
+the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction? Only the monkish
+writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if
+reproduced in these days, must be "printed for private circulation"!_
+
+_Yet may the typical noodle of popular tales "point a moral," after a
+fashion. Poor fellow! he follows his instructions only too literally,
+and with a firm conviction that he is thus doing a very clever thing.
+But the consequence is almost always ridiculous. He practically shows
+the fallacy of the old saw that "fools learn by experience," for his
+next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every
+caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does
+everything, like the man in the play, "with the best intentions." His
+mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time; but to
+that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw: he cannot
+be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it;
+and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however,
+which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster
+to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to unexpected good fortune.
+He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet S�d� alludes when he
+says, in his charming "Gulist�n," or Rose Garden, "The alchemist died of
+grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin."
+Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood"'; the
+noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries.
+In brief, he is--in stories, at least--a standing illustration of the
+"vanity of human life"!_
+
+_And now a few words as to the history and design of the following
+work. When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the
+late Mr. W.J. Thoms, who was one of the leading men in its formation,
+promised to edit for the Society the "Merry Tales of the Mad Men of
+Gotham," furnishing notes of analogous stories, a task which he was
+peculiarly qualified to perform. As time passed on, however, the
+infirmities of old age doubtless rendered the purposed work less and
+less attractive to him, and his death, after a long, useful, and
+honourable career, left it still undone. What particular plan he had
+sketched out for himself I do not know; but there can be no doubt that
+had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And,
+since he did not perform his self-allotted task, his death is surely a
+great loss, perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of
+comparative folk-lore._
+
+_More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set
+about the work, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape
+of Oriental noodle-stories; but from a remark in his reply I feared
+there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That
+fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered
+as a humble substitute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is
+displaced by a more worthy one._
+
+_Since the "Tales of the Men of Gotham" ceased to be reproduced in
+chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840,
+with an introduction by Mr. J.O. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillipps);
+and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies
+themselves: the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the
+Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the
+"Shakespeare Jest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew
+Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John
+Ashton's "Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century" (1882)._
+
+_It did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite
+analogues or variants of the Gothamite Tales; nor, on the other hand,
+was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the
+Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet
+all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be
+found in the chapters entitled "Gothamite Drolleries," of which they
+form, indeed, but a small portion._
+
+_My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources,
+many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers,
+the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing
+Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are
+current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be
+thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been
+omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an
+amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of
+popular fictions from country to country. In this design I was assisted
+by Captain R.C. Temple, one of the editors of the "Indian Antiquary,"
+and one of the authors of "Wide-awake Stories," from the Punjab and
+Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some
+curious Oriental parallels to European stories of simpletons._
+
+_W.A.C._
+
+
+*.* _While my "Popular Tales and Fictions" was passing through the
+press, in 1886, I made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present
+work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has
+had unavoidably to defer its publication till now._
+
+_W.A.C_.
+
+GLASGOW, _March_, 1888.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES                                            1-15
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES:
+
+Reputed communities of stupids in different countries--The noodles of
+Norfolk: their lord's bond; the dog and the honey; the fool and his sack
+of meal--Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham: Andrew Borde not the author--
+The two Gothamites at Notts Bridge--The hedging of the cuckoo--How the
+men of Gotham paid their rents--The twelve fishers and the courtier--The
+_G�r� Paramartan_--The brothers of Bakki--Drowning the eel--The
+Gothamite and his cheese--The trivet--The buzzard--The gossips at the
+alehouse--The cheese on the highway--The wasp's nest--Casting sheep's
+eyes--The devil in the meadow--The priest of Gotham--The "boiling"
+river--The moon a green cheese--The "carles of Austwick"--The Wiltshire
+farmer and his pigs
+                                                                  16-55
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_):
+
+The men of Schilda: the dark council-house; the mill-stone; the cat--
+Sinhalese noodles: the man who observed Buddha's five precepts--The fool
+and the _R�m�yana_--The two Arabian noodles--The alewife and her
+hens--"Sorry he has gone to heaven"--The man of Hama and the man of
+Hums--_Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard--The rustic and the dog
+                                                                  56-80
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_):
+
+The simpleton and the sharpers--The schoolmaster's lady-love--The judge
+and the thieves--The calf's head--The Kashm�r� and his store of rice--
+The Turkish noodle: the kerchief; the caftan; the wolf's tail; the right
+hand and the left; the stolen cheese; the moon in the well--The good
+dreams--Chinese noodles: the lady and her husband; the stolen spade; the
+relic-hunter--Indian noodles: the fools and the mosquitoes; the fools
+and the palm-trees; the servants and the trunks; taking care of the
+door; the fool and the aloes-wood; the fool and the cotton; the cup lost
+in the sea; the fool and the thieves; the simpletons who ate the
+buffalo; the princess who was made to grow; the washerman's ass
+transformed; the foolish herdsman--Noodle-stories moralised--The
+brothers and their heritage--Sowing roasted sesame
+                                                                 81-120
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SILLY SON:
+
+Simple Simon--The Norse booby--The Russian booby--The Japanese noodle--
+The Arabian idiot--The English silly son--The Sinhalese noodle with the
+robbers--The Italian booby--The Arab simpleton and his cow--The Russian
+fool and the birch-tree--The silly wife deceived by her husband--The
+Indian fool on the tree-branch--The Indian monk who believed he was
+dead--The Florentine fool and the young men--The Indian silly son as a
+fisher; as a messenger; killing a mosquito; as a pupil--The best of the
+family--The doctor's apprentice
+                                                                121-170
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BR�HMANS:
+
+Introduction                                                        171
+Story of the first Br�hman                                          176
+Story of the second Br�hman                                         178
+Story of the third Br�hman                                          181
+Story of the fourth Br�hman                                         185
+Conclusion                                                          190
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES                                         191-218
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+JACK OF DOVER'S QUEST OF THE FOOL OF ALL FOOLS                      219
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF NOODLES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES.
+
+
+"Old as the days of Hierokles!" is the exclamation of the "classical"
+reader on hearing a well-worn jest; while, on the like occasion, that of
+the "general" reader--a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies
+one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"--is, that it is "a Joe
+Miller;" both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in
+_joke-ology_ to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him
+as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of
+Hierokles are _old_ there can be no doubt whatever; that they were
+collected by the Alexandrian sage of that name is more than doubtful;
+while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in
+which he flourished, namely, the fifth century: it is very possible that
+some may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians! It
+is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the
+comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which
+his name is associated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's
+trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and
+cranks, and quiddities," _Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade
+Mecum_. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Miller," he
+should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it
+is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller"
+are, at least, "as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the
+man who trained his horse to live on a straw _per diem_, when it
+suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about
+a brick as a specimen of it.
+
+The collection of faceti� ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it was
+made, is composed of very short anecdotes of the sayings and doings of
+pedants, who are represented as noodles, or simpletons. In their
+existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the
+ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular faceti� of Europe
+through the churchmen of the Middle Ages, and, after having circulated
+long orally, passed into literature, whence, like other kinds of tales,
+they once more returned to the people. We find in them the indirect
+originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times
+been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also,
+perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type: as brave men lived
+before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very
+ancient pedigree! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now
+pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in
+ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which
+utterly fail to tickle our "sense of humour" in these double-distilled
+days. Of the [Greek: Asteia], or faceti�, of Hierokles, twenty-eight
+only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of
+his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, and
+published at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with
+other Greek jests--of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, Cum�, etc.--has
+been edited by Eberhard, under the title of _Philogelos Hieraclis el
+Philagrii Facetia_ which was published at Berlin in 1869.
+
+In attempting to classify the best of these relics of ancient wit--or
+witlessness, rather--it is often difficult to decide whether a
+particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an
+example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles
+or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to
+place the story of the men of Cum�, who were expecting shortly to be
+visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they
+filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order
+that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.
+
+But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on
+going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen
+years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you
+one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his
+father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done
+me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's
+estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred
+years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.
+
+Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was the hunter who was constantly
+disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep
+with him. Another, surely, was the man of Cum� who wished to sell some
+clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should
+not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of
+Abdera who punished a runaway ass for having got into the gymnasium and
+upset the olive oil. Having brought all the asses of the town together,
+as a caution, they flogged the delinquent ass before his fellows.
+
+Some of the jests of Hierokles may be considered either as witticisms or
+witless sayings of noodles; for example, the story of the man who
+recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and
+afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor
+whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should
+not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of the pedant who
+said to the doctor, "Pardon me for not having been sick so long;" or
+this, "I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night:" quoth the
+other, "By the gods, I was so busy, I did not hear you."
+
+But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some
+sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe,
+and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like
+ripe fruit again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he
+had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after
+stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the
+cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to
+him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You
+may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and
+again, in the man of Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the rope
+broke, and he hurt his head; but after having the wound dressed by the
+doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a
+trace of them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had
+pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up; when he told a
+friend of his mishap, he said, "Why do you sleep barefooted?"
+
+The following jest is spread--_mutatis mutandis_--over all Europe:
+A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in company, agreed
+to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He
+propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time
+came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, "What a fool is
+this barber," he cried, "for he has roused the bald man instead of me!"
+
+A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the
+heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro.
+Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when
+he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up,
+he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a
+rage, "Tuts, tuts! The silly body has waukened the wrang man."
+
+In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a
+Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in
+forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew
+near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, "I
+shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I
+have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a
+pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young
+wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to
+spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the
+pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In
+the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his
+companion's leg, he called to him, "Hey! get up, for I am perplexed in
+my mind. Who am I, and who are you? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin
+on your leg? And if you are yourself, why is the pumpkin not on my leg?"
+
+Modern counterparts of the following jest are not far to seek: Quoth a
+man to a pedant, "The slave I bought of you has died." Rejoined the
+other, "By the gods, I do assure you that he never once played me such a
+trick while I had him." The old Greek pedant is transformed into an
+Irishman, in our collections of faceti�, who applied to a farmer for
+work. "I'll have nothing to do with you," said the farmer, "for the last
+five Irishmen I had all died on my hands." Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can
+bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen I've worked for that I
+never did such a thing." And the jest is thus told in an old translation
+of _Les Contes Facetieux de Sieur Gaulard_: "Speaking of one of his
+Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said, Truly it
+was one of the handsomest and best Curtails in all the Country; he neuer
+shewed me such a trick before in all his life."[1]
+
+Equally familiar is the jest of the pedant who was looking out for a
+place to prepare a tomb for himself, and on a friend indicating what he
+thought to be a suitable spot, "Very true," said the pedant, "but it is
+unhealthy." And we have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the
+following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it
+below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his
+wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had
+communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor
+had not been drawn off from below. "Why, you fool," said he, "it is not
+the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off."
+
+It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that
+he might know how he looked when asleep--a jest which reappears in
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ in this form: "A wealthy monsieur in
+France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his
+man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry
+with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be
+true; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so,
+except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes; and therefore
+I will have a great Looking glasse at my bed's feet for the purpose to
+try whether thou art a lying knaue or not."[2]
+
+Not unlike some of our "Joe Millers" is the following: A citizen of
+Cum�, on an ass, passed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree
+loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the ass went on,
+leaving him suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him
+what he did there. The man replied, "I fell off the ass."--An analogue
+to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, entitled _Katha
+Manjari_: One day a thief climbed up a cocoa-nut tree in a garden to
+steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running
+from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the
+tree. "Why were you up that tree?" asked the gardener. The thief
+replied, "My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf." "Ha! ha!
+is there grass, then, on a cocoa-nut tree?" said the gardener. "No,"
+quoth the thief; "but I did not know; therefore I came down again."--And
+we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went
+into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of
+vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom.
+The gardener, coming suddenly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said,
+"What are you seeking here?" The simpleton replied, "For some days past
+a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither." "But who
+pulled up these vegetables?" "As the wind blew very violently, it cast
+me here and there; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving
+myself remained in my hands." "Ah," said the gardener, "but who filled
+this sack with them?" "Well, that is the very question I was about to
+ask myself when you came up."
+
+The propensity with which Irishmen are credited of making ludicrous
+bulls is said to have its origin, not from any lack of intelligence, but
+rather in the fancy of that lively race, which often does not wait for
+expression until the ideas have taken proper verbal form. Be this as it
+may, a considerable portion of the bulls popularly ascribed to Irishmen
+are certainly "old as the jests of Hierokles," and are, moreover,
+current throughout Europe. Thus in Hierokles we read that one of
+twin-brothers having recently died, a pedant, meeting the survivor,
+asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased.--Taylor has
+this in his _Wit and Mirth_, and he probably heard it from some one
+who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard: "A nobleman of
+France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he
+said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remember I haue often seene
+thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore
+tenants, and my name is T.J. I remember better now (said my Lord); there
+were two brothers of you, but one is dead; I pray, which of you doth
+remaine alive?"--Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the notes to his edition of
+Taylor's collection _(Shakespeare Jest Books_, Third Series), cites
+a Scotch parallel from _The Laird of Logan_: "As the Paisley
+steamer came alongside the quay[3] at the city of the Seestus,[4] a
+denizen of St. Mirren's hailed one of the passengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu
+hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the
+old nursery rhyme,--
+
+  "Ho, Master Teague, what is your story?
+  I went to the wood, and killed a tory;[5]
+  I went to the wood, and killed another:
+  Was it the same, or was it his brother?"[6]
+
+We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and
+sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating
+lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards
+meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to
+him, "Don't grieve; buy some lettuces; eat them at a corner; turn round
+it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there
+anything like this in "Joe Miller"?--Two lazy fellows were sleeping
+together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with
+it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up,
+and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead,"
+replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster,
+and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?--A pedant's
+little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom
+he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."
+
+An epigram in the _Anthologia_ may find a place among noodle
+stories:
+
+  "A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light,
+  And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"
+
+This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two
+Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept
+their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did
+not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus
+puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the
+other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his
+bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's
+one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"
+
+Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the
+old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cum� having died at Alexandria,
+the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at
+the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of
+bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any
+peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol
+replied, "He had a cough."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Etienne Tabourot, the author of this amusing little book,
+who was born at Dijon in 1549 and died in 1590, is said to have written
+the tales in ridicule of the inhabitants of Franche Comte, who were then
+the subjects of Spain, and reputed to be stupid and illiterate. From a
+manuscript translation, entitled _Bizarrures; or, The Pleasant and
+Witlesse and Simple Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy_,
+purporting to be made by "J.B., of Charterhouse," probably about the
+year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London,
+fifty copies, edited, with a preface, by "A.S." (Alexander Smith), were
+printed at Glasgow in 1884. I am indebted to the courtesy of my friend
+Mr. F.T. Barrett, Librarian of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for
+directing my attention to this curious work, a copy of which is among
+the treasures of that already important institution.
+
+[2] "_Wit and Mirth_. Chargeably collected out of Taverns,
+Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Allyes, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops,
+Highwayes, and Water-passages. Made up and fashioned into Clinches,
+Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips, and Jerkes. Apothegmatically bundled vp
+and garbled at the request of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635)--such is the
+elaborate title of the collection of jests made by John Taylor, the
+Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The
+above story had, however, been told previously in the _Bizarrures_
+of the Sieur Gaulard: "His cousine Dantressesa reproued him one day that
+she had found him sleeping in an ill posture with his mouth open, to
+order which for the tyme to come he commanded his seruant to hang a
+looking glasse upon the curtaine at his Bed's feet, that he might
+henceforth see if he had a good posture in his sleep."
+
+[3] Only a Liliputian steamer could go up the "river" Cart!
+
+[4] "Seestu" is a nickname for Paisley, the good folks of that busy town
+being in the habit of frequently interjecting, "Seestu?"--_i.e.,_
+"Seest thou?"--in their familiar colloquies.
+
+[5] "Tory" is said to be the Erse term for a robber.
+
+[6] Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes of England_, vol. iv. of Percy
+Society's publications.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES, WITH VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES.
+
+
+It seems to have been common to most countries, from very ancient times,
+for the inhabitants of a particular district, town, or village to be
+popularly regarded as pre-eminently foolish, arrant noodles or
+simpletons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly sayings and doings
+of the people of B�otia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs the
+folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The
+Kaba�l, or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad
+as little better than idiots. The Schildburgers are the noodles of
+German popular tales. In Switzerland the townsmen of Belmont, near
+Lausanne, are typical blockheads. And England has her "men of Gotham"--a
+village in Nottinghamshire--who are credited with most of the noodle
+stories which have been current among the people for centuries past,
+though other places share to some extent in their not very enviable
+reputation: in Yorkshire the "carles" of Austwick, in Craven; some
+villages near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire; and in the counties of
+Sutherland and Ross, the people of Assynt.
+
+But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a
+similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we
+learn from a curious Latin poem, _Descriptio Norfolciensium_,
+written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of
+Peterborough, which is printed in Wright's _Early Mysteries and Other
+Latin Poems_. This poem sets out with stating that C�sar having
+despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were
+bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the
+most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other
+peoples. Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of
+Norfolk is the following: Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a
+large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future
+burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of
+green wax. To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk.
+When it became dark, they had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure
+one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should
+use the wax seal of the bond for a candle--they should still have the
+words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate; so they made
+the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their
+merry-making. This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he
+reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice,
+at the same time producing the bond. The lord calls a clerk to examine
+the document, who pronounces it to be null and void in the absence of
+the lord's seal, and so their oppression continues.
+
+Another story is of a man of Norfolk who put some honey in a jar, and in
+his absence his dog came and ate it all up. When he returned home and
+was told of this, he took the dog and forced him to disgorge the honey,
+put it back into the jar, and took it to market. A customer having
+examined the honey, declared it to be putrid. "Well," said the
+simpleton, "it was in a vessel that was not very clean."--Wright has
+pointed out that this reappears in an English jest-book of the
+seventeenth century. "A cleanly woman of Cambridgeshire made a good
+store of butter, and whilst she went a little way out of the town about
+some earnest occasions, a neighbour's dog came in in the meantime, and
+eat up half the butter. Being come home, her maid told her what the dog
+had done, and that she had locked him up in the dairy-house. So she took
+the dog and hang'd him up by the heels till she had squeez'd all the
+butter out of his throat again, whilst she, pretty, cleanly soul, took
+and put it to the rest of the butter, and made it up for Cambridge
+market. But her maid told her she was ashamed to see such a nasty trick
+done. 'Hold your peace, you fool!' says she; ''tis good enough for
+schollards. Away with it to market!'"[1]--Perhaps the original form is
+found in the _Philogelos Hieraclis et Philagrii Faceti�_, edited by
+Eberhard. A citizen of Cum� was selling honey. Some one came up and
+tasted it, and said that it was all bad. He replied, "If a mouse had not
+fallen into it, I would not sell it."
+
+The well-known Gothamite jest of the man who put a sack of meal on his
+own shoulders to save his horse, and then got on the animal's back and
+rode home, had been previously told of a man of Norfolk, thus:
+
+  "Ad foram ambulant diebus singulis;
+  Saccum de lolio portant in humeris,
+  Jumentis ne noccant: bene fatuis,
+  Ut prolocutiis sum acquantur bestiis."
+
+It reappears in the _Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard:[2] "Seeing
+one day his mule charged with a verie great Portmantle, [he] said to his
+groome that was upon the back of the mule, thou lasie fellowe, hast thou
+no pitie upon that poore Beast? Take that portmantle upon thine owne
+shoulders to ease the poore Beast." And in our own time it is told of an
+Irish exciseman with a keg of smuggled whisky.
+
+How such stories came to be transferred to the men of Gotham, it were
+fruitless to inquire.[3] Similar jests have been long current in other
+countries of Europe and throughout Asia, and accident or malice may have
+fixed the stigma of stupidity on any particular spot. There is probably
+no ground whatever for crediting the tale of the origin of the proverb,
+"As wise as the men of Gotham," although it is reproduced in Thoroton's
+_Nottinghamshire_, i. 42-3:
+
+"King John, intending to pass through this place, towards Nottingham,
+was prevented by the inhabitants, they apprehending that the ground over
+which a king passed was for ever after to become a public road. The
+King, incensed at their proceedings, sent from his court soon afterwards
+some of his servants to inquire of them the reason of their incivility
+and ill-treatment, that he might punish them. The villagers, hearing of
+the approach of the King's servants, thought of an expedient to turn
+away his Majesty's displeasure from them. When the messengers arrived at
+Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to
+drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts
+upon a large barn to shade the wood from the sun; and others were
+engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush.
+In short, they were all employed in some foolish way or other, which
+convinced the King's servants that it was a village of fools."
+
+The fooleries ascribed to the men of Gotham were probably first
+collected and printed in the sixteenth century; but that jests of the
+"fools of Gotham" were current among the people long before that period
+is evident from a reference to them in the _Widkirk Miracle Plays_,
+the only existing MS. of which was written about the reign of Henry VI.:
+
+  "Foles al sam;
+  Sagh I never none so fare
+  Bote the soles of Gotham."
+
+The oldest known copy of the _Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam_
+was printed in 1630, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
+Warton, in his _History of English Poetry_, mentions an edition,
+which he says was printed about 1568, by Henry Wikes, but he had never
+seen it. But Mr. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillips), in his _Notices
+of Popular English Histories_, cites one still earlier, which he
+thinks was probably printed between 1556 and 1566: "Merie Tales of the
+Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A.B., of Phisike Doctour.
+[colophon:] Imprinted at London, in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at
+the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n.d. 12�, black
+letter." The book is mentioned in _A Briefe and Necessary
+Introduction_, etc., by E.D. (8vo, 1572), among a number of other
+folk-books: "Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, Arthur of the Round
+Table, Huon of Bourdeaux, Oliver of the Castle, The Four Sonnes of
+Amond, The Witles Devices of Gargantua, Howleglas, Esop, Robyn Hoode,
+Adam Bell, Frier Rushe, The Fooles of Gotham, and a thousand such
+other."[4] And Anthony � Wood, in his _Athen� Oxonienses_ (1691-2),
+says it was "printed at London in the time of K. Hen. 8, in whose reign
+and after it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by scholars and
+gentlemen. Afterwards being often printed, [it] is now sold only on the
+stalls of ballad-singers." It is likely that the estimation in which the
+book was held "by scholars and gentlemen" was not a little due to the
+supposition that "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," by whom the tales were said
+to have been "gathered together," was none other than Andrew Borde, or
+Boorde, a Carthusian friar before the Reformation, one of the physicians
+to Henry VIII., a great traveller, even beyond the bounds of
+Christendom, "a thousand or two and more myles," a man of great
+learning, withal "of fame facete." For to Borde have the _Merie Tales
+of the Mad Men of Gotham_ been generally ascribed down to our own
+times. There is, however, as Dr. F.J. Furnivall justly remarks, "no good
+external evidence that the book was written by Borde, while the internal
+evidence is against his authorship."[5] In short, the ascription of its
+compilation to "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," was clearly a device of the
+printer to sell the book.[6]
+
+The _Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham_ continued to be printed as a
+chap-book down to the close of the first quarter of the present century;
+and much harmless mirth they must have caused at cottage firesides in
+remote rural districts occasionally visited by the ubiquitous pedlar, in
+whose well-filled pack of all kinds of petty merchandise such drolleries
+were sure to be found. Unlike other old collections of faceti�, the
+little work is remarkably free from objectionable stories; some are
+certainly not very brilliant, having, indeed, nothing in them
+particularly "Gothamite," and one or two seem to have been adapted from
+the Italian novelists. Of the twenty tales comprised in the collection,
+the first is certainly one of the most humorous:
+
+There were two men of Gotham, and one of them was going to the market at
+Nottingham to buy sheep, and the other was coming from the market, and
+both met on Nottingham bridge. "Well met!" said the one to the other.
+"Whither are you a-going?" said he that came from Nottingham. "Marry,"
+said he that was going thither, "I am going to the market to buy sheep."
+"Buy sheep!" said the other. "And which way will you bring them home?"
+"Marry," said the other, "I will bring them over this bridge." "By Robin
+Hood," said he that came from Nottingham, "but thou shalt not." "By Maid
+Marian," said he that was going thither, "but I will." "Thou shalt not,"
+said the one. "I will," said the other. Then they beat their staves
+against the ground, one against the other, as if there had been a
+hundred sheep betwixt them. "Hold them there," said the one. "Beware of
+the leaping over the bridge of my sheep," said the other. "They shall
+all come this way," said one. "But they shall not," said the other. And
+as they were in contention, another wise man that belonged to Gotham
+came from the market, with a sack of meal upon his horse; and seeing and
+hearing his neighbours at strife about sheep, and none betwixt them,
+said he, "Ah, fools, will you never learn wit? Then help me," said he
+that had the meal, "and lay this sack upon my shoulder." They did so,
+and he went to the one side of the bridge and unloosed the mouth of the
+sack, and did shake out all the meal into the river. Then said he, "How
+much meal is there in the sack, neighbours?" "Marry," answered they,
+"none." "Now, by my faith," answered this wise man, "even so much wit is
+there in your two heads to strive for the thing which you have not." Now
+which was the wisest of these three persons, I leave you to judge.
+
+Allusions to these tales are of frequent occurrence in our literature of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dekker, in his _Gul's Horn
+Book_ (1609), says, "It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy
+head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, but rather set it
+on faster, bestowing upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise
+men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should
+not be able to compare with thine;" and Wither, in his _Abuses_,
+says,
+
+  "And he that tryes to doe it might have bin
+  One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,"
+
+alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols:
+
+On a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she
+should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge
+round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it,
+and said, "Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor
+drink." The cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself encompassed within
+the hedge, flew away. "A vengeance on her!" said they. "We made not our
+hedge high enough."
+
+The tales had, however, attained popular favour much earlier. Mr.
+Halliwell-Phillipps has pointed out that in _Philotimus_ (1583) the
+men of Gotham are remembered as having "tied their rentes in a purse
+about an hare's necke, and bade her to carrie it to their landlord," an
+excellent plan, which is thus described:
+
+On a time the men of Gotham had forgotten to pay their rent to their
+landlord. The one said to the other, "To-morrow is our payday, and what
+remedy shall we find to send our money to our lord?" The one said, "This
+day I have taken a quick [i.e., live] hare, and she shall carry it, for
+she is light of foot." "Be it so," said all. "She shall have a letter
+and a purse to put in our money, and we shall direct her the ready way."
+And when the letters were written, and the money put in a purse, they
+did tie them about the hare's neck, saying, "First thou must go to
+Loughborough, and then to Leicester; and at Newark there is our lord,
+and commend us to him, and there is his duty [i.e., due]." The hare, as
+soon as she was out of their hands, she did run a clean contrary way.
+Some cried to her, saying, "Thou must go to Loughborough first." Some
+said, "Let the hare alone; she can tell a nearer way than the best of us
+all do: let her go." Another said, "It is a noble hare; let her alone;
+she will not keep the highway for fear of the dogs."
+
+The well-worn "Joe Miller" of the Irishman who tried to count the party
+to which he belonged, and always forgot to count himself, which is also
+known in Russia and in the West Highlands of Scotland, is simply a
+variant of this drollery:
+
+On a certain day there were twelve men of Gotham that went to fish, and
+some stood on dry land; and in going home one said to the other, "We
+have ventured wonderfully in wading: I pray God that none of us come
+home and be drowned." "Nay, marry," said one to the other, "let us see
+that; for there did twelve of us come out." Then they told (i.e.,
+counted) themselves, and every one told eleven. Said one to the other,
+"There is one of us drowned." They went back to the brook where they had
+been fishing, and sought up and down for him that was wanting, making
+great lamentation. A courtier, coming by, asked what it was they sought
+for, and why they were sorrowful. "Oh," said they, "this day we went to
+fish in the brook; twelve of us came out together, and one is drowned."
+Said the courtier, "Tell [count] how many there be of you." One of them
+said, "Eleven," and he did not tell himself. "Well," said the courtier,
+"what will you give me, and I will find the twelfth man?" "Sir," said
+they, "all the money we have got." "Give me the money," said the
+courtier, and began with the first, and gave him a stroke over the
+shoulders with his whip, which made him groan, saying, "Here is one,"
+and so served them all, and they all groaned at the matter. When he came
+to the last, he paid him well, saying, "Here is the twelfth man." "God's
+blessing on thy heart," said they, "for thus finding our dear brother!"
+
+This droll adventure is also found in the _Gooroo Paramartan_, a
+most amusing work, written in the Tamil language by Beschi, an Italian
+Jesuit, who was missionary in India from 1700 till his death, in 1742.
+The Gooroo (teacher) and his five disciples, who are, like himself,
+noodles, come to a river which they have to cross, and which, as the
+Gooroo informs them, is a very dangerous stream. To ascertain whether it
+is at present "asleep," one of them dips his lighted cheroot in the
+water, which, of course, extinguishes it, upon which he returns to the
+Gooroo and reports that the river is still in a dangerous mood. So they
+all sit down, and begin to tell stories of the destructive nature of
+this river. One relates how his grandfather and another man were
+journeying together, driving two asses laden with bags of salt, and
+coming to this river, they resolved to bathe in it, and the asses,
+tempted by the coolness of the water, at the same time knelt down in it.
+When the men found that their salt had disappeared, they congratulated
+themselves on their wonderful escape from the devouring stream, which
+had eaten up all their salt without even opening the bags. Another
+disciple relates a story similar to the so-called �sopian fable of the
+dog and his shadow, this river being supposed to have devoured a piece
+of meat which the dog had dropped into it. At length the river is found
+to be quiescent, a piece of charred wood having been plunged into it
+without producing any effect like that of the former experiment; and
+they determine to ford it, but with great caution. Arrived on the other
+side, they count their number, like the men of Gotham, and discover that
+one is not present. A traveller, coming up, finds the missing man by
+whacking each of them over the shoulder. The Gooroo, while gratified
+that the lost one was found, was grumbling at his sore bones--for the
+traveller had struck pretty hard--when an old woman, on learning of
+their adventure, told them that, in her young days, she and her female
+companions were once returning home from a grand festival, and adopted
+another plan for ascertaining if they were all together. Gathering some
+of the cattle-droppings, they kneaded them into a cake, in which they
+each made a mark with the tip of the nose, and then counted the marks--a
+plan which the Gooroo and his disciples should make use of on future
+occasions.
+
+The Abb� Dubois has given a French translation of the Adventures of the
+Gooroo Paramartan among the _Contes Divers_ appended to his not
+very valuable selection of tales and apologues from Tamil, Telegu, and
+Cannada versions of the _Panchatantra_ (Five Chapters, not "Cinq
+Ruses," as he renders it), a Sanskrit form of the celebrated Fables of
+Bidpa�, or Pilpay. An English rendering of Beschi's work, by Babington,
+forms one of the publications of the Oriental Translation Fund. Dubois
+states that he found the tales of the Gooroo current in Indian countries
+where Beschi's name was unknown, and he had no doubt of their Indian
+origin. However this may be, the work was probably designed, as
+Babington thinks, to satirise the Br�hmans, as well as to furnish a
+pleasing vehicle of instruction to those Jesuits in India whose duties
+required a knowledge of the Tamil language.
+
+A story akin to that of the Gothamite fishers, if not, indeed, an older
+form of it, is told in Iceland of the Three Brothers of Bakki, who came
+upon one of the hot springs which abound in that volcanic island, and
+taking off their boots and stockings, put their feet into the water and
+began to bathe them. When they would rise up, they were perplexed to
+know each his own feet, and so they sat disconsolate, until a wayfarer
+chanced to pass by, to whom they told their case, when he soon relieved
+their minds by striking the feet of each, for which important service
+they gave him many thanks.[7] This story reappears, slightly modified,
+in Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_: A party of
+masons, engaged in building a dyke, take shelter during a heavy shower,
+and when it has passed, they continue sitting, because their legs had
+got mixed together, and none knew his own, until they were put right by
+a traveller with a big stick. We have here an evident relic of the
+Norsemen's occupation of the Hebrides.
+
+Several of the tales of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in
+Gaelic. That of the twelve fishers has been already mentioned, and here
+is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in
+similar terms in his _Tales of the West Highlands_:
+
+When that Good Friday was come, the men of Gotham did cast their heads
+together what to do with their white herring, their red herring, their
+sprats, and salt fish. One consulted with the other, and agreed that
+such fish should be cast into a pond or pool (the which was in the
+middle of the town), that it might increase the next year; and every man
+did cast them into the pool. The one said, "I have thus many white
+herrings;" another said, "I have thus many sprats;" another said, "I
+have thus many salt fishes; let us all go together into the pool, and we
+shall fare like lords the next Lent." At the beginning of next Lent the
+men did draw the pond, to have their fish, and there was nothing but a
+great eel. "Ah," said they all, "a mischief on this eel, for he hath eat
+up all our fish!" "What shall we do with him?" said the one to the
+other. "Kill him!" said one of them. "Chop him all to pieces!" said
+another. "Nay, not so," said the other; "let us drown him." "Be it so,"
+said all. They went to another pool, and did cast the eel into the
+water. "Lie there," said they, "and shift for thyself, for no help thou
+shalt have of us;" and there they left the eel to be drowned.
+
+Campbell's Gaelic story differs so little from the above that we must
+suppose it to have been derived directly from the English chap-book.
+Oral tradition always produces local variations from a written story, of
+which we have an example in a Gaelic version of this choice exploit:
+
+There was a man of Gotham who went to the market of Nottingham to sell
+cheese; and as he was going down the hill to Nottingham Bridge, one of
+his cheeses fell out of his wallet and ran down the hill. "Ah," said the
+fellow, "can you run to the market alone? I will now send one after the
+other;" then laying down the wallet and taking out the cheeses, he
+tumbled them down the hill one after the other; and some ran into one
+bush, and some into another; so at last he said, "I do charge you to
+meet me in the market-place." And when the man came into the market to
+meet the cheeses, he stayed until the market was almost done, then went
+and inquired of his neighbours and other men if they did see his cheeses
+come to market. "Why, who should bring them?" said one of the
+neighbours. "Marry, themselves," said the fellow; "they knew the way
+well enough," said he: "a vengeance on them! For I was afraid to see my
+cheeses run so fast, that they would run beyond the market. I am
+persuaded that they are at this time almost as far as York." So he
+immediately takes a horse and rides after them to York; but to this day
+no man has ever heard of the cheeses.
+
+In one Gaelic variant a woman is going to Inverness with a basket filled
+with balls of worsted of her own spinning, and going down a hill, one of
+the balls tumbles out and rolls along briskly, upon which she sends the
+others after it, holding the ends of each in her hand; and when she
+reaches the town, she finds a "ravelled hank" instead of her neat balls
+of worsted. In another version a man goes to market with two bags of
+cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. After waiting at
+the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his
+misfortune. She goes to the foot of the hill and finds all the cheese.
+
+The next Gothamite tale also finds its counterpart in the Gaelic
+stories: There was a man of Gotham who bought at Nottingham a trivet, or
+brandiron, and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the
+carriage thereof, and he set it down; and seeing that it had three feet,
+he said, "Ha! hast thou three feet, and I but two? Thou shalt bear me
+home, if thou wilt," and set himself down thereupon, and said to the
+trivet, "Bear me as long as I have borne thee; but if thou do not, thou
+shalt stand still for me." The man of Gotham did see that his trivet
+would not go farther. "Stand still, in the mayor's name," said he, "and
+follow me if thou wilt. I will tell thee right the way to my home." When
+he did come to his house, his wife said, "Where is my trivet?" The man
+said, "He hath three legs, and I have but two; and I did teach him the
+way to my house. Let him come home if he will." "Where left ye the
+trivet?" said the woman. "At Gotham hill," said the man. His wife did
+run and fetch home the trivet her own self, or else she had lost it
+through her husband's wit.
+
+In Campbell's version a man having been sent by his wife with her
+spinning-wheel to get mended, as he was returning home with it the wind
+set the wheel in motion, so he put it down, and bidding it go straight
+to his house, set off himself. When he reached home, he asked his wife
+if the spinning-wheel had arrived yet, and on her replying that it had
+not, "I thought as much," quoth he, "for I took the shorter way."
+
+A somewhat similar story is found in Rivi�re's French collection of
+tales of the Kaba�l, Algeria, to this effect: The mother of a youth of
+the Beni-Jennad clan gave him a hundred reals to buy a mule; so he went
+to market, and on his way met a man carrying a water-melon for sale.
+"How much for the melon?" he asks. "What will you give?" says the man.
+"I have only got a hundred reals," answered the booby; "had I more, you
+should have it." "Well," rejoined the man, "I'll take them." Then the
+youth took the melon and handed over the money. "But tell me," says he,
+"will its young one be as green as it is?" "Doubtless," answered the
+man, "it will be green." As the booby was going home, he allowed the
+melon to roll down a slope before him. It burst on its way, when up
+started a frightened hare. "Go to my house, young one," he shouted.
+"Surely a green animal has come out of it." And when he got home, he
+inquired of his mother if the young one had arrived.
+
+In the _Gooroo Paramartan_ there is a parallel incident to this
+last. The noodles are desirous of providing their Gooroo with a horse,
+and a man sells them a pumpkin, telling them it is a mare's egg, which
+only requires to be sat upon for a certain time to produce a fine young
+horse. The Gooroo himself undertakes to hatch the mare's egg, since his
+disciples have all other matters to attend to; but as they are carrying
+it through a jungle, it falls down and splits into pieces; just then a
+frightened hare runs before them; and they inform the Gooroo that, a
+fine young colt came out of the mare's egg, with very long ears, and ran
+off with the speed of the wind. It would have proved a fine horse for
+their revered Gooroo, they add; but he consoles himself for the loss by
+reflecting that such an animal would probably have run away with him.
+
+A number of the Gothamite tales in the printed collection are not only
+inferior to those which are preserved orally, but can be considered in
+no sense examples of preeminent folly. Three consist of tricks played by
+women upon their husbands, such as are found in the ordinary jest-books
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In one a man, who had taken
+a buzzard, invites some friends to dine with him. His wife, with two of
+her gossips, having secretly eaten the buzzard, kills and cooks an old
+goose, and sets it before him and his guests; the latter call him a
+knave to mock them thus with an old goose, and go off in great anger.
+The husband, resolved to put himself right with his friends, stuffs the
+buzzard's feathers into a sack, in order to show them that they were
+mistaken in thinking he had tried to deceive them with an old goose
+instead of a fine fat buzzard. But before he started on this business,
+his wife contrived to substitute the goose's feathers, which he
+exhibited to his friends as those of the buzzard, and was soundly
+cudgelled for what they believed to be a second attempt to mock them.--
+Two other stories seem to be derived from the Italian novelists: of the
+man who intended cutting off his wife's hair[8] and of the man who
+defied his wife to cuckold him. Two others turn upon wrong responses at
+a christening and a marriage, which have certainly nothing Gothamite in
+them. Another is a dull story of a Scotchman who employed a carver to
+make him as a sign of his inn a boar's head, the tradesman supposing
+from his northern pronunciation that he meant _bare_ head.--In the
+nineteenth tale, a party of gossips are assembled at the alehouse, and
+each relates in what manner she is profitable to her husband: one saves
+candles by sending all her household to bed in daylight; another, like
+the old fellow and Tib his wife in _Jolly Good Ale and Old_, eats
+little meat, but can swig a gallon or two of ale, and so forth.
+
+We have, however, our Gothamite once more in the story of him who,
+seeing a fine cheese on the ground as he rode along the highway, tried
+to pick it up with his sword, and finding his sword too short, rode back
+to fetch a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found
+the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this
+sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also
+in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch
+of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down
+the smithy--a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a
+moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place of
+the honest Gothamite![9]
+
+The following properly belongs to stories of the "silly son" class:
+There was a young man of Gotham the which should go wooing to a fair
+maid. His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, "When thou dost look
+upon her, cast a sheep's-eye, and say, 'How do ye, sweet pigsnie?'" The
+fellow went to the butcher's and bought seven or eight sheep's eyes; and
+when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a
+sheep's eye, saying, "How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?" "How do I?"
+said the wench. "Swine's-face, why dost thou cast the sheep's eye upon
+me?" "O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" "I defy thee,
+Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What,
+sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou
+wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live
+till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool."
+
+It is very evident that the men of Gotham were of "honest" Jack
+Falstaff's opinion that the better part of valour is discretion: On a
+time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great
+grasshopper. He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his
+neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in
+the grass. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with
+halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper. When
+they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one
+to the other, "Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will
+not meddle with him." And so they returned again, and said, "We were all
+blessed this day that we went no farther." "Ah, cowards," said he that
+had his scythe in the mead, "help me to fetch my scythe." "No," said
+they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin: better it is to lose thy
+scythe than to mar us all."
+
+There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed
+collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednesday the
+priest said to the men of Gotham, "If I should enjoin you to prayer,
+there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too
+old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not
+eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour
+all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will
+come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he
+did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after
+another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might
+have part of his meat. "And as for alms," said the priest, "ye be
+beggars all, except one or two; therefore bestow alms on yourselves."
+
+Among the numerous stories of the Gothamites preserved orally, but not
+found in the collection of "A.B., of Phisicke Doctour," is the
+following, which seems to be of Indian extraction:
+
+One day some men of Gotham were walking by the riverside, and came to a
+place where the contrary currents caused the water to boil as in a
+whirlpool. "See how the water boils!" says one. "If we had plenty of
+oatmeal," says another, "we might make enough porridge to serve all the
+village for a month." So it was resolved that part of them should go to
+the village and fetch their oatmeal, which was soon brought and thrown
+into the river. But there presently arose the question of how they were
+to know when the porridge was ready. This difficulty was overcome by the
+offer of one of the company to jump in, and it was agreed that if he
+found it ready for use, he should signify the same to his companions.
+The man jumped in, and found the water deeper than he expected. Thrice
+he rose to the surface, but said nothing. The others, impatient at his
+remaining so long silent, and seeing him smack his lips, took this for
+an avowal that the porridge was good, and so they all jumped in after
+him and were drowned.
+
+Another traditional Gothamite story is related of a villager coming home
+at a late hour and, seeing the reflection of the moon in a horse-pond,
+believed it to be a green cheese, and roused all his neighbours to help
+him to draw it out. They raked and raked away until a passing cloud sank
+the cheese, when they returned to their homes grievously
+disappointed.[10]--This is also related of the villagers near the
+Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire, and the _sobriquet_ of
+"moon-rakers," applied to Wiltshire folk in general, is said to have had
+its origin in the incident; but they assert that it was a keg of
+smuggled brandy, which had been sunk in a pond, that the villagers were
+attempting to fish up, when the exciseman coming suddenly upon the
+scene, they made him believe they were raking the reflection of the
+moon, thinking it a green cheese, an explanation which is on a par with
+the apocryphal tale of the Gothamites and the messengers of King John.
+
+The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable
+antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is
+referred to by Rabelais, and was doubtless the subject of a popular
+French tale in his time. In the twenty-second story of the _Disciplina
+Clericalis_ of Peter Alfonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was baptised in
+1106, a fox leaves a wolf in a well, looking after a supposed cheese,
+made by the image of the moon in the water; and the same fable had been
+told by the Talmudists in the fifth century.[11] The well-known "Joe
+Miller" of the party of Irishmen who endeavoured to reach a "green
+cheese" in the river by hanging one by another's legs finds its parallel
+in a Mecklenburg story, in which some men by the same contrivance tried
+to get a stone from the bottom of a well, and the incident is thus
+related in the old English jest-book entitled _The Sacke Full of
+Newes_:
+
+There were three young men going to Lambeth along by the waterside, and
+one played with the other, and they cast each other's caps into the
+water in such sort as they could not get their caps again. But over the
+place where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did
+cover a great deal of the water. One of them said to the rest, "Sirs, I
+have found a notable way to come by them. First I will make myself fast
+by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is
+with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take
+hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands
+he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand." And so they
+did; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he
+that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, "Soft, sirs! My girdle
+slacketh." "Make it fast quickly," said they. But as he was untying it
+to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well
+washed for their pains.
+
+Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who
+planted a cabbage-head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage,
+and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky. He climbs up the
+cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky. There he sees a mill, which gives
+a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the
+top. The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill; then he lies down to
+sleep. By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.
+
+He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him
+to take her with him. She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in
+his teeth and begins to climb up. The old woman, becoming tired, asked
+him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, "Not much
+farther," the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman
+fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.
+
+There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr.
+Ralston's most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian
+folk-tales), but observe the very close resemblance which it bears to
+the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the
+_Kath� Sarit S�gara_ (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand
+collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh
+century, from a similar work entitled _Vrihat Kath�_ (Great Story),
+written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century:[12]
+
+In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was
+the greatest fool of the lot. He once heard in a treatise on law, which
+was being read aloud, that a man who has a tank made gains a great
+reward in the next world. Then, as he had a large fortune, he had made a
+large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent. One
+day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and
+perceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature. The next
+day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part
+of the tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, "I will
+watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and
+I will find out what creature it is that does this." After he had formed
+this resolution, he came there early next morning, and watched, until at
+last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its
+horns. He thought, "This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to
+heaven with it?" And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands
+laid hold of the tail behind. Then the holy bull lifted up, with the
+utmost force, the foolish man who was clinging to its tail, and carried
+him in a moment to its home in Kail�sa.[13] There the foolish man lived
+for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties,
+sweetmeats, and other things which he obtained. And seeing that the bull
+kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny,
+thought, "I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my
+friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return
+in the same way." Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung
+to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned
+to the surface of the earth. When he entered the convent, the other
+blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been,
+and he told them. Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of
+his adventures, made this petition to him: "Be kind, and take us also
+there; enable us also to feast on sweetmeats." He consented, and told
+them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the
+tank, and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail of
+the bull with his two hands, and another took hold of his feet, and a
+third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by
+hanging on to one another's feet, the bull flew rapidly up into the air.
+And while the bull was going along, with all the fools clinging to its
+tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool,
+"Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats
+which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in
+heaven?" Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in
+hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and
+exclaimed in answer, "So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the
+bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were
+killed; and the bull returned to Kail�sa; but the people who saw it were
+much amused.[14]
+
+"Thus," remarks the story-teller, "fools do themselves injury by asking
+questions and giving answers without reflection"; he then proceeds to
+relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that "association with
+fools brings prosperity to no man":
+
+A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when
+he asked the way, the people said to him, "Take the path that goes up by
+the tree on the bank of the river." Then the fool went and got on the
+trunk of that tree, and said to himself, "The men told me that my way
+lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the
+bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to
+avoid falling by clinging to it. While he was clinging to it, there came
+that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on
+his back. And the fool called to him, saying, "Great sir, take me down."
+The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to
+take him down from the tree. Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the
+driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fool, who was clinging
+to the end of the tree. Then said the fool to the driver, "Sing
+something, in order that the people may hear, and come at once and take
+us down." So the elephant-driver, thus appealed to, began to sing, and
+he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased; and in his desire to
+applaud him, he forgot what he was about, let go his hold of the tree,
+and prepared to clap him with both his hands; and immediately he and the
+elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned.
+
+The germ of all stories of this class is perhaps found in the
+_J�takas_, or Buddhist Birth Stories: A pair of geese resolve to
+migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise,
+their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills,
+and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth.  As they are
+flying over B�n�res, the people exclaim in wonder to one another at such
+a strange sight, and the tortoise, unable to maintain silence, opens his
+mouth to rebuke them, and by so doing falls to the ground, and is dashed
+into pieces. This fable is also found in Babrius. (115); in the _Kath�
+Sarit S�gara_; in the several versions of the Fables of Bidpa�; and
+in the _Avad�nas_, translated into French from the Chinese by
+Stanislas Julien.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To return to Gothamite stories. According to one of those which are
+current orally, the men of Gotham had but one knife among them, which
+was stuck in a tree in the middle of the village for their common use,
+and many amusing incidents, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, arose out of
+their disputes for the use of this knife. The "carles" of Austwick, in
+Yorkshire, are said also to have had but one knife, or "whittle," which
+was deposited under a tree, and if it was not found there when wanted,
+the "carle" requiring it called out, "Whittle to the tree!" This plan
+did very well for some years, until it was taken one day by a party of
+labourers to a neighbouring moor, to be used for cutting their bread and
+cheese. When the day's labour was done, they resolved to leave the knife
+at the place, to save themselves the trouble of carrying it back, as
+they should want it again next day; so they looked about for some object
+to mark the spot, and stuck it into the ground under a black cloud that
+happened to be the most remarkable object in sight. But next day, when
+they returned to the place, the cloud was gone, and the "whittle" was
+never seen again.
+
+When an Austwick "carle" comes into any of the larger towns of
+Yorkshire, it is said he is greeted with the question, "Who tried to
+lift the bull over the gate?" in allusion to the following story: An
+Austwick farmer, wishing to get a bull out of a field--how the animal
+got into it, the story does not inform us--procured the assistance of
+nine of his neighbours to lift the animal over the gate. After trying in
+vain for some hours, they sent one of their number to the village for
+more help. In going out he opened the gate, and after he had gone away,
+it occurred to one of those who remained that the bull might be allowed
+to go out in the same manner.
+
+Another Austwick farmer had to take a wheelbarrow to a certain town,
+and, to save a hundred yards by going the ordinary road, he went through
+the fields, and had to lift the barrow over twenty-two stiles.
+
+It was a Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined
+to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the
+branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted
+up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck
+broken, until at last there were none left.--And quite as witless,
+surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired to move
+their church three yards farther westward, so they carefully marked the
+exact distance by leaving their coats on the ground. Then they set to
+work to push with all their might against the eastern wall. In the
+meantime a thief had gone round to the west side and stolen their coats.
+"Diable!" exclaimed they on finding that their coats were gone, "we have
+pushed too far!"
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Coffee House Jests_. Fifth edition. London. 1688. P. 36.
+
+[2] "See _ante_, p. 8, note." [Transcriber's note: This is Chapter I,
+Footnote 1 in this etext.]
+
+[3] Fuller, while admitting that "an hundred fopperies are forged and
+fathered on the townsfolk of Gotham," maintains that "Gotham doth breed
+as wise people as any which laugh at their simplicity."
+
+[4] Collier's _Bibliographical Account_, etc., vol. i., p. 327.
+
+[5] Forewords to Borde's _Introduction of Knowledge_, etc., edited,
+for the Early English Text Society, by F.J. Furnivall.
+
+[6] It is equally certain that Borde had no hand either in the _Jests
+of Scogin_ or _The Mylner of Abyngton_, the latter an imitation
+of Chaucer's _Reve's Tale_.
+
+[7] Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_, Second Series.
+
+[8] An imitation of Boccaccio, _Decameron_, Day vii., nov. 8, who
+perhaps borrowed the story from Guerin's _fabliau_ "De la Dame qui
+fit accroire a son Mari qu'il avait r�ve; _alias_, Les Cheveux
+Coup�s" (Le Grand's _Fabliaux_, ed. 1781, tome ii., 280).
+
+[9] A slightly different version occurs in the _Tale of Beryn_,
+which is found in a unique MS. of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and
+which forms the first part of the old French romance of the _Chevalier
+Berinus_. In the English poem Beryn, lamenting his misfortunes, and
+that he had disinherited himself, says:
+
+  "But I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies]
+  He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies,
+  And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase,
+  Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase
+  Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was,
+  And kissid so the evese, that brent was al the plase."
+
+It is certain that the author of the French original of the _Tale of
+Beryn_ did not get this story out of our jests of the men of Gotham.
+
+[10] There is an analogous Indian story of a youth who went to a tank to
+drink, and observing the reflection of a golden-crested bird that was
+sitting on a tree, he thought it was gold in the water, and entered the
+tank to take it up, but he could not lay hold of it as it appeared and
+disappeared in the water. But as often as he ascended the bank he again
+saw it in the water, and again he entered the tank to lay hold of it,
+and still he got nothing. At length his father saw and questioned him,
+then drove away the bird, and explaining the matter to him, took the
+foolish fellow home.
+
+We have already seen that the men of Abdera (p. 5) flogged an ass before
+its fellows for upsetting a jar of olive oil, but what is that compared
+with the story of the ass that drank up the moon? According to Ludovicus
+Vives, a learned Spanish writer, certain townspeople imprisoned an ass
+for drinking up the moon, whose reflection, appearing in the water, was
+covered with a cloud while the ass was drinking. Next day the poor beast
+was brought to the bar to be sentenced according to his deserts. After
+the grave burghers had discussed the affair for some time, one at length
+rose up and declared that it was not fit the town should lose its moon,
+but rather that the ass should be cut open and the moon he had swallowed
+taken out of him, which, being cordially approved by the others, was
+done accordingly.
+
+[11] This is also one of the Fables of Marie de France (thirteenth
+century).
+
+[12] A complete translation of the _Kath� Sarit S�gara_, by
+Professor C.H. Tawney, with notes of variants, which exhibit his wide
+acquaintance with the popular fictions of all lands, has been recently
+published at Calcutta (London agents, Messrs. Tr�bner and Co.), a work
+which must prove invaluable to every English student of comparative
+folk-lore.
+
+[13] Siva's paradise, according to Hindu mythology, is on Mount Kail�sa,
+in the Him�lyas, north of M�nasa.
+
+[14] Tawney's translation, which is used throughout this work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_).
+
+
+The Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gothamites of
+Germany, and the stories of their stupidity, after being orally current
+for years among the people, were collected near the close of the
+sixteenth century, the earliest known edition being that of 1597. In a
+most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances"
+(_Foreign Quarterly Review_, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms
+has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from
+which the following particulars and tales are extracted: "There have
+been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from
+one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally
+gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils
+of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their
+circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and
+then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered
+affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity,
+and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as
+to prove 'plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this
+strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the
+Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and
+receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and
+signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn
+themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the
+Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by
+which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on
+which some of their descendants, who may be known by their
+characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."
+
+Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows.
+When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, "saw
+they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a
+state of things; and having in vain gone outside and examined the
+building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to hold a
+council upon the subject on the following day. At the time appointed
+they assembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating
+himself, he stuck in his hat. After much discussion, one genius,
+brighter than the rest, decided that they could not see for want of
+daylight, and that they ought on the morrow to carry in as much of it as
+possible. Accordingly, the next day, when the sun shone, all the sacks,
+bags, boxes, baskets, tubs, pans, etc. of the village were filled with
+its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied
+there, but with no good effect. After this they removed the roof, by the
+advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion. This
+plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter
+fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, they found the house
+just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in
+their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting
+the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell
+through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had
+never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get
+daylight in by making a window.
+
+Another tale relates how the boors of Schilda contrived to get their
+millstone twice down from a high mountain:
+
+The boors of Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour
+they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the
+summit of a high mountain; and when the stone was finished, they carried
+it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the
+bottom, it occurred to one of them that they might have spared
+themselves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down.
+"Verily," said he, "we are the stupidest of fools to take these
+extraordinary pains to do that which we might have done with so little
+trouble. We will carry it up, and then let it roll down the hill by
+itself, as we did before with the tree which we felled for the
+council-house."
+
+This advice pleased them all, and with greater labour they carried the
+stone to the top of the mountain again, and were about to roll it down,
+when one of them said, "But how shall we know where it runs to? Who will
+be able to tell us aught about it?" "Why," said the bailiff, who had
+advised the stone being carried up again, "this is very easily managed.
+One of us must stick in the hole [for the millstone, of course, had a
+hole in the middle], and run down with it." This was agreed to, and one
+of them, having been chosen for the purpose, thrust his head through the
+hole, and ran down the hill with the millstone. Now at the bottom of the
+mountain was a deep fish-pond, into which the stone rolled, and the
+simpleton with it, so that the Schildburgers lost both stone and man,
+and not one among them knew what had become of them. And they felt
+sorely angered against their old companion who had run down the hill
+with the stone, for they considered that he had carried it off for the
+purpose of disposing of it. So they published a notice in all the
+neighbouring boroughs, towns, and villages, calling on them, that "if
+any one come there with a millstone round his neck, they should treat
+him as one who had stolen the common goods, and give him to justice."
+But the poor fellow lay in the pond, dead. Had he been able to speak, he
+would have been willing to tell them not to worry themselves on his
+account, for he would give them their own again. But his load pressed so
+heavily upon him, and he was so deep in the water, that he, after
+drinking water enough--more, indeed, than was good for him--died; and he
+is dead at the present day, and dead he will, shall, and must remain!
+
+The forty-seventh chapter recounts "How the Schildburgers purchased a
+mouser, and with it their own ruin":
+
+Now it happened that there were no cats in Schilda, and so many mice
+that nothing was safe, even in the bread-basket, for whatsoever they put
+there was sure to be gnawed or eaten; and this grieved them sorely. And
+upon a time there came a traveller into the village, carrying a cat in
+his arms, and he entered the hostel. The host asked him, "What sort of a
+beast is that?" Said he, "It is a mouser." Now the mice at Schilda were
+so quiet and so tame that they never fled before the people, but ran
+about all day long, without the slightest fear. So the traveller let the
+cat run, who, in the sight of the host, soon caught numbers of mice. Now
+when the people were told this by the host, they asked the man whether
+the mouser was to be sold, for they would pay him well for it. He said,
+"It certainly was not to be sold; but seeing that it would be so useful
+to them, he would let them have it if they would pay him what was
+right," and he asked a hundred florins for it. The boors were glad to
+find that he asked so little, and concluded a bargain with him, he
+agreeing to take half the money down, and to come again in six months to
+fetch the rest. As soon as the bargain was struck on both sides, they
+gave the traveller the half of the money, and he carried the mouser into
+the granary, where they kept their corn, for there were most mice there.
+The traveller went off with the money at full speed, for he feared
+greatly lest they should repent them of the bargain, and want their
+money back again; and as he went along he kept looking behind him to see
+that no one was following him. Now the boors had forgotten to ask what
+the cat was to be fed upon, so they sent one after him in haste to ask
+him the question. But when he with the gold saw that some one was
+following him, he hastened so much the more, so that the boor could by
+no means overtake him, whereupon he called out to him from afar off,
+"What does it eat?" "What you please! What you please!" quoth the
+traveller. But the peasant understood him to say, "Men and beasts! Men
+and beasts!" Therefore he returned home in great affliction, and said as
+much to his worthy masters.
+
+On learning this they became greatly alarmed, and said, "When it has no
+more mice to eat, it will eat our cattle; and when they are gone, it
+will eat us! To think that we should lay out our good money in buying
+such a thing!" And they held counsel together and resolved that the cat
+should be killed. But no one would venture to lay hold of it for that
+purpose, whereupon it was determined to burn the granary, and the cat in
+it, seeing that it was better they should suffer a common loss than all
+lose life and limb. So they set fire to the granary. But when the cat
+smelt the fire, it sprang out of a window and fled to another house, and
+the granary was burned to the ground. Never was there sorrow greater
+than that of the Schildburgers when they found that they could not kill
+the cat. They counselled with one another, and purchased the house to
+which the cat had fled, and burned that also. But the cat sprang out
+upon the roof, and sat there, washing itself and putting its paws behind
+its ears, after the manner of cats; and the Schildburgers understood
+thereby that the cat lifted up its hands and swore an oath that it would
+not leave their treatment of it unrevenged. Then one of them took a long
+pole and struck at the cat, but the cat caught hold of the pole, and
+began to clamber down it, whereupon all the people grew greatly alarmed
+and ran away, and left the fire to burn as it might. And because no one
+regarded the fire, nor sought to put it out, the whole village was
+burned to a house, and notwithstanding that, the cat escaped. And the
+Schildburgers fled with their wives and children to a neighbouring
+forest. And at this time was burned their chancery and all the papers
+therein, which is the reason why their history is not to be found
+described in a more regular manner.
+
+Thus ended the career of the Schildburgers as a community, according to
+the veracious chronicle of their marvellous exploits, the first of
+which, their carrying sunshine into the council-house, is a favourite
+incident in the noodle-stories of many countries, and has its parallel
+in the Icelandic story of the Three Brothers of Bakki: They had observed
+that in winter the weather was colder than in summer, also that the
+larger the windows of a house were the colder it was. All frost and
+sharp cold, therefore, they thought sprang from the fact that houses had
+windows in them. So they built themselves a house on a new plan, without
+windows in it at all. It followed, of course, that there was always
+pitch darkness in it. They found that this was rather a fault in the
+house, but comforted themselves with the certainty that in winter it
+would be very warm; and as to light, they thought they could contrive
+some easy means of getting the house lighted. One fine day in the middle
+of summer, when the sunshine was brightest, they began to carry the
+darkness out of the house in their caps, and emptied it out when they
+came into the sunshine, which they then carried into the dark room. Thus
+they worked hard the whole day, but in the evening, when they had done
+all their best, they were not a little disappointed to find that it was
+as dark as before, so much so that they could not tell one hand from the
+other.[1]
+
+There is a Kashm�r� story which bears a slight resemblance to the
+exploit of the Schildburgers with the cat. A poor old woman used to beg
+her food by day and cook it at night. Half of the food she would eat in
+the morning, and the other half in the evening. After a while a cat got
+to know of this arrangement, and came and ate the meal for her. The old
+woman was very patient, but at last could no longer endure the cat's
+impudence, and so she laid hold of it. She argued with herself as to
+whether she should kill it or not. "If I slay it," she thought, "it will
+be a sin; but if I keep it alive, it will be to my heavy loss." So she
+determined only to punish it. She procured some cotton wool and some
+oil, and soaking the one in the other, tied it on to the cat's tail and
+then set it on fire. Away rushed the cat across the yard, up the side of
+the window, and on to the roof, where its flaming tail ignited the
+thatch and set the whole house on fire. The flames soon spread to other
+houses, and the whole village was destroyed.[2]
+
+An older form of this incident is found in the introduction to a Persian
+poetical version of the Book of Sindib�d (_Sindib�d N�ma_), of
+which a unique MS. copy, very finely illuminated, but imperfect, is
+preserved in the Library of the India Office:[3] In a village called
+Buzina-Gird (i.e., Monkey Town) there was a goat that was in the habit
+of butting at a certain old woman whenever she came into the street. One
+day the old woman had been to ask fire from a neighbour, and on her
+return the goat struck her so violently with his horns when she was off
+her guard as to draw blood. Enraged at this, she applied the fire which
+she held to the goat's fleece, which kindled, and the animal ran to the
+stables of the elephant-keeper, and rubbed his sides against the reeds
+and willows. They caught fire, which the wind soon spread, and the heads
+and faces of the warlike elephants were scorched. With the sequel--how
+the king caused all the monkeys to be slaughtered, as their fat was
+required to cure the scorched elephants--we have no concern at
+present.[4]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Ceylon whole districts, such as Tumpane, in the central province,
+Morora Korle, in the southern province, and Rayigam Korle, in the
+western province, are credited with being the abode of fools. A learned
+writer on the proverbial sayings of the Sinhalese states that these
+often refer to "popular stories of stupid people to which foolish
+actions are likened. The stories of the Tumpane villagers who tried to
+unearth and carry off a well because they saw a bees' nest reflected in
+the water; of the Morora Korle boatmen who mistook a bend in the river
+for the sea, left their cargo there, and returned home; of the Rayigam
+Korle fools who threw stones at the moon to frighten her off one fine
+moonlight night when they thought she was coming too near, and that
+there was danger of her burning their crops, are well known, and it is
+customary to ask a man if he was born in one of these places if he has
+done anything particularly foolish. The story of the double-fool--i.e.,
+of the man who tried to lighten the boat by carrying his pingo load over
+his shoulders;[5] of the man who stretched out his hands to be warmed by
+the fire on the other side of the river; of the rustic's wife who had
+her own head shaved, so as not to lose the barber's services for the day
+when he came, and her husband was away from home; of the villagers who
+tied up their mortars in the village in the belief that the elephant
+tracks in the rice fields were caused by the mortars wandering about at
+night; of the man who would not wash his body in order to spite the
+river; of the people who flogged the elk-skin at home to avenge
+themselves on the deer that trespassed in the fields at night; and of
+the man who performed the five precepts--all these are popular stories
+of foolish people which have passed into proverbs."[6]
+
+The last of the stories referred to in the above extract is as follows:
+A woman once rebuked her husband for not performing the five (Buddhist)
+precepts. "I don't know what they are," he replied. "Oh, it's very
+easy," she said; "all you have to do is to go to the priest and repeat
+what he says after him." "Is that all?" he answered. "Then I'll go and
+do it at once." Off he went, and as he neared the temple the priest saw
+him and called out, "Who are you?" to which he replied, "Who are you?"
+"What do you want?" demands the priest. "What do you want?" the
+blockhead answers dutifully. "Are you mad?" roared the priest. "Are you
+mad?" returned the rustic. "Here," said the priest to his attendants,
+"take and beat him well;" and notwithstanding that he carefully repeated
+the words again, taken and thoroughly well thrashed he was, after which
+he crawled back to his wife and said, "What a wonderful woman you are!
+You manage to repeat the five precepts every day, and are strong and
+healthy, while I, who have only said them once, am nearly dead with
+fever from the bruises."[7]
+
+To this last may be added a story in the _Kath� Manjari_, a
+Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the _R�m�yana_, one
+of the two great Hind� epics: One day a man was reading the
+_R�m�yana_ in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might
+be instructed by hearing it, sent him there. He went, and stood leaning
+on his crook--for he was a shepherd--when presently a practical joker,
+seeing his simplicity, jumped upon his shoulders, and he stood with the
+man on his back until the discourse was concluded. When he reached home,
+his wife asked him how he liked the _R�m�yana_. "Alas!" said he,
+"it was not easy; it was a man's load."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The race of Gothamites is indeed found everywhere--in popular tales, if
+not in actual life; and their sayings and doings are not less diverting
+when husband and wife are well mated, as in the following story:
+
+An Arab observing one morning that his house was ready to tumble about
+his ears from decay, and being without the means of repairing it, went
+with a long face to his wife, and informed her of his trouble. She said,
+"Why, my dear, need you distress yourself about so small a matter? You
+have a cow worth thirty dirhams; take her to the market and sell her for
+that sum. I have some thread, which I will dispose of to-day, and I
+warrant you that between us both we shall manage very well." The man at
+once drove the cow to the market, and gave her over for sale to the
+appraiser of cattle. The salesman showed her to the bystanders, directed
+their attention to all her good points, expatiated on all her good
+qualities, and, in short, passed her off as a cow of inestimable value.
+To all this the simpleton listened with delight and astonishment; he
+heard his cow praised for qualities that no other cow ever possessed,
+and determined in his own mind not to lose so rare a bargain, but
+purchase her himself and balk the chapmen. He therefore called out to
+the appraiser, and asked him what she was going at. The salesman
+replied, "At fifteen dirhams and upwards." "By the head of the Prophet,"
+exclaimed the wittol, "had I known that my cow was such a prodigy of
+excellence, you should not have caught me in the market with her for
+sale." Now it happened that he had just fifteen dirhams, and no more,
+and these he thrust upon the broker, exclaiming, "The cow is mine; I
+have the best claim to her." He then seized the cow and drove her home,
+exulting all the way as if he had found a treasure. On reaching home he
+inquired eagerly for his wife, to inform her of his adventure, but was
+told she was not returned from market. He waited impatiently for her
+return, when he sprang up to meet her, crying, "Wife, I have done
+something to-day that will astonish you. I have performed a marvellous
+exploit!" "Patience!" says his wife. "Perhaps I have done something
+myself to match it. But hear my story, and then talk of cleverness, if
+you please." The husband desired her to proceed.
+
+"When I went to market," says she, "I found a man in want of thread. I
+showed him mine, which he approved of, and having bargained for it, he
+agreed to pay me according to the weight. I told him it weighed so much,
+which he seemed to discredit, and weighed it himself. Observing it to
+fall short of the weight I had mentioned, and fearing I should lose the
+price I at first expected, I requested him to weigh it over again, and
+make certain. In the meantime, taking an opportunity unobserved, I
+stripped off my silver bracelets and put them slily into the scale with
+my thread. The scale, of course, now preponderated, and I received the
+full price I had demanded." Having finished her story, she cried out,
+"Now, what do you think of your wife?" "Amazing! amazing!" said he.
+"Your capacity is supernatural. And now, if you please, I will give you
+a specimen of mine," and he related his adventure at the market. "O
+husband," she exclaimed when he had told his story, "had we not
+possessed such consummate wisdom and address, how could we have
+contrived means to repair our old house? In future vex not yourself
+about domestic concerns, since by the exercise of our talents we need
+never want for anything!"
+
+The exploits of that precious pair may be compared with the following:
+An alewife went to the market with a brood of chickens and an old black
+hen. For the hen and one chicken she could not find a purchaser; so,
+before leaving the town, she called upon a surgeon, to try to effect a
+sale. He bought the chicken, but declined taking the hen. She then asked
+him if he would draw a tooth for it. The tooth was drawn, and he
+expressed his surprise on finding it was perfectly sound. "Oh," said
+she, "I knew it was sound; but it was worth while having it drawn for
+the old hen." She then called upon another surgeon, and had a second
+tooth drawn, as sound as the other. "What's to pay?" she inquired. "A
+shilling," said the surgeon. "Very well," rejoined the hostess, with a
+chuckle; "you left a shilling due in my house the other night, and now
+we are quits." "Certainly we are," responded the perplexed tooth-drawer,
+and the delighted old woman returned to her hostelry, to acquaint all
+her gossips of how cleverly she had outwitted the doctors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ferrier says, in his _Illustrations of Sterne_, that the facetious
+tales of the Sieur Gaulard laid the foundation of some of the jests in
+our old English collections. A few of them found their way somehow into
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_, and this is one: A monsieur chanced to
+meet a lady of his acquaintance, and asked her how she did and how her
+good husband fared, at which she wept, saying that her husband was in
+heaven. "In heaven!" quoth he. "It is the first time that I heard of it,
+and I am sorry for it with all my heart."
+
+Similar in its point is a story in _Archie Armstrong's Banquet of
+Jests_:[8] Sitting over a cup of ale in a winter night, two widows
+entered into discourse of their dead husbands, and after ripping up
+their good and bad qualities, saith one of them to the maid, "I prithee,
+wench, reach us another light, for my husband (God rest his soul!) above
+all things loved to see good lights about the house. God grant him light
+everlasting!" "And I pray you, neighbour," said the other, "let the maid
+lay on some more coals or stir up the fire, for my husband in his
+lifetime ever loved to see a good fire. God grant him fire everlasting!"
+
+This seems cousin-german to the Arabian story of two men, one of whom
+hailed from the town of Hama (ancient Hamath), the other from Hums
+(ancient Emessa). Those towns are not far apart, but the people of the
+former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the
+latter are proverbially as stupid. (And for the proper understanding of
+the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb _hama_
+means to "protect" or "defend," the verb _hamasa_ to "roast" or
+"toast.") These men had some business of importance with the nearest
+magistrate, and set out together on their journey. The man of Hums,
+conscious of his own ignorance, begged his companion to speak first in
+the audience, in order that he might get a hint as to how such a formal
+matter should be conducted. Accordingly, when they came into the pasha's
+presence, the man of Hama went forward, and the pasha asked him, "Where
+are you from?" "Your servant is from Hama," said he. "May Allah PROTECT
+(_hama_) your excellency!" The pasha then turned to the other man,
+and asked, "And where are you from?" to which he answered, "Your servant
+is from Hums. May Allah ROAST _(hamasa)_ your excellency!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not a few of the _Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard are the
+prototypes of bulls and foolish sayings of the typical Irishman, which
+go their ceaseless round in popular periodicals, and are even
+audaciously reproduced as original in our "comic" journals--save the
+mark! To cite some examples:
+
+A friend one day told M. Gaulard that the Dean of Besan�on was dead.
+"Believe it not," said he; "for had it been so he would have told me
+himself, since he writes to me about everything."
+
+M. Gaulard asked his secretary one evening what hour it was. "Sir,"
+replied the secretary, "I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun
+is set." "Well," quoth M. Gaulard, "and can you not see by the candle?"
+
+On another occasion the Sieur called from his bed to a servant desiring
+him to see if it was daylight yet. "There is no sign of daylight," said
+the servant. "I do not wonder," rejoined the Sieur, "that thou canst not
+see day, great fool as thou art. Take a candle and look with it out at
+the window, and thou shalt see whether it be day or not."
+
+In a strange house, the Sieur found the walls of his bedchamber full of
+great holes. "This," exclaimed he in a rage, "is the cursedest chamber
+in all the world. One may see day all the night through."
+
+Travelling in the country, his man, to gain the fairest way, rode
+through a field sowed with pease, upon which M. Gaulard cried to him,
+"Thou knave, wilt thou burn my horse's feet? Dost thou not know that
+about six weeks ago I burned my mouth with eating pease, they were so
+hot?"
+
+A poor man complained to him that he had had a horse stolen from him.
+"Why did you not mark his visage," asked M. Gaulard, "and the clothes he
+wore?" "Sir," said the man, "I was not there when he was stolen." Quoth
+the Sieur, "You should have left somebody to ask him his name, and in
+what place he resided."
+
+M. Gaulard felt the sun so hot in the midst of a field at noontide in
+August that he asked of those about him, "What means the sun to be so
+hot? How should it not keep its heat till winter, when it is cold
+weather?"
+
+A proctor, discoursing with M. Gaulard, told him that a dumb, deaf, or
+blind man could not make a will but with certain additional forms. "I
+pray you," said the Sieur, "give me that in writing, that I may send it
+to a cousin of mine who is lame."
+
+One day a friend visited the Sieur and found him asleep in his chair. "I
+slept," said he, "only to avoid idleness; for I must always be doing
+something."
+
+The Abb� of Poupet complained to him that the moles had spoiled a fine
+meadow, and he could find no remedy for them. "Why, cousin," said M.
+Gaulard, "it is but paving your meadow, and the moles will no more
+trouble you."
+
+M. Gaulard had a lackey belonging to Auvergne, who robbed him of twelve
+crowns and ran away, at which he was very angry, and said he would have
+nothing that came from that country. So he ordered all that was from
+Auvergne to be cast out of the house, even his mule; and to make the
+animal more ashamed, he caused his servants to take off its shoes and
+its saddle and bridle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Although Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ is the most "original" of our old
+English jest-books--that is to say, it contains very few stories in
+common with preceding collections--yet some of the diverting tales he
+relates are traceable to very distant sources, more especially the
+following:
+
+A country fellow (that had not walked much in streets that were paved)
+came to London, where a dog came suddenly out of a house, and furiously
+ran at him. The fellow stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the dog,
+and finding them all fast rammed or paved in the ground, quoth he, "What
+a strange country am I in, where the people tie up the stones and let
+the dogs loose!"
+
+Three centuries and a half before the Water Poet heard this exquisitely
+humorous story, the great Persian poet Sa'd� related it in his
+_Gulist�n_ (or Rose-garden), which was written A.D. 1278:
+
+A poor poet presented himself before the chief of a gang of robbers, and
+recited some verses in his praise. The robber-chief, however, instead of
+rewarding him, as he fondly expected, ordered him to be stripped of his
+clothes and expelled from the village. The dogs attacking him in the
+rear, the unlucky bard stooped to pick up a stone to throw at them, and
+finding the stones frozen in the ground, he exclaimed, "What a vile set
+of men are these, who set loose the dogs and fasten the stones!"
+
+Now here we have a very curious instance of the migration of a popular
+tale from Persia--perchance it first set out on its travels from India
+--in the thirteenth century, when grave and reverend seigniors wagged
+their beards and shook their portly sides at its recital, to London in
+the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed "the wisest fool
+in Christendom"!), when Taylor, the Water Poet, probably heard it told,
+in some river-side tavern, amidst the clinking of beer-cans and the
+fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado, and "put it in his book!"
+How it came into England it would be interesting to ascertain. It may
+have been brought to Europe by the Venetian merchants, who traded
+largely in the Levant and with the Moors in Northern Africa.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_, Second Series, p.
+626.
+
+[2] _Dictionary of Kashm�r� Proverbs and Sayings_. Explained and
+illustrated from the rich and interesting folk-lore of the Valley. By
+the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles. Bombay: 1885.
+
+[3] This work was composed A.H. 776 (A.D. 1374-5), as the anonymous
+author takes care to inform us in his opening verses.
+
+[4] A still older form of the story occurs in the _Pancha Tantra_
+(Five Sections), a Sanskrit version of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai,
+in which a gluttonous ram is in the habit of going to the king's kitchen
+and devouring all food within his reach. One of the cooks beat him with
+a burning log of wood, and the ram rushed off with his blazing fleece
+and set the horses' stables on fire, and so forth. The story is most
+probably of Buddhist extraction.
+
+[5]  A Sinhalese variant of the exploit of the man of Norfolk and of the
+man of Gotham with the sack of meal. "See _ante_, p. 19." [Transcriber's
+note: this approximates to the text reference for Chapter II
+Footnote 1 in this etext.]
+
+[6]  Mr. C.J.R. le Mesurier in _The Orientalist_ (Kandy, Ceylon:
+1884), pp. 233-4.
+
+[7] _The Orientalist_, 1884, p. 234. A much fuller version, with
+subsequent incidents, is given in the same excellent periodical, pp.
+36-38.
+
+[8] Archie Armstrong was Court jester to James I. of England. It is
+needless, perhaps, to say that he had no hand in this book of faceti�,
+which is composed for the most part of jests taken out of earlier
+collections.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES _(continued)._
+
+
+Tales of sharpers' tricks upon simpletons do not quite fall within the
+scope of the present series of papers, but there is one, in the
+_Arabian Nights_--not found, however, in our common English version
+of that fascinating story-book--which deserves a place among
+noodle-stories, since it is so diverting, is not very generally known,
+and is probably the original of the early Italian novel of the _Monk
+Transformed_, which is ascribed to Michele Colombo:
+
+A rustic simpleton was walking homeward dragging his ass after him by
+the halter, which a brace of sharpers observing, one said to his fellow,
+"Come with me, and I will take the ass from that man." He then quietly
+advanced to the ass, unloosed it from the halter, and gave the animal to
+his companion, who went off with it, after which he put the halter over
+his own head, and allowed the rustic to drag him for some little
+distance, until he with the ass was fairly out of sight, when he
+suddenly stopped, and the man having tugged at the halter several times
+without effect, looked round, and, amazed to see a human being in place
+of his beast, exclaimed, "Who art thou?" The sharper answered, "I was
+thy ass; but hear my story, for it is wonderful. I had a good and pious
+mother, and one day I came home intoxicated. Grieved to see me in such a
+state, she gently reproved me, but I, instead of being penetrated with
+remorse, beat her with a stick, whereupon she prayed to Allah, and, in
+answer to her supplication, lo! I was transformed into an ass. In that
+shape I have continued until this day, when my mother, as it appears,
+has interceded for my restoration to human form, as before." The
+simpleton, believing every word of this strange story, raised his eyes
+to heaven, saying, "Of a truth there is no power but from Allah! But,
+pray, forgive me for having used thee as I have done." The sharper
+readily granted his forgiveness, and went off to rejoin his companion
+and dispose of the ass; while the simpleton returned home, and showing
+his wife the bridle, told her of the marvellous transformation which had
+occurred. His wife, in hopes of propitiating Heaven, gave alms and
+offered up many prayers to avert evil from them, on account of their
+having used a human being as an ass. At length the simpleton, having
+remained idle at home for some time, went one day to the market to
+purchase another ass, and on entering the place where all the animals
+were fastened, he saw with astonishment his old ass offered for sale.
+Putting his mouth to its ear, he whispered, "Woe to thee, unlucky!
+Doubtless thou hast again been intoxicated; but, by Allah, I will never
+buy thee!"
+
+Another noodle-story, of a different class, in the _Arabian
+Nights_, may be here cited in full from Sir R.F. Burton's
+translation of that delightful work, privately printed for the
+subscribers, and it will serve, moreover, as a fair specimen of the
+admirable manner in which that ripe scholar has represented in English
+the quaint style of his original:
+
+[Quoth one of the learned,] I passed once by a school wherein a
+schoolmaster was teaching children; so I entered, finding him a
+good-looking man, and a well-dressed, when he rose to me and made me sit
+with him. Then I examined him in the Koran, and in syntax and prosody,
+and lexicography; and behold, he was perfect in all required of him; and
+I said to him, "Allah strengthen thy purpose! Thou art indeed versed in
+all that is requisite." Thereafter I frequented him a while, discovering
+daily some new excellence in him, and quoth I to myself, "This is indeed
+a wonder in any dominie; for the wise are agreed upon a lack of wit in
+children's teachers."[1] Then I separated myself from him, and sought
+him and visited him only every few days, till coming to see him one day,
+as of wont, I found the school shut, and made inquiry of his neighbours,
+who replied, "Some one is dead in his house." So I said in my mind, "It
+behoveth me to pay him a visit of condolence," and going to his house,
+knocked at the door, when a slave-girl came out to me and asked, "What
+dost thou want?" and I answered, "I want thy master." She replied, "He
+is sitting alone mourning;" and I rejoined, "Tell him that his friend
+So-and-so seeketh to console him." She went in and told him; and he
+said, "Admit him." So she brought me in to him, and I found him seated
+alone, and his head bound with mourning fillets. So I said to him,
+"Allah requite thee amply! This is a path all must perforce tread, and
+it behoveth thee to take patience," adding, "but who is dead unto thee?"
+He answered, "One who was dearest of the folk to me, and best beloved."
+"Perhaps thy father?" "No." "Thy brother?" "No." "One of thy kindred?"
+"No." Then asked I, "What relation was the dead to thee?" and he
+answered, "My lover." Quoth I to myself, "This is the first proof to
+swear by of his lack of wit." So I said to him, "Assuredly there be
+others than she, and fairer;" and he made answer, "I never saw her that
+I might judge whether or no there be others fairer than she." Quoth I to
+myself, "This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, "And how
+couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied,
+"Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo! there passed
+by a man, singing the following distich:
+
+  "'Umm Amr', thy boons Allah repay!
+  Give back my heart, be't where it may!'"
+
+The schoolmaster continued, "When I heard the man humming these words as
+he passed along the street, I said to myself, 'Except this Umm Amru were
+without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and
+canzon.' So I fell in love with her; but two days after, the same man
+passed, singing the following couplet:
+
+  "'Ass and Umm Amr' went their way,
+  Nor she nor ass returned for aye.'
+
+Thereupon I knew that she was dead, and mourned for her. This was three
+days ago, and I have been mourning ever since." So I left him and fared
+forth, having assured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinder's
+wit[2].
+
+Here, surely, was the very Father of Folly, but what shall we say of
+judges and magistrates being sometimes (represented as) equally witless?
+Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish K�z�, that two
+men came before him one of whom complained that the other had almost bit
+his ear off. The accused denied this, and declared that the fellow had
+bit his own ear. After pondering the matter for some time, the judge
+told them to come again two hours later. Then he went into his private
+room, and attempted to bring his ear and his mouth together; but all he
+did was to fall backwards and break his head. Wrapping a cloth round his
+head, he returned to court, and the two men coming in again presently,
+he thus decided the question: "No man can bite his own ear, but in
+trying to do so he may fall down and break his head."
+
+A Sinhalese story, which is also well known in various forms in India,
+furnishes a still more remarkable example of forensic sagacity. It is
+thus related by the able editor of _The Orientalist_, vol. i., p.
+191:
+
+One night some thieves broke into the house of a rich man, and carried
+away all his valuables. The man complained to the justice of the peace,
+who had the robbers captured, and when brought before him, inquired of
+them whether they had anything to say in their defence. "Sir," said
+they, "we are not to blame in this matter; the robbery was entirely due
+to the mason who built the house; for the walls were so badly made, and
+gave way so easily, that we were quite unable to resist the temptation
+of breaking in." Orders were then given to bring the mason to the
+court-house. On his arrival he was informed of the charge brought
+against him. "Ah," said he, "the fault is not mine, but that of the
+coolie, who made mortar badly." When the coolie was brought, he laid the
+blame on the potter, who, he said, had sold him a cracked chattie, in
+which he could not carry sufficient water to mix the mortar properly.
+Then the potter was brought before the judge, and he explained that the
+blame should not be laid upon him, but upon a very pretty woman, who, in
+a beautiful dress, was passing at the time he was making the chattie,
+and had so riveted his attention, that he forgot all about the work.
+When the woman appeared, she protested that the fault was not hers, for
+she would not have been in that neighbourhood at all had the goldsmith
+sent home her earrings at the proper time; the charge, she argued,
+should properly be brought against him. The goldsmith was brought, and
+as he was unable to offer any reasonable excuse, he was condemned to be
+hanged. Those in the court, however, begged the judge to spare the
+goldsmith's life; "for," said they, "he is very sick and ill-favoured,
+and would not make at all a pretty spectacle." "But," said the judge,
+"somebody must be hanged." Then they drew the attention of the court to
+the fact that there was a fat Moorman in a shop opposite, who was a much
+fitter subject for an execution, and asked that he might be hanged in
+the goldsmith's stead. The learned judge, considering that this
+arrangement would be very satisfactory, gave judgment accordingly.
+
+If some of the last-cited stories are not precisely Gothamite
+drolleries, though all are droll enough in their way, there can be no
+doubt whatever that we have a Sinhalese brother to the men of Gotham in
+the following: A villager in Ceylon, whose calf had got its head into a
+pot and could not get it out again, sent for a friend, celebrated for
+his wisdom, to release the poor animal. The sagacious friend, taking in
+the situation at a glance, cut off the calf's head, broke the pot, and
+then delivered the head to the owner of the calf, saying, "What will you
+do when I am dead and gone?"--And we have another Gothamite in the
+Kashm�r� who bought as much rice as he thought would suffice for a
+year's food, and finding he had only enough for eleven months, concluded
+it was better to fast the other month right off, which he did
+accordingly; but he died just before the month was completed, leaving
+eleven months' rice in his house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The typical noodle of the Turks, the Khoja Nasru-'d-D�n, is said to have
+been a subject of the independent prince of Karaman, at whose capital,
+Konya, he resided, and he is represented as a contemporary of Tim�r
+(Tamerlane), in the middle of the fourteenth century. The pleasantries
+which are ascribed to him are for the most part common to all countries,
+but some are probably of genuine Turkish origin. To cite a few
+specimens: The Khoja's wife said to him one day, "Make me a present of a
+kerchief of red Yemen silk, to put on my head." The Khoja stretched out
+his arms and said, "Like that? Is that large enough?" On her replying in
+the affirmative he ran off to the bazaar, with his arms still stretched
+out, and meeting a man on the road, he bawled to him, "Look where you
+are going, O man, or you will cause me to lose my measure!"
+
+Another day the Khoja's wife washed his caftan and spread it upon a tree
+in the garden of the house. That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he
+sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. "Give
+me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he
+shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into
+the house. Next morning, when he discovered that it was his own caftan
+he had shot at, he exclaimed, "By Allah, had I happened to be in it, I
+should have killed myself!"
+
+The Ettrick Shepherd's well-known story of the two Highlanders and the
+wild boar has its exact parallel in the Turkish jest-book, as follows:
+One day the Khoja went with his friend Sheragh Ahmed to the den of a
+wolf, in order to take the cubs. Said the Khoja to Ahmed, "Do you go in,
+and I will watch without;" and Ahmed went in, to take the cubs in the
+absence of the old wolf. But she came back presently, and had got
+half-way into her den when the Khoja seized hold of her tail. The wolf
+in her struggles cast up a great dust into the eyes of Ahmed, who called
+out to the Khoja, "Hallo! what does all this dust mean?" The Khoja
+replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks, you will soon know what the dust
+means!"
+
+Several of the jests closely resemble "Joe Millers" told of Irishmen,
+such as this: It happened one night, after the Khoja and a guest had
+lain down to sleep, that the taper went out. "O Khoja Effendi," said the
+guest, "the taper is gone out. But there is a taper at your right side.
+Pray bring it and let us light it." Quoth the Khoja, "You must surely be
+a fool to think that I should know my right hand in the dark." And this:
+A thief having stolen a piece of salted cheese from the Khoja, he ran
+immediately and seated himself on the border of a fountain. Said the
+people to him, "O Khoja, what have you come here to look for in such a
+hurry?" The Khoja replied, "The thief will certainly come here to drink
+as soon as he has eaten my salted cheese; I always do so myself."
+
+And here is one of the Gothamite class: One evening the Khoja went to
+the well to draw water, and seeing the moon reflected in the water, he
+exclaimed, "The moon has fallen into the well; I must pull it out." So
+he let down the rope and hook, and the hook became fastened to a stone,
+whereupon he exerted all his strength, and the rope broke, and he fell
+upon his back. Looking into the sky, he saw the moon, and cried out
+joyfully, "Praise be to Allah! I am sorely bruised, but the moon has got
+into its place again."
+
+There is a well-worn jest of an Irishman who, being observed by a friend
+to look exceedingly blank and perplexed, was asked what ailed him. He
+replied that he had had a dream. "Was it a good or a bad dream?"
+"Faith," said he, "it was a little of both; but I'll tell ye. I dreamt
+that I was with the Pope, who was the finest gentleman in the whole
+district; and after we had conversed a while, his Holiness axed me,
+Would I drink? Thinks I to myself, 'Would a duck swim?' So, seeing the
+whisky and the lemons and the sugar on the side-board, I said, I didn't
+mind if I took a drop of punch. 'Cold or hot?' says his Holiness. 'Hot,
+your Holiness,' says I. So on that he steps down to the kitchen for the
+boiling water, but, bedad, before he came back, I woke straight up; and
+now it's distressing me that I didn't take it cold!"
+
+We have somewhat of a parallel to this in a Turkish jest: The Khoja
+dreamt that some one gave him nine pieces of money, but he was not
+content, and said, "Make it ten." Then he awoke and found his hands
+empty. Instantly closing his eyes again, and holding out his hand, he
+said, "I repent; give me the nine pieces[3]."
+
+But the Chinese relate the very counterpart of our Irishman's story. A
+confirmed drunkard dreamt that he had been presented with a cup of
+excellent wine, and set it by the fire to warm[4], that he should better
+enjoy the flavour of it; but just as he was about to drink off the
+delicious draught he awoke. "Fool that I am," he cried, "why was I not
+content to drink it cold?"[5]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chinese seem to have as keen a sense of humour as any other people.
+They tell a story, for instance, of a lady who had been recently
+married, and on the third day saw her husband returning home, so she
+slipped quietly behind him and gave him a hearty kiss. The husband was
+annoyed, and said she offended all propriety. "Pardon! pardon!" said
+she. "I did not know it was you." Thus the excuse may sometimes be worse
+than the offence. There is exquisite humour in the following
+noodle-story: Two brothers were tilling the ground together. The elder,
+having prepared dinner, called his brother, who replied in a loud voice,
+"Wait till I have hidden my spade, and I shall at once be with you."
+When he joined his elder brother, the latter mildly reproached him,
+saying, "When one hides anything, one should keep silence, or at least
+should not cry aloud about it, for it lays one open to be robbed."
+Dinner over, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his
+spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and
+_whispered_ mysteriously in his ear, "My spade is stolen!"--The
+passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed: A man who was
+fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false,
+expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the
+lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor
+Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he
+carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in
+the streets, "Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Ta�-Koung."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest
+extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the _J�takas_,
+or Buddhist Birth-stories. Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad
+men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes
+when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to _J�taka_
+44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon
+the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every
+one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and
+injured one another. And nothing more foolish is recorded of the
+Schildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his _Kath� Sarit S�gara_,
+of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees: Being required to furnish
+the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was
+very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself,
+they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and
+having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up
+and planted them again, thinking they would grow.
+
+In illustration of the apothegm that "fools who attend only to the words
+of an order, and do not understand the meaning, cause much detriment,"
+is the story of the servants who kept the rain off the trunks: The camel
+of a merchant gave way under its load on a journey. He said to his
+servants, "I will go and buy another camel to carry the half of this
+camel's load. And you must remain here, and take particular care that if
+it clouds over the rain does not wet the leather of these trunks, which
+are full of clothes." With these words the merchant left the servants by
+the side of the camel and went off, and suddenly a cloud came up and
+began to discharge rain. Then the fools said, "Our master told us to
+take care that the rain did not touch the leather of the trunks;" and
+after they had made this sage reflection they dragged the clothes out of
+the trunks and wrapped them round the leather. The consequence was that
+the rain spoiled the clothes. Then the merchant returned, and in a rage
+said to his servants, "You rascals! Talk of water! Why, the whole stock
+of clothes is spoiled by the rain!" And they answered him, "You told us
+to keep the rain off the leather of the trunks. What fault have we
+committed?" He answered, "I told you that if the leather got wet the
+clothes would be spoiled. I told you so in order to save the clothes,
+not the leather."
+
+The story of the servant who looked after the door is a farther
+illustration of the same maxim. A merchant said to his foolish servant,
+"Take care of the door of my shop; I am going home for a short time."
+After his master was gone, the fool took the shop-door on his shoulder
+and went off to see an actor perform. As he was returning his master met
+him, and gave him a scolding, and he answered, "I have taken care of
+this door, as you told me."
+
+This jest had found its way into Europe three centuries ago. It is
+related of Giufa, the typical Sicilian booby, and probably came to
+England from Italy. This is how it is told in the _Sacke Full of
+Newes_, a jest-book originally printed in the sixteenth century: "In
+the countrey dwelt a Gentlewoman who had a French man dwelling with her,
+and he did ever use to go to Church with her; and upon a time he and his
+mistresse were going to church, and she bad him pull the doore after him
+and follow her to the church; and so he took the doore betweene his
+armes, and lifted it from the hooks, and followed his mistresse with it.
+But when she looked behinde her and saw him bring the doore upon his
+back, 'Why, thou foolish knave,' qd she, 'what wilt thou do with the
+door?' 'Marry, mistresse,' qd he, 'you bad me pull the doore after me.'
+'Why, fool,' qd she, 'I did command thee that thou shouldest make fast
+the doore after thee, and not bring it upon thy back after me.' But
+after this there was much good sport and laughing at his simplicity and
+foolishnesse therein."
+
+In the capacity of a merchant the simpleton does very wonderful things,
+and plumes himself on his sagacity, as we have already seen in the case
+of the Arab and his cow. And here are a brace of similar stories: A
+foolish man once went to the island of Kat�ha to trade, and among his
+wares was a quantity of fragrant aloes-wood. After he had sold his other
+goods, he could not find any one to take the aloes-wood off his hands,
+for the people who live there are not acquainted with that article of
+commerce. Then seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, he burnt
+his stock of aloes-wood and reduced it to charcoal. He sold it for the
+price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his
+cleverness, and became the laughing-stock of everybody.--Another
+blockhead went to the market to sell cotton, but no one would buy it
+from him, because it was not properly cleaned. In the meanwhile he saw
+in the bazaar a goldsmith selling gold which he had purified by heating
+it, and he saw it taken by a customer. Seeing that, he threw his cotton
+into the fire in order to purify it, and it was all burned to ashes.
+
+ There must be few who have not heard of the Irishman who was hired by a
+Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship. As the vessel was about to
+sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, "Captain, I lost your shovel
+overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern,
+just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back."--A
+similar story is told of an Indian simpleton. He was sailing in a ship
+when he let a silver cup fall from his hand into the water. Having taken
+notes of the spot by observing the eddies and other signs in the water,
+he said to himself, "I will bring it up from the bottom when I return."
+As he was recrossing the sea, he saw the eddies and other signs, and
+thinking he recognised the spot, he plunged into the water again and
+again, to recover his cup, but he only got well laughed at for his
+pains.
+
+We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that "distress is sure to
+come from being in the company of fools" in the following, from the
+Canarese story-book entitled _Kath� Manjari_: A foolish fellow
+travelled with a shopkeeper. When it became dark, the fool lay down in
+the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree.
+Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet
+against the fool's legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions,
+"What is this? Is it a piece of wood?" The fool was angry, and said, "Go
+away! go away! Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the
+loins of a plank in your house?" The thieves then seized him, and took
+away his annas. As they were moving off, they asked if the money was
+good or bad, to which the noodle replied, "Ha! ha! is it of my money you
+speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad? Look--
+there is a shopkeeper in that tree," pointing with his finger--"show it
+to him." Then the thieves went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of
+two hundred pagodas.
+
+In our next story, of the villagers who ate the buffalo, is exemplified
+the fact that "fools, in the conceit of their folly, while they deny
+what need not be denied, reveal what it is their interest to suppress,
+in order to get themselves believed." Some villagers took a buffalo
+belonging to a certain man, and killed it in an enclosure outside the
+village, under a banyan tree, and dividing the flesh, ate it up. The
+owner of the buffalo went and complained to the king, and he had the
+villagers who had eaten the animal brought before him. The proprietor of
+the buffalo said before the king, in their presence, "These men took my
+buffalo under a banyan tree near the tank, and killed and ate it before
+my eyes," whereupon an old fool among the villagers said, "There is no
+tank or banyan tree in our village. He says what is not true; where did
+we kill his buffalo or eat it?" When the man heard this, he replied,
+"What! are there not a banyan tree and a tank on the east side of the
+village? Moreover, you ate my buffalo on the eighth day of the lunar
+month." The old fool then said, "There is no east side or eighth day in
+our village." On hearing this, the king laughed, and said, to encourage
+the fool, "You are a truthful person; you never say anything false; so
+tell me the truth: did you eat that buffalo, or did you not?" The old
+fool answered, "I was born three years after my father died, and he
+taught me skill in speaking. So I never say what is untrue, my king. It
+is true that we ate his buffalo, but all the rest that he alleges is
+false." When the king heard this, he and his courtiers could not
+restrain their laughter; but he restored the price of the buffalo to the
+man, and fined the villagers.
+
+But sometimes even kings have been arrant noodles, and their credulity
+quite as amusing--or amazing--as that of their subjects. Once on a time
+there was a king who had a handsome daughter, and he summoned his
+physicians, and said to them, "Make some preparation of salutary drugs,
+which will cause my daughter to grow up quickly, so that she may be
+married to a good husband." The physicians, wishing to get a living out
+of this royal fool, replied, "There is a medicine which will do this,
+but it can only be procured in a distant country; and while we are
+sending for it, we must shut up your daughter in concealment, for this
+is the treatment laid down in such cases." The king having consented,
+they placed his daughter in concealment for several years, pretending
+that they were engaged in procuring the medicine; and when she was grown
+up, they presented her to the king, saying that she had been made to
+grow by the preparation; so the king was highly pleased, and gave them
+much wealth.
+
+Between an Indian r�j� and an Indian dhobie, or washerman, there is the
+greatest possible difference socially, but individually--when both are
+noodles--there may be sometimes very little to choose; indeed, of the
+two, all things considered, the difference, if any, is perhaps in favour
+of the humble cleanser of body-clothes. A favourite story in various
+parts of India, near akin to that last cited, is of a poor washerman and
+his young ass. This simpleton one day, passing a school kept by a
+mullah, or Muhammedan doctor of laws, heard him scolding his pupils,
+exclaiming that they were still asses, although he had done so much to
+make them men. The washerman thought that here was a rare chance, for he
+happened to have the foal of the ass that carried his bundles of
+clothes, which, since he had no child, he should get the learned mullah
+to change into a boy. Thus thinking, he goes next day to the mullah, and
+asks him to admit his foal into his school, in order that it should be
+changed into the human form and nature. The preceptor, seeing the poor
+fellow's simplicity, answered that the task was very laborious, and he
+must have a fee of a hundred rup�s. So the washerman went home, and soon
+returned leading his foal, which, with the money, he handed over to the
+teacher, who told him to come again on such a day and hour, when he
+should find that the change he desired had been effected. But the
+washerman was so impatient that he went to the teacher several times
+before the day appointed, and was informed that the foal was beginning
+to learn manners, that its ears were already become very much shorter,
+and, in short, that it was making satisfactory progress.
+
+It happened, when the day came on which he was to receive his young ass
+transformed into a fine, well-educated boy, the simpleton was kept busy
+with his customers' clothes, but on the day following he found time to
+go to the teacher, who told him it was most unfortunate he had not come
+at the appointed hour, since the youth had quitted the school yesterday,
+refusing to submit any longer to authority; but the teacher had just
+learned that he had been made k�z� (or judge) in Cawnpore. At first the
+washerman was disposed to be angry, but reflecting that, after all, the
+business was better even than he anticipated, he thanked the preceptor
+for all his care and trouble, and returned home. Having informed his
+wife of his good luck, they resolved to visit their quondam young foal,
+and get him to make them some allowance out of his now ample means. So,
+shutting up their house, they travelled to Cawnpore, which they reached
+in safety. Being directed to the k�z�'s court, the washerman, leaving
+his wife outside, entered, and discovered the k�z� seated in great
+dignity, and before him were the pleaders, litigants, and officers of
+the court. He had brought a bridle in one hand and a wisp of hay in the
+other; but being unable, on account of the crowd, to approach the k�z�,
+he got tired of waiting, so, holding up the bridle and the hay, he cried
+out, "Khoor! khoor! khoor!" as he used to do in calling his donkeys,
+thinking this would induce the k�z� to come to him. But, instead of
+this, he was seized by the k�z�'s order and locked up for creating a
+disturbance.
+
+When the business of the court was over, the k�z�, pitying the supposed
+madman, sent for him to learn the reason of his strange behaviour, and
+in answer to his inquiries the simpleton said, "You don't seem to know
+me, sir, nor recognise this bridle, which has been in your mouth so
+often. You appear to forget that you are the foal of one of my asses,
+that I got changed into a man, for the fee of a hundred rupis, by a
+learned mullah who transforms asses into educated men. You forget what
+you were, and, I suppose, will be as little submissive to me as you were
+to the mullah when you ran away from him." All present were convulsed
+with laughter: such a "case" was never heard of before. But the k�z�,
+seeing how the mullah had taken advantage of the poor fellow's
+simplicity, gave him a present of a hundred rupis, besides sufficient
+for the expenses of his journey home, and so dismissed him.
+
+ A party of rogues once found as great a blockhead in a rich Indian
+herdsman, to whom they said, "We have asked the daughter of a wealthy
+inhabitant of the town in marriage for you, and her father has promised
+to give her." He was much pleased to hear this, and gave them an ample
+reward for their trouble. After a few days they came again and told him
+that his marriage had taken place. Again he gave them rich presents for
+their good news. Some more days having passed, they said to him, "A son
+has been born to you," at which he was in ecstacies and gave them all
+his remaining wealth; but the next day, when he began to lament, saying,
+"I am longing to see my son," the people laughed at him on account of
+his having been cheated by the rogues, as if he had acquired the
+stupidity of cattle from having so much to do with them.
+
+It is not generally known that the incident which forms the subject of
+the droll Scotch song "The Barring of the Door," which also occurs in
+the _Nights_ of Straparola, is of Eastern origin. In an Arabian
+tale, a blockhead, having married his pretty cousin, gave the customary
+feast to their relations and friends. When the festivities were over, he
+conducted his guests to the door, and from absence of mind neglected to
+shut it before returning to his wife. "Dear cousin," said his wife to
+him when they were alone, "go and shut the street door." "It would be
+strange indeed," he replied, "if I did such a thing. Am I just made a
+bridegroom, clothed in silk, wearing a shawl and a dagger set with
+diamonds, and am I to go and shut the door? Why, my dear, you are crazy.
+Go and shut it yourself." "Oh, indeed!" exclaimed the wife. "Am I,
+young, robed in a dress, with lace and precious stones--am I to go and
+shut the street door? No, indeed! It is you who are become crazy, and
+not I. Come, let us make a bargain," she continued; "and let the first
+who speaks go and fasten the door." "Agreed," said the husband, and
+immediately he became mute, and the wife too was silent, while they both
+sat down, dressed as they were in their nuptial attire, looking at each
+other and seated on opposite sofas. Thus they remained for two hours.
+Some thieves happened to pass by, and seeing the door open, entered and
+laid hold of whatever came to their hands. The silent couple heard
+footsteps in the house, but opened not their mouths. The thieves came
+into the room and saw them seated motionless and apparently indifferent
+to all that might take place. They continued their pillage, therefore,
+collecting together everything valuable, and even dragging away the
+carpets from beneath them; they laid hands on the noodle and his wife,
+taking from their persons every article of jewellery, while they, in
+fear of losing the wager, said not a word. Having thus cleared the
+house, the thieves departed quietly, but the pair continued to sit,
+uttering not a syllable. Towards morning a police officer came past on
+his tour of inspection, and seeing the door open, walked in. After
+searching all the rooms and finding no person, he entered their
+apartment, and inquired the meaning of what he saw. Neither of them
+would condescend to reply. The officer became angry, and ordered their
+heads to be cut off. The executioner's sword was about to perform its
+office, when the wife cried out, "Sir, he is my husband. Do not kill
+him!" "Oh, oh," exclaimed the husband, overjoyed and clapping his hands,
+"you have lost the wager; go and shut the door." He then explained the
+whole affair to the police officer, who shrugged his shoulders and went
+away.[6]
+
+A party of noodles are substituted for the husband and wife in a Turkish
+version of the tale, in the _History of the Forty Vazirs. _ Some
+bang-eaters,[7] while out walking, found a sequin. They said, "Let us go
+to a cook, and buy food and eat." So they went and entered a cook's shop
+and said, "Master, give us a sequin's worth of food." The cook prepared
+all kinds of food, and loaded a porter with it; and the bang-eaters took
+him without the city, where there was a ruined tomb, which they entered
+and sat down in, and the porter deposited the food and went away. The
+bang-eaters began to partake of the food, when suddenly one of them
+said, "The door is open; do one of you shut it, else some other
+bang-eaters will come in and annoy us: even though they be friends, they
+will do the deeds of foes." One of them replied, "Go thou and shut the
+door," and they fell a-quarrelling. At length one said, "Come, let us
+agree that whichever of us speaks or laughs shall rise and fasten the
+door." They all agreed to this proposal, and left the food and sat quite
+still. Suddenly a great number of dogs came in; not one of the
+bang-eaters stirred or spoke, for if one spoke he would have to rise and
+shut the door, so they spoke not. The dogs made an end of the food, and
+ate it all up. Just then another dog leapt in from without, but no food
+remained. Now one of the bang-eaters had partaken of everything, and
+some of the food remained about his mouth and on his beard. That newly
+come dog licked up the particles of food that were on the bang-eater's
+breast, and while he was licking up those about his mouth, he took his
+lip for a piece of meat and bit it. The bang-eater did not stir, for he
+said within himself, "They will tell me to shut the door." But to ease
+his soul he cried, "Ough!" inwardly cursing the dog. When the other
+bang-eaters heard him make that noise, they said, "Rise, fasten the
+door." He replied, "After loss, attention! Now that the food is gone,
+and my lip is wounded, what is the use of shutting that door?" and
+crying, "Woe! alas!" they each went in a different direction.[8]
+
+A similar story is known in Kashmir: Five friends chanced to meet, and
+all having leisure, they decided to go to the bazaar and purchase a
+sheep's head, and have a great feast in the house of one of the party,
+each of whom subscribed four annas. The head was bought, but while they
+were returning to the house it was remembered that there was not any
+butter. On this one of the five proposed that the first of them that
+should break silence by speaking should go for the butter. Now it was no
+light matter to have to retrace one's steps back to the butter-shop, as
+the way was long and the day was very hot. So they all five kept strict
+silence. Pots were cleaned, the fire was prepared, and the head laid
+thereon. Now and then one would cough, and another would groan, but
+never a tongue uttered a word, though the fire was fast going out, and
+the head was getting burnt, owing to there being no fat or butter
+wherewith to grease the pot. Thus matters were when a policeman passed
+by, and, attracted by the smell of cooking, looked in at the window, and
+saw these five men perfectly silent and sitting around a burnt sheep's
+head. Not knowing the arrangement, he supposed that these men were
+either mad or were thieves, and so he inquired how they came there, and
+how they obtained the head. Not a word was uttered in reply. "Why are
+you squatting there in that stupid fashion?" shouted the policeman.
+Still no reply. Then the policeman, full of rage that these wretched men
+should thus mock at his authority, took them all off straight to the
+police inspectors office. On arrival the inspector asked them the reason
+of their strange behaviour, but he also got no reply. This rather tried
+the patience and temper of the man of authority, who was generally
+feared, and flattered, and bribed. So he ordered one of the five to be
+immediately flogged. The poor fool bore it bravely, and uttered never a
+sound; but when the blows repeatedly fell on the same wounded parts, he
+could endure no longer, and cried out, "Oh! oh! Why do you beat me?
+Enough, enough! Is it not enough that the sheep's head has been
+spoiled?"
+
+His four associates now cried out, "Go to the bazaar and fetch the
+butter."[9]
+
+There is quite as droll a version current among the people of Ceylon, to
+the following effect: A gentleman once had in his employment twenty-five
+idiots. In the old times it was customary with Sinhalese high families
+not to allow their servants to eat from plates, but every day they were
+supplied with plantain leaves, from which they took their food. After
+eating, they were accustomed to shape the leaf into the form of a cup
+and drink out of it. Now in this gentleman's house the duty of providing
+the leaves devolved upon the twenty-five idiots, who were scarcely fit
+for any other work. One day, when they had gone into the garden to cut
+the leaves, they spoke among themselves and said, "Why should we, every
+one of us, trouble ourselves to fetch plantain leaves, when one only
+could very easily do it? Let us therefore lie down on the ground and
+sleep like dead men, and let him who first utters a sound or opens his
+eyes undertake the work." It was no sooner said than done. The men lay
+in a heap like so many logs. At breakfast-time that day the hungry
+servants went to the kitchen for their rice, only to be disappointed. No
+leaves were forthcoming on which to distribute the food, and a complaint
+was made to the master that the twenty-five idiots had not returned to
+the house since they went out in the morning. Search was at once made,
+and they were found fast asleep in the garden. After vainly endeavouring
+to rouse them, the master concluded that they were dead, and ordered his
+servants to dig a deep hole and bury them. A grave was then dug, and the
+idiots were, one by one, thrown into it, but still there was no noise or
+motion on their part. At length, when they were all put into the grave,
+and were being covered up, a tool employed by one of the servants hit
+sharply by accident against the leg of one of the idiots, who then
+involuntarily moaned. Thereupon all the others exclaimed, "You were the
+first to utter a sound; therefore from henceforth you must take upon
+yourself the duty of providing the plantain leaves."[10]
+
+It has already been remarked that a literary Italian version of the
+Silent Couple is found in the _Nights_ of Straparola, but there are
+other variants orally current among the common people in different parts
+of Italy. This is one from Venice: There were once a husband and a wife.
+The former said one day to the latter, "Let us have some fritters." She
+replied, "What shall we do for a frying-pan?" "Go and borrow one from my
+godmother." "You go and get it; it is only a little way off." "Go
+yourself, and I will take it back when we are done with it." So she went
+and borrowed the pan, and when she returned said to her husband, "Here
+is the pan, but you must carry it back." So they cooked the fritters,
+and after they had eaten, the husband said, "Now let us go to work, both
+of us, and the one who speaks first shall carry back the pan." Then she
+began to spin, and he to draw his thread--for he was a shoemaker--and
+all the time keeping silence, except that when he drew his thread he
+said, "Leuler�! leuler�!" and she, spinning, answered, "Picic�! picic�!
+picici�!" And they said not another word. Now there happened to pass
+that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any
+shoemaker in that street. She said there was one near by, and took him
+to the house. The, soldier asked the shoemaker to come and cut his horse
+a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but "Leuler�!
+leuler�!" and his wife "Picic�! picic�! picici�!" Then the soldier said,
+"Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." The
+shoemaker only answered, "Leuler�! leuler�!" and his wife "Picic�!
+picic�! picici�!" Then the soldier began to grow angry, and seized his
+sword, and said to the shoemaker, "Either come and cut my horse a girth,
+or I will cut your head off." But to no purpose. The shoemaker did not
+wish to be the first one to speak, and only replied, "Leuler�! leuler�!"
+and his wife "Picic�! picic�! picici�!" Then the soldier got mad in good
+earnest, seized the shoemaker's head, and was going to cut it off. When
+his wile saw that, she cried out, "Ah, don't, for mercy's sake!" "Good!"
+exclaimed her husband, "good! Now you go and carry the pan back to my
+godmother, and I will go and cut the horse's girth."
+
+In a Sicilian version the man and wife fry some fish, and then set about
+their respective work--shoemaking and spinning--and the one who finishes
+first the piece of work begun is to eat the fish. While they are singing
+and whistling at their work, a friend comes along, who knocks at the
+door, but receives no answer. Then he enters and speaks to them, but
+still no reply. Finally, in anger, he sits down at the table, and eats
+up all the fish himself.[11]
+
+Thus, it will be observed, the droll incident which forms the subject of
+the old Scotch song of "The Barring of the Door" is of world-wide
+celebrity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gothamite stories appear to have been familiar throughout Europe during
+the later Middle Ages, if we may judge from a chapter of the _Gesta
+Romanorum_ in which the monkish compiler has curiously "moralised"
+the actions of three noodles:
+
+We read in the "Lives of the Fathers" that an angel showed to a certain
+holy man three men labouring under a triple fatuity. The first made a
+faggot of wood, and because it was too heavy for him to carry, he added
+to it more wood, hoping by such means to make it light.  The second drew
+water with great labour from a very deep well with a sieve, which he
+incessantly filled.  The third carried a beam in his chariot, and,
+wishing to enter his house, whereof the gate was so narrow and low that
+it would not admit him, he violently whipped his horse until they both
+fell together into a deep well. Having shown this to the holy man, the
+angel said, "What think you of these three men?" "That they are fools,"
+answered he. "Understand, however," returned the angel, "that they
+represent the sinners of this world. The first describes that kind of
+men who from day to day do add new sins to the old, because they cannot
+bear the weight of those which they already have. The second man
+represents those who do good, but do it sinfully, and therefore it is of
+no benefit. And the third person is he who would enter the kingdom of
+heaven with all his world of vanities, but is cast down into hell."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite class to
+conclude the present section. In M�lava there were two Br�hman brothers,
+and the wealth inherited from their father was left jointly between
+them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one
+having too little and one having too much, and they made a teacher
+learned in the Vedas arbitrator, and he said to them, "You must divide
+everything your father left into two halves, so that you may not quarrel
+about the inequality of the division." When the two fools heard this,
+they divided every single thing into two equal parts--house, beds, in
+fact, all their property, including their cattle. Henry Stephens (Henri
+Estienne), in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[12] relates
+some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his shins
+before the fire, and not having wit enough to go back from it, sent for
+masons to remove the chimney; of the fool who ate the doctor's
+prescription, because he was told to "take it;" of another wittol who,
+having seen one spit upon iron to try whether it was hot, did likewise
+with his porridge; and, best of all, he tells of a fellow who was hit on
+the back with a stone as he rode upon his mule, and cursed the animal
+for kicking him. This last exquisite jest has its analogue in that of
+the Irishman who was riding on an ass one fine day, when the beast, by
+kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet
+entangled in the stirrup, whereupon the rider dismounted, saying,
+"Faith, if you're going to get up, it's time I was getting down."
+
+The poet Ovid alludes to the story of Ino persuading the women of the
+country to roast the wheat before it was sown, which may have come to
+India through the Greeks, since we are told in the _Kath� Sarit
+S�gara_ of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds,
+and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quantity of roasted
+seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in
+Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, and is probably of Buddhistic
+origin. And an analogous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens
+hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to
+have been entertained from ancient times, and to be still prevalent in
+the East; the so-called jests of Hierokles are all at the expense of
+pedants; and the Turkish typical noodle is Khoja _(i.e.,_ Teacher)
+Nasru-'d-D�n, some of whose "witless devices" shall be cited presently.
+
+[2] _Elf Laylawa Layla_, or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a
+Night. Translated, with Introduction, Notes on the Manners and Customs
+of Moslem Men, and a Terminal Essay on the History of _The Nights_,
+by R.F. Burton. Vol. v.
+
+[3] The Khoja, however, was not such a fool as we might conclude from
+the foregoing examples of his sayings and doings; for, being asked one
+day what musical instrument he liked best, he answered, "I am very fond
+of the music of plates and saucepans."
+
+[4] In China wine is almost invariably taken hot, according to Davis, in
+his work on the Chinese.
+
+[5] This and the following specimens of Chinese stories of simpletons
+are from "Contes et Bon Mots extraits d'un livre chinois intitule
+_Siao li Siao_, traduit par M. Stanislas Julien," (_Journal
+Asiatique_, tom. iv., 1824).
+
+[6] In another Arabian version, the man desires his wife to moisten some
+stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an
+altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and
+moisten the bread.  A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds
+the couple dumb; he kisses the wife, but the man says nothing; he gives
+the man a blow, but still he says nothing; he has the man taken before
+the k�z�, but even yet he says nothing; the k�z� orders him to be
+hanged, and he is led off to execution, when the wife rushes up and
+cries out, "Oh, save my poor husband!"  "You wretch," says the man, "go
+home and moisten the bread!"
+
+[7]  Bang is a preparation of hemp and coarse opium.
+
+[8] From Mr. E.J.W. Gibb's translation of the _Forty Vazirs_
+(London: 1886).
+
+[9] Knowles' _Dictionary of Kashm�r� Proverbs and Sayings_, pp.
+197-8. The article bought by the five men is called a _hir_, which
+Mr. Knowles says "is the head of any animal used for food," and a
+_sheep's_ head were surely fitting food for such noodles. Mr.
+Knowles makes it appear that the whole affair of keeping silence was a
+mere jest, but we have before seen that it is decidedly meant for a
+noodle-story.
+
+[10] _The Orientalist_, 1884, p. 136.
+
+[11] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 284-5.
+
+[12] A separate work from the _Apologie pour Herodote_ Such was the
+exasperation of the French clerics at the bitter truths set forth in it,
+that the author had to flee the country. An English translation,
+entitled "_A World of Wonders;_ or, an introduction to a Treatise
+tovching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a
+Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,'" etc., was
+published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio.
+The _Apologie pour Herodote_ was printed at the Hague.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SILLY SON.
+
+
+Among the favourite jests of all peoples, from Iceland to Japan, from
+India to England, are the droll adventures and mishaps of the silly son,
+who contrives to muddle everything he is set to do. In vain does his
+poor mother try to direct him in "the way he should go": she gets him a
+wife, as a last resource; but a fool he is still, and a fool he will
+always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny chap-books
+and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how
+
+  Simple Simon went a-fishing
+    For to catch a whale,
+  But all the water he had got
+    Was in his mother's pail?
+
+an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still
+more celebrated prototypes:
+
+  Three men of Gotham
+  Went to sea in a bowl;
+  If the bowl had been stronger,
+  My tale had been longer.
+
+Then there is the prose history of _Simple Simon's Misfortunes; or,
+his Wife Marjory's Outrageous Cruelty_, which tells (1) of Simon's
+wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his
+roast-meat clothes (_i.e.,_ Sunday clothes) the very next morning
+after he was married; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a
+basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him
+look like a red herring; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was
+going to the mill to have it ground; (4) how Simon went to market with a
+basket of eggs, but broke them by the way: also how he was put into the
+stocks; (5) how Simon's wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money
+for the eggs; (6) how Simon lost his wife's pail and burnt the bottom of
+her kettle; (7) how Simon's wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but
+going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river: also how a
+ragman ran away with his clothes. No wonder if, after this crowning
+misfortune, poor Simon "drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as
+being weary of his life"!
+
+Again, we have _The Unfortunate Son; or, a Kind Wife is worth Gold,
+being full of Mirth and Pastime_, which commences thus:
+
+  There was a man but one son had,
+    And he was all his joy;
+  But still his fortune was but bad,
+    Though he was a pretty boy.
+
+  His father sent him forth one day
+    To feed a flock of sheep,
+  And half of them were stole away
+    While he lay down asleep!
+
+  Next day he went with one Tom Goff
+    To reap as he was seen,
+  When he did cut his fingers off,
+    The sickle was so keen!
+
+Another of the chap-book histories of noodles is that of _Simple John
+and his Twelve Misfortunes_, an imitation of _Simple Simon_; it
+was still popular amongst the rustics of Scotland fifty years ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The adventures of Silly Matt, the Norwegian counterpart of our typical
+English booby, as related in Asbjornson's collection of Norse
+folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular
+fictions:
+
+The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge
+across the river and take toll of every one who wished to go over it; so
+he sets to work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at
+one end--"at the receipt of custom." Three men come up with loads of
+hay, and Matt demands toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay.
+Next comes a pedlar, with all sorts of small wares in his pack, and Matt
+gets from him two needles. On his return home his mother asks him what
+he has got that day. "Hay and needles," says Matt. Well! and what had he
+done with the hay? "I put some of it in my mouth," quoth he, "and as it
+tasted like grass, I threw it into the river." She says he ought to have
+spread it on the byre-floor. "Very good," replies the dutiful Matt;
+"I'll remember that next time." And what had he done with the needles?
+He stuck them into the hay. "Ah," says the mother, "you should rather
+have stuck them in and out of your cap, and brought them home to me."
+Well! well! Matt will not forget to do so next time. The following day a
+man comes to the bridge with a sack of meal and gives Matt a pound of
+it; then comes a smith, who gives him a gimlet: the meal he spread on
+the byre-floor, and the gimlet he stuck in and out of his cap. His
+mother tells him he should have come home for a bucket to hold the meal,
+and the gimlet he should have put up his sleeve. Very good! Matt will
+not forget next time. Another day some men come to the bridge with kegs
+of brandy, of which Matt gets a pint, and pours it into his sleeve; next
+comes a man driving some goats and their young ones, and gives Matt a
+kid, which he treads down into a bucket. His mother says he should have
+led the goat home with a cord round its neck, and put the brandy in a
+pail. Next day he gets a pat of butter and drags it home with a string.
+After this his mother despairs of his improvement, till it occurs to her
+that he might not be such a noodle if he had a wife. So she bids him go
+and see whether he cannot find some lass who will take him for a
+husband. Should he meet any folk on his way, he ought to say to them,
+"God's peace!" Matt accordingly sets off in quest of a wife, and meets a
+she-wolf and her seven cubs. "God's peace!" says Matt, and then returns
+home. When his mother learns of this, she tells him he should have
+cried, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" Next day he goes off again, and
+meeting a bridal party, he cries, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" and goes
+back to his mother and acquaints her of this fresh adventure. "O you
+great silly!" says she; "you should have said, 'Ride happily, bride and
+bridegroom!'" Once more Matt sets out to seek a wife, and seeing on the
+road a bear taking a ride on a horse, he exclaims joyfully, "Ride
+happily, bride and bridegroom!" and then returns home. His mother, on
+hearing of this new piece of folly, tells him he should have cried, "To
+the devil with you!" Again he sets out, and meeting a funeral
+procession, he roars, "To the devil with you!" His mother says he should
+have cried, "May your poor soul have mercy!" and sends him off for the
+fifth time to look for a lass. On the road he sees some gipsies busy
+skinning a dead dog, upon which he piously exclaims, "May your poor soul
+have mercy!" His mother now goes herself to get him a wife, finds a lass
+that is willing to marry him, and invites her to dinner. She privately
+tells Matt how he should comport himself in the presence of his
+sweetheart; he should cast an eye at her now and then. Matt understands
+her instruction most literally: stealing into the sheepfold, he plucks
+out the eyes of all the sheep and goats, and puts them in his pocket.
+When he is seated beside his sweetheart, he casts a "sheep's eye" at
+her, which hits her on the nose.[1]
+
+This last incident, as we have seen, occurs in the _Tales of the Men
+of Gotham ("ante_, p. 41" in original. This section is to be found
+immediately after the reference to Chapter II, Footnote 9 in this
+e-text), and it is also found in a Venetian story (Bernoni,
+_Fiabe_, No. 11) entitled "The Fool," of which the following is the
+first part:
+
+Once upon a time there was a mother who had a son with little brains.
+One morning she said, "We must get up early, for we have to make bread."
+So they both rose early, and began to make bread. The mother made the
+loaves, but took no pains to make them the same size. Her son said to
+her finally, "How small you have made this loaf, mother." "Oh," said
+she, "it does not matter whether they are big or little, for the proverb
+says, 'Large and small, all must go to mass.'" "Good! good!" said her
+son. When the bread was made, instead of taking it to the baker's, the
+son took it to the church, for it was the hour for mass, saying, "My
+mother said that, 'large and small, all must go to mass.'" So he threw
+the loaves down in the middle of the church. Then he went home to his
+mother, and said, "I have done what you told me to do," "Good! Did you
+take the bread to the baker's?" "O mother, if you had seen how they all
+looked at me!" "You might also have cast an eye on them in return," said
+his mother. "Wait; wait. I will cast an eye at them too," he exclaimed,
+and went to the stable and cut out the eyes of all the animals, and
+putting them in a handkerchief, went to the church, and when any man or
+woman looked at him, he threw an eye at them.[2]
+
+Silly Matt has a brother in Russia, according to M. Leger's _Contes
+Populaires Slaves_, published at Paris in 1882: An old man and his
+wife had a son, who was about as great a noodle as could be. One day his
+mother said to him, "My son, thou shouldst go about among people, to get
+thyself sharpened and rubbed down a little." "Yes, mother," says he;
+"I'm off this moment." So he went to the village, and saw two men
+threshing pease. He ran up to them, and rubbed himself now on one and
+then on the other. "No nonsense!" cried the men. "Get away." But he
+continued to rub himself on them, till at last they would stand it no
+longer, and beat him with their flails so lustily that he could hardly
+crawl home. "What art thou crying about, child?" asked his mother. He
+related his misfortune. "Ah, my child," said she, "how silly thou art!
+Thou shouldst have said to them, 'God aid you, good men! Do you wish me
+to help you to thresh?' and then they would have given thee some pease
+for thy trouble, and we should have had them to cook and eat." On
+another occasion the noodle again went through the village, and met some
+people carrying a dead man. "May God aid you, good men!" he exclaimed.
+"Do you wish me to help you to thresh?" But he got himself well thrashed
+once more for this ill-timed speech. When he reached home, he howled,
+"They've felled me to the ground, beaten me, and plucked my beard and
+hair!" and told of his new mishap. "Ah, noodle!" said his mother, "thou
+shouldst have said, 'God give peace to his soul!' Thou shouldst have
+taken off thy bonnet, wept, and fallen upon thy knees. They would then
+have given thee meat and drink." Again he went to the village, and met a
+marriage procession. So he took off his bonnet, and cried with all his
+might, "God grant peace to his soul!" and then burst into tears. "What
+brute is this?" said the wedding company. "We laugh and amuse ourselves,
+and he laments as if he were at a funeral." So they leaped out of the
+carriages, and beat him soundly on the ribs. Home he returned, crying,
+"They've beaten me, thrashed me, and torn my beard and hair!" and
+related what had happened. "My son," said his mother, "thou shouldst
+have leaped and danced with them." The next time he went to the village
+he took his bagpipe under his arm. At the end of the street a cart-shed
+was on fire. The noodle ran to the spot, and began to play on his
+bagpipe and to dance and caper about, for which he was abused as before.
+Going back to his mother in tears, he told her how he had fared. "My
+son," said she, "thou shouldst have carried water and thrown it on the
+fire, like the other folks." Three days later, when his ribs were well
+again, the noodle went through the village once more, and seeing a man
+roasting a little pig, he seized a vessel of water, ran up with it, and
+threw the water on the fire. This time also he was beaten, and when he
+got home, and told his mother of his ill-luck, she resolved never again
+to allow him to go abroad; so he remains by the fireside, as great a
+fool as ever.
+
+ This species of noodle is also known in Japan. He is the hero of a
+farce entitled _Hone Kaha_, or Ribs and Skin, which has been done
+into English by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in his _Classical Poetry
+of the Japanese_. The rector of a Buddhist temple tells his curate
+that he feels he is now getting too old for the duties of his office,
+and means to resign the benefice in his favour. Before retiring to his
+private chamber, he desires the curate to let him know if any persons
+visit the temple, and bids him, should he be in want of information
+regarding any matter, to come to him. A parishioner calls to borrow an
+umbrella. The curate lends him a new one, and then goes to the rector
+and informs him of this visitor. "You have done wrong," says the rector.
+"You ought to have said that you should have been happy to comply with
+such a small request, but, unfortunately, the rector was walking out
+with it the other day, when, at a place where four roads meet, a sudden
+gust of wind blew the skin to one side and the ribs to another; we have
+tied the ribs and skin together in the middle, and hung it from the
+ceiling. Something like that," adds the rector, "something with an air
+of truth about it, is what you should have said." Next comes another
+parishioner, who wishes to borrow a horse. The curate replies with great
+politeness, "The request with which you honour me is a mere trifle, but
+the rector took it out with him a few days since, and coming to the
+junction of four cross roads, a gust of wind blew the ribs to one side
+and the skin to another, and we have tied them together, and hung them
+from the ceiling; so I fear it would not suit your purpose." "It is a
+horse I want," said the man. "Precisely--a horse: I am aware of it,"
+quoth the curate, and the man went off, not a little perplexed, after
+which the curate reports this new affair to the rector, who says it was
+to an umbrella, not to a horse, that such a story was applicable. Should
+any one come again to borrow a horse, he ought to say, "I much regret
+that I cannot comply with your request. The fact is, we lately turned
+him out to grass, and becoming frolicsome, he dislocated his thigh, and
+is now lying, covered with straw, in a corner of the stable." "Something
+like that," adds the rector, "something with an air of truth about it,
+is what you should say." A third parishioner comes to invite the rector
+and the curate to a feast at his house. "For myself," says the curate,
+"I promise to come; but I fear it will not be convenient for the rector
+to accompany me." "I presume then," says the man, "that he has some
+particular business on hand?" "No, not any particular business," answers
+the curate; "but the truth is, we lately turned him out to grass, and
+becoming frisky, he dislocated his thigh, and now lies in a corner of
+the stable, covered with straw." "I spoke of the rector," says the
+parishioner. "Yes, of the rector. I quite understand," responds the
+curate, very complaisantly, upon which the man goes away, not knowing
+what to make of such a strange account of the rector's condition. This
+last affair puts the rector into a fury, and he cuffs his intended
+successor, exclaiming, "When was I ever frisky, I should like to know?"
+
+ As great a jolterhead as any of the foregoing was the hero of a story
+in Cazotte's "Continuation" of the _Arabian Nights_, entitled
+"L'Imb�cille; ou, L'Histoire de Xailoun,"[3] This noodle's wife said to
+him one day, "Go and buy some pease, and don't forget that it is pease
+you are to buy; continually repeat 'Pease!' till you reach the
+market-place." So he went off, with "Pease! pease!" always in his mouth.
+He passed the corner of a street where a merchant who had pearls for
+sale was proclaiming his wares in a loud voice, saying, "In the name of
+the Prophet, pearls!" Xailoun's attention was at once attracted by the
+display of pearls, and at the same time he was occupied in retaining the
+lesson his wife had taught him, and putting his hand in the box of
+pearls, he cried out, "Pease! pease!" The merchant, supposing Xailoun
+played upon him and depreciated his pearls by wishing to make them pass
+for false ones, struck him a severe blow. "Why do you strike me?" said
+Xailoun. "Because you insult me," answered the merchant. "Do you suppose
+I am trying to deceive people?" "No," said the noodle. "But what must I
+say, then?" "If you will cry properly, say as I do, 'Pearls, in the name
+of the Prophet!'" He next passed by the shop of a merchant from whom
+some pearls had been stolen, and his manner of crying, "Pearls!" etc.,
+which was not nearly so loud as usual, appeared to the merchant very
+suspicious. "The man who has stolen my pearls," thought he, "has
+probably recognised me, and when he passes my shop lowers his voice in
+crying the goods." Upon this suspicion he ran after Xailoun, and
+stopping him, said, "Show me your pearls." The poor fool was in great
+confusion, and the merchant thought he had got the thief. The supposed
+seller of pearls was soon surrounded by a great crowd, and the merchant
+at last discovered that he was a perfect simpleton. "Why," said he, "do
+you cry that you sell pearls?" "What should I say, then?" asked Xailoun.
+"It is not true," said the merchant, not listening to him.  "It is not
+true," exclaimed the noodle. "Let me repeat, 'It is not true,' that I
+may not forget it;" and as he went on he kept crying, "It is not true."
+His way led him towards a place where a man was proclaiming, "In the
+name of the Prophet, lentils!" Xailoun, induced by curiosity, went up to
+the man, his mouth full of the last words he remembered, and putting his
+hand into the sack, cried, "It is not true." The sturdy villager gave
+him a blow that caused him to stagger, saying, "What d'ye mean by giving
+me the lie about my goods, which I both sowed and reaped myself?" Quoth
+the noodle, "I have only tried to say what I ought to say." "Well,
+then," rejoined the dealer, "you ought to say, as I do, 'Lentils, in the
+name of the Prophet!'" So our noodle at once took up this new cry, and
+proceeded on his way till he came to the bank of the river, where a
+fisherman had been casting his net for hours, and had frequently changed
+his place, without getting any fish. Xailoun, who was amused with every
+new thing he saw, began to follow the fisherman, and, that he should not
+forget his lesson, continued to repeat, "Lentils, in the name of the
+Prophet!" Suddenly the fisherman made a pretence of spreading his net,
+in order to wring and dry it, and having folded in his hand the rope to
+which it was fastened, he took hold of the simpleton and struck him some
+furious blows with it, saying, "Vile sorcerer! cease to curse my
+fishing." Xailoun struggled, and at length disengaged himself. "I am no
+sorcerer," said he. "Well, if you are not," answered the fisherman, "why
+do you cause me bad luck by your words every time I throw my net?" "I
+didn't mean to bring you bad luck," said the noodle. "I only repeat what
+I was told to repeat." The fisherman then concluded that some of his
+enemies, who wished to do him an ill turn without exposing themselves,
+had prevailed upon this poor fellow to come and curse his fishing, so he
+said, "I am sorry, brother, for having beaten you, but you were wrong to
+pronounce the words you did, thereby bringing bad luck to me, who never
+did you any harm." Quoth the simpleton, "I only tried to say the words
+my wife told me not to forget." "Do you know them?" "Yes." "Well, place
+yourself beside me, and each time I cast my net you must say, 'In the
+name of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!'"
+But Xailoun thought what his wife had said was not so long as that.
+"Oh, yes, it was," said the fisherman; "and take care you don't miss a
+single word, and I shall give you some of the fish to take home with
+you." That he might not forget, Xailoun repeated it very loud, but as
+'he was afraid of the cord whenever he saw the fisherman drawing in his
+net, he ran away as fast as he could, but still repeating, "In the name
+of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!" These
+words he pronounced in the midst of a crowd of people, through which the
+corpse of the k�z� (magistrate, or judge) was being carried to the
+burying ground, and the mullahs who surrounded the bier, scandalised by
+what they thought a horrible imprecation, exclaimed, "How darest thou,
+wicked wretch, thus blaspheme? Is it not enough that Death has taken one
+of the greatest men of Baghd�d?" The poor simpleton was skulking off in
+fear and trembling, when his sleeve was pulled by an aged slave, who
+told him that he ought to say, "May Allah preserve his body and save his
+soul!" So our noodle went on, repeating this new cry till he came to a
+street where a dead ass was being carted away. "May Allah preserve his
+body and save his soul!"' he exclaimed. "How he blasphemes!" said the
+folk, and they set upon him with their fists and sticks, and gave him a
+sound drubbing. At length he got clear of them, and by chance came to
+the house of his wife's mother, but he only ventured to stand at the
+door and peep within. He was recognised, however, and asked what he
+would have to eat--goat's flesh? rice? _pease?_ Yes, it was pease
+he wanted, and having got some, he hastened home, and after relating all
+his mishaps, informed his wife, that her sister was very sick. His wife,
+having prepared herself to go to her mother's house, tells the simpleton
+to rock the baby should it awake and cry; feed the hen that was sitting;
+if the ass was thirsty, give her to drink; shut the door, and take care
+not to go to sleep, lest robbers should come and plunder the house. The
+baby awakes, and Xailoun rocks it to sleep again; so far, well. The hen
+seems uneasy; he concludes she is troubled with insects, like himself.
+So he takes up the hen, and thinking the best way to kill the insects
+was to stick a pin into them, he unluckily kills the hen. This was a
+serious matter, and while he considers what he should do in the
+circumstances, the ass begins to bray. "Ah," says he, "I've no time to
+attend to you just now; but when I am on your back, you can carry me to
+the river." Then he opened the door and let out the ass and her colt.
+After this he sat down on the eggs, and took the baby in his arms. His
+wife returning, knocks at the door. "Let me in, you fool," she cries. "I
+can't, for I am nursing the baby and hatching the eggs." At length she
+contrived to force open the door, and running up to her idiot of a
+husband, fetched him a blow that caused him to crush all the
+half-hatched eggs. Luckily she had met the ass and her foal on the road,
+so the amount of mischief done by her stupid spouse in her absence was
+not so great, all things considered.[4]
+
+The misadventures of the Arabian idiot in his expedition to purchase
+pease present a close analogy to those of the typical English booby,
+only the latter end tragically:
+
+A woman sent her son one day to buy a sheep's head and pluck, and, lest
+he should forget his message, he kept bawling loudly as he went along,
+"Sheep's head and pluck! sheep's head and pluck!" In getting over a
+stile he fell and hurt himself, and forgot what he was sent for, so he
+stood a little to consider; and at last he thought he recollected it,
+and began to shout, "Liver and lights and gall and all!" which he was
+repeating when he came up to a man who was very sick. The man, thinking
+the booby was mocking him, laid hold of him, and after cuffing him, bade
+the booby cry, "Pray God, send no more up!" So he ran along uttering
+these words till he came to a field where a man was sowing wheat, who,
+on hearing what he took for a curse upon his labour, seized and thrashed
+him, and told him to repeat, "Pray God, send plenty more!" So the young
+jolterhead at once "changed his tune," and was loudly singing out these
+words when he met a funeral. The chief mourner punished him for what he
+thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to
+heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be
+hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his
+seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he
+and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating
+this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When
+the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave him many a good thump,
+and bade him say, "I wish you much joy!" This he was crying at the top
+of his voice when he came to a pit into which two labourers had fallen,
+and one of them, enraged at what he thought his mockery of their
+misfortune, exerted all his strength and scrambled out, then beat the
+poor simpleton, and told him to say, "The one is out; I wish the other
+was!" Glad to be set free, the booby went on shouting these words till
+he met with a one-eyed man, who, like the others, taking what he was
+crying for a personal insult, gave him another drubbing, and then bade
+him cry, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" So
+he adopted this new cry, and continued his adventurous journey till he
+came to a house, one side of which was on fire. The people, hearing him
+bawling, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" at
+once concluded that he had set the house a-blazing; so they put him in
+prison, and the end was, the judge put on the black cap and condemned
+him to be hanged![5]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the noodle is persuaded, as in the following case of a Sinhalese
+wittol, by a gang of thieves to join them in a plundering expedition,
+they have little reason to be pleased with him, for he does not make a
+good "cat's-paw." The Sinhalese noodle joined some thieves, took readily
+to their ways, and was always eager to accompany them on their marauding
+excursions. One night they took him with them, and boring a large hole
+in the wall of a house,[6] they sent him in, telling him to hand out the
+heaviest article he could lay hands upon. He readily went in, and seeing
+a large kurakkan-grinder,[7] thought that was the heaviest thing in the
+room, and attempted to remove it. But it proved too much for him alone,
+so he gently awoke a man who was sleeping in the room, and said to him,
+"My friend, pray help me to remove this kurakkan-grinder." The man
+immediately guessed that thieves had entered the house, and gave the
+alarm. The thieves, who were waiting outside quite expectant, rushed
+away, and the noodle somehow or other managed to escape with them.
+
+Next night they again took him along with them, and after boring a hole
+in the wall of another house, sent him in with strict injunctions not to
+make a noise or wake anybody. He crept in noiselessly and entered a
+large room, in which was an old woman, fast asleep by the fire, with
+wide-open mouth. An earthen chattie, a wooden spoon, and a small bag of
+pease were also placed by the fire. The noodle first proceeded to roast
+some pease in the chattie. When they were roasted to a nice brownish
+colour, and emitted a very tempting smell, he thought that the old woman
+might also enjoy a mouthful. He considered for a while how he might best
+offer some to her. He did not wish to wake her, as he was ordered not to
+wake anybody. Suddenly a bright idea struck him. Why should he not feed
+her? There she was sleeping with her mouth wide open. Surely it would be
+no difficult task to put some pease into her mouth. Taking some of the
+hot, smoking pease into the wooden spoon, he put the contents into her
+mouth. The woman awoke, screaming with all her might. The noise roused
+the other inmates of the house, who came rushing to the spot to see what
+was the matter. This time also the noodle managed to escape with the
+thieves; but in a subsequent adventure he, as well as the thieves, came
+to grief.[8]
+
+The silly son of Italian popular tales is represented as being sent by
+his mother to sell a piece of linen which she had woven, saying to him,
+"Now listen attentively to what I say: Walk straight along the road.
+Don't take less than such a price for this linen. Don't have any
+dealings with women who chatter. Whether you sell it to any one you meet
+on the way, or carry it into the market, offer it only to some quiet
+sort of body whom you may see standing apart and not gossiping or
+prating, for such as they will persuade you to take some sort of price
+that won't suit me at all." The booby answers, "Yes, mamma," and goes
+off on his errand, keeping straight on, instead of taking the turnings
+leading to villages. It happened, as he went along, that the wife of the
+syndic of the next town was driving out with her maids, and had got out
+of the carriage, to walk a short distance, as the day was fine. Her maid
+tells her that there goes the simple son of the poor widow by the brook.
+"What are you going to do, my good lad?" kindly asks the lady. "I'm not
+going to tell you," says the booby, "because you were chattering." "I
+see your mother has sent you to sell this linen," continues the lady; "I
+will buy it of you," and she offers to pay twice as much as his mother
+had said she wanted. "Can't sell it to you," replies he, "for you were
+chattering," and he continues his journey. Farther along he comes to a
+plaster statue by the roadside, so he says to himself, "Here's one who
+stands apart and doesn't chatter; this is the one to sell the linen to,"
+then aloud, "Will you buy my linen, good friend?" The statue maintained
+its usual taciturnity, and the booby concluded, as it did not speak, it
+was all right, so he said, "The price is so-and-so; have the money ready
+by the time I come back, as I have to go on and buy some yarn for
+mother." On he went accordingly, and bought the yarn, and then came back
+to the statue. Some one passing by had in the meantime taken the linen.
+Finding it gone, "It's all right," says he to himself; "she's taken it,"
+then aloud, "Where's the money I told you to have ready?" The statue
+remained silent. "If you don't give me the money, I'll hit you on the
+head," he exclaimed, and raising his stick, he knocked the head off, and
+found it filled with gold coin. "That's where you keep your money, is
+it? All right; I can pay myself." So saying, he filled his pockets with
+the coin and went home. When he handed his mother the money, and told
+her of his adventure with the quiet body by the roadside, she was afraid
+lest the neighbours should learn of her windfall if the booby knew its
+value, so she said to him, "You've only brought me a lot of rusty nails;
+but never mind: you'll know better what to do next time," and put the
+money in an earthen jar. In her absence, a ragman comes to the house,
+and the booby asks him, "Will you buy some rusty nails?" The man desires
+to see them. "Well," quoth he on beholding the treasure, "they're not
+much worth, but I'll give you twelve pauls for the lot," and having
+handed over the sum, went off with his prize. When his mother comes
+home, the booby tells her what a bargain he had made for the rusty
+nails. "Nails!" she echoes, in consternation. "Why, you foolish thing,
+they were gold coins!" "Can't help that now, mamma," he answers
+philosophically; "you told me they were old rusty nails." By another
+lucky adventure, however, the booby is enabled to make up his mother's
+loss, finding a treasure which a party of robbers had left behind them
+at the foot of a tree.
+
+The incident of a simpleton selling something to an inanimate object and
+discovering a hidden treasure occurs, in different forms, in the
+folk-tales of Asiatic as well as European countries. In a manuscript
+text of the _Arabian Nights_, brought from Constantinople by
+Wortley Montague, and now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a
+more elaborate version of the Italian booby's adventure with the statue
+is found, in the "Story of the Bang-eater and his Wife:"
+
+In former times there lived not far from Baghdad a half-witted fellow,
+who was much addicted to the use of bang. Being reduced to poverty, he
+was obliged to sell his cow, which he took to the market one day, but
+the animal being in such a poor condition, no one would buy it, and
+after waiting till he was weary he returned homeward. On the way he
+stopped to repose himself under a tree, and tied the cow to one of the
+branches, while he ate some bread, and drank an infusion of his bang,
+which he always carried with him. In a short time it began to operate,
+so as to bereave him of the little sense he had, and his head was filled
+with ridiculous reveries. While he was musing, a bird beginning to
+chatter from her nest in the tree, he fancied it was a human voice, and
+that some woman had offered to purchase his cow, upon which he said,
+"Reverend mother of Solomon,[9] dost thou wish to buy my cow?" The bird
+again chattered. "Well," replied he, "what wilt thou give? I will sell
+her a bargain." The bird repeated her noise. "Never mind," said the
+fool, "for though thou hast forgotten to bring thy purse, yet, as I
+daresay thou art an honest woman, and hast bidden me ten dinars, I will
+trust thee with the cow, and call on Friday for the money." The bird
+renewed her chattering; so, leaving the cow tied to a branch of the
+tree, he returned home, exulting in the good bargain he had made for the
+animal. When he entered the house, his wife inquired what he had got for
+the cow, and he replied that he had sold her to an honest woman, who had
+promised to pay him ten pieces of gold next Friday. The wife was
+contented; and when Friday arrived, her noodle of a husband having, as
+usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird
+chattering as before, said, "Well, good mother, hast thou brought the
+gold?" The bird croaked. The blockhead, supposing the imaginary woman
+refused to pay him, became angry, and threw up a stone, which
+frightening the bird, it flew from its nest in the tree and alighted on
+a heap of ruins at some little distance. He now concluded that the woman
+had desired him to take his money from the heap, into which he
+accordingly dug, and found a copper vessel full of coin. This discovery
+convinced him he was right, and being withal an honest fellow, he only
+took ten pieces; then replacing the soil, "May Allah requite thee for
+thy punctuality, good mother!" he exclaimed, and returned to his wife,
+to whom he gave the money, informing her at the same time of the great
+treasure his friend the imaginary old woman possessed, and where it was
+concealed.
+
+The wife waited till night, when she brought away the pot of gold, which
+her foolish husband observing, he said, "It is dishonest to rob one who
+has paid us so punctually; and if thou dost not return it to its place,
+I will inform the wal�" (governor of the city). She laughed at his
+simplicity, but fearing that he would execute his threat, she planned a
+stratagem to render it of no avail. Going to market, she purchased some
+meat and fish ready cooked, which she brought privately home, and
+concealed in the house. At night, while her husband was sleeping off the
+effects of his favourite narcotic, she strewed the provisions she had
+brought outside the door, and then awakening him, cried out, "Dear
+husband, a most wonderful thing has occurred: there has been a violent
+storm while you slept, and, strange to tell, it has rained pieces of
+broiled meat and fish, which now lie at the door!" The blockhead got up,
+and seeing the food, was persuaded of the truth of his wife's story. The
+flesh and fish were gathered up, and he partook with much glee of the
+miraculous treat, but still said he would tell the wal� of her having
+stolen the treasure of the honest old woman.
+
+In the morning he actually repaired to the wal�, and informed him that
+his wife had stolen a pot of gold, which she had still in her
+possession. Upon this the wal� had the woman apprehended. She denied the
+accusation, and was then threatened with death. "My lord," said she,
+"the power is in your hands; but I am an injured woman, as you will find
+by questioning my husband, who is deranged in his intellect. Ask him
+when I committed the theft." The wal� did so, and the simpleton
+answered, "It was the evening of that night when it rained broiled fish
+and ready-cooked flesh." On hearing this, "Wretch!" exclaimed the wal�
+in a fury, "dost thou dare to utter falsehoods before me? Who ever saw
+it rain anything but water?" "As I hope for life," replied the fool, "I
+speak the truth; for my wife and myself ate of the fish and flesh which
+fell from the clouds." The woman, being appealed to, denied the
+assertion of her husband. The wal�, now convinced that the man was
+crazy, released the woman, and sent her husband to the madhouse, where
+he remained for some days, till his wife, pitying his condition,
+contrived to get him set at liberty. She visited her husband, and
+counselled him, should any one ask him if he had seen it rain fish and
+flesh, to answer, "No; who ever saw it rain anything but water?" Then
+she informed the keeper that he was come to his senses, and suggested he
+should question him; and on the poor fellow answering properly he was
+released.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a Russian variant, an old man had three sons, one of whom was a
+noodle. When the old man died, his property was shared between the
+brothers, but all that the simpleton received was one ox, which he took
+to the market to sell. On his way he chanced to pass an old birch-tree,
+which creaked and groaned in the wind. He thinks the tree is offering to
+buy his ox, and so he says, "Well, you shall have it for twenty
+roubles." But the tree only creaked and creaked, and he fancied it was
+asking the ox on credit. "Very good," says he. "You'll pay me tomorrow?
+I'll wait till then." So he ties the ox to the tree and goes home. His
+brothers question him about his ox, and he tells them he has sold it for
+twenty roubles and is to get the money to-morrow, at which they laugh;
+he is, they think; a greater fool than ever. Next morning he went to the
+birch-tree, and found the ox was gone, for, in truth, the wolves had
+eaten it. He demanded his money, but the tree only creaked and groaned,
+as usual. "You'll pay me to-morrow?" he exclaimed. "That's what you said
+yesterday. I'll have no more of your promises." So saying, he struck the
+old birch-tree with his hatchet and sent the chips flying about. Now the
+tree was hollow, and it soon split asunder from his blows; and in the
+hollow trunk he found a pot full of gold, which some robbers had hidden
+there. Taking some of the gold, he returns home, and shows it to his
+brothers, who ask him how he got so much money. "A neighbour," he
+replies, "gave it to me for my ox. But this is nothing like the whole of
+it. Come along, brothers, and let us get the rest." They go, and fetch
+the rest of the treasure, and on their way home they meet a diachok (one
+of the inferior members of the Russian clerical body, though not one of
+the clergy), who asks them what they are carrying. "Mushrooms," say the
+two clever brothers; but the noodle cries, "That's not true; we're
+carrying money: here, look at it." The diachok, with an exclamation,
+flung himself upon the gold and began stuffing it into his pockets. At
+this the noodle grew angry, dealt him a blow with his hatchet, and
+killed him on the spot. The brothers dragged the body to an empty
+cellar, and flung it in. Later in the evening the eldest said to the
+other, "This business is sure to turn out badly. When they look for the
+diachok, Simpleton will be sure to tell them all about it. So we had
+better hide the body in some other place, and kill a goat and bury it in
+the cellar." This they did accordingly. And after several days had
+passed the people asked the noodle if he had seen the diachok. "Yes," he
+answered. "I killed him some time ago with my hatchet, and my brothers
+carried him to the cellar." They seize upon him and compel him to go
+down into the cellar and bring out the body. He gets hold of the goat's
+head, and asks, "Was your diachok dark-haired?" "He was." "Had he a
+beard?" "Yes." "And horns?" "What horns are you talking of?" "Well, see
+for yourselves," said he, tossing up the head to them. They saw it was a
+goat's head, and went away home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reader cannot fail to remark the close resemblance there is between
+the first parts of the Arabian and Russian stories; and the second parts
+of both reappear in many tales of the Silly Son. The goat's carcase
+substituted for the dead man occurs, for instance, in the Norse story of
+Silly Matt; in the Sicilian story of Giufa; in M. Rivi�re's _Contes
+Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_; and "Foolish Sach�li," in
+Miss Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_. The incident of the pretended
+shower of broiled fish and flesh is found in Campbell's _Tales of the
+West Highlands_ (porridge and pancakes); in Rivi�re's Tales of the
+Kaba�l (fritters); "Foolish Sach�li" (sweetmeats); Giuf�, the Sicilian
+Booby (figs and raisins); and in M. Leger's _Contes Populaires
+Slaves_, where, curiously enough, the trick is played by a husband
+upon his wife. It is perhaps worth while reproducing the Russian story
+from Leger, in a somewhat abridged form, as follows:
+
+In tilling the ground a labourer found a treasure, and carrying it home,
+said to his wife, "See! Heaven has sent us a fortune. But where can we
+conceal it?" She suggested he should bury it under the floor, which he
+did accordingly. Soon after this the wife went out to fetch water, and
+the labourer reflected that his wife was a dreadful gossip, and by
+to-morrow night all the village would know their secret.  So he removed
+the treasure from its hiding-place and buried it in his barn, beneath a
+heap of corn. When the wife came back from the well, he said to her
+quite gravely, "To-morrow we shall go to the forest to seek fish; they
+say there's plenty there at present." "What! fish in the forest?" she
+exclaimed. "Of course," he rejoined; "and you'll see them there." Very
+early next morning he got up, and took some fish, which he had concealed
+in a basket. He went to the grocer's and bought a quantity of sweet
+cakes. He also caught a hare and killed it. The fish and cakes he
+disposed of in different parts of the wood, and the hare he hooked on a
+fishing-line, and then threw it in the river. After breakfast he took
+his wife with him into the wood, which they had scarcely entered when
+she found a pike, then a perch, and then a roach, on the ground. With
+many exclamations of surprise, she gathered up the fish and put them in
+her basket. Presently they came to a pear-tree, from the branches of
+which hung sweet cakes. "See!" she cried. "Cakes on a pear-tree!" "Quite
+natural," replied he; "it has rained cakes, and some have remained on
+this tree; travellers have picked up the rest." Continuing their way to
+the village, they passed near a stream. "Wait a little," said the
+husband; "I set my line early this morning, and I'll look if anything is
+caught on it." He then pulled in the line, and behold, there was a hare
+hooked on to it! "How extraordinary!" cries the good wife--"a hare in
+the water!" "Why," says he, "don't you know there are hares in the water
+as well as rats?" "No, indeed, I knew it not." They now returned home,
+and the wife set about preparing all the nice eatables for supper. In a
+day or two the labourer found from the talk of his acquaintances that
+his finding the treasure was no secret in the village, and in less than
+a week he was summoned to the castle. "Is it true," said the lord, "that
+you have found a treasure?" "It is not true," was his reply. "But your
+wife has told me all." "My wife does not know what she says--she is mad,
+my lord." Hereupon the woman cries, "It is the truth, my lord; he has
+found a treasure and buried it beneath the floor of our cottage."
+"When?" "On the eve before the day we went into the forest to look for
+fish." "What do you say?" "Yes; it was on the day that it rained cakes;
+we gathered a basketful of them, and coming home, my husband fished a
+fine hare out of the river." My lord declared the woman to be an idiot;
+nevertheless he caused his servants to search under the labourer's
+cottage floor, but nothing was found there, and so the shrewd fellow
+secured his treasure.
+
+The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a
+number of fools' exploits are strung together and ascribed to one
+individual, as in the tale of "Foolish Sach�li;" but generally they are
+told as separate stories. The following adventure of Sach�li is also
+found, in varied form, in Beschi's _Gooroo Paramartan_: One day
+Sach�li climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting
+off the branch between the tree and himself. A man passing by called to
+him, saying, "What are you doing up there? You will be killed if you cut
+that branch off." "What do you say?" asked the booby, coming down. "When
+shall I die?" "How can I tell?" said the man. "Let me go." "I will not
+let you go until you tell me when I shall die." At last the man, in
+order to get rid of him, said, "When you find a scarlet thread on your
+jacket, then you will die." After this Sach�li went to the
+_bazaar_, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away
+shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes. "Now I shall die!"
+exclaimed the fool. "How do you know that?" the tailors inquired, when
+he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they
+all laughed. Nevertheless, Sach�li went and dug a grave in the jungle
+and lay down in it.
+
+Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of _ghi_, or clarified
+butter, which he engages Sach�li to carry for him, and the noodle, of
+course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to
+which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.
+
+The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated
+seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical
+Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-D�n, and there exist German, Saxon,
+and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon,
+and the following is a version from a Hind� work entitled _Bharataka
+Dw�trinsati_, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:
+
+In El�kapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named
+Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure
+a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and
+he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there
+came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, "O
+monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you
+yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will
+fall down and die." After saying this the travellers went their way. The
+monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut
+the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch
+broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, "Those
+travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened
+just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead." So he remained on
+the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he
+even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him
+up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could
+not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your
+associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks
+in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him
+up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had
+gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided
+itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others
+said, "It is to the right that we must go." Thus a dispute arose among
+them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The "dead" monk,
+who was borne on a bier, said, "Friends, quarrel not among yourselves;
+when I was alive, I always went by the left road." Then said some, "He
+always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple
+fact. Let us therefore take the left road." This was agreed upon, and as
+they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to
+be present said, "O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that
+ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive." They
+answered, "Nay, but he is dead." Then the bystanders said, "He cannot be
+dead, seeing that he yet speaks." They then set down the bier on the
+ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and
+related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the
+travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained
+quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka
+was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the
+bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in
+inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and
+went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.[11]
+
+A diverting story in the _Faceti�_ of Poggius, entitled "Mortuus
+Loqueus," from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini
+and in our old collection _Tales and Quicke Answeres_, has a near
+affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of
+stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of
+his property. In the early English jest-book,[12] it is, in effect, as
+follows:
+
+There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party
+of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their
+plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was
+not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth
+the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way.
+Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if
+he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The
+poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was
+convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be
+in his bed--he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca
+stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague,"
+when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying
+man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he
+did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers
+came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his
+pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.[13] Then,
+standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking
+fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the
+ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast,
+and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though
+he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through
+the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were
+carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a
+taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the
+mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard
+himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you
+scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a
+false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set
+down the "body" and ran away--leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole
+affair to the marvelling multitude.[14]
+
+We read of another silly son, in the _Kath� Manjari_, whose father
+said to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem
+to have much sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go,
+therefore, to the tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad
+accordingly went to the tank, and having caused all the water--which was
+required for the irrigation of his father's fields--to run to waste, he
+picked up from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to
+his father, not a little proud of his exploit.--In the _Kath� Sarit
+S�gara_ it is related that a Br�hman told his foolish son one evening
+that he must send him to the village early on the morrow, and thither
+the lad went, without asking what he was to do. Returning home at night
+very tired, he said to his father, "I have been to the village." "Yes,"
+said the Br�hman, "you went thither without an object, and have done no
+good by it."--And in the Buddhist _J�takas_ we find what is
+probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled
+tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely.
+Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is
+a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear--drive it off."
+"Wait a bit, father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow."
+Then he took up an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking
+to kill the mosquito with the axe, he only killed his father.
+
+Among numerous variants is the story of the Sicilian booby, Giuf�, who
+was annoyed by the flies, and complained of them to the judge, who told
+him that he was at liberty to kill a fly wherever he saw it: just then a
+fly happened to alight on the judge's nose, which Giuf� observing, he
+immediately aimed at it so furious a blow with his fist, that he smashed
+his worship's nose!
+
+The hopelessness of attempting to impart instruction to the silly son is
+farther illustrated by the story in a Sinhalese collection: A g�r� was
+engaged in teaching one of his disciples, but whilst he was teaching the
+youth was watching the movements of a rat which was entering its hole.
+As soon as the g�r� had finished his teaching, he said, "Well, my son,
+has all entered in?" to which the youth replied, "Yes, all has entered
+in except the tail." And from the same work is the following choice
+example of "a happy family": A priest went one day to the house of one
+of his followers, and amongst other things he said, "Tell me now, which
+of your four children is the best-behaved?" The father replied, "Look,
+sir, at that boy who has climbed to the top of that thatched building,
+and is waving aloft a firebrand. Among them all, he is the divinely
+excellent one." Whereupon the priest placed his finger on his nose, drew
+a deep, deep sigh, and said, "Is it indeed so? What, then, must the
+other three be?"
+
+The Turkish romance of the Forty Vaz�rs--the plan of which is similar to
+that of the Book of Sindib�d and its derivatives--furnishes us with two
+stories of the same class, one of which is as follows, according to my
+friend Mr. Gibb's complete translation (the first that has been made in
+English), recently published:[15]
+
+They have told that in bygone times there was a king, and he had a
+skilful minstrel. One day a certain person gave to the latter a little
+boy, that he might teach him the science of music. The boy abode a long
+time by him, and though the master instructed him, he succeeded not in
+learning, and the master could make nothing of him. He arranged a scale,
+and said, "Whatsoever thou sayest to me, say in this scale." So
+whatsoever the boy said he used to say in that scale. Now one day a
+spark of fire fell on the master's turban. The boy saw it and chanted,
+"O master, I see something; shall I say it or no?" and he went over the
+whole scale. Then the master chanted, "O boy, what dost thou see?
+Speak!" and he too went over all that the boy had gone over. Then the
+turn came to the boy, and he chanted, "O master, a spark has fallen on
+thy turban, and it is burning." The master straightway tore off his
+turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew
+out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said
+to the boy, "What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its
+own place," and he admonished him.[16]
+
+The other story tells how a king had a stupid son, and placed him in
+charge of a cunning master, learned in the sciences, who declared it
+would be easy for him to teach the boy discretion, and, before
+dismissing him, the king gave the sage many rich gifts. After the boy
+has been long under the tuition of his learned master, the latter,
+conceiving him to be well versed in all the sciences, takes him to the
+king, his father, who says to him, "O my son, were I to hold a certain
+thing hidden in my hand, couldst thou tell me what it is?" "Yes,"
+answers the youth. Upon this the king secretly slips the ring off his
+finger, and hides it in his hand, and then asks the boy, "What have I in
+my hand?" Quoth the clever youth, "O father, it first came from the
+hills." (The king thinks to himself, "He knows that mines are in the
+hills.") "And it is a round thing," continues he--"it must be a
+millstone." "Blockhead!" exclaims the irate king, "could a millstone be
+hidden in a man's hand?" Then addressing the learned man, "Take him
+away," he says, "and _teach_ him."
+
+Lastly, we have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the
+doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so
+ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits
+to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had
+been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to
+deny it;--you have been eating beans." On their way home, the
+apprentice, admiring his master's sagacity, begged to be informed how he
+knew that the patient had been eating beans. "Boy," said the doctor,
+loftily, "I drew an inference." "An inference!" echoed this youth of
+inquiring mind; "and what is an inference?" Quoth the doctor, "Listen:
+when we came to the door, I observed the shells of beans lying about,
+and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner."
+Another day it chanced that the doctor did not take his apprentice with
+him when he went his rounds, and in his absence a message came for him
+to visit a person who had been taken suddenly ill. "Here," thought the
+apprentice, "is a chance for my putting master's last lesson into
+practice;" so off he went to the sick man, and assuming as "knowing" an
+air as he could, he felt his pulse, and then said to him severely,
+"Don't deny it; I see by your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I
+shall send you some medicine." When the doctor returned home he inquired
+of his hopeful pupil, whether any person had called for him, upon which
+the wittol proudly told him of his own exploit. "Eaten a horse!"
+exclaimed the man of physic. "In the name of all that's wonderful, what
+induced you to say such a thing?" Quoth the youth, simpering, "Why, sir,
+I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer--I drew
+an inference." "You drew an inference, did you? And how did you draw the
+inference that the man had eaten a horse?" "Why, very readily, sir; for
+as I entered the house I saw a saddle hanging on the wall."[17]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Abridged from the story of "Silly Matt" in Sir George W. Dasent's
+_Tales from the Fjeld_.
+
+[2] Professor Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, p. 302. This actual
+throwing of eyes occurs in the folk-tales of Europe generally.
+
+[3] In _Le Cabinet des F�es, 1788_ (tome xxxviii., p. 337 ff.).--
+There can be no such name as Xailoun in Arabic; that of the noodle's
+wife, Oitba, may be intended for "Utba." Cazotte has so Frenchified the
+names of the characters in his tales as to render their identification
+with the Arabic originals (where he had any such) often impossible.
+Although this story is not found in any known Arabian text of the
+_Book of the Thousand and One Nights_, yet the incidents for the
+most part occur in several Eastern story-books.
+
+ [4] On a similar occasion Giuf�, the Sicilian brother to the Arabian
+fool, did somewhat more mischief. Once his mother went to church and
+told him to make some porridge for his baby-sister. Giuf� made a great
+pot of porridge and fed the baby with it, and burned her mouth so that
+she died. Another time his mother on leaving home told him to feed the
+hen that was sitting and put her back in the nest, so that the eggs
+should not get cold. Giuf� stuffed the hen with food so that he killed
+her, and then sat on the eggs himself until his mother returned.--See
+Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 296-7.
+
+[5] Abridged and modified from a version in the _Folk-Lore Record_,
+vol. iii., pp. 153-5.
+
+[6] The usual mode by which in the East thieves break into houses, which
+are for the most part constructed of clay. See Job xxiv. 16.
+
+[7] Kurakkan is a species of grain.
+
+[8] _The Orientalist_, June, 1884, pp. 137-8.
+
+[9] Ummu Sulayman. In Arabia the mother is generally addressed in this
+way as a mark of respect for having borne children, and the eldest gives
+the title. Our bang-eater supposed he was addressing an old woman who
+had (or might have had) a son named Solomon.
+
+[10] See Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales._ [Transcriber's note:
+Footnote reference missing from original, p. 153]
+
+[11] From a paper on "Comparative Folk-lore," by W. Goonetilleke, in
+_The Orientalist_, i., p. 122.
+
+[12] _Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant
+to be Readde._ Imprinted at London by H. Wykes, 1567.
+
+[13] Thus, too, Scogin and his "chamber-fellow" successively declared to
+a rustic that the sheep he was driving were pigs. In Fortini's novels,
+in like manner, a simpleton is persuaded that the kid he offered for
+sale was a capon; and in the Spanish _El Conde Lucanor_, and the
+German _Tyl Eulenspiegel_, a countryman is cheated out of a piece
+of cloth. The original form of the incident is found in the
+_Hitopadesa_, where three sharpers persuade a Br�hman that the goat
+he is carrying for a sacrifice is a dog. This story of the Florentine
+noodle--or rather Poggio's version--may have been suggested by a tale in
+the _Gesta Romanorum_, in which the emperor's physician is made to
+believe that he had leprosy. See my _Popular Tales and Fictions_,
+where these and similar stories are compared in a paper entitled "The
+Sharpers and the Simpleton."
+
+[14] In Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_ (Second Series,
+p. 627), a woman makes her husband believe that he is dressed in fine
+clothes when he is naked; another persuades her husband that he is dead,
+and as he is being carried to the burying-ground, he perceives the naked
+man, who asserts that he is dressed, upon which he exclaims, "How I
+should laugh if I were not dead!" And in a _fabliau_ by Jean de
+Boves, "Le Villain de Bailleul; _ali�s_, Le Femme qui fit croire �
+son Mari qu'il �tait mort," the husband exclaims, "Rascal of a priest,
+you may well thank Heaven that I am dead, else I would belabour you
+soundly with my stick."--See M. Le Grand's _Fabliaux_, ed. 1781,
+tome v., pp. 192, 193.
+
+[5] _History of the Forty Viziers; or, The Forty Morns and Forty
+Eves._ Translated from the Turkish, by E.J.W. Gibb, M.R.A.S. London:
+G. Redway, 1886.
+
+[16] A variant of this is found in John Bromyard's _Summa
+Pr�dicantium_, A 26, 34, as follows:
+
+Quidam sedebat juxta igneum, cujus vestem ignis intrabat. Dixit socius
+suus, "Vis audire rumores?" "Ita," inquit, "bonos et non alios." Cui
+alius, "Nescio nisi malos." "Ergo," inquit, "nolo audire." Et quum bis
+aut ter ei hoc diceret, semper idem respondit. In fine, quum sentiret
+vestem combustam, iratus ait socio, "Quare non dixisti mihi?" "Quia
+(inquit) dixista quod noluisti audire rumores nisi placentes et illi non
+erant tales."
+
+[17] Under the title of "The Phisitian that bare his Paciente in honde
+that he had eaten an Asse" this jest occurs in _Merry Tales and Quicke
+Answeres_, and Professor Crane gives a Sicilian version in his
+_Italian Popular Tales_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BR�HMANS.
+
+
+[As a sort of supplement to the sayings and doings of the silly son, the
+following highly diverting Indian tale is here inserted, from the Abb�
+Dubois' French rendering of the Tamil original, appended, with others,
+to his selections from the _Panchatantra_. The story is known in
+the north as well as in the south of India: in the Panj�bi version there
+are, however, but three noodle-heroes. It will be seen that the third
+Br�hman's tale is another of the numerous silent couple class, and it
+may possibly be the original form.]
+
+
+_Introduction._
+
+In a certain district, proclamation had been made of a Samaradanam being
+about to be held.[1] Four Br�hmans, from different villages, going
+thither, fell in upon the road, and, finding that they were all upon the
+same errand, they agreed to proceed in company.  A soldier, happening to
+meet them, saluted them in the usual way, by touching hands and
+pronouncing the words always applied on such occasions to Br�hmans,
+"_Dandamarya_!" or "Health to my lord!" The four travellers made
+the customary return, "_Asirvadam!_" and going on, they came to a
+well, where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the
+shade of some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of
+conversation, one of them asked the others, whether they did not remark
+how particularly the soldier had distinguished him by his polite
+salutation. "You!" said another; "it was not you that he saluted, but
+me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for you may remember that
+when the soldier said, '_Dandamarya!_' he cast his eyes upon me."
+"Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was I only he saluted; otherwise,
+should I have answered him as I did, by saying, '_Asirvadam_'?"
+
+Each maintained his argument obstinately; and as none of them would
+yield, the dispute had nearly come to blows, when the least stupid of
+the four, seeing what was likely to happen, put an end to the brawl by
+the following advice: "How foolish it is in us," said he, "thus to put
+ourselves in a passion! After we have said all the ill of one another
+that we can invent--nay, after going stoutly to fisticuffs, like Sudra
+rabble, should we be at all nearer to the decision of our difference?
+The fittest person to determine the controversy, I think, would be the
+man who occasioned it. The soldier, who chose to salute one of us,
+cannot yet be far off: let us therefore run after him as quickly as we
+can, and we shall soon know for which of us he intended his salutation."
+
+This advice appeared wise to them all, and was immediately adopted. The
+whole of them set off in pursuit of the soldier, and at last overtook
+him, after running a league, and all out of breath. As soon as they came
+in sight of him, they cried out to him to stop; and before they had well
+approached him, they had put him in full possession of the nature of
+their dispute, and prayed him to terminate it, by saying to which of
+them he had directed his salutation. The soldier instantly perceiving
+the character of the people he had to do with, and being willing to
+amuse himself a little at their expense, coolly replied, that he
+intended his salutation for the greatest fool of all four, and then,
+turning on his heel, he continued his journey.
+
+The Br�hmans, confounded at this answer, turned back in silence. But all
+of them had deeply at heart the distinction of the salutation of the
+soldier, and the dispute was gradually renewed. Even the awkward
+decision of the warrior could not prevent each of them from arrogating
+to himself the pre-eminence of being noticed by him, to the exclusion of
+the others. The contention, therefore, now became, which of the four was
+the stupidest; and strange to say, it grew as warm as ever, and must
+have come to blows, had not the person who gave the former advice, to
+follow the soldier, interposed again with his wisdom, and spoken as
+follows: "I think myself the greatest fool of us all. Each of you thinks
+the same thing of himself. And after a fight, shall we be a bit nearer
+the decision of the question? Let us, therefore, have a little patience.
+We are within a short distance of Dharmapuri, where there is a choultry,
+at which all little causes are tried by the heads of the village; and
+let ours be judged among the rest."
+
+The others agreed in the soundness of this advice; and having arrived at
+the village, they eagerly entered the choultry, to have their business
+settled by the arbitrator. They could not have come at a better season.
+The chiefs of the district, Br�hmans and others, had already met in the
+choultry; and no other cause being brought forward, they proceeded
+immediately to that of the four Br�hmans, who advanced into the middle
+of the court, and stated that a sharp contest having arisen among them,
+they were come to have it decided with fairness and impartiality. The
+court desired them to proceed and explain the ground of their
+controversy. Upon this, one of them stood forward and related to the
+assembly all that had happened, from their meeting with the soldier to
+the present state of the quarrel, which rested on the superior degree of
+stupidity of one of their number. The detail created a general shout of
+laughter. The president, who was of a gay disposition, was delighted
+beyond measure to have fallen in with so diverting an incident. But he
+put on a grave face, and laid it down, as the peculiarity of the cause,
+that it could not be determined on the testimony of witnesses, and that,
+in fact, there was no other way of satisfying the minds of the judges
+than by each, in his turn, relating some particular occurrence of his
+life, on which he could best establish his claim to superior folly. He
+clearly showed that there could be no other means of determining to
+which of them the salutation of the soldier could with justice be
+awarded. The Br�hmans assented, and upon a sign being made to one of
+them to begin, and the rest to keep silence, the first thus spoke:
+
+_Story of the First Br�hman_.
+
+I am poorly provided with clothing, as you see; and it is not to-day
+only that I have been covered with rags. A rich and very charitable
+Br�hman merchant once made a present of two pieces of cloth to attire
+me--the finest that had ever been seen in our village. I showed them to
+the other Br�hmans of the village, who all congratulated me on so
+fortunate an acquisition. They told me it must be the fruit of some good
+deeds that I had done in a preceding generation. Before I should put
+them on, I washed them, according to the custom, in order to purify them
+from the soil of the weaver's touch, and hung them up to dry, with the
+ends fastened to two branches of a tree. A dog, then happening to come
+that way, ran under them, and I could not discover whether he was high
+enough to touch the clothes or not. I asked my children, who were
+present, but they said they were not quite certain. How, then, was I to
+discover the fact? I put myself upon all-fours, so as to be of the
+height of the dog, and in that posture I crawled under the clothing.
+"Did I touch it?" said I to the children, who were observing me. They
+answered, "No," and I was filled with joy at the news. But after
+reflecting a while, I recollected that the dog had a turned-up tail, and
+that by elevating it above the rest of his body, it might well have
+reached my cloth. To ascertain that, I fixed a leaf in my loin-cloth,
+turning upwards, and then, creeping again on all-fours, I passed a
+second time under the clothing. The children immediately cried out that
+the point of the leaf on my back had touched the cloth. This proved to
+me that the point of the dog's tail must have done so too, and that my
+garments were therefore polluted. In my rage I pulled down the beautiful
+raiment, and tore it in a thousand pieces, loading with curses both the
+dog and his master.
+
+When this foolish act was known, I became the laughing-stock of all the
+world, and I was universally treated as a madman. "Even if the dog had
+touched the cloth," said they, "and so brought defilement upon it, might
+not you have washed it a second time, and so have removed the stain? Or
+might you not have given it to some poor Sudra, rather than tear it in
+pieces? After such egregious folly, who will give you clothes another
+time?" This was all true; for ever since, when I have begged clothing of
+any one, the constant answer has been, that, no doubt, I wanted a piece
+of cloth to pull to pieces.
+
+He was going on, when a bystander interrupted him by remarking that he
+seemed to understand going on all-fours. "Exceedingly well," said he,
+"as you shall see;" and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the
+unbounded laughter of the spectators. "Enough! enough!" said the
+president. "What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his
+favour. But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in
+proof of his stupidity." The second accordingly began by expressing his
+confidence that if what they had just heard appeared to them to be
+deserving of the salutation of the soldier, what he had to say would
+change their opinion.
+
+ _Story of the Second Br�hman_.
+
+Having got my hair and beard shaven one day, in order to appear decent
+at a public festival of the Br�hmans, which had been proclaimed
+throughout the district, I desired my wife to give the barber a penny
+for his trouble. She heedlessly gave him a couple. I asked him to give
+me one of them back, but he refused. Upon that we quarrelled, and began
+to abuse each other; but the barber at length pacified me, by offering,
+in consideration of the double fee, to shave my wife also. I thought
+this a fair way of settling the difference between us. But my wife,
+hearing the proposal, and seeing the barber in earnest, tried to make
+her escape by flight. I took hold of her, and forced her to sit down,
+while he shaved her poll in the same manner as they serve widows.[2]
+During the operation she cried out bitterly; but I was inexorable,
+thinking it less hard that my wife should be close-shaven than that my
+penny should be given away for nothing. When the barber had finished, I
+let her go, and she retired immediately to a place of concealment,
+pouring down curses on me and the barber. He took his departure, and
+meeting my mother in his way, told her what he had done, which made her
+hasten to the house, to inquire into the outrage; and when she saw that
+it was all true she also loaded me with incivilities.
+
+The barber published everywhere what had happened at our house; and the
+villain added to the story that I had caught her with another man, which
+was the cause of my having her shaved; and people were no doubt
+expecting, according to our custom in such a case, to see her mounted on
+an ass, with her face turned towards the tail. They came running to my
+dwelling from all quarters, and actually brought an ass to make the
+usual exhibition in the streets. The report soon reached my
+father-in-law, who lived at a distance of ten or twelve leagues, and
+he, with his wife, came also to inquire into the affair. Seeing their
+poor daughter in that degraded state, and being apprised of the only
+reason, they reproached me most bitterly; which I patiently endured,
+being conscious that I was in the wrong. They persisted, however, in
+taking her with them, and keeping her carefully concealed from every eye
+for four whole years; when at length they restored her to me.
+
+This little accident made me lose the Samaradanam, for which I had been
+preparing by a fast of three days; and it was a great mortification to
+me to be excluded from it, as I understood it was a most splendid
+entertainment. Another Samaradanam was announced to be held ten days
+afterwards, at which I expected to make up for my loss. But I was
+received with the hisses of six hundred Br�hmans, who seized my person,
+and insisted on my giving up the accomplice of my wife, that he might be
+prosecuted and punished, according to the severe rules of the caste.
+
+I solemnly attested her innocence, and told the real cause of the
+shaving of her hair; when a universal burst of surprise took place,
+every one exclaiming, how monstrous it was that a married woman should
+be so degraded, without having committed the crime of infidelity.
+"Either this man," said they, "must be a liar, or he is the greatest
+fool on the face of the earth!" Such, I daresay, gentlemen, you will
+think me, and I am sure you will consider my folly [looking with great
+disdain on the first speaker] as being far superior to that of the
+render of body-clothing.
+
+The court agreed that the speaker had put in a very strong case; but
+justice required that the other two should also be heard. The third
+claimant was indeed burning with impatience for his turn, and as soon as
+he had permission, he thus spoke:
+
+ _Story of the Third Brahman_.
+
+My name was originally Anantya; now all the world call me Betel Anantya,
+and I will tell you how this nickname arose. My wife, having been long
+detained at her father's house, on account of her youth, had cohabited
+with me but about a month when, going to bed one evening, I happened to
+say (carelessly, I believe), that all women were babblers. She retorted,
+that she knew men who were not less babblers than women. I perceived at
+once that she alluded to myself; and being somewhat piqued at the
+sharpness of her retort, I said, "Now let us see which of us shall speak
+first." "Agreed," quoth she; "but what shall be the forfeit?" "A leaf of
+betel," said I. Our wager being thus made, we both addressed ourselves
+to sleep, without speaking another word.
+
+Next morning, as we did not appear at our usual hour, after some
+interval, they called us, but got no answer. They again called, and then
+roared stoutly at the door, but with no success. The alarm began to
+spread in the house. They began to fear that we had died suddenly. The
+carpenter was called with his tools. The door of our room was forced
+open, and when they got in they were not a little surprised to find both
+of us wide awake, in good health, and at our ease, though without the
+faculty of speech. My mother was greatly alarmed, and gave loud vent to
+her grief. All the Br�hmans in the village, of both sexes, assembled, to
+the number of one hundred; and after close examination, every one drew
+his own conclusion on the accident which was supposed to have befallen
+us. The greater number were of opinion that it could have arisen only
+from the malevolence of some enemy who had availed himself of magical
+incantations to injure us. For this reason, a famous magician was
+called, to counteract the effects of the witchcraft, and to remove it.
+As soon as he came, after steadfastly contemplating us for some time, he
+began to try our pulses, by putting his finger on our wrists, on our
+temples, on the heart, and on various other parts of the body; and after
+a great variety of grimaces, the remembrance of which excites my
+laughter, as often as I think of him, he decided that our malady arose
+wholly from the effect of malevolence. He even gave the name of the
+particular devil that possessed my wife and me and rendered us dumb. He
+added that the devil was very stubborn and difficult to allay, and that
+it would cost three or four pagodas for the offerings necessary for
+compelling him to fly.
+
+My relations, who were not very opulent, were astonished at the grievous
+imposition which the magician had laid on them. Yet, rather than we
+should continue dumb, they consented to give him whatsoever should be
+necessary for the expense of his sacrifice; and they farther promised
+that they would reward him for his trouble as soon as the demon by whom
+we were possessed should be expelled. He was on the point of commencing
+his magical operations, when a Br�hman, one of our friends, who was
+present, maintained, in opposition to the opinion of the magician and
+his assistants, that our malady was not at all the effect of witchcraft,
+but arose from some simple and ordinary cause, of which he had seen
+several instances, and he undertook to cure us without any expense.
+
+He took a chafing-dish filled with burning charcoal, and heated a small
+bar of gold very hot. This he took up with pincers, and applied to the
+soles of my feet, then to my elbows, and the crown of my head. I endured
+these cruel operations without showing the least symptom of pain, or
+making any complaint; being determined to bear anything, and to die, if
+necessary, rather than lose the wager I had laid.
+
+"Let us try the effect on the woman," said the doctor, astonished at my
+resolution and apparent insensibility. And immediately taking the bit of
+gold, well heated, he applied it to the sole of her foot. She was not
+able to endure the pain for a moment, but instantly screamed out,
+"Enough!" and turning to me, "I have lost my wager," she said; "there is
+your leaf of betel."  "Did I not tell you," said I, taking the leaf,
+"that you would be the first to speak out, and that you would prove by
+your own conduct that I was right in saying yesterday, when we went to
+bed, that women are babblers?"
+
+Every one was surprised at the proceeding; nor could any of them
+comprehend the meaning of what was passing between my wife and me; until
+I explained the kind of wager we had made overnight, before going to
+sleep. "What!" they exclaimed, "was it for a leaf of betel that you have
+spread this alarm through your own house and the whole village?--for a
+leaf of betel that you showed such constancy, and suffered burning from
+the feet to the head upwards? Never in the world was there seen such
+folly!" And so, from that time, I have been constantly known by the name
+of Betel Anantya.
+
+The narrative being finished, the court were of opinion that so
+transcendent a piece of folly gave him high pretensions in the depending
+suit; but it was necessary also to hear the fourth and last of the
+suitors, who thus addressed them:
+
+ _Story of the Fourth Br�hman_.
+
+The maiden to whom I was betrothed, having remained six or seven years
+at her father's house, on account of her youth, we were at last apprised
+that she was become marriageable; and her parents informed mine that she
+was in a situation to fulfil all the duties of a wife, and might
+therefore join her husband. My mother being at that time sick, and the
+house of my father-in-law being at the distance of five or six leagues
+from ours, she was not able to undertake the journey. She therefore
+committed to myself the duty of bringing home my wife, and counselled me
+so to conduct myself, in words and actions, that they might not see that
+I was only a brute. "Knowing thee as I do," said my mother, as I took
+leave of her, "I am very distrustful of thee." But I promised to be on
+my good behaviour; and so I departed.
+
+I was well received by my father-in-law, who gave a great feast to all
+the Br�hmans of the village on the occasion. He made me stay three days,
+during which there was nothing but festivity. At length the time of our
+departure having arrived, he suffered my wife and myself to leave him,
+after pouring out blessings on us both, and wishing us a long and happy
+life, enriched with a numerous progeny. When we took leave of him, he
+shed abundance of tears, as if he had foreseen the misery that awaited
+us.
+
+It was then the summer solstice, and the day was exceedingly hot. We had
+to cross a sandy plain of more than two leagues; and the sand, being
+heated by the burning sun, scorched the feet of my young wife, who,
+being brought up too tenderly in her father's house, was not accustomed
+to such severe trials. She began to cry, and being unable to go on, she
+lay down on the ground, saying she wished to die there. I was in
+dreadful trouble, and knew not what step to take; when a merchant came
+up, travelling the contrary way. He had a train of fifty bullocks,
+loaded with various kinds of merchandise. I ran to meet him, and told
+him the cause of my anxiety with tears in my eyes; and entreated him to
+aid me with his good advice in the distressing circumstances in which I
+was placed. He immediately answered, that a young and delicate woman,
+such as my wife was, could neither remain where she lay nor proceed on
+her journey, under a hot sun, without being exposed to certain death.
+Rather than that I should see her perish, and run the hazard of being
+suspected of having killed her myself, and being guilty of one of the
+five crimes which the Br�hmans consider as the most heinous, he advised
+me to give her to him, and then he would mount her on one of his cattle
+and take her along with him.  That I should be a loser, he admitted;
+but, all things considered, it was better to lose her, with the merit of
+having saved her life, than equally to lose her, under the suspicion of
+being her murderer. "Her trinkets," he said, "may be worth fifteen
+pagodas; take these twenty and give me your wife."
+
+The merchant's arguments appeared unanswerable; so I yielded to them,
+and delivered to him my wife, whom he placed on one of his best oxen,
+and continued his journey without delay. I continued mine also, and got
+home in the evening, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and with my feet
+almost roasted with the burning sand, over which I had walked the
+greater part of the day. Frightened to see me alone, "Where is your
+wife?" cried my mother. I gave her a full account of everything that had
+happened from the time I left her. I spoke of the agreeable and
+courteous manner in which my father-in-law had received me, and how, by
+some delay, we had been overtaken by the scorching heat of the sun at
+noon, so that my wife must have perished and myself suspected of having
+caused her death, had we proceeded; and that I had preferred to sell her
+to a merchant who met us for twenty pagodas. And I showed my mother the
+money.
+
+When I had done, my mother fell into an ecstasy of fury. She lifted up
+her voice against me with cries of rage, and overwhelmed me with
+imprecations and awful curses. Having given way to these first emotions
+of despair, she sank into a more moderate tone: "What hast thou done!
+Sold thy wife, hast thou! Delivered her to another man! A Br�hmanari is
+become the concubine of a vile merchant! Ah, what will her kindred and
+ours say when they hear the tale of this brutish stupidity--of folly so
+unexampled and degrading?"
+
+The relations of my wife were soon informed of the sad adventure that
+had befallen their unhappy girl. They came over to attack me, and would
+certainly have murdered me and my innocent mother, if we had not both
+made a sudden escape. Having no direct object to wreak their vengeance
+upon, they brought the matter before the chiefs of the caste, who
+unanimously fined me in two hundred pagodas, as a reparation to my
+father-in-law, and issued a proclamation against so great a fool being
+ever allowed to take another wife; denouncing the penalty of expulsion
+from the caste against any one who should assist me in such an attempt.
+I was therefore condemned to remain a widower all my life, and to pay
+dear for my folly. Indeed, I should have been excluded for ever from my
+caste, but for the high consideration in which the memory of my late
+father is still held, he having lived respected by all the world.
+
+Now that you have heard one specimen of the many follies of my life, I
+hope you will not consider me as beneath those who have spoken before
+me, nor my pretensions altogether undeserving of the salutation of the
+soldier.
+
+ _Conclusion_.
+
+The heads of the assembly, several of whom were convulsed with laughter
+while the Br�hmans were telling their stories, decided, after hearing
+them all, that each had given such absolute proofs of folly as to be
+entitled, in justice, to a superiority in his own way: that each of
+them, therefore, should be at liberty to call himself the greatest fool
+of all, and to attribute to himself the salutation of the soldier. Each
+of them having thus gained his suit, it was recommended to them all to
+continue their journey, if it were possible, in amity. The delighted
+Brahmans then rushed out of court, each exclaiming that he had gained
+his cause.
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] A Samaradanam is one of the public festivals given by pious people,
+and sometimes by those in power, to the Br�hmans, who on such occasions
+assemble in great numbers from all quarters.
+
+[2] In a Sinhalese story, referred to on ["p. 68" in original. This
+approximates to the reference to Chapter III, Footnote 5 in this
+e-text], it is, curiously enough, the woman herself "who has her head
+shaved, so as not to lose the services of the barber for the day when he
+came, and her husband was away from home." The story probably was
+introduced into Ceylon by the Tamils; both versions are equally good as
+noodle-stories.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES.
+
+
+Few folk-tales are more widely diffused than that of the man who set out
+in quest of as great noodles as those of his own household. The details
+may be varied more or less, but the fundamental outline is identical,
+wherever the story is found; and, whether it be an instance of the
+transmission of popular tales from one country to another, or one of
+those "primitive fictions" which are said to be the common heritage of
+the Aryans, its independent development by different nations and in
+different ages cannot be reasonably maintained.
+
+Thus, in one Gaelic version of this diverting story--in which our old
+friends the Gothamites reappear on the scene to enact their unconscious
+drolleries--a lad marries a farmer's daughter, and one day while they
+are all busily engaged in peat-cutting, she is sent to the house to
+fetch the dinner. On entering the house, she perceives the speckled
+pony's packsaddle hanging from the roof, and says to herself, "Oh, if
+that packsaddle were to fall and kill me, what should I do?" and here
+she began to cry, until her mother, wondering what could be detaining
+her, comes, when she tells the old woman the cause of her grief,
+whereupon the mother, in her turn, begins to cry, and when the old man
+next comes to see what is the matter with his wife and daughter, and is
+informed about the speckled pony's packsaddle, he, too, "mingles his
+tears" with theirs. At last the young husband arrives, and finding the
+trio of noodles thus grieving at an imaginary misfortune, he there and
+then leaves them, declaring his purpose not to return until he has found
+three as great fools as themselves. In the course of his travels he
+meets with some strange folks: men whose wives make them believe
+whatever they please--one, that he is dead; another, that he is clothed,
+when he is stark naked; a third, that he is not himself. He meets with
+the twelve fishers who always miscounted their number; the noodles who
+went to drown an eel in the sea; and a man trying to get his cow on the
+roof of his house, in order that she might eat the grass growing there.
+But the most wonderful incident was a man coming with a cow in a cart:
+and the people had found out that the man had stolen the cow, and that a
+court should be held upon him, and so they did; and the justice they did
+was to put the horse to death for carrying the cow.[1]
+
+In another Gaelic version a young husband had provided his house with a
+cradle, in natural anticipation that such an interesting piece of
+furniture would be required in due time. In this he was disappointed,
+but the cradle stood in the kitchen all the same. One day he chanced to
+throw something into the empty cradle, upon which his wife, his mother,
+and his wife's mother set up loud lamentations, exclaiming, "Oh, if
+_he_ had been there, he had been killed!" alluding to a potential
+son. The man was so much shocked at such an exhibition of folly that he
+left the country in search of three greater noodles. Among other
+adventures, he goes into a house and plays tricks on some people there,
+telling them his name is "_Saw ye ever my like_?" When the old man
+of the house comes home he finds his people tied upon tables, and asks,
+"What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye ever my like?" says the first. Then
+going to a second man, he asks, "What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye
+ever my like?" says the second. "I saw thy like in the kitchen," replies
+the old man, and then he goes to the third: "What's the reason of this?"
+"Saw ye ever my like?" says the third. "I have seen plenty of thy like,"
+quoth the old man; "but never before this day," and then he understood
+that some one had been playing tricks on his people.[2]
+
+In Russian variants the old parents of a youth named Lutonya weep over
+the supposititious death of a potential grandchild, thinking how sad it
+would have been if a log which the old woman had dropped had killed that
+hypothetical infant. The parents' grief appears to Lutonya so uncalled
+for that he leaves the house, declaring he will not return until he has
+met with people more foolish than they. He travels long and far, and
+sees several foolish doings. In one place a horse is being inserted into
+its collar by sheer force; in another, a woman is fetching milk from the
+cellar a spoonful at a time; and in a third place some carpenters are
+attempting to stretch a beam which is not long enough, and Lutonya earns
+their gratitude by showing them how to join a piece to it.[3]
+
+A well-known English version is to this effect: There was a young man
+who courted a farmer's daughter, and one evening when he came to the
+house she was sent to the cellar for beer. Seeing an axe stuck in a beam
+above her head, she thought to herself, "Suppose I were married and had
+a son, and he were to grow up, and be sent to this cellar for beer, and
+this axe were to fall and kill him--oh dear! oh dear!" and there she sat
+crying and crying, while the beer flowed all over the cellar-floor,
+until her old father and mother come in succession and blubber along
+with her about the hypothetical death of her imaginary grown-up son. The
+young man goes off in quest of three bigger fools, and sees a woman
+hoisting a cow on to the roof of her cottage to eat the grass that grew
+among the thatch, and to keep the animal from falling off, she ties a
+rope round its neck, then goes into the kitchen, secures at her waist
+the rope, which she had dropped down the chimney, and presently the cow
+stumbles over the roof, and the woman is pulled up the flue till she
+sticks half-way. In an inn he sees a man attempting to jump into his
+trousers--a favourite incident in this class of stories; and farther
+along he meets with a party raking the moon out of a pond.
+
+Another English variant relates that a young girl having been left alone
+in the house, her mother finds her in tears when she comes home, and
+asks the cause of her distress. "Oh," says the girl, "while you were
+away, a brick fell down the chimney, and I thought, if it had fallen on
+me I might have been killed!" The only novel adventure which the girl's
+betrothed meets with, in his quest of three bigger fools, is an old
+woman trying to drag an oven with a rope to the table where the dough
+lay.
+
+Several versions are current in Italy and Sicily, which present a close
+analogy to those of other European countries. The following is a
+translation of one in Bernoni's Venetian collection:
+
+Once upon a time there were a husband and a wife who had a son. This son
+grew up, and said one day to his mother, "Do you know, mother, I would
+like to marry?" "Very well, marry! Whom do you want to take?" He
+answered, "I want the gardener's daughter." "She is a good girl--take
+her; I am willing." So he went, and asked for the girl, and her parents
+gave her to him. They were married, and when they were in the midst of
+their dinner, the wine gave out. The husband said, "There is no more
+wine!" The bride, to show that she was a good housekeeper, said, "I will
+go and get some." She took the bottles and went to the cellar, turned
+the cock, and began to think, "Suppose I should have a son, and we
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die! Oh, how grieved I should
+be! oh, how grieved I should be!" And thereupon she began to weep and
+weep; and meanwhile the wine was running all over the cellar.
+
+When they saw that the bride did not return, the mother said, "I will go
+and see what the matter is." So she went into the cellar, and saw the
+bride, with the bottle in her hand, and weeping. "What is the matter
+with you that you are weeping?" "Ah, my mother, I was thinking that if I
+had a son, and should name him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" The mother, too, began to weep,
+and weep, and weep; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.
+
+When the people at the table saw that no one brought the wine, the
+groom's father said, "I will go and see what is the matter. Certainly
+something wrong has happened to the bride." He went and saw the whole
+cellar full of wine, and the mother and bride weeping. "What is the
+matter?" he said; "has anything wrong happened to you?"
+
+"No," said the bride; "but I was thinking that if I had a son, and
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I should grieve!
+oh, how I should grieve!" Then he, too, began to weep, and all three
+wept; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.
+
+When the groom saw that neither the bride, nor the mother, nor the
+father came back, he said, "Now I will go and see what the matter is
+that no one returns." He went into the cellar and saw all the wine
+running over the cellar. He hastened and stopped the cask, and then
+asked, "What is the matter that you are all weeping, and have let the
+wine run all over the cellar?" Then the bride said, "I was thinking that
+if I had a son and called him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" Then the groom said, "You
+stupid fools! Are you weeping at this and letting all the wine run into
+the cellar? Have you nothing else to think of? It shall never be said
+that I remained with you. I will roam about the world, and until I find
+three fools greater than you, I will not return home."
+
+He had a bread-cake made, took a bottle of wine, a sausage, and some
+linen, and made a bundle, which he put on a stick and carried over his
+shoulder. He journeyed and journeyed, but found no fool. At last he
+said, worn out, "I must turn back, for I see I cannot find a greater
+fool than my wife." He did not know what to do, whether to go on or turn
+back. "Oh," said he, "it is better to try and go a little farther." So
+he went on, and shortly saw a man in his shirt-sleeves at a well, all
+wet with perspiration, and water. "What are you doing, sir, that you are
+so covered with water and in such a sweat?" "Oh, let me alone," the man
+answered; "for I have been here a long time drawing water to fill this
+pail, and I cannot fill it." "What are you drawing the water in?" he
+asked him. "In this sieve," he said. "What are you thinking about, to
+draw water in that sieve? Just wait!" He went to a house near by and
+borrowed a bucket, with which he returned to the well and filled the
+pail. "Thank you, good man. God knows how long I should have had to
+remain here!"--"Here," thought he, "is one who is a greater fool than my
+wife."
+
+He continued his journey, and after a time he saw at a distance a man in
+his shirt, who was jumping down from a tree. He drew near, and saw a
+woman under the same tree, holding a pair of breeches. He asked them
+what they were doing, and they said that they had been there a long
+time, and that the man was trying on those breeches and did not know how
+to get into them. "I have jumped and jumped," said the man, "until I am
+tired out, and I cannot imagine how to get into those breeches." "Oh,"
+said the traveller, "you might stay here as long as you wished, for you
+would never get into them this way. Come down and lean against the
+tree." Then he took his legs and put them in the breeches, and after he
+had put them on, he said, "Is that right?" "Very good; bless you; for if
+it had not been for you, God knows how long I should have had to jump."
+Then the traveller said to himself, "I have seen two greater fools than
+my wife."
+
+Then he went his way, and as he approached a city, he heard a great
+noise. When he drew near he asked what it was, and was told it was a
+marriage, and that it was the custom in that city for the brides to
+enter the city gate on horseback, and that there was a great discussion
+on this occasion between the groom and the owner of the horse, for the
+bride was tall and the horse high, and they could not get through the
+gate; so that they must either cut off the bride's head or the horse's
+legs. The groom did not wish his bride's head cut off, and the owner of
+the horse did not wish his horse's legs cut off, and hence this
+disturbance. Then the traveller said, "Just wait," and came up to the
+bride and gave her a slap that made her lower her head, and then he gave
+the horse a kick, and so they passed through the gate and entered the
+city. The groom and the owner of the horse asked the traveller what he
+wanted, for he had saved the groom his bride and the owner of the horse
+his horse. He answered that he did not wish anything, and said to
+himself, "Two and one make three! that is enough. Now I will go home."
+He did so, and said to his wife, "Here I am, my wife; I have seen three
+greater fools than you;--now let us remain in peace, and think of
+nothing else." They renewed the wedding, and always remained in peace.
+After a time the wife had a son, whom they named Bastianelo, and
+Bastianelo did not die, but still lives with his father and mother.[4]
+
+There is (Professor Crane remarks) a Sicilian version in Pitr�'s
+collection, called "The Peasant of Larc�ra," in which the bride's mother
+imagines that her daughter has a son who falls into the cistern. The
+groom--they are not yet married--is disgusted, and sets out on his
+travels with no fixed purpose of returning if he finds some fools
+greater than his mother-in-law, as in the Venetian tale. The first fool
+he meets is a mother, whose child, in playing the game called
+_nocciole_.[5] tries to get his hand out of the hole whilst his
+fist is full of stones. He cannot, of course, and the mother thinks they
+will have to cut off his hand. The traveller tells the child to drop the
+stones, and then he draws out his hand easily enough. Next he finds a
+bride who cannot enter the church because she is very tall and wears a
+high comb. The difficulty is settled as in the former story. After a
+while he comes to a woman who is spinning and drops her spindle. She
+calls out to the pig, whose name is Tony, to pick it up for her. The pig
+does nothing but grunt, and the woman in anger cries, "Well, you won't
+pick it up? May your mother die!" The traveller, who had overheard all
+this, takes a piece of paper, which he folds up like a letter, and then
+knocks at the door. "Who is there?" "Open the door, for I have a letter
+for you from Tony's mother, who is ill and wishes to see her son before
+she dies." The woman wonders that her imprecation has taken effect so
+soon, and readily consents to Tony's visit. Not only this, but she loads
+a mule with everything necessary for the comfort of the body and soul of
+the dying pig. The traveller leads away the mule with Tony, and returns
+home so pleased with having found that the outside world contains so
+many fools that he marries as he had first intended.[6]
+
+In other Italian versions, a man is trying to jump into his stockings;
+another endeavours to put walnuts into a sack with a fork; and a woman
+dips a knotted rope into a deep well, and then having drawn it up,
+squeezes the water out of the knots into a pail. The final adventure of
+the traveller in quest of the greatest noodles is thus related in Miss
+Busk's _Folk-lore of Rome_:
+
+Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage, where he knocked, and
+asked for a night's lodging. "I can't give you that," said a voice from
+the inside; "for I am a lone widow. I can't take a man in to sleep
+here." "But I am a pilgrim," replied he; "let me in at least to cook a
+bit of supper."
+
+"That I don't mind doing," said the good wife, and she opened the door.
+"Thanks, good friend," said the pilgrim, as he sat down by the stove.
+"Now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan." So she gave him a
+pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the
+six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan too. Presently,
+when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs
+swimming in the pan instead of two, she said, "Lack-a-day! you must
+surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know
+So-and-so?" naming her husband. "Oh yes," said he, enjoying the joke; "I
+know him very well: he lives just next to me." "Only to think of that!"
+replied the poor woman. "And, do tell me, how do you get on in the other
+world? What sort of a life is it?" "Oh, not so very bad; it depends what
+sort of a place you get. The part where we are is pretty good, except
+that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly
+starved." "No, really?" cried the good wife, clasping her hands. "Only
+fancy, my good husband starving out there, so fond as he was of a good
+dinner, too!" Then she added, coaxingly, "As you know him so well,
+perhaps you wouldn't mind doing him the charity of taking him a little
+somewhat, to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could
+easily send him." "Oh dear, no, not at all. I'll do so with pleasure,"
+answered he. "But I'm not going back till to-morrow, and if I don't
+sleep here I must go on farther, and then I shan't come by this way."
+"That's true," replied the widow. "Ah, well, I mustn't mind what the
+folks say; for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You
+must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning
+I'll load a donkey with provisions for my poor husband." "Oh, no,"
+replied the pilgrim, "you shan't be disturbed in your bed. Only let me
+sleep on the hearth--that will do for me; and as I am an early riser, I
+can be gone before any one's astir, so folks won't have anything to
+say."
+
+So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up, loading the
+donkey with the best of her stores--ham, macaroni, flour, cheese, and
+wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying, "You'll send the
+donkey back, won't you?" "Of course I would send him back," he replied;
+"he'd be of no use to me out there. But I shan't get out again myself
+for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won't find his way back
+alone, for it's no easy way to find." "To be sure not; I ought to have
+thought of that," replied the widow. "Ah, well, so as my poor husband
+gets a good meal, never mind the donkey." So the pretended pilgrim from
+the other world went his way. He hadn't gone a hundred yards before the
+widow called him back. "Ah, she's beginning to think better of it," said
+he to himself, and he continued his way, pretending not to hear. "Good
+pilgrim," shouted the widow, "I forgot one thing: would money be of any
+use to my poor husband?" "Oh dear, yes," said he, "all the use in the
+world. You can always get anything for money anywhere." "Oh, do come
+back, then, and I'll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him." He went
+back, willingly, for the hundred scudi, which the widow counted out to
+him. "There's no help for it," said he to himself as he went his way: "I
+must go back to those at home."
+
+From sunny Italy to bleak Norway is certainly a "far cry," yet the
+adventure of the "Pilgrim from Paradise" is also known to the Norse
+peasants, in connection with the quest of the greatest noodles: A goody
+goes to market, with a cow and a hen for sale. She wants five shillings
+for the cow and ten pounds for the hen. A butcher buys the cow, but
+doesn't want the hen. As she cannot find a buyer for the hen, she goes
+back to the butcher, who treats her to so much brandy that she gets
+dead-drunk, and in this condition the butcher tars and feathers her.
+When she awakes, she fancies that she must be some strange bird, and
+cries out, "Is this me, or is it not me? I'll go home, and if our dog
+barks, then it is not me." Thus far we have a variant of our favourite
+nursery rhyme:
+
+  There was an old woman, as I've heard tell,
+  She went to market her eggs for to sell;
+  She went to market, all on a market-day,
+  And she fell asleep on the king's highway.
+
+  There came a pedlar, whose name was Stout,
+  He cut her petticoats all round about;
+  He cut her petticoats up to the knees,
+  Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze.
+
+  When the little woman first did wake,
+  She began to shiver and she began to shake;
+  She began to wonder, and she began to cry,
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this is none of I!"
+
+  "But if this be I, as I do hope it be,
+  I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me;
+  If it be I, he'll wag his little tail,
+  And if it be not I, he loudly bark and wail."
+
+  Home went the little woman all in the dark,
+  Up got the little dog, and began to bark;
+  He began to bark, and she began to cry,
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this can't be I!"
+
+To return to the Norse tale. As in our nursery rhyme, when the goody
+reaches home, the dog barks at her; then she goes to the calves' house,
+but the calves, having sniffed the tar with which she was smeared, turn
+away from her in disgust. She is now fully convinced that she has been
+transformed into some outlandish bird, so she climbs on to the roof of a
+shed, and begins to flap her arms as if she were about to fly, when out
+comes her goodman, and seeing a suspicious-looking creature on the roof
+of the shed, he fetches his gun and is going to shoot at his goody, when
+he recognises her voice. Amazed at such a piece of folly, he resolves to
+leave her and not come back till he has found three goodies as silly. He
+meets with a female descendant of the Schildburgers, evidently, carrying
+into her cottage sunshine in a sieve, there being no window in the
+house: he cuts out a window for her and is well paid for his trouble. He
+next comes to a house where an old woman is thumping her goodman on the
+head with a beetle, in order to force over him a shirt without a slit
+for the neck, which she had drawn over his head: he cuts a slit in the
+shirt with a pair of scissors, and is amply rewarded for his ingenuity.
+His third adventure is similar to that of the "pilgrim" in the Italian
+version:
+
+At another house he informs the goody that he came from Paradise Place--
+which was the name of his own farm--and she asks him if he knew her
+second husband in paradise. (She had been married twice before she took
+her present husband, who was an old curmudgeon, and she liked her second
+husband best--she was sure he had gone to heaven.) He replies that he
+knew him very intimately, but, poor man, he was far from well off,
+having to go about begging from house to house. The goody gives him a
+cart-load of clothes and a box of shining dollars, for her dear second
+husband; for why should he go about begging in paradise when there was
+so much of everything in their house? So the stranger, jumps into the
+cart and drives off, as fast as possible. But Peter, the goody's third
+husband, sees him on the road, and recognising his own horse and cart,
+hastens home to his wife, and asks why a stranger has gone off with his
+property. She explains the whole affair, upon which he mounts a horse
+and gallops away after the rogue who had thus taken advantage of his
+wife's simplicity. The stranger, perceiving him approach, hides the
+horse and cart behind a high hedge, takes part of the horse's tail and
+hangs it on the branches of a birch-tree, and then lays himself down on
+his back and gazes up into the sky. When Peter comes up to him, he
+exclaims, still looking at the sky, "What a wonder! there is a man going
+straight to heaven on a black horse!" Peter can see no such thing. "Can
+you not?" says the stranger. "See, there is his tail, still on the
+birch-tree. You must lie down in this very spot, and look straight up,
+and don't for a moment take your eyes off the sky, and then you'll see--
+what you'll see." So Peter lies down and gazes up at the sky very
+intently, looking for the man going straight to heaven on a black horse.
+Meanwhile the traveller escapes, with the cart-load of clothes and the
+box of shining dollars, and the second horse besides. Peter, when he
+reaches home, tells his wife that he had given the man from paradise the
+other horse for her second husband to ride about on, for he was ashamed
+to confess that he had been cheated as well as herself.[7] As to our
+traveller, having found three goodies as great fools as his own, he
+returned home, and saw that all his fields had been ploughed and sown;
+so he asked his wife where she had got the seed from. "Oh," says she, "I
+have always heard that what a man sows he shall also reap, so I sowed
+the salt that our friends the north-countrymen laid up with us, and if
+we only have rain, I fancy it will come up nicely."[8] "Silly you are,"
+said her husband, "and silly you will be as long as you live. But that
+is all one now, for the rest are not a bit wiser than you;--_there is
+not a pin to choose between you_!"[9]
+
+Now, if it be "a far cry" from Italy to Norway, it is still farther from
+Norway to India; and yet it is in the southern provinces of our great
+Asiatic empire that a story is current among the people, which, strange
+as it may seem, is almost the exact counterpart of the Norse version of
+the pretended pilgrim from paradise, of which the above is an abstract.
+It is found in Pandit S.M. Nat�sa S�str�'s _Folk-lore in Southern
+India_, now in course of publication at Bombay; a work which, when
+completed, will be of very great value, to students of comparative
+folk-tales, as well as prove an entertaining story-book for general
+readers. After condensation in some parts, this story--which the Pandit
+entitles "The Good Wife and the Bad Husband"--runs thus:
+
+In a secluded village there lived a rich man, who was very miserly, and
+his wife, who was very kind-hearted and charitable, but a stupid little
+woman that believed everything she heard. And there lived in the same
+village a clever rogue, who had for some time watched for an opportunity
+for getting something from this simple woman during her husband's
+absence. So one day, when he had seen the old miser ride out to inspect
+his lands, this rogue of the first water came to the house, and fell
+down at the threshold as if overcome by fatigue. The woman ran up to him
+at once and inquired whence he came. "I am come from Kail�sa,"[10] said
+he; "having been sent down by an old couple living there, for news of
+their son and his wife." "Who are those fortunate dwellers in Siva's
+mountain?" she asked. And the rogue gave the names of her husband's
+deceased parents, which he had taken good care, of course, to learn from
+the neighbours. "Do you really come from them?" said the simple woman.
+"Are they doing well there? Dear old people! How glad my husband would
+be to see you, were he here! Sit down, please, and rest until he
+returns. How do they live there? Have they enough to eat and dress
+themselves withal?" These and a hundred other questions she put to the
+rogue, who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible,
+knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return
+while he was there. So he replied, "Mother, language has no words to
+describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have
+not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten
+nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see
+them." The rogue's pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly
+believed that he had come down from Kail�sa, a messenger from the old
+couple to herself. "Why should they so suffer," said she, "when their
+son has plenty to eat and clothe himself withal, and when their
+daughter-in-law wears all sorts of costly garments?" So saying, she went
+into the house, and soon came out again with two boxes containing all
+her own and her husband's clothes, which she handed to the rogue,
+desiring him to deliver them to the poor old couple in Kail�sa. She also
+gave him her jewel-box, to be presented to her mother-in-law. "But dress
+and jewels will not fill their hungry stomachs," said the rogue. "Very
+true; I had forgot: wait a moment," said the simple woman, going into
+the house once more. Presently returning with her husband's cash chest,
+she emptied its glittering contents into the rogue's skirt, who now took
+his leave in haste, promising to give everything to the good old couple
+in Kail�sa; and having secured all the booty in his upper garment, he
+made off at the top of his speed as soon as the silly woman had gone
+indoors.
+
+Shortly after this the husband returned home, and his wife's pleasure at
+what she had done was so great that she ran to meet him at the door, and
+told him all about the arrival of the messenger from Kail�sa, how his
+parents were without clothes and food, and how she had sent them clothes
+and jewels and store of money. On hearing this, the anger of the husband
+was great; but he checked himself, and inquired which road the messenger
+from Kail�sa had taken, saying that he wished to follow him with a
+further message for his parents. So she very readily pointed out the
+direction in which the rogue had gone. With rage in his heart at the
+trick played upon his stupid wife, he rode off in hot haste, and after
+having proceeded a considerable distance, he caught sight of the flying
+rogue, who, finding escape hopeless, climbed up into a _pipal_
+tree.
+
+The husband soon reached the foot of the tree, when he shouted to the
+rogue to come down. "No, I cannot," said he; "this is the way to
+Kail�sa," and then climbed to the very top of the tree. Seeing there was
+no chance of the rogue coming down, and there being no one near to whom
+he could call for help, the old miser tied his horse to a neighbouring
+tree, and began to climb up the _p�pal_ himself. When the rogue
+observed this, he thanked all his gods most fervently, and having waited
+until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle
+of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached
+the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser's horse and with his
+bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be
+discovered. Being thus balked the miser came down the _p�pal_ tree
+slowly cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover
+the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at
+leisure. His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a
+joyous countenance, and cried, "I thought as much: you have sent away
+your horse to Kail�sa, to be used by your old father." Vexed at his
+wife's words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his
+own folly.
+
+Through the Tamils it is probable this story reached Ceylon, where it
+exists in a slightly different form: A young girl, named Kaluh�mi, had
+lately died, when a beggar came to the parents' house, and on being
+asked by the mother where he had come from, he said that he had just
+come from the other world to this world, meaning that he had only just
+recovered from severe illness. "Then," said the woman, "since you have
+come from the other world, you must have seen my daughter Kaluh�mi
+there, who died but a few days ago. Pray tell me how she is." The
+beggar, seeing how simple she was, replied, "She is my wife, and lives
+with me at present, and she has sent me to you for her dowry." The woman
+at once gave him all the money and jewels that were in the house, and
+sent him away delighted with his unexpected good luck. Soon after, the
+woman's husband returned, and learning how silly she had been, mounted
+his horse and rode after the beggar. The rest of the story corresponds
+to the Tamil version, as above, with the exception that when the husband
+saw the beggar slide down the tree, get on his horse, and ride off, he
+cried out to him, "Hey, son-in-law, you may tell Kaluh�mi that the money
+and jewels are from her mother, and that the horse is from me;" which is
+altogether inconsistent, since he is represented as the reverse of a
+simpleton in pursuing the beggar, on hearing what his wife had done. It
+is curious, also, to observe that in the Tamil version the man goes to
+the house with the deliberate purpose of deceiving the simple woman,
+while in the Sinhalese the beggar is evidently tempted by her mistaking
+the meaning of his words. But both present very close points of
+resemblance to the Norwegian story of the pretended pilgrim from
+paradise. There are indeed few instances of a story having travelled so
+far and lost so little of its original details, allowing for the
+inevitable local colouring.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. ii., pp.
+373-381. In a note to these adventures Campbell gives a story of some
+women who, as judges, doomed a horse to be hanged: the thief who stole
+the horse got off, because it was his first offence; the horse went back
+to the house of the thief, because he was the better master, and was
+condemned for stealing himself!
+
+[2]: Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. ii.,
+pp. 385--387.
+
+In a Northumberland popular tale a child in bed sees a little fairy come
+down the chimney, and the child tells the creature that his name is
+My-ainsel. They play together, and the little fairy is burnt with a
+cinder, and on its mother appearing when it cries, and asking it who had
+hurt it, the imp answers, "It was My-ainsel."--There is a somewhat
+similar story current in Finland: A man is moulding lead buttons, when
+the Devil appears, and asks him what he is doing. "Making eyes." "Could
+you make me new ones?" "Yes." So he ties the Devil to a bench, and, in
+reply to the fiend, tells him that his name is Myself _(Issi)_, and
+then pours lead into his eyes. The Devil starts up with the bench on his
+back, and runs off howling. Some people working in a field ask him who
+did it. Quoth the fiend, "Myself did it" (_Issi teggi_).
+
+Cf. the _Odyssey_, Book ix., where Ulysses informs the Cyclops that
+his name is No-man, and when the monster, after having had his eye put
+out in his sleep, awakes in agony, he roars to his comrades for help:
+
+  "Friends, No-man kills me, No-man, in the hour
+  Of sleep, oppresses me with fraudful power!"
+  "If no man hurt thee, but the hand divine
+  Inflict disease, it fits thee to resign;--
+  To Jove, or to thy father, Neptune, pray,"
+  The brethren cried, and instant strode away.
+
+[3] Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales_.
+
+[4] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 279--282.
+
+[5] A game played with peach-pits, which are thrown into holes made in
+the ground, and to which certain numbers are attached.
+
+[6] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 282-3.
+
+[7] The same story is told in Brittany, with no important variations.
+
+[8] Quite as literally did the rustic understand the priest's assurance,
+that whatsoever one gave in charity, for the love of God, should be
+repaid him twofold: next day he takes his cow to the priest, who accepts
+it as sent by Heaven--and the poor man did _not_ get two cows in
+return. The story is known in various forms all over Europe; it was a
+special favourite in medi�val times. See Le Grand's _Fabliaux_,
+tome iii., 376: "La Vache du Cur�," by the trouv�re Jean de Boves;
+Wright's _Latin Stories; Icelandic Legends_, etc.
+
+[9] Dasent's _Popular Tales from the Norse_.
+
+[10] "See note, p. 49" in original. This is Chapter II, Footnote 13 in
+this e-text.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+The idea of the old English jest-book, _Jacke of Dover His Quest of
+Inquirie, or His Privy Search for the Veriest Foole in England_
+(London: 1604), may perhaps have been suggested by such popular tales as
+those of the man going about in quest of three greater fools than his
+wife, father-in-law, and mother-in-law. It is, however, simply a
+collection of humorous anecdotes, not specially examples of folly or
+stupidity, most of which are found in earlier jest-books. The
+introduction is rather curious:
+
+"When merry Jacke of Dover had made his privy search for the Foole of
+all Fooles, and making his inquirie in most of the principal places in
+England, at his return home he was adjudged to be the fool himself; but
+now wearied with the motley coxcombe, he hath undertaken in some place
+or other to find a verier foole than himself. But first of all, coming
+to London, he went into Paul's Church, where walking very melancholy in
+the middle aisle with Captain Thingut and his fellowes, he was invited
+to dine at Duke Humphry's ordinary,[1] where, amongst other good
+stomachs that repaired to his bountiful feast, there came a whole jury
+of penniless poets, who being fellows of a merry disposition (but as
+necessary in a commonwealth as a candle in a straw bed), he accepted of
+their company, and as from poets cometh all kind of folly, so he hoped
+by their good directions to find out his Foole of Fooles, so long looked
+for. So, thinking to pass away the dinner-hour with some pleasant chat
+(lest, being overcloyed with too many dishes, they should surfeit), he
+discovered to them his merry meaning, who, being glad of so good an
+occasion of mirth, instead of a cup of sack and sugar for digestion,
+these men of little wit began to make inquiry and to search for the
+aforesaid fool, thinking it a deed of charity to ease him of so great a
+burden as his motley coxcomb was, and because such weak brains as are
+now resident almost in every place, might take benefit hereat. In this
+manner began the inquiry:
+
+_The Foole of Hereford._
+
+"'Upon a time (quoth one of the jury) it was my chance to be in the city
+of Hereford, when, lodging at an inn, I was told of a certain
+silly-witted gentleman there dwelling, that would assuredly believe all
+things that he heard for a truth; to whose house I went upon a
+sleeveless errand, and finding occasion to be acquainted with him, I was
+well entertained, and for three days' space had my bed and board in his
+house; where, amongst many other fooleries, I, being a traveller, made
+him believe that the steeple of Brentwood, in Essex, sailed in one night
+as far as Calais, in France, and afterwards returned again to its proper
+place. Another time I made him believe that in the forest of Sherwood,
+in Nottinghamshire, were seen five hundred of the King of Spain's
+galleys, which went to besiege Robin Hood's Well, and that forty
+thousand scholars with elder squirts performed such a piece of service
+as they were all in a manner taken and overthrown in the forest. Another
+time I made him believe that Westminster Hall, for suspicion of treason,
+was banished for ten years into Staffordshire. And last of all, I made
+him believe that a tinker should be baited to death at Canterbury for
+getting two and twenty children in a year; whereupon, to prove me a
+liar, he took his horse and rode thither, and I, to verify him a fool,
+took my horse and rode hither.'
+
+"'Well,' quoth Jacke of Dover, 'this in my mind was pretty foolery, but
+yet the Foole of all Fooles is not here found that I looked for.'
+
+_The Fool of Huntington._
+
+"'And it was my chance (quoth another of the jury) upon a time to be at
+Huntington, where I heard tell of a simple shoemaker there dwelling, who
+having two little boys whom he made a vaunt to bring up to learning, the
+better to maintain themselves when they were men; and having kept them a
+year or two at school, he examined them saying, "My good boy," quoth he
+to one of them, "what dost thou learn and where is thy lesson?" "O
+father," said the boy, "I am past grace." "And where art thou?" quoth he
+to the other boy, who likewise answered that he was at the devil and all
+his works. "Now Lord bless us," quoth the shoemaker, "whither are my
+children learning? The one is already past grace and the other at the
+devil and all his works!" Whereupon he took them both from school and
+set them to his own occupation.[2]'"
+
+A number of others of the jury of penniless poets having related their
+stories, at last it is agreed that if the Foole of all Fooles cannot be
+found among those before named, one of themselves must be the fool, for
+there cannot be a verier fool than a poet, "for poets have good wits,
+but cannot use them, great store of money, but cannot keep it," etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is doubtful what the name "Jack of Dover" imports, as that of the
+imaginary inquirer after fools. The author of the Cook's Tale of
+Gamelyn--which is generally considered as a spurious "Canterbury" tale--
+represents, in the prologue, mine host of the Tabard as saying to Roger
+the Cook:
+
+  "Full many a pastie hast thou lettin blode;
+  And many a jack of Dovyr hast thou sold,
+  That hath ben twic� hot and twic� cold."
+
+Dr. Brewer says--apparently on the strength of these lines--that a "Jack
+of Dover" is a fish that has been cooked a second time. But it may have
+been a name of a particular kind of fish caught in the waters off Dover.
+If, however, a "Jack of Dover" is a twice-cooked fish, the title of the
+jest-book is not inappropriate, since all the stories it comprises are
+at least "twice-told."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] To "dine with Duke Humphry" meant not to dine at all. See Brewer's
+_Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ for the origin of the expression.
+
+[2] The jest is thus told in some parts of Scotland: An old gentleman,
+walking in the country, met three small boys on their way home from
+school, and asked them how they progressed in their learning. The
+youngest--referring, of course, to the _Shorter Catechism_--replied
+that he was "in a state of sin and misery;" the second, that he was past
+"redemption;" and the eldest, that he was "in the pains of hell for
+ever."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Abdera, Man of, 6.
+
+Alewife and her Hens, 73.
+
+Alfonsus, Peter, 45.
+
+Arab and his Cow, 70.
+
+Arab Schoolmaster, 83.
+
+Arabian Idiot, 133.
+
+_Arabian Nights_, 81, 83, 133, 146.
+
+Arabian Noodles, 70,75,107, 147.
+
+Armstrong's, Archie, _Banquet of Jests_, 74.
+
+Ashton, John, xiv.
+
+Ass and the Two Sharpers, 81.
+
+Austwick, Carles of, 17,53,54.
+
+_Avad�nas_, 53.
+
+
+Babrius, 53.
+
+Bakki, Brothers of, 32, 64.
+
+Bang-eater and his Wife, 147.
+
+Bang-eaters and the Dogs, 109.
+
+Barrett, F.T., 9.
+
+_Barrin' o' the Door_, 107.
+
+Belmont, Fools of, 55.
+
+_Beryn, Tale of_, 40.
+
+Beschi, Father, 29.
+
+_Bharataka Dwatrinsati_, 158.
+
+_Bizarrures of the Sieur Gaulard_, 8, 12, 20, 76.
+
+Bidpa�'s Fables, 53.
+
+Birth-Stories--_see_ J�takas.
+
+Boccaccio's _Decameron_, 39.
+
+"Boiling" River, 30, 43.
+
+Bond, The Lord's, 17.
+
+Borde, Andrew, 23.
+
+Br�hmans, Four Simple, 171.
+
+Bromyard, John, 167.
+
+Buddha's Five Precepts, 69.
+
+Bull and the Gate, 54.
+
+Bull of Siva, 48.
+
+Burton's _Arabian Nights_, 83.
+
+Busk's _Folk-Lore of Rome_, 204.
+
+Butter eaten by a Dog, 18.
+
+Buzzard, The Gothamite's, 38.
+
+
+Cabbage-Tree, 47.
+
+Caftan on Tree, 90.
+
+Calf's Head in a Pot, 89.
+
+Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, 32, 33, 34, 35,
+36, 154, 193.
+
+Cat and old Woman, 65.
+
+Cat, Men of Schilda's, 61.
+
+Cazotte's _New Arabian Nights_, 133.
+
+Ceylon--_see_ Sinhalese Noodles.
+
+Chamberlain, B.H., 130.
+
+Cheese, The Gothamite's, 34.
+
+Cheese on the Highway, 40.
+
+Cheese, The Stolen, 91.
+
+Chinese Noodles, 93, 94.
+
+Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, 120.
+
+Colombo, Michele, 81.
+
+Countryman and Dog, 79.
+
+Cozens, F.W., 9.
+
+Council-House, Dark, 57.
+
+Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, 117, 128, 139, 202, 204.
+
+Cuckoo, Hedging in the, 26.
+
+Cumeans and the bath, 4;
+  and the father's corpse,15;
+  and the fig-tree, 10;
+  and the pot of honey, 19;
+  and the stolen clothes, 4.
+
+Dark Council-House, 57.
+
+Dasent's _Norse Tales_, 126, 212.
+
+Dekker's _Gul's Horn Book_, 26.
+
+Devil in the Meadow, 42.
+
+_Disciplina Clericalis_, 45.
+
+Doctor and Patients, 5.
+
+Doctor's Apprentice, 168.
+
+Dog that ate Honey, 18.
+
+Door, Taking Care of the, 97, 98.
+
+Dreams, The Good, 92, 93.
+
+Dubois, Abb�, 171.
+
+
+Ear, Biting one's own, 86.
+
+Eberhard's _Hieraclis_, 3.
+
+Eel, Drowning the, 33.
+
+_El Conde Lucanor_, 162.
+
+English typical booby, 139.
+
+
+_Fabliaux_, Le Grand's, 39,163.
+
+Family, Best of the, 165.
+
+Farmer and his Pigs, 54.
+
+Fisher, Indian Silly Son as, 163.
+
+Fishers, Gothamite, 28.
+
+Fleas, Bit by, 14.
+
+_Folk-Lore in Southern India_, 212.
+
+Fool and the aloes-wood, 98;
+  and the birch-tree, 151;
+  and the cotton, 99;
+  and the cup lost in the sea, 99;
+  and the elephant-driver, 51;
+  and his porridge, 119;
+  and the _Ramayana_, 70;
+  and the sack of meal, 19, 25, 68;
+  and the shopkeeper, 100;
+  at his fireside, 119;
+  kicked by his mule, 119;
+  of Hereford, 221;
+  of Huntingdon, 222.
+
+Fools and the buffalo, 101;
+  and the Bull of Siva, 48;
+  and their inheritance, 118;
+  and the mosquitoes, 95;
+  and the palm-trees, 96;
+  and the trunks, 96.
+
+Fortini's Italian Novels, 162.
+
+Fuller, Thomas, on the Gothamites, 20.
+
+Fumivall, F.J., 23.
+
+
+Gaulard, The Sieur, 8, 12, 20, 76.
+
+Geese and Tortoise, 52.
+
+_Gesta Romanorum_, 117,163.
+
+Gibb's _Forty. Vaz�rs_, 109, 166, 167.
+
+Giuf�, the Sicilian Booby, 97, 130, 165.
+
+Goat and Old Woman, 66.
+
+_Gooroo Paramartan_, 29, 37, 157.
+
+Gossips and their late Husbands, 74.
+
+Gossips at the Alehouse, 43.
+
+_Gotham, Tales of the Mad Men of_, xiii., 20, 24-44.
+
+Grazzini's Florentine Fool, 161.
+
+Grecian Noodles, 1-15.
+
+
+Halliwell-Phillipps, J.O., xiii., 13, 22, 27, 53.
+
+Hama and Hums, Men of, 75.
+
+Hazlitt, W.C., xiii., 12.
+
+Heaven, Sorry he has gone to, 74.
+
+Herdsman, The Foolish, 106.
+
+Herodotus, Stephens' _Apology_ for, 119.
+
+Hierokles, Jests of, 2.
+
+_Hitopadesa_, 162.
+
+Honey, Pot of, 6, 18.
+
+Hunter's Dream of a Boar, 4.
+
+
+Icelandic Noodles, 32, 64, 163.
+
+Indian Noodles, 29, 37, 44, 48, 51, 70, 96, 97-106, 111,
+1l8, 158, l6l, 163, 170, 212.
+
+Italian Noodles, 115, 127, 143, 160, 197, 202, 204.
+
+Irish Labourer and Farmer, 8.
+
+Irishman and his ass, 119.
+
+Irishman and his hens, 120.
+
+Irishman and lost shovel, 99.
+
+Irishmen and mosquitoes, 14.
+
+Irishman's Dream, 92.
+
+
+Jack of Dover's Quest, 219.
+
+Japanese Noodle, 130.
+
+Jatakas (Buddhist Birth-Stories), 52, 65, 95, 164.
+
+_Jests of Scogin_, 162.
+
+Joe Miller's Jest-Book, 1, 2.
+
+Judge and Thieves, 87.
+
+
+Kaba�l Tales, 37, 154.
+
+Kashm�r� Tales, 65, 89, 111.
+
+_Katha Manjari_, 11, 70, 100, 163.
+
+_Katha Sarit Sagara_, 48, 53, 120, 164.
+
+Kerchief, The, 90.
+
+Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, 89.
+
+King's Stupid Son, The, 167.
+
+Knite, 'The Gothamites', 53.
+
+Knowles, J.H., 66, 113.
+
+
+_Laird of Logan_, 13.
+
+Leger's _Contes Populaires Slaves_, 128, 154.
+
+
+Marie de France, 46.
+
+_Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres_, 161.
+
+Miller's Jest-Book, 1, 2.
+
+Millstone of the Schildburgers, 59.
+
+Minstrel and Pupil, 166.
+
+Monk Transformed, 81.
+
+Moon a green cheese, 44.
+
+Moon in the well, 92.
+
+Moon swallowed by an ass, 46.
+
+"Mortuus Loquens," 160.
+
+Mummy, The, 15.
+
+
+Nasr-ed-Din Khoja, 89.
+
+Natesa Sastri Pandit, 212.
+
+Needham's _Hieroclis_, 3.
+
+Noodles, The Three Great, 191.
+
+Norfolk Noodles, 17.
+
+Norse Noodles, 123, 207.
+
+Notts Bridge, 24.
+
+
+_Orientalist, The_, 69, 87, 114, 143, 160.
+
+
+_Pancha Tantra_, 67, 171.
+
+Paradise, Man who came from, 204, 210, 212, 217.
+
+Pedant, bald man, and barber, 6;
+  and the lost book, 13;
+  and his dream, 5,6;
+  and the jar of feathers, 5;
+  and his jar of wine, 9;
+  and the mirror, 9;
+  and the two slave-boys, 4;
+  and his slave who died, 8;
+  and the sparrows, 5;
+  and the twin-brothers, 12;
+  and his tomb, 8.
+
+Persian Noodle, 7.
+
+Persian Tales, 7, 66, 79.
+
+_Philotimus_, 27.
+
+Poet and the Dogs, 79.
+
+Poggius' _Faceti�_ 160, 162.
+
+Priest of Gotham, 42.
+
+Princess caused to grow, 102.
+
+Pupil, The Attentive, 165.
+
+
+Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales,_ 48, 153.
+
+Relic-hunter, 95.
+
+Rents of Gothamites, 27.
+
+Right Hand or Left, 91.
+
+River, "Boiling," 30, 43.
+
+Riviere's _Contes Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_,
+37, 154.
+
+Russian Noodles, 47, 128, 151, 154, 195
+
+Rustic and the Dog, 79.
+
+
+_Sacke Full of Newes_, 46, 97.
+
+Sa'd�'s _Gulist�n_, xi, 79.
+
+Schilda, The Men of, 56.
+
+Schoolmaster's Lady-love, 83.
+
+Sesame, Roasted, 120.
+
+Sheep's Eyes, Casting, 41, 126, 127.
+
+Sicilian Boobies, 97, 116, 139, 165.
+
+Silent Noodles, 107-117.
+
+Silly Matt, 123.
+
+Silly Son, The, 121.
+
+Simple Simon, 121, 122.
+
+Simpleton and Sharpers, 81.
+
+_Sindib�d N�ma_, 66.
+
+Sinhalese Noodles, 67-69, 87, 89, 113, 141, 165, 179, 217.
+
+Smith, Alexander, 9.
+
+Spade, The Stolen, 94.
+
+Spinning-Wheel, The, 36.
+
+Stephens, Henry, Tales by, 119.
+
+Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_, 154.
+
+_Summa Pra�dicantium_, The, 167.
+
+
+Tabourot, Etienne, 8.
+
+_Tales and Quicke Answeres_, 161.
+
+Tawney, C.H., 48.
+
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_, 9, 10, 74, 78.
+
+Thief on a Tree, 11.
+
+Thoms, W.J., xii., 56.
+
+Thoroton's _History of Nottinghamshire_, 21.
+
+Three Greatest Noodles, 191.
+
+Treasure Trove, 144, 151, 154.
+
+Trivet, The Gothamite's, 36.
+
+Turkish Noodles, 11, 86, 90, 93, 109, 166, 167.
+
+Twelve Fishers, The, 28.
+
+Twin Brothers, 12.
+
+
+Vives, Ludovicus, 46.
+
+
+Warton's _History of English Poetry_, 22.
+
+Washerman and his young Ass, 103.
+
+Wasp's Nest, 40.
+
+"Whittle to the Tree," 53.
+
+Widows, The Two, 74.
+
+Wiltshire Noodles, 17, 54.
+
+Wither's _Abuses Whipt and Stript_, 26.
+
+Wolf's Tail, The, 91.
+
+Wood, Anthony, on the Gotham Tales, 23.
+
+Worsted Balls, The, 35.
+
+Wrestler and the Wag, 7.
+
+Wrong Man wakened, 6, 7.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Noodles, by W. A. Clouston
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF NOODLES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 13032-8.txt or 13032-8.zip *****
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+  <title>The Book of Noodles</title></head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Noodles, by W. A. Clouston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Book of Noodles
+       Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies
+
+Author: W. A. Clouston
+
+Release Date: July 26, 2004 [EBook #13032]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF NOODLES ***
+
+
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+Produced by Bob Jones, Frank van Drogen, Carol David and PG
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1 align="center">THE</h1>
+
+  <h1 align="center">BOOK OF NOODLES:</h1>
+
+  <h2><i>STORIES OF SIMPLETONS; OR,<br/>
+     FOOLS AND THEIR FOLLIES.</i></h2>
+
+  <h3>BY</h3>
+
+  <h3>W. A. CLOUSTON,</h3>
+
+  <h4><i>Author of &quot;Popular Tales and Fictions: their Migrations and<br/>
+   Transformations</i></h4>
+
+  <h3>&quot;Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling when all<br/>
+   is done.&quot;-<i>-Twelfth Night.</i></h3>
+
+  <h4>LONDON:<br/>
+   ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.<br/>
+   1888.<br/></h4>
+
+
+
+<p align="left">&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h4>Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-24351</h4>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+  <h3>TO MY DEAR FRIEND</h3>
+
+  <h3>DAVID ROSS, LL.D., M.A., B.Sc.,</h3>
+
+   <h3>PRINCIPAL OF THE<br/>
+   CHURCH OF SCOTLAND TRAINING COLLEGE,<br/>
+   GLASGOW,</h3>
+
+  <h3>THIS COLLECTION OF FACETI�<br/>
+   IS DEDICATED.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter"> <img src="images/image001.png" alt="Preface divider"/></div>
+
+
+<h2><i>PREFACE</i>.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img border="0" src="images/image002.png" width="96" height="94" alt="L"/><i>IKE popular tales in general, the original sources of stories of
+simpletons are for the most part not traceable. The old Greek jests of
+this class had doubtless been floating about among different peoples
+long before they were reduced to writing. The only tales and apologues
+of noodles or stupid folk to which an approximate date can be assigned
+are those found in the early Buddhist books, especially in the
+"J�takas," or Birth-stories, which are said to have been related to his
+disciples by Gautama, the illustrious founder of Buddhism, as incidents
+which occurred to himself and others in former births, and were
+afterwards put into a literary form by his followers. Many of the
+"J�takas" relate to silly men and women, and also to stupid animals, the
+latter being, of course, men re-born as beasts, birds, or reptiles. But
+it is not to be supposed that all are of Buddhist invention; some had
+doubtless been current for ages among the Hindus before Gautama
+promulgated his mild doctrines. Scholars are, however, agreed that these
+fictions date at latest from a century prior to the Christian era.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Of European noodle-stories, as of other folk-tales, it may be said
+that, while they are numerous, yet the elements of which they are
+composed are comparatively very few. The versions domiciled in different
+countries exhibit little originality, farther than occasional
+modifications in accordance with local manners and customs. Thus for the
+stupid Brahman of Indian stories the blundering, silly son is often
+substituted in European variants; for the brose in Norse and Highland
+tales we find polenta or macaroni in Italian and Sicilian versions. The
+identity of incidents in the noodle-stories of Europe with those in what
+are for us their oldest forms, the Buddhist and Indian books, is very
+remarkable, particularly so in the case of Norse popular fictions,
+which, there is every reason to believe, were largely introduced through
+the Mongolians; and the similarity of Italian and West Highland stories
+to those of Iceland and Norway would seem to indicate the influence of
+the Norsemen in the Western Islands of Scotland and in the south of
+Europe.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It were utterly futile to attempt to trace the literary history of
+most of the noodle-stories which appear to have been current throughout
+European countries for many generations, since they have practically
+none. Soon after the invention of printing collections of faceti� were
+rapidly multiplied, the compilers taking their material from oral as
+well as written sources, amongst others, from medi�val collections of
+"exempla" designed for the use of preachers and the writings of the
+classical authors of antiquity. With the exception of those in Buddhist
+works, it is more than probable that the noodle-stories which are found
+among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere
+amusement. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the "witless devices" of
+the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction? Only the monkish
+writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if
+reproduced in these days, must be "printed for private circulation"!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Yet may the typical noodle of popular tales "point a moral," after a
+fashion. Poor fellow! he follows his instructions only too literally,
+and with a firm conviction that he is thus doing a very clever thing.
+But the consequence is almost always ridiculous. He practically shows
+the fallacy of the old saw that "fools learn by experience," for his
+next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every
+caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does
+everything, like the man in the play, "with the best intentions." His
+mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time; but to
+that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw: he cannot
+be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it;
+and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however,
+which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster
+to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to unexpected good fortune.
+He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet S�d� alludes when he
+says, in his charming "Gulist�n," or Rose Garden, "The alchemist died of
+grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin."
+Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood"'; the
+noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries.
+In brief, he is&mdash;in stories, at least&mdash;a standing illustration of the
+"vanity of human life"!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>And now a few words as to the history and design of the following work.
+  When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the late Mr. W.J.
+  <a name="thoms"></a>Thoms, who was one of the leading men in its formation,
+  promised to edit for the Society the "Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham,"
+  furnishing notes of analogous stories, a task which he was peculiarly qualified
+  to perform. As time passed on, however, the infirmities of old age doubtless
+  rendered the purposed work less and less attractive to him, and his death, after
+  a long, useful, and honourable career, left it still undone. What particular
+  plan he had sketched out for himself I do not know; but there can be no doubt
+  that had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And, since
+  he did not perform his self-allotted task, his death is surely a great loss,
+  perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of comparative folk-lore.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set
+about the work, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape
+of Oriental noodle-stories; but from a remark in his reply I feared
+there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That
+fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered
+as a humble substitute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is
+displaced by a more worthy one.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Since the "Tales of the Men of Gotham" ceased to be reproduced in
+chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840,
+with an introduction by Mr. J.O. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillipps);
+and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies
+themselves: the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the
+Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the
+"Shakespeare Jest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew
+Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John
+Ashton's "Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century" (1882).</i></p>
+<a name="ashton"></a>
+<p><i>It did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite
+analogues or variants of the Gothamite Tales; nor, on the other hand,
+was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the
+Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet
+all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be
+found in the chapters entitled "Gothamite Drolleries," of which they
+form, indeed, but a small portion.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources,
+many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers,
+the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing
+Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are
+current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be
+thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been
+omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an
+amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of
+popular fictions from country to country. In this design I was assisted
+by Captain R.C. Temple, one of the editors of the "Indian Antiquary,"
+and one of the authors of "Wide-awake Stories," from the Punjab and
+Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some
+curious Oriental parallels to European stories of simpletons.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>W.A.C.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>*.* <i>While my "Popular Tales and Fictions" was passing through the
+press, in 1886, I made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present
+work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has
+had unavoidably to defer its publication till now.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>W.A.C</i>.</p>
+
+<p>GLASGOW, <i>March</i>, 1888.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+  <p align="center"><b>CONTENTS.</b></p>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapItitle">CHAPTER I.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES . . . 1-15</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapIItitle">CHAPTER II.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES:</p>
+
+
+  <p>Reputed communities of stupids in different countries--The noodles of Norfolk:
+    their lord&#39;s bond; the dog and the honey; the fool and his sack of meal--Tales
+    of the Mad Men of Gotham: Andrew Borde not the author--The two Gothamites
+    at Notts Bridge--The hedging of the cuckoo--How the men of Gotham paid their
+    rents--The twelve fishers and the courtier--The <i>G�r� Paramartan</i>--The
+    brothers of Bakki--Drowning the eel--The Gothamite and his cheese--The trivet--The
+    buzzard--The gossips at the alehouse--The cheese on the highway--The wasp&#39;s
+    nest--Casting sheep&#39;s eyes--The devil in the meadow--The priest of Gotham--The &quot;boiling&quot; river--The
+    moon a green cheese--The &quot;carles of Austwick&quot;--The Wiltshire farmer and his pigs . . . 16-55</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapIIItitle">CHAPTER III.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p align="left">GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (<i>continued</i>):</p>
+
+    <p align="justify">The men of Schilda: the dark council-house; the mill-stone; the cat--Sinhalese noodles: the man
+    who observed Buddha&#39;s five precepts--The fool and the <i>R�m�yana</i>--The two Arabian noodles-- The alewife
+    and her hens--&quot;Sorry he has gone to heaven&quot;--The man of Hama and the man of Hums--<i>Bizarrures</i> of
+    the Sieur Gaulard--The rustic and the dog . . . 56-80</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapIVtitle">CHAPTER IV.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p align="left">GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (<i>continued</i>):</p>
+
+    <p>The simpleton and the sharpers--The schoolmaster&#39;s lady-love--The judge and the thieves--The calf s
+    head--The Kashm�r� and his store of rice--The Turkish noodle: the kerchief; the caftan; the wolfs tail; the right
+    hand and the left; the stolen cheese; the moon in the well--The good dreams--Chinese noodles: the lady and her
+    husband; the stolen spade; the relic-hunter--Indian noodles: the fools and the mosquitoes; the fools and the
+    palm-trees; the servants and the trunks; taking care of the door; the fool and the aloes-wood; the fool and the
+    cotton; the cup lost in the sea; the fool and the thieves; the simpletons who ate the buffalo; the princess who was
+    made to grow; the washerman&#39;s ass transformed; the foolish herdsman--Noodle-stories moralised--The brothers and
+    their heritage--Sowing roasted sesame . . . 81-120</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapVtitle">CHAPTER V.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p align="left">THE SILLY SON:</p>
+
+    <p align="left">Simple Simon--The Norse booby--The Russian booby--The
+    Japanese noodle--The Arabian idiot--The English silly son--The Sinhalese
+    noodle with the robbers--The Italian booby--The Arab simpleton and his
+    cow--The Russian fool and the birch-tree--The silly wife deceived by her husband--The Indian fool on the
+    tree-branch--The Indian monk who believed he was dead--The Florentine fool
+    and the young men--The Indian silly son as a fisher; as a messenger; killing
+    a mosquito; as a pupil--The best of the family--The doctor's apprentice . .
+    . 121-170</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapVItitle">CHAPTER VI.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>THE FOUR SIMPLE BR�HMANS:</p>
+
+    <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="90%" summary="Page numbers for sections in this chapter">
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Introduction</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">171</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the first Br�hman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">176</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the second Br�hman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">178</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the third Br�hman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">181</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Story of the fourth Br�hman</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">185</td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td width="50%" align="left">Conclusion</td>
+        <td width="50%" align="right">190</td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#chapVIItitle">CHAPTER VII.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>THE THREE GREAT NOODLES . . 191-218</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p align="center"><a href="#appendix">APPENDIX.</a></p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    <p>JACK OF DOVER&#39;S QUEST OF THE FOOL OF ALL FOOLS ...... 219</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#chindex">INDEX</a> . . . . . 225</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p>THE BOOK OF NOODLES.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image003.png" width="482" height="91" alt="Chapter Header"/></div><a name="chapItitle"></a>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I.<br/>
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"<img border="0" src="images/image004.png" width="96" height="94" alt="O"/>LD as the days of Hierokles!" is the exclamation of the "classical"
+reader on hearing a well-worn jest; while, on the like occasion, that of
+the "general" reader&mdash;a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies
+one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"&mdash;is, that it is "a Joe
+Miller;" both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in
+<i>joke-ology</i> to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him
+as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of
+Hierokles are <i>old</i> there can be no doubt whatever; that they were
+collected by the Alexandrian sage of that name is more than doubtful;
+while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in
+which he flourished, namely, the fifth century: it is very possible that
+some may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians! It
+is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the
+comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which
+his name is associated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's
+trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and
+cranks, and quiddities," <i>Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade
+Mecum</i>. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Miller," he
+should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it
+is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller"
+are, at least, "as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the
+man who trained his horse to live on a straw <i>per diem</i>, when it
+suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about
+a brick as a specimen of it.</p>
+
+<p>The collection of faceti� ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it was
+made, is composed of very short anecdotes of the sayings and doings of
+pedants, who are represented as noodles, or simpletons. In their
+existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the
+ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular faceti� of Europe
+through the churchmen of the Middle Ages, and, after having circulated
+long orally, passed into literature, whence, like other kinds of tales,
+they once more returned to the people. We find in them the indirect
+originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times
+been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also,
+perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type: as brave men lived
+before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very
+ancient pedigree! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now
+pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in
+ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which
+utterly fail to tickle our "sense of humour" in these double-distilled
+days. Of the [Greek: Asteia], or faceti�, of Hierokles, twenty-eight
+only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of
+his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, and
+published at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with
+other Greek jests&mdash;of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, Cum�, etc.&mdash;has
+been edited by Eberhard, under the title of <i>Philogelos Hieraclis el
+Philagrii Facetia</i> which was published at Berlin in 1869.</p>
+<a name="p4"></a>
+<p>In attempting to classify the best of these relics of ancient wit&mdash;or
+witlessness, rather&mdash;it is often difficult to decide whether a
+particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an
+example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles
+or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to
+place the story of the men of Cum�, who were expecting shortly to be
+visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they
+filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order
+that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.</p>
+
+<p>But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on
+going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen
+years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you
+one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his
+father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done
+me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's
+estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred
+years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.</p>
+<a name="p5"></a>
+<p>Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was the hunter who was constantly
+disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep
+with him. Another, surely, was the man of Cum� who wished to sell some
+clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should
+not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of
+Abdera who punished a runaway ass for having got into the gymnasium and
+upset the olive oil. Having brought all the asses of the town together,
+as a caution, they flogged the delinquent ass before his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the jests of Hierokles may be considered either as witticisms or
+witless sayings of noodles; for example, the story of the man who
+recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and
+afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor
+whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should
+not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of the pedant who
+said to the doctor, "Pardon me for not having been sick so long;" or
+this, "I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night:" quoth the
+other, "By the gods, I was so busy, I did not hear you."</p>
+
+<p>But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some
+sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe,
+and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like
+ripe fruit again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he
+had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after
+stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the
+cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to
+him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You
+may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and
+again, in the man of <a name="p06"></a>Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the rope
+broke, and he hurt his head; but after having the wound dressed by the
+doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a
+trace of them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had
+pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up; when he told a
+friend of his mishap, he said, "Why do you sleep barefooted?"</p>
+
+<p>The following jest is spread&mdash;<i>mutatis mutandis</i>&mdash;over all Europe:
+A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in company, agreed
+to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He
+propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time
+came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, "What a fool is
+this barber," he cried, "for he has roused the bald man instead of me!"</p>
+<a name="p07"></a>
+<p>A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the
+heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro.
+Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when
+he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up,
+he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a
+rage, "Tuts, tuts! The silly body has waukened the wrang man."</p>
+
+<p>In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a
+Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in
+forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew
+near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, "I
+shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I
+have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a
+pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young
+wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to
+spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the
+pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In
+the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his
+companion's leg, he called to him, "Hey! get up, for I am perplexed in
+my mind. Who am I, and who are you? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin
+on your leg? And if you are yourself, why is the pumpkin not on my leg?"</p>
+<a name="p8"></a>
+<p>Modern counterparts of the following jest are not far to seek: Quoth a man
+  to a pedant, "The slave I bought of you has died." Rejoined the other, "By the
+  gods, I do assure you that he never once played me such a trick while I had
+  him." The old Greek pedant is transformed into an Irishman, in our collections
+  of faceti�, who applied to a farmer for work. "I'll have nothing to do with
+  you," said the farmer, "for the last five Irishmen I had all died on my hands."
+  Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen
+  I've worked for that I never did such a thing." And the jest is thus told in
+  an old translation of <i>Les Contes Facetieux de Sieur Gaulard</i>: "Speaking
+  of one of his Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said,
+  Truly it was one of the handsomest and best Curtails in all the Country; he
+  neuer shewed me such a trick before in all his life."<sup><a href="#chapI01">1</a></sup></p>
+<a name="p09"></a>
+<p>Equally familiar is the jest of the pedant who was looking out for a
+place to prepare a tomb for himself, and on a friend indicating what he
+thought to be a suitable spot, "Very true," said the pedant, "but it is
+unhealthy." And we have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the
+following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it
+below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his
+wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had
+communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor
+had not been drawn off from below. "Why, you fool," said he, "it is not
+the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off."</p>
+
+<p>It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that
+he might know how he looked when asleep&mdash;a jest which reappears in
+Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i> in this form: <a name="p10"></a>"A wealthy monsieur in
+France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his
+man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry
+with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be
+true; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so,
+except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes; and therefore
+I will have a great Looking glasse at my bed's feet for the purpose to
+try whether thou art a lying knaue or not."<a href="#chapI02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Not unlike some of our "Joe Millers" is the following: A citizen of
+Cum�, on an ass, passed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree
+loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the ass went on,
+leaving him suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him
+what he did there. The man replied, "I fell off the ass."&mdash;An analogue
+to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, entitled <i>Katha
+Manjari</i>: One day a thief climbed up a cocoa-nut tree in a garden to
+steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running
+from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the
+tree. "Why were you up that tree?" asked the gardener. The thief
+replied, "My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf." "Ha! ha!
+is there grass, then, on a cocoa-nut tree?" said the gardener. "No,"
+quoth the thief; "but I did not know; therefore I came down again."&mdash;And
+we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went
+into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of
+vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom.
+The gardener, coming suddenly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said,
+"What are you seeking here?" The simpleton replied, "For some days past
+a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither." "But who
+pulled up these vegetables?" "As the wind blew very violently, it cast
+me here and there; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving
+myself remained in my hands." "Ah," said the gardener, "but who filled
+this sack with them?" "Well, that is the very question I was about to
+ask myself when you came up."</p>
+<a name="p12"></a>
+<p>The propensity with which Irishmen are credited of making ludicrous
+bulls is said to have its origin, not from any lack of intelligence, but
+rather in the fancy of that lively race, which often does not wait for
+expression until the ideas have taken proper verbal form. Be this as it
+may, a considerable portion of the bulls popularly ascribed to Irishmen
+are certainly "old as the jests of Hierokles," and are, moreover,
+current throughout Europe. Thus in Hierokles we read that one of
+twin-brothers having recently died, a pedant, meeting the survivor,
+asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased.&mdash;Taylor has
+this in his <i>Wit and Mirth</i>, and he probably heard it from some one
+who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard: "A nobleman of
+France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he
+said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remember I haue often seene
+thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore
+tenants, and my name is T.J. I remember better now (said my Lord); there
+were two brothers of you, but one is dead; I pray, which of you doth
+remaine alive?"&mdash;Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the notes to his edition of
+Taylor's collection <i>(Shakespeare Jest Books</i>, Third Series), cites
+a Scotch parallel from <i>The Laird of Logan</i>: "As the Paisley
+steamer came alongside the quay<a href="#chapI03"><sup>3</sup></a> at the city of the Seestus,<a href="#chapI04"><sup>4</sup></a> a
+denizen of St. Mirren's hailed one of the passengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu
+hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the
+old nursery rhyme,&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Ho, Master Teague, what is your story?<br/>
+  I went to the wood, and killed a tory;<a href="#chapI05"><sup>5</sup></a><br/>
+  I went to the wood, and killed another:<br/>
+  Was it the same, or was it his brother?"<a href="#chapI06"><sup>6</sup></a>
+</blockquote>
+<p>We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and
+sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating
+lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards
+meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to
+him, "Don't grieve; buy some lettuces; eat them at a corner; turn round
+it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there
+anything like this in "Joe Miller"?&mdash;Two lazy fellows were sleeping
+together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with
+it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up,
+and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead,"
+replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster,
+and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?&mdash;A pedant's
+little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom
+he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."</p>
+<a name="p14"></a>
+<p>An epigram in the <i>Anthologia</i> may find a place among noodle
+stories:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light,<br/>
+  And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"</blockquote>
+
+<p>This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two
+Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept
+their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did
+not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus
+puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the
+other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his
+bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's
+one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"</p>
+<a name="p15"></a>
+<p>Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the
+old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cum� having died at Alexandria,
+the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at
+the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of
+bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any
+peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol
+replied, "He had a cough."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"> <img src="images/image005.png" width="156" height="84" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI01"><sup>1</sup></a> Etienne Tabourot, the author of this amusing little book,
+who was born at Dijon in 1549 and died in 1590, is said to have written
+the tales in ridicule of the inhabitants of Franche Comte, who were then
+the subjects of Spain, and reputed to be stupid and illiterate. From a
+manuscript translation, entitled <i>Bizarrures; or, The Pleasant and
+Witlesse and Simple Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy</i>,
+purporting to be made by "J.B., of Charterhouse," probably about the
+year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London,
+fifty copies, edited, with a preface, by "A.S." (Alexander Smith), were
+printed at Glasgow in 1884. I am indebted to the courtesy of my friend
+Mr. F.T. Barrett, Librarian of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for
+directing my attention to this curious work, a copy of which is among
+the treasures of that already important institution.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI02"><sup>2</sup></a> "<i>Wit and Mirth</i>. Chargeably collected out of Taverns,
+Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Allyes, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops,
+Highwayes, and Water-passages. Made up and fashioned into Clinches,
+Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips, and Jerkes. Apothegmatically bundled vp
+and garbled at the request of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635)&mdash;such is the
+elaborate title of the collection of jests made by John Taylor, the
+Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The
+above story had, however, been told previously in the <i>Bizarrures</i>
+of the Sieur Gaulard: "His cousine Dantressesa reproued him one day that
+she had found him sleeping in an ill posture with his mouth open, to
+order which for the tyme to come he commanded his seruant to hang a
+looking glasse upon the curtaine at his Bed's feet, that he might
+henceforth see if he had a good posture in his sleep."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI03"><sup>3</sup></a> Only a Liliputian steamer could go up the "river" Cart!</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI04"><sup>4</sup></a> "Seestu" is a nickname for Paisley, the good folks of that busy town
+being in the habit of frequently interjecting, "Seestu?"&mdash;<i>i.e.,</i>
+"Seest thou?"&mdash;in their familiar colloquies.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI05"><sup>5</sup></a> "Tory" is said to be the Erse term for a robber.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapI06"><sup>6</sup></a> Halliwell's <i>Nursery Rhymes of England</i>,
+  vol. iv. of Percy Society's publications.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image006.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+<p><a name="chapIItitle"></a></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.<br/>
+  GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES, WITH VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES.</h2>
+<img border="0" src ="images/image007.png" width="96" height="94" alt="I"/>T seems
+to have been common to most countries, from very ancient times, for the inhabitants
+of a particular district, town, or village to be popularly regarded as pre-eminently
+foolish, arrant noodles or simpletons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly
+sayings and doings of the people of B�otia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs
+the folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The Kaba�l,
+or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad as little better
+than idiots. The Schildburgers are the noodles of German popular tales. In Switzerland
+the townsmen of Belmont, near Lausanne, are typical blockheads. <a name="p17"></a>And
+England has her "men of Gotham"&mdash;a village in Nottinghamshire&mdash;who are
+credited with most of the noodle stories which have been current among the people
+for centuries past, though other places share to some extent in their not very
+enviable reputation: in Yorkshire the "carles" of Austwick, in Craven; some villages
+near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire; and in the counties of Sutherland and Ross,
+the people of Assynt.
+<p>But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a
+similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we
+learn from a curious Latin poem, <i>Descriptio Norfolciensium</i>,
+written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of
+Peterborough, which is printed in Wright's <i>Early Mysteries and Other
+Latin Poems</i>. This poem sets out with stating that C�sar having
+despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were
+bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the
+most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other
+peoples. Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of
+Norfolk is the following: Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a
+large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future
+burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of
+green wax. To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk.
+When it became dark, they had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure
+one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should
+use the wax seal of the bond for a candle&mdash;they should still have the
+words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate; so they made
+the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their
+merry-making. This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he
+reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice,
+at the same time producing the bond. The lord calls a clerk to examine
+the document, who pronounces it to be null and void in the absence of
+the lord's seal, and so their oppression continues.</p>
+<a name="p18"></a> <a name="p19"></a>
+<p>Another story is of a man of Norfolk who put some honey in a jar, and in
+his absence his dog came and ate it all up. When he returned home and
+was told of this, he took the dog and forced him to disgorge the honey,
+put it back into the jar, and took it to market. A customer having
+examined the honey, declared it to be putrid. "Well," said the
+simpleton, "it was in a vessel that was not very clean."&mdash;Wright has
+pointed out that this reappears in an English jest-book of the
+seventeenth century. "A cleanly woman of Cambridgeshire made a good
+store of butter, and whilst she went a little way out of the town about
+some earnest occasions, a neighbour's dog came in in the meantime, and
+eat up half the butter. Being come home, her maid told her what the dog
+had done, and that she had locked him up in the dairy-house. So she took
+the dog and hang'd him up by the heels till she had squeez'd all the
+butter out of his throat again, whilst she, pretty, cleanly soul, took
+and put it to the rest of the butter, and made it up for Cambridge
+market. But her maid told her she was ashamed to see such a nasty trick
+done. 'Hold your peace, you fool!' says she; ''tis good enough for
+schollards. Away with it to market!'"<a name="chapII1"></a><a href="#chapII01"><sup>1</sup></a>&mdash;Perhaps the original form is
+found in the <i>Philogelos Hieraclis et Philagrii Faceti�</i>, edited by
+Eberhard. A citizen of Cum� was selling honey. Some one came up and
+tasted it, and said that it was all bad. He replied, "If a mouse had not
+fallen into it, I would not sell it."</p>
+
+<p>The well-known Gothamite jest of the man who put a sack of meal on his
+own shoulders to save his horse, and then got on the animal's back and
+rode home, had been previously told of a man of Norfolk, thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Ad foram ambulant diebus singulis;<br/>
+  Saccum de lolio portant in humeris,<br/>
+  Jumentis ne noccant: bene fatuis,<br/>
+  Ut prolocutiis sum acquantur bestiis."</blockquote>
+<a name="p20"></a>
+<p>It reappears in the <i>Bizarrures</i> of the Sieur Gaulard:<a href="#chapII02"><sup>2</sup></a> "Seeing
+one day his mule charged with a verie great Portmantle, [he] said to his
+groome that was upon the back of the mule, thou lasie fellowe, hast thou
+no pitie upon that poore Beast? Take that portmantle upon thine owne
+shoulders to ease the poore Beast." And in our own time it is told of an
+Irish exciseman with a keg of smuggled whisky.</p>
+
+<p>How such stories came to be transferred to the men of Gotham, it were
+fruitless to inquire.<a href="#chapII03"><sup>3</sup></a> Similar jests have been long current in other
+countries of Europe and throughout Asia, and accident or malice may have
+fixed the stigma of stupidity on any particular spot. There is probably
+no ground whatever for crediting the tale of the origin of the proverb,
+"As wise as the men of Gotham," although it is reproduced in Thoroton's
+<i>Nottinghamshire</i>, i. 42-3:</p>
+
+<p>"King John, intending to pass through this place, towards Nottingham,
+was prevented by the inhabitants, they apprehending that the ground over
+which a king passed was for ever after to become a public road. The
+King, incensed at their proceedings, sent from his court soon afterwards
+some of his servants to inquire of them the reason of their incivility
+and ill-treatment, that he might punish them. The villagers, hearing of
+the approach of the King's servants, thought of an expedient to turn
+away his Majesty's displeasure from them. When the messengers arrived at
+Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to
+drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts
+upon a large barn to shade the wood from the sun; and others were
+engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush.
+In short, they were all employed in some foolish way or other, which
+convinced the King's servants that it was a village of fools."</p>
+
+<p>The fooleries ascribed to the men of Gotham were probably first
+collected and printed in the sixteenth century; but that jests of the
+"fools of Gotham" were current among the people long before that period
+is evident from a reference to them in the <i>Widkirk Miracle Plays</i>,
+the only existing MS. of which was written about the reign of Henry VI.:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Foles al sam;<br/>
+  Sagh I never none so fare<br/>
+  Bote the soles of Gotham."</blockquote>
+<a name="p22"></a>
+<p>The oldest known copy of the <i>Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam</i>
+was printed in 1630, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
+Warton, in his <i>History of English Poetry</i>, mentions an edition,
+which he says was printed about 1568, by Henry Wikes, but he had never
+seen it. But Mr. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillips), in his <i>Notices
+of Popular English Histories</i>, cites one still earlier, which he
+thinks was probably printed between 1556 and 1566: "Merie Tales of the
+Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A.B., of Phisike Doctour.
+[colophon:] Imprinted at London, in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at
+the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n.d. 12�, black
+letter." The book is mentioned in <i>A Briefe and Necessary
+Introduction</i>, etc., by E.D. (8vo, 1572), among a number of other
+folk-books: "Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, Arthur of the Round
+Table, Huon of Bourdeaux, Oliver of the Castle, <a name="p23"></a>The Four Sonnes of
+Amond, The Witles Devices of Gargantua, Howleglas, Esop, Robyn Hoode,
+Adam Bell, Frier Rushe, The Fooles of Gotham, and a thousand such
+other."<a href="#chapII04"><sup>4</sup></a> And Anthony � Wood, in his <i>Athen� Oxonienses</i> (1691-2),
+says it was "printed at London in the time of K. Hen. 8, in whose reign
+and after it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by scholars and
+gentlemen. Afterwards being often printed, [it] is now sold only on the
+stalls of ballad-singers." It is likely that the estimation in which the
+book was held "by scholars and gentlemen" was not a little due to the
+supposition that "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," by whom the tales were said
+to have been "gathered together," was none other than Andrew Borde, or
+Boorde, a Carthusian friar before the Reformation, one of the physicians
+to Henry VIII., a great traveller, even beyond the bounds of
+Christendom, "a thousand or two and more myles," a man of great
+learning, withal "of fame facete." For to Borde have the <i>Merie Tales
+of the Mad Men of Gotham</i> been generally ascribed down to our own
+times. There is, however, as Dr. F.J. Furnivall justly remarks, "no good
+external evidence that the book was written by Borde, while the internal
+evidence is against his authorship."<a href="#chapII05"><sup>5</sup></a> In short, the ascription of its
+compilation to "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," was clearly a device of the
+printer to sell the book.<a href="#chapII06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p24"></a>
+<p>The <i>Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham</i> continued to be printed as a
+chap-book down to the close of the first quarter of the present century;
+and much harmless mirth they must have caused at cottage firesides in
+remote rural districts occasionally visited by the ubiquitous pedlar, in
+whose well-filled pack of all kinds of petty merchandise such drolleries
+were sure to be found. Unlike other old collections of faceti�, the
+little work is remarkably free from objectionable stories; some are
+certainly not very brilliant, having, indeed, nothing in them
+particularly "Gothamite," and one or two seem to have been adapted from
+the Italian novelists. Of the twenty tales comprised in the collection,
+the first is certainly one of the most humorous:</p>
+
+<p>There were two men of Gotham, and one of them was going to the market at
+Nottingham to buy sheep, and the other was coming from the market, and
+both met on Nottingham bridge. "Well met!" said the one to the other.
+"Whither are you a-going?" said he that came from Nottingham. "Marry,"
+said he that was going thither, "I am going to the market to buy sheep."
+"Buy sheep!" said the other. "And which way will you bring them home?"
+"Marry," said the other, "I will bring them over this bridge." "By Robin
+Hood," said he that came from Nottingham, "but thou shalt not." "By Maid
+Marian," said he that was going thither, "but I will." "Thou shalt not,"
+said the one. "I will," said the other. Then they beat their staves
+against the ground, one against the other, as if there had been a
+hundred sheep betwixt them. "Hold them there," said the one. "Beware of
+the leaping over the bridge of my sheep," said the other. "They shall
+all come this way," said one. "But they shall not," said the other. And
+as they were in contention, another wise man that belonged to Gotham
+came from the market, with a sack of meal upon his horse; and seeing and
+hearing his neighbours at strife about sheep, and none betwixt them,
+said he, "Ah, fools, will you never learn wit? Then help me," said he
+that had the meal,<a name="p26"></a> "and lay this sack upon my shoulder." They did so,
+and he went to the one side of the bridge and unloosed the mouth of the
+sack, and did shake out all the meal into the river. Then said he, "How
+much meal is there in the sack, neighbours?" "Marry," answered they,
+"none." "Now, by my faith," answered this wise man, "even so much wit is
+there in your two heads to strive for the thing which you have not." Now
+which was the wisest of these three persons, I leave you to judge.</p>
+
+<p>Allusions to these tales are of frequent occurrence in our literature of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dekker, in his <i>Gul's Horn
+Book</i> (1609), says, "It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy
+head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, but rather set it
+on faster, bestowing upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise
+men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should
+not be able to compare with thine;" and Wither, in his <i>Abuses</i>,
+says,</p>
+
+<blockquote>"And he that tryes to doe it might have bin<br/>
+  One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,"</blockquote>
+
+<p>alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols:</p>
+
+<p>On a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she
+should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge
+round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it,
+and said, "Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor
+drink." The cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself encompassed within
+the hedge, flew away. "A vengeance on her!" said they. "We made not our
+hedge high enough."</p>
+<a name="p27"></a>
+<p>The tales had, however, attained popular favour much earlier. Mr.
+Halliwell-Phillipps has pointed out that in <i>Philotimus</i> (1583) the
+men of Gotham are remembered as having "tied their rentes in a purse
+about an hare's necke, and bade her to carrie it to their landlord," an
+excellent plan, which is thus described:</p>
+
+<p>On a time the men of Gotham had forgotten to pay their rent to their
+landlord. The one said to the other, "To-morrow is our payday, and what
+remedy shall we find to send our money to our lord?" The one said, "This
+day I have taken a quick [i.e., live] hare, and she shall carry it, for
+she is light of foot." "Be it so," said all. "She shall have a letter
+and a purse to put in our money, and we shall direct her the ready way."
+<a name="p28"></a>And when the letters were written, and the money put in a purse, they
+did tie them about the hare's neck, saying, "First thou must go to
+Loughborough, and then to Leicester; and at Newark there is our lord,
+and commend us to him, and there is his duty [i.e., due]." The hare, as
+soon as she was out of their hands, she did run a clean contrary way.
+Some cried to her, saying, "Thou must go to Loughborough first." Some
+said, "Let the hare alone; she can tell a nearer way than the best of us
+all do: let her go." Another said, "It is a noble hare; let her alone;
+she will not keep the highway for fear of the dogs."</p>
+
+<p>The well-worn "Joe Miller" of the Irishman who tried to count the party
+to which he belonged, and always forgot to count himself, which is also
+known in Russia and in the West Highlands of Scotland, is simply a
+variant of this drollery:</p>
+
+<p>On a certain day there were twelve men of Gotham that went to fish, and
+some stood on dry land; and in going home one said to the other, "We
+have ventured wonderfully in wading: I pray God that none of us come
+home and be drowned." "Nay, marry," said one to the other, "let us see
+that; for there did twelve of us come out." Then they told (i.e.,
+counted) themselves, and every one told eleven. Said one to the other,
+"There is one of us drowned." They went back to the brook where they had
+been fishing, and sought up and down for him that was wanting, making
+great lamentation. A courtier, coming by, asked what it was they sought
+for, and why they were sorrowful. "Oh," said they, "this day we went to
+fish in the brook; twelve of us came out together, and one is drowned."
+Said the courtier, "Tell [count] how many there be of you." One of them
+said, "Eleven," and he did not tell himself. "Well," said the courtier,
+"what will you give me, and I will find the twelfth man?" "Sir," said
+they, "all the money we have got." "Give me the money," said the
+courtier, and began with the first, and gave him a stroke over the
+shoulders with his whip, which made him groan, saying, "Here is one,"
+and so served them all, and they all groaned at the matter. When he came
+to the last, he paid him well, saying, "Here is the twelfth man." "God's
+blessing on thy heart," said they, "for thus finding our dear brother!"</p>
+<a name="p29"></a>
+<p>This droll adventure is also found in the <i>Gooroo Paramartan</i>, a
+most amusing work, written in the Tamil language by Beschi, an Italian
+Jesuit, who was missionary in India from 1700 till his death, in 1742.
+The Gooroo (teacher) and his five disciples, who are, like himself,
+noodles, come to a river which they have to cross, and which, as the
+Gooroo informs them, is a very dangerous stream. To ascertain whether it
+is at present "asleep," one of them dips his lighted cheroot in the
+water, which, of course, extinguishes it, upon which he returns to the
+Gooroo and reports that the river is still in a dangerous mood. So they
+all sit down, and begin to tell stories of the destructive nature of
+this river. One relates how his grandfather and another man were
+journeying together, driving two asses laden with bags of salt, and
+coming to this river, they resolved to bathe in it, and the asses,
+tempted by the coolness of the water, at the same time knelt down in it.
+When the men found that their salt had disappeared, they congratulated
+themselves on their wonderful escape from the devouring stream, which
+had eaten up all their salt without even opening the bags. Another
+disciple relates a story similar to the so-called �sopian fable of the
+dog and his shadow, this river being supposed to have devoured a piece
+of meat which the dog had dropped into it. At length the river is found
+to be quiescent, a piece of charred wood having been plunged into it
+without producing any effect like that of the former experiment; and
+they determine to ford it, but with great caution. Arrived on the other
+side, they count their number, like the men of Gotham, and discover that
+one is not present. A traveller, coming up, finds the missing man by
+whacking each of them over the shoulder. The Gooroo, while gratified
+that the lost one was found, was grumbling at his sore bones&mdash;for the
+traveller had struck pretty hard&mdash;when an old woman, on learning of
+their adventure, told them that, in her young days, she and her female
+companions were once returning home from a grand festival, and adopted
+another plan for ascertaining if they were all together. Gathering some
+of the cattle-droppings, they kneaded them into a cake, in which they
+each made a mark with the tip of the nose, and then counted the marks&mdash;a
+plan which the Gooroo and his disciples should make use of on future
+occasions.</p>
+
+<p>The Abb� Dubois has given a French translation of the Adventures of the
+Gooroo Paramartan among the <i>Contes Divers</i> appended to his not
+very valuable selection of tales and apologues from Tamil, Telegu, and
+Cannada versions of the <i>Panchatantra</i> (Five Chapters, not "Cinq
+Ruses," as he renders it), a Sanskrit form of the celebrated Fables of
+Bidpa�, or Pilpay. An English rendering of Beschi's work, by Babington,
+forms one of the publications of the Oriental Translation Fund. Dubois
+states that he found the tales of the Gooroo current in Indian countries
+where Beschi's name was unknown, and he had no doubt of their Indian
+origin. However this may be, the work was probably designed, as
+Babington thinks, to satirise the Br�hmans, as well as to furnish a
+pleasing vehicle of instruction to those Jesuits in India whose duties
+required a knowledge of the Tamil language.</p>
+<a name="p32"></a>
+<p>A story akin to that of the Gothamite fishers, if not, indeed, an older
+form of it, is told in Iceland of the Three Brothers of Bakki, who came
+upon one of the hot springs which abound in that volcanic island, and
+taking off their boots and stockings, put their feet into the water and
+began to bathe them. When they would rise up, they were perplexed to
+know each his own feet, and so they sat disconsolate, until a wayfarer
+chanced to pass by, to whom they told their case, when he soon relieved
+their minds by striking the feet of each, for which important service
+they gave him many thanks.<a href="#chapII07"><sup>7</sup></a> This story reappears, slightly modified,
+in Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>: A party of
+masons, engaged in building a dyke, take shelter during a heavy shower,
+and when it has passed, they continue sitting, because their legs had
+got mixed together, and none knew his own, until they were put right by
+a traveller with a big stick. We have here an evident relic of the
+Norsemen's occupation of the Hebrides.</p>
+<a name="p33"></a>
+<p>Several of the tales of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in
+Gaelic. That of the twelve fishers has been already mentioned, and here
+is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in
+similar terms in his <i>Tales of the West Highlands</i>:</p>
+
+<p>When that Good Friday was come, the men of Gotham did cast their heads
+together what to do with their white herring, their red herring, their
+sprats, and salt fish. One consulted with the other, and agreed that
+such fish should be cast into a pond or pool (the which was in the
+middle of the town), that it might increase the next year; and every man
+did cast them into the pool. The one said, "I have thus many white
+herrings;" another said, "I have thus many sprats;" another said, "I
+have thus many salt fishes; let us all go together into the pool, and we
+shall fare like lords the next Lent." At the beginning of next Lent the
+men did draw the pond, to have their fish, and there was nothing but a
+great eel. "Ah," said they all, "a mischief on this eel, for he hath eat
+up all our fish!" "What shall we do with him?" said the one to the
+other. "Kill him!" said one of them. "Chop him all to pieces!" said
+another. "Nay, not so," said the other; "let us drown him." "Be it so,"
+said all. They went to another pool, and did cast the eel into the
+water. "Lie there," said they, "and shift for thyself, for no help thou
+shalt have of us;" and there they left the eel to be drowned.</p>
+<a name="p34"></a>
+<p>Campbell's Gaelic story differs so little from the above that we must
+suppose it to have been derived directly from the English chap-book.
+Oral tradition always produces local variations from a written story, of
+which we have an example in a Gaelic version of this choice exploit:</p>
+
+<p>There was a man of Gotham who went to the market of Nottingham to sell
+cheese; and as he was going down the hill to Nottingham Bridge, one of
+his cheeses fell out of his wallet and ran down the hill. "Ah," said the
+fellow, "can you run to the market alone? I will now send one after the
+other;" then laying down the wallet and taking out the cheeses, he
+tumbled them down the hill one after the other; and some ran into one
+bush, and some into another; so at last he said, "I do charge you to
+meet me in the market-place." <a name="p35"></a>And when the man came into the market to
+meet the cheeses, he stayed until the market was almost done, then went
+and inquired of his neighbours and other men if they did see his cheeses
+come to market. "Why, who should bring them?" said one of the
+neighbours. "Marry, themselves," said the fellow; "they knew the way
+well enough," said he: "a vengeance on them! For I was afraid to see my
+cheeses run so fast, that they would run beyond the market. I am
+persuaded that they are at this time almost as far as York." So he
+immediately takes a horse and rides after them to York; but to this day
+no man has ever heard of the cheeses.</p>
+
+<p>In one Gaelic variant a woman is going to Inverness with a basket filled
+with balls of worsted of her own spinning, and going down a hill, one of
+the balls tumbles out and rolls along briskly, upon which she sends the
+others after it, holding the ends of each in her hand; and when she
+reaches the town, she finds a "ravelled hank" instead of her neat balls
+of worsted. In another version a man goes to market with two bags of
+cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. After waiting at
+the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his
+misfortune. She goes to the foot of the hill and finds all the cheese.</p>
+<a name="p36"></a>
+<p>The next Gothamite tale also finds its counterpart in the Gaelic
+stories: There was a man of Gotham who bought at Nottingham a trivet, or
+brandiron, and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the
+carriage thereof, and he set it down; and seeing that it had three feet,
+he said, "Ha! hast thou three feet, and I but two? Thou shalt bear me
+home, if thou wilt," and set himself down thereupon, and said to the
+trivet, "Bear me as long as I have borne thee; but if thou do not, thou
+shalt stand still for me." The man of Gotham did see that his trivet
+would not go farther. "Stand still, in the mayor's name," said he, "and
+follow me if thou wilt. I will tell thee right the way to my home." When
+he did come to his house, his wife said, "Where is my trivet?" The man
+said, "He hath three legs, and I have but two; and I did teach him the
+way to my house. Let him come home if he will." "Where left ye the
+trivet?" said the woman. "At Gotham hill," said the man. His wife did
+run and fetch home the trivet her own self, or else she had lost it
+through her husband's wit.</p>
+
+<p>In Campbell's version a man having been sent by his wife with her
+spinning-wheel to get mended, as he was returning home with it the wind
+set the wheel in motion, so he put it down, and bidding it go straight
+to his house, set off himself. When he reached home, he asked his wife
+if the spinning-wheel had arrived yet, and on her replying that it had
+not, "I thought as much," quoth he, "for I took the shorter way."</p>
+<a name="p37"></a>
+<p>A somewhat similar story is found in Rivi�re's French collection of
+tales of the Kaba�l, Algeria, to this effect: The mother of a youth of
+the Beni-Jennad clan gave him a hundred reals to buy a mule; so he went
+to market, and on his way met a man carrying a water-melon for sale.
+"How much for the melon?" he asks. "What will you give?" says the man.
+"I have only got a hundred reals," answered the booby; "had I more, you
+should have it." "Well," rejoined the man, "I'll take them." Then the
+youth took the melon and handed over the money. "But tell me," says he,
+"will its young one be as green as it is?" "Doubtless," answered the
+man, "it will be green." As the booby was going home, he allowed the
+melon to roll down a slope before him. It burst on its way, when up
+started a frightened hare. "Go to my house, young one," he shouted.
+"Surely a green animal has come out of it." And when he got home, he
+inquired of his mother if the young one had arrived.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Gooroo Paramartan</i> there is a parallel incident to this
+last. The noodles are desirous of providing their Gooroo with a horse,
+and a man sells them a pumpkin, telling them it is a mare's egg, which
+only requires to be sat upon for a certain time to produce a fine young
+horse. The Gooroo himself undertakes to hatch the mare's egg, since his
+disciples have all other matters to attend to; but as they are carrying
+it through a jungle, it falls down and splits into pieces; just then a
+frightened hare runs before them; and they inform the Gooroo that, a
+fine young colt came out of the mare's egg, with very long ears, and ran
+off with the speed of the wind. It would have proved a fine horse for
+their revered Gooroo, they add; but he consoles himself for the loss by
+reflecting that such an animal would probably have run away with him.</p>
+<a name="p38"></a>
+<p>A number of the Gothamite tales in the printed collection are not only inferior
+  to those which are preserved orally, but can be considered in no sense examples
+  of preeminent folly. Three consist of tricks played by women upon their husbands,
+  such as are found in the ordinary jest-books of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+  centuries. In one a man, who had taken a buzzard, invites some friends to dine
+  with him. His wife, with two of her gossips, having secretly eaten the buzzard,
+  kills and cooks an old goose, and sets it before him and his guests; the latter
+  call him a knave to mock them thus with an old goose, and go off in great anger.
+  The husband, resolved to put himself right with his friends, stuffs the buzzard's
+  feathers into a sack, in order to show them that they were mistaken in thinking
+  he had tried to deceive them with an old goose instead of a fine fat buzzard.
+  But before he started on this business, his wife contrived to substitute the
+  goose's feathers, which he exhibited to his friends as those of the buzzard,
+  and was soundly cudgelled for what they believed to be a second attempt to mock
+  them.&mdash;Two other stories seem to be derived from the Italian novelists: of the
+  man who intended cutting off his wife's hair<a href="#chapII08"><sup>8</sup></a>
+  and of the man who defied his wife to cuckold him. Two others turn upon wrong
+  responses at a christening and a marriage, which have certainly nothing Gothamite
+  in them. Another is a dull story of a Scotchman who employed a carver to make
+  him as a sign of his inn a boar's head, the tradesman supposing from his northern
+  pronunciation that he meant <i>bare</i> head.&mdash;In the nineteenth tale,
+  a party of gossips are assembled at the alehouse, and each relates in what manner
+  she is profitable to her husband: one saves candles by sending all her household
+  to bed in daylight; another, like the old fellow and Tib his wife in <i>Jolly
+  Good Ale and Old</i>, eats little meat, but can swig a gallon or two of ale,
+  and so forth.</p>
+<a name="p40"></a>
+<p>We have, however, our Gothamite once more in the story of him who,
+seeing a fine cheese on the ground as he rode along the highway, tried
+to pick it up with his sword, and finding his sword too short, rode back
+to fetch a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found
+the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this
+sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also
+in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch
+of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down
+the smithy&mdash;a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a
+moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place of
+the honest Gothamite!<a href="#chapII09"><sup>9</sup></a><a name="chapII9"></a></p>
+
+<p>The following properly belongs to stories of the "silly son" class:
+There was a young man of Gotham the which should go wooing to a fair
+maid. His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, "When thou dost look
+upon her, cast a sheep's-eye, and say, 'How do ye, sweet pigsnie?'" The
+fellow went to the butcher's and bought seven or eight sheep's eyes; and
+when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a
+sheep's eye, saying, "How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?" "How do I?"
+said the wench. "Swine's-face, why dost thou cast the sheep's eye upon
+me?" "O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" "I defy thee,
+Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What,
+sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou
+wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live
+till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool."</p>
+<a name="p42"></a>
+<p>It is very evident that the men of Gotham were of "honest" Jack
+Falstaff's opinion that the better part of valour is discretion: On a
+time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great
+grasshopper. He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his
+neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in
+the grass. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with
+halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper. When
+they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one
+to the other, "Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will
+not meddle with him." And so they returned again, and said, "We were all
+blessed this day that we went no farther." "Ah, cowards," said he that
+had his scythe in the mead, "help me to fetch my scythe." "No," said
+they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin: better it is to lose thy
+scythe than to mar us all."</p>
+
+<p>There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed
+collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednesday the
+priest said to the men of Gotham, "If I should enjoin you to prayer,
+there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too
+old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not
+eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour
+all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will
+come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he
+did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after
+another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might
+have part of his meat. "And as for alms," said the priest, "ye be
+beggars all, except one or two; therefore bestow alms on yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>Among the numerous stories of the Gothamites preserved orally, but not
+found in the collection of "A.B., of Phisicke Doctour," is the
+following, which seems to be of Indian extraction:</p>
+<a name="p43"></a>
+<p>One day some men of Gotham were walking by the riverside, and came to a
+place where the contrary currents caused the water to boil as in a
+whirlpool. "See how the water boils!" says one. "If we had plenty of
+oatmeal," says another, "we might make enough porridge to serve all the
+village for a month." So it was resolved that part of them should go to
+the village and fetch their oatmeal, which was soon brought and thrown
+into the river. But there presently arose the question of how they were
+to know when the porridge was ready. This difficulty was overcome by the
+offer of one of the company to jump in, and it was agreed that if he
+found it ready for use, he should signify the same to his companions.
+<a name="p44"></a>The man jumped in, and found the water deeper than he expected. Thrice
+he rose to the surface, but said nothing. The others, impatient at his
+remaining so long silent, and seeing him smack his lips, took this for
+an avowal that the porridge was good, and so they all jumped in after
+him and were drowned.</p>
+
+<p>Another traditional Gothamite story is related of a villager coming home
+at a late hour and, seeing the reflection of the moon in a horse-pond,
+believed it to be a green cheese, and roused all his neighbours to help
+him to draw it out. They raked and raked away until a passing cloud sank
+the cheese, when they returned to their homes grievously
+disappointed.<a href="#chapII10"><sup>10</sup></a>&mdash;This is also related of the villagers near the
+Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire, and the <i>sobriquet</i> of
+"moon-rakers," applied to Wiltshire folk in general, is said to have had
+its origin in the incident; but they assert that it was a keg of
+smuggled brandy, which had been sunk in a pond, that the villagers were
+attempting to fish up, when the exciseman coming suddenly upon the
+scene, they made him believe they were raking the reflection of the
+moon, thinking it a green cheese, an explanation which is on a par with
+the apocryphal tale of the Gothamites and the messengers of King John.</p>
+<a name="p45"></a>
+<p>The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable
+antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is
+referred to by Rabelais, and was doubtless the subject of a popular
+French tale in his time. In the twenty-second story of the <i>Disciplina
+Clericalis</i> of Peter Alfonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was baptised in
+1106, a fox leaves a wolf in a well, looking after a supposed cheese,
+made by the image of the moon in the water; and the same fable had been
+told by the Talmudists in the fifth century.<a href="#chapII11"><sup>11</sup></a> The well-known "Joe
+Miller" of the party of Irishmen who endeavoured to reach a "green
+cheese" in the river by hanging one by another's legs finds its parallel
+in a Mecklenburg story, in which some men by the same contrivance tried
+to get a stone from the bottom of a well, and the incident is thus
+related in the old English jest-book entitled <i>The Sacke Full of
+Newes</i>:</p>
+<a name="p47"></a>
+<p>There were three young men going to Lambeth along by the waterside, and
+one played with the other, and they cast each other's caps into the
+water in such sort as they could not get their caps again. But over the
+place where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did
+cover a great deal of the water. One of them said to the rest, "Sirs, I
+have found a notable way to come by them. First I will make myself fast
+by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is
+with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take
+hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands
+he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand." And so they
+did; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he
+that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, "Soft, sirs! My girdle
+slacketh." "Make it fast quickly," said they. But as he was untying it
+to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well
+washed for their pains.</p>
+
+<p>Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who
+planted a cabbage-head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage,
+and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky. He climbs up the
+cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky. There he sees a mill, which gives
+a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the
+top. The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill; then he lies down to
+sleep. By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.</p>
+<a name="p48"></a>
+<p>He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him
+to take her with him. She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in
+his teeth and begins to climb up. The old woman, becoming tired, asked
+him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, "Not much
+farther," the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman
+fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr.
+Ralston's most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian
+folk-tales), but observe the very close resemblance which it bears to
+the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the
+<i>Kath� Sarit S�gara</i> (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand
+collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh
+century, from a similar work entitled <i>Vrihat Kath�</i> (Great Story),
+written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century:<a href="#chapII12"><sup>12</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was
+the greatest fool of the lot. He once heard in a treatise on law, which
+was being read aloud, that a man who has a tank made gains a great
+reward in the next world. Then, as he had a large fortune, he had made a
+large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent. One
+day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and
+perceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature. The next
+day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part
+of the tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, "I will
+watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and
+I will find out what creature it is that does this." After he had formed
+this resolution, he came there early next morning, and watched, until at
+last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its
+horns. He thought, "This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to
+heaven with it?" And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands
+laid hold of the tail behind. Then the holy bull lifted up, with the
+utmost force, the foolish man who was clinging to its tail, and carried
+him in a moment to its home in Kail�sa.<a href="#chapII13"><sup>13</sup></a> There the foolish man lived
+for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties,
+sweetmeats, and other things which he obtained. And seeing that the bull
+kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny,
+thought, "I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my
+friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return
+in the same way." Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung
+to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned
+to the surface of the earth. When he entered the convent, the other
+blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been,
+and he told them. Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of
+his adventures, made this petition to him: "Be kind, and take us also
+there; enable us also to feast on sweetmeats." He consented, and told
+them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the
+tank, and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail of
+the bull with his two hands, and another took hold of his feet, and a
+third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by
+hanging on to one another's feet, the bull flew rapidly up into the air.
+And while the bull was going along, with all the fools clinging to its
+tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool,
+<a name="p51"></a>"Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats
+which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in
+heaven?" Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in
+hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and
+exclaimed in answer, "So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the
+bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were
+killed; and the bull returned to Kail�sa; but the people who saw it were
+much amused.<a href="#chapII14"><sup>14</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>"Thus," remarks the story-teller, "fools do themselves injury by asking
+questions and giving answers without reflection"; he then proceeds to
+relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that "association with
+fools brings prosperity to no man":</p>
+<a name="p52"></a>
+<p>A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when
+he asked the way, the people said to him, "Take the path that goes up by
+the tree on the bank of the river." Then the fool went and got on the
+trunk of that tree, and said to himself, "The men told me that my way
+lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the
+bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to
+avoid falling by clinging to it. While he was clinging to it, there came
+that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on
+his back. And the fool called to him, saying, "Great sir, take me down."
+The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to
+take him down from the tree. Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the
+driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fool, who was clinging
+to the end of the tree. Then said the fool to the driver, "Sing
+something, in order that the people may hear, and come at once and take
+us down." So the elephant-driver, thus appealed to, began to sing, and
+he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased; and in his desire to
+applaud him, he forgot what he was about, let go his hold of the tree,
+and prepared to clap him with both his hands; and immediately he and the
+elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned.</p>
+
+<p>The germ of all stories of this class is perhaps found in the
+<i>J�takas</i>, or Buddhist Birth Stories: A pair of geese resolve to
+migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise,
+their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills,
+and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth.  As they are
+flying over B�n�res, the people exclaim in wonder to one another at such
+a strange sight, and the tortoise, unable to maintain silence, opens his
+mouth to rebuke them, and by so doing falls to the ground, and is dashed
+into pieces. This fable is also found in Babrius. (115); in the <i>Kath�
+Sarit S�gara</i>; in the several versions of the Fables of Bidpa�; and
+in the <i>Avad�nas</i>, translated into French from the Chinese by
+Stanislas Julien.</p>
+<a name="p53"></a>
+<hr />
+
+<p>To return to Gothamite stories. According to one of those which are
+current orally, the men of Gotham had but one knife among them, which
+was stuck in a tree in the middle of the village for their common use,
+and many amusing incidents, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, arose out of
+their disputes for the use of this knife. The "carles" of Austwick, in
+Yorkshire, are said also to have had but one knife, or "whittle," which
+was deposited under a tree, and if it was not found there when wanted,
+the "carle" requiring it called out, "Whittle to the tree!" This plan
+did very well for some years, until it was taken one day by a party of
+labourers to a neighbouring moor, to be used for cutting their bread and
+cheese. When the day's labour was done, they resolved to leave the knife
+at the place, to save themselves the trouble of carrying it back, as
+they should want it again next day; so they looked about for some object
+to mark the spot, and stuck it into the ground under a black cloud that
+happened to be the most remarkable object in sight. But next day, when
+they returned to the place, the cloud was gone, and the "whittle" was
+never seen again.</p>
+<a name="p54"></a>
+<p>When an Austwick "carle" comes into any of the larger towns of
+Yorkshire, it is said he is greeted with the question, "Who tried to
+lift the bull over the gate?" in allusion to the following story: An
+Austwick farmer, wishing to get a bull out of a field&mdash;how the animal
+got into it, the story does not inform us&mdash;procured the assistance of
+nine of his neighbours to lift the animal over the gate. After trying in
+vain for some hours, they sent one of their number to the village for
+more help. In going out he opened the gate, and after he had gone away,
+it occurred to one of those who remained that the bull might be allowed
+to go out in the same manner.</p>
+
+<p>Another Austwick farmer had to take a wheelbarrow to a certain town,
+and, to save a hundred yards by going the ordinary road, he went through
+the fields, and had to lift the barrow over twenty-two stiles.</p>
+
+<p>It was a Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined
+to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the
+branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted
+up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck
+broken, until at last there were none left.&mdash;And quite as witless,
+surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired to move
+their church three yards farther westward, so they carefully marked the
+exact distance by leaving their coats on the ground. Then they set to
+work to push with all their might against the eastern wall. In the
+meantime a thief had gone round to the west side and stolen their coats.
+"Diable!" exclaimed they on finding that their coats were gone, "we have
+pushed too far!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image008.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII01"><sup>1</sup></a> <i>Coffee House Jests</i>. Fifth edition. London. 1688. P. 36.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII02"><sup>2</sup></a> <a href="#chapI01">See <i>ante</i>, p.
+  8, note [1].</a></p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII03"><sup>3</sup></a> Fuller, while admitting that "an hundred fopperies are forged and
+fathered on the townsfolk of Gotham," maintains that "Gotham doth breed
+as wise people as any which laugh at their simplicity."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII04"><sup>4</sup></a> Collier's <i>Bibliographical Account</i>, etc., vol. i., p. 327.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII05"><sup>5</sup></a> Forewords to Borde's <i>Introduction of Knowledge</i>, etc., edited,
+for the Early English Text Society, by F.J. Furnivall.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII06"><sup>6</sup></a> It is equally certain that Borde had no hand either in the <i>Jests
+of Scogin</i> or <i>The Mylner of Abyngton</i>, the latter an imitation
+of Chaucer's <i>Reve's Tale</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII07"><sup>7</sup></a> Powell and Magnusson's <i>Legends of Iceland</i>, Second Series.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII08"><sup>8</sup></a> An imitation of Boccaccio, <i>Decameron</i>, Day vii., nov. 8, who
+perhaps borrowed the story from Guerin's <i>fabliau</i> "De la Dame qui
+fit accroire a son Mari qu'il avait r�ve; <i>alias</i>, Les Cheveux
+Coup�s" (Le Grand's <i>Fabliaux</i>, ed. 1781, tome ii., 280).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII09"><sup>9</sup></a> A slightly different version occurs in the <i>Tale of Beryn</i>,
+which is found in a unique MS. of Chaucer's <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, and
+which forms the first part of the old French romance of the <i>Chevalier
+Berinus</i>. In the English poem Beryn, lamenting his misfortunes, and
+that he had disinherited himself, says:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"But I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies]<br/>
+  He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies,<br/>
+  And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase,<br/>
+  Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase<br/>
+  Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was,<br/>
+  And kissid so the evese, that brent was al the plase."</blockquote>
+
+<p>It is certain that the author of the French original of the <i>Tale of
+Beryn</i> did not get this story out of our jests of the men of Gotham.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII10"><sup>10</sup></a> There is an analogous Indian story of a youth who went to a tank to
+drink, and observing the reflection of a golden-crested bird that was
+sitting on a tree, he thought it was gold in the water, and entered the
+tank to take it up, but he could not lay hold of it as it appeared and
+disappeared in the water. But as often as he ascended the bank he again
+saw it in the water, and again he entered the tank to lay hold of it,
+and still he got nothing. At length his father saw and questioned him,
+then drove away the bird, and explaining the matter to him, took the
+foolish fellow home.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen that the men of Abdera (p. 5) flogged an ass before
+its fellows for upsetting a jar of olive oil, but what is that compared
+with the story of the ass that drank up the moon? According to Ludovicus
+Vives, a learned Spanish writer, certain townspeople imprisoned an ass
+for drinking up the moon, whose reflection, appearing in the water, was
+covered with a cloud while the ass was drinking. Next day the poor beast
+was brought to the bar to be sentenced according to his deserts. After
+the grave burghers had discussed the affair for some time, one at length
+rose up and declared that it was not fit the town should lose its moon,
+but rather that the ass should be cut open and the moon he had swallowed
+taken out of him, which, being cordially approved by the others, was
+done accordingly.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII11"><sup>11</sup></a> This is also one of the Fables of Marie de France (thirteenth
+century).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII12"><sup>12</sup></a> A complete translation of the <i>Kath� Sarit S�gara</i>, by
+Professor C.H. Tawney, with notes of variants, which exhibit his wide
+acquaintance with the popular fictions of all lands, has been recently
+published at Calcutta (London agents, Messrs. Tr�bner and Co.), a work
+which must prove invaluable to every English student of comparative
+folk-lore.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII13"><sup>13</sup></a> Siva's paradise, according to Hindu mythology, is on Mount Kail�sa,
+in the Him�lyas, north of M�nasa.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapII14"><sup>14</sup></a> Tawney's translation, which is used throughout
+  this work.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapIIItitle"></a><img src="images/image009.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.<br/>
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (<i>continued</i>).</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image010.png" alt="T"/>HE Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gothamites of
+Germany, and the stories of their stupidity, after being orally current
+for years among the people, were collected near the close of the
+sixteenth century, the earliest known edition being that of 1597. In a
+most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances"
+(<i>Foreign Quarterly Review</i>, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms
+has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from
+which the following particulars and tales are extracted: "There have
+been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from
+one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally
+gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils
+of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their
+circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and
+then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered
+affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity,
+and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as
+to prove 'plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this
+strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the
+Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and
+receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and
+signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn
+themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the
+Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by
+which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on
+which some of their descendants, who may be known by their
+characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."</p>
+<a name="p57"></a>
+<p>Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows.
+When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, "saw
+they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a
+state of things; and having in vain gone outside and examined the
+building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to hold a
+council upon the subject on the following day. At the time appointed
+they assembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating
+himself, he stuck in his hat. After much discussion, one genius,
+brighter than the rest, decided that they could not see for want of
+daylight, and that they ought on the morrow to carry in as much of it as
+possible. Accordingly, the next day, when the sun shone, all the sacks,
+bags, boxes, baskets, tubs, pans, etc. of the village were filled with
+its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied
+there, but with no good effect. After this they removed the roof, by the
+advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion. This
+plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter
+fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, they found the house
+just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in
+their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting
+the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell
+through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had
+never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get
+daylight in by making a window.</p>
+
+<p>Another tale relates how the boors of Schilda contrived to get their
+millstone twice down from a high mountain:</p>
+
+<p>The boors of Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour
+they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the
+summit of a high mountain; and when the stone was finished, they carried
+it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the
+bottom, it occurred to one of them that they might have spared
+themselves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down.
+"Verily," said he, "we are the stupidest of fools to take these
+extraordinary pains to do that which we might have done with so little
+trouble. We will carry it up, and then let it roll down the hill by
+itself, as we did before with the tree which we felled for the
+council-house."</p>
+
+<p>This advice pleased them all, and with greater labour they carried the
+stone to the top of the mountain again, and were about to roll it down,
+when one of them said, "But how shall we know where it runs to? Who will
+be able to tell us aught about it?" "Why," said the bailiff, who had
+advised the stone being carried up again, "this is very easily managed.
+One of us must stick in the hole [for the millstone, of course, had a
+hole in the middle], and run down with it." This was agreed to, and one
+of them, having been chosen for the purpose, thrust his head through the
+hole, and ran down the hill with the millstone. Now at the bottom of the
+mountain was a deep fish-pond, into which the stone rolled, and the
+simpleton with it, so that the Schildburgers lost both stone and man,
+and not one among them knew what had become of them. And they felt
+sorely angered against their old companion who had run down the hill
+with the stone, for they considered that he had carried it off for the
+purpose of disposing of it. So they published a notice in all the
+neighbouring boroughs, towns, and villages, calling on them, that "if
+any one come there with a millstone round his neck, they should treat
+him as one who had stolen the common goods, and give him to justice."
+But the poor fellow lay in the pond, dead. Had he been able to speak, he
+would have been willing to tell them not to worry themselves on his
+account, for he would give them their own again. But his load pressed so
+heavily upon him, and he was so deep in the water, that he, after
+drinking water enough&mdash;more, indeed, than was good for him&mdash;died; and he
+is dead at the present day, and dead he will, shall, and must remain!</p>
+
+<p>The forty-seventh chapter recounts "How the Schildburgers purchased a
+mouser, and with it their own ruin":</p>
+<a name="p61"></a>
+<p>Now it happened that there were no cats in Schilda, and so many mice
+that nothing was safe, even in the bread-basket, for whatsoever they put
+there was sure to be gnawed or eaten; and this grieved them sorely. And
+upon a time there came a traveller into the village, carrying a cat in
+his arms, and he entered the hostel. The host asked him, "What sort of a
+beast is that?" Said he, "It is a mouser." Now the mice at Schilda were
+so quiet and so tame that they never fled before the people, but ran
+about all day long, without the slightest fear. So the traveller let the
+cat run, who, in the sight of the host, soon caught numbers of mice. Now
+when the people were told this by the host, they asked the man whether
+the mouser was to be sold, for they would pay him well for it. He said,
+"It certainly was not to be sold; but seeing that it would be so useful
+to them, he would let them have it if they would pay him what was
+right," and he asked a hundred florins for it. The boors were glad to
+find that he asked so little, and concluded a bargain with him, he
+agreeing to take half the money down, and to come again in six months to
+fetch the rest. As soon as the bargain was struck on both sides, they
+gave the traveller the half of the money, and he carried the mouser into
+the granary, where they kept their corn, for there were most mice there.
+The traveller went off with the money at full speed, for he feared
+greatly lest they should repent them of the bargain, and want their
+money back again; and as he went along he kept looking behind him to see
+that no one was following him. Now the boors had forgotten to ask what
+the cat was to be fed upon, so they sent one after him in haste to ask
+him the question. But when he with the gold saw that some one was
+following him, he hastened so much the more, so that the boor could by
+no means overtake him, whereupon he called out to him from afar off,
+"What does it eat?" "What you please! What you please!" quoth the
+traveller. But the peasant understood him to say, "Men and beasts! Men
+and beasts!" Therefore he returned home in great affliction, and said as
+much to his worthy masters.</p>
+
+<p>On learning this they became greatly alarmed, and said, "When it has no
+more mice to eat, it will eat our cattle; and when they are gone, it
+will eat us! To think that we should lay out our good money in buying
+such a thing!" And they held counsel together and resolved that the cat
+should be killed. But no one would venture to lay hold of it for that
+purpose, whereupon it was determined to burn the granary, and the cat in
+it, seeing that it was better they should suffer a common loss than all
+lose life and limb. So they set fire to the granary. But when the cat
+smelt the fire, it sprang out of a window and fled to another house, and
+the granary was burned to the ground. Never was there sorrow greater
+than that of the Schildburgers when they found that they could not kill
+the cat. They counselled with one another, and purchased the house to
+which the cat had fled, and burned that also. But the cat sprang out
+upon the roof, and sat there, washing itself and putting its paws behind
+its ears, after the manner of cats; and the Schildburgers understood
+thereby that the cat lifted up its hands and swore an oath that it would
+not leave their treatment of it unrevenged. Then one of them took a long
+pole and struck at the cat, but the cat caught hold of the pole, and
+began to clamber down it, whereupon all the people grew greatly alarmed
+and ran away, and left the fire to burn as it might. And because no one
+regarded the fire, nor sought to put it out, the whole village was
+burned to a house, and notwithstanding that, the cat escaped. And the
+Schildburgers fled with their wives and children to a neighbouring
+forest. And at this time was burned their chancery and all the papers
+therein, which is the reason why their history is not to be found
+described in a more regular manner.</p>
+<a name="p64"></a>
+<p>Thus ended the career of the Schildburgers as a community, according to
+the veracious chronicle of their marvellous exploits, the first of
+which, their carrying sunshine into the council-house, is a favourite
+incident in the noodle-stories of many countries, and has its parallel
+in the Icelandic story of the Three Brothers of Bakki: They had observed
+that in winter the weather was colder than in summer, also that the
+larger the windows of a house were the colder it was. All frost and
+sharp cold, therefore, they thought sprang from the fact that houses had
+windows in them. So they built themselves a house on a new plan, without
+windows in it at all. It followed, of course, that there was always
+pitch darkness in it. They found that this was rather a fault in the
+house, but comforted themselves with the certainty that in winter it
+would be very warm; and as to light, they thought they could contrive
+some easy means of getting the house lighted. One fine day in the middle
+of summer, when the sunshine was brightest, they began to carry the
+darkness out of the house in their caps, and emptied it out when they
+came into the sunshine, which they then carried into the dark room. Thus
+they worked hard the whole day, but in the evening, when they had done
+all their best, they were not a little disappointed to find that it was
+as dark as before, so much so that they could not tell one hand from the
+other.<a href="#chapIII01"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p65"></a>
+<p>There is a Kashm�r� story which bears a slight resemblance to the
+exploit of the Schildburgers with the cat. A poor old woman used to beg
+her food by day and cook it at night. Half of the food she would eat in
+the morning, and the other half in the evening. After a while a cat got
+to know of this arrangement, and came and ate the meal for her. The old
+woman was very patient, but at last could no longer endure the cat's
+impudence, and so she laid hold of it. She argued with herself as to
+whether she should kill it or not. "If I slay it," she thought, "it will
+be a sin; but if I keep it alive, it will be to my heavy loss." So she
+determined only to punish it. She procured some cotton wool and some
+oil, and soaking the one in the other, tied it on to the cat's tail and
+then set it on fire. Away rushed the cat across the yard, up the side of
+the window, and on to the roof, where its flaming tail ignited the
+thatch and set the whole house on fire. The flames soon spread to other
+houses, and the whole village was destroyed.<a href="#chapIII02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p66"></a>
+<p>An older form of this incident is found in the introduction to a Persian
+poetical version of the Book of Sindib�d (<i>Sindib�d N�ma</i>), of
+which a unique MS. copy, very finely illuminated, but imperfect, is
+preserved in the Library of the India Office:<a href="#chapIII03"><sup>3</sup></a> In a village called
+Buzina-Gird (i.e., Monkey Town) there was a goat that was in the habit
+of butting at a certain old woman whenever she came into the street. One
+day the old woman had been to ask fire from a neighbour, and on her
+return the goat struck her so violently with his horns when she was off
+her guard as to draw blood. Enraged at this, she applied the fire which
+she held to the goat's fleece, which kindled, and the animal ran to the
+stables of the elephant-keeper, and rubbed his sides against the reeds
+and willows. They caught fire, which the wind soon spread, and the heads
+and faces of the warlike elephants were scorched. With the sequel&mdash;how
+the king caused all the monkeys to be slaughtered, as their fat was
+required to cure the scorched elephants&mdash;we have no concern at
+present.<a href="#chapIII04"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p67"></a>
+<p>In Ceylon whole districts, such as Tumpane, in the central province,
+Morora Korle, in the southern province, and Rayigam Korle, in the
+western province, are credited with being the abode of fools. A learned
+writer on the proverbial sayings of the Sinhalese states that these
+often refer to "popular stories of stupid people to which foolish
+actions are likened. The stories of the Tumpane villagers who tried to
+unearth and carry off a well because they saw a bees' nest reflected in
+the water; of the Morora Korle boatmen who mistook a bend in the river
+for the sea, left their cargo there, and returned home; of the Rayigam
+Korle fools who threw stones at the moon to frighten her off one fine
+moonlight night when they thought she was coming too near, and that
+there was danger of her burning their crops, are well known, and it is
+customary to ask a man if he was born in one of these places if he has
+done anything particularly foolish. The story of the double-fool&mdash;i.e.,
+of the man who tried to lighten the boat by carrying his pingo load over
+his shoulders;<a href="#chapIII05"><sup>5</sup></a> <a name="chapIII5"></a>of the man who stretched out his hands to be warmed by
+the fire on the other side of the river; of the rustic's wife who had
+her own head shaved, so as not to lose the barber's services for the day
+when he came, and her husband was away from home; of the villagers who
+tied up their mortars in the village in the belief that the elephant
+tracks in the rice fields were caused by the mortars wandering about at
+night; of the man who would not wash his body in order to spite the
+river; of the people who flogged the elk-skin at home to avenge
+themselves on the deer that trespassed in the fields at night; and of
+the man who performed the five precepts&mdash;all these are popular stories
+of foolish people which have passed into proverbs."<a href="#chapIII06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p69"></a>
+<p>The last of the stories referred to in the above extract is as follows:
+A woman once rebuked her husband for not performing the five (Buddhist)
+precepts. "I don't know what they are," he replied. "Oh, it's very
+easy," she said; "all you have to do is to go to the priest and repeat
+what he says after him." "Is that all?" he answered. "Then I'll go and
+do it at once." Off he went, and as he neared the temple the priest saw
+him and called out, "Who are you?" to which he replied, "Who are you?"
+"What do you want?" demands the priest. "What do you want?" the
+blockhead answers dutifully. "Are you mad?" roared the priest. "Are you
+mad?" returned the rustic. "Here," said the priest to his attendants,
+"take and beat him well;" and notwithstanding that he carefully repeated
+the words again, taken and thoroughly well thrashed he was, after which
+he crawled back to his wife and said, "What a wonderful woman you are!
+You manage to repeat the five precepts every day, and are strong and
+healthy, while I, who have only said them once, am nearly dead with
+fever from the bruises."<a href="#chapIII07"><sup>7</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>To this last may be added a story in the <i>Kath� Manjari</i>, a
+Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the <i>R�m�yana</i>, one
+of the two great Hind� epics: One day a man was reading the
+<i>R�m�yana</i> in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might
+be instructed by hearing it, sent him there. He went, and stood leaning
+on his crook&mdash;for he was a shepherd&mdash;when presently a practical joker,
+seeing his simplicity, jumped upon his shoulders, and he stood with the
+man on his back until the discourse was concluded. When he reached home,
+his wife asked him how he liked the <i>R�m�yana</i>. "Alas!" said he,
+"it was not easy; it was a man's load."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The race of Gothamites is indeed found everywhere&mdash;in popular tales, if
+not in actual life; and their sayings and doings are not less diverting
+when husband and wife are well mated, as in the following story:</p>
+<a name="p70"></a>
+<p>An Arab observing one morning that his house was ready to tumble about
+his ears from decay, and being without the means of repairing it, went
+with a long face to his wife, and informed her of his trouble. She said,
+"Why, my dear, need you distress yourself about so small a matter? You
+have a cow worth thirty dirhams; take her to the market and sell her for
+that sum. I have some thread, which I will dispose of to-day, and I
+warrant you that between us both we shall manage very well." The man at
+once drove the cow to the market, and gave her over for sale to the
+appraiser of cattle. The salesman showed her to the bystanders, directed
+their attention to all her good points, expatiated on all her good
+qualities, and, in short, passed her off as a cow of inestimable value.
+To all this the simpleton listened with delight and astonishment; he
+heard his cow praised for qualities that no other cow ever possessed,
+and determined in his own mind not to lose so rare a bargain, but
+purchase her himself and balk the chapmen. He therefore called out to
+the appraiser, and asked him what she was going at. The salesman
+replied, "At fifteen dirhams and upwards." "By the head of the Prophet,"
+exclaimed the wittol, "had I known that my cow was such a prodigy of
+excellence, you should not have caught me in the market with her for
+sale." Now it happened that he had just fifteen dirhams, and no more,
+and these he thrust upon the broker, exclaiming, "The cow is mine; I
+have the best claim to her." He then seized the cow and drove her home,
+exulting all the way as if he had found a treasure. On reaching home he
+inquired eagerly for his wife, to inform her of his adventure, but was
+told she was not returned from market. He waited impatiently for her
+return, when he sprang up to meet her, crying, "Wife, I have done
+something to-day that will astonish you. I have performed a marvellous
+exploit!" "Patience!" says his wife. "Perhaps I have done something
+myself to match it. But hear my story, and then talk of cleverness, if
+you please." The husband desired her to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>"When I went to market," says she, "I found a man in want of thread. I
+showed him mine, which he approved of, and having bargained for it, he
+agreed to pay me according to the weight. I told him it weighed so much,
+which he seemed to discredit, and weighed it himself. Observing it to
+fall short of the weight I had mentioned, and fearing I should lose the
+price I at first expected, I requested him to weigh it over again, and
+make certain. In the meantime, taking an opportunity unobserved, I
+stripped off my silver bracelets and put them slily into the scale with
+my thread. The scale, of course, now preponderated, and I received the
+full price I had demanded." Having finished her story, she cried out,
+"Now, what do you think of your wife?" "Amazing! amazing!" said he.
+"Your capacity is supernatural. And now, if you please, I will give you
+a specimen of mine," and he related his adventure at the market. "O
+husband," she exclaimed when he had told his story, "had we not
+possessed such consummate wisdom and address, how could we have
+contrived means to repair our old house? In future vex not yourself
+about domestic concerns, since by the exercise of our talents we need
+never want for anything!"</p>
+<a name="p73"></a>
+<p>The exploits of that precious pair may be compared with the following:
+An alewife went to the market with a brood of chickens and an old black
+hen. For the hen and one chicken she could not find a purchaser; so,
+before leaving the town, she called upon a surgeon, to try to effect a
+sale. He bought the chicken, but declined taking the hen. She then asked
+him if he would draw a tooth for it. The tooth was drawn, and he
+expressed his surprise on finding it was perfectly sound. "Oh," said
+she, "I knew it was sound; but it was worth while having it drawn for
+the old hen." She then called upon another surgeon, and had a second
+tooth drawn, as sound as the other. "What's to pay?" she inquired. "A
+shilling," said the surgeon. "Very well," rejoined the hostess, with a
+chuckle; "you left a shilling due in my house the other night, and now
+we are quits." "Certainly we are," responded the perplexed tooth-drawer,
+and the delighted old woman returned to her hostelry, to acquaint all
+her gossips of how cleverly she had outwitted the doctors.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Ferrier says, in his <i>Illustrations of Sterne</i>, that the facetious
+tales of the Sieur Gaulard laid the foundation of some of the jests in
+our old English collections. A few of them found their way somehow into
+Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i>, and this is one: A monsieur chanced to
+meet a lady of his acquaintance, and asked her how she did and how her
+good husband fared, at which she wept, saying that her husband was in
+heaven. "In heaven!" quoth he. "It is the first time that I heard of it,
+and I am sorry for it with all my heart."</p>
+
+<p>Similar in its point is a story in <i>Archie Armstrong's Banquet of
+Jests</i>:<a href="#chapIII08"><sup>8</sup></a> <a name="p74"></a>Sitting over a cup of ale in a winter night, two widows
+entered into discourse of their dead husbands, and after ripping up
+their good and bad qualities, saith one of them to the maid, "I prithee,
+wench, reach us another light, for my husband (God rest his soul!) above
+all things loved to see good lights about the house. God grant him light
+everlasting!" "And I pray you, neighbour," said the other, "let the maid
+lay on some more coals or stir up the fire, for my husband in his
+lifetime ever loved to see a good fire. God grant him fire everlasting!"</p>
+<a name="p75"></a>
+<p>This seems cousin-german to the Arabian story of two men, one of whom
+hailed from the town of Hama (ancient Hamath), the other from Hums
+(ancient Emessa). Those towns are not far apart, but the people of the
+former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the
+latter are proverbially as stupid. (And for the proper understanding of
+the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb <i>hama</i>
+means to "protect" or "defend," the verb <i>hamasa</i> to "roast" or
+"toast.") These men had some business of importance with the nearest
+magistrate, and set out together on their journey. The man of Hums,
+conscious of his own ignorance, begged his companion to speak first in
+the audience, in order that he might get a hint as to how such a formal
+matter should be conducted. Accordingly, when they came into the pasha's
+presence, the man of Hama went forward, and the pasha asked him, "Where
+are you from?" "Your servant is from Hama," said he. "May Allah PROTECT
+(<i>hama</i>) your excellency!" The pasha then turned to the other man,
+and asked, "And where are you from?" to which he answered, "Your servant
+is from Hums. May Allah ROAST <i>(hamasa)</i> your excellency!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p76"></a>
+<p>Not a few of the <i>Bizarrures</i> of the Sieur Gaulard are the
+prototypes of bulls and foolish sayings of the typical Irishman, which
+go their ceaseless round in popular periodicals, and are even
+audaciously reproduced as original in our "comic" journals&mdash;save the
+mark! To cite some examples:</p>
+
+<p>A friend one day told M. Gaulard that the Dean of Besan�on was dead.
+"Believe it not," said he; "for had it been so he would have told me
+himself, since he writes to me about everything."</p>
+
+<p>M. Gaulard asked his secretary one evening what hour it was. "Sir,"
+replied the secretary, "I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun
+is set." "Well," quoth M. Gaulard, "and can you not see by the candle?"</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion the Sieur called from his bed to a servant desiring
+him to see if it was daylight yet. "There is no sign of daylight," said
+the servant. "I do not wonder," rejoined the Sieur, "that thou canst not
+see day, great fool as thou art. Take a candle and look with it out at
+the window, and thou shalt see whether it be day or not."</p>
+
+<p>In a strange house, the Sieur found the walls of his bedchamber full of
+great holes. "This," exclaimed he in a rage, "is the cursedest chamber
+in all the world. One may see day all the night through."</p>
+
+<p>Travelling in the country, his man, to gain the fairest way, rode
+through a field sowed with pease, upon which M. Gaulard cried to him,
+"Thou knave, wilt thou burn my horse's feet? Dost thou not know that
+about six weeks ago I burned my mouth with eating pease, they were so
+hot?"</p>
+
+<p>A poor man complained to him that he had had a horse stolen from him.
+"Why did you not mark his visage," asked M. Gaulard, "and the clothes he
+wore?" "Sir," said the man, "I was not there when he was stolen." Quoth
+the Sieur, "You should have left somebody to ask him his name, and in
+what place he resided."</p>
+
+<p>M. Gaulard felt the sun so hot in the midst of a field at noontide in
+August that he asked of those about him, "What means the sun to be so
+hot? How should it not keep its heat till winter, when it is cold
+weather?"</p>
+
+<p>A proctor, discoursing with M. Gaulard, told him that a dumb, deaf, or
+blind man could not make a will but with certain additional forms. "I
+pray you," said the Sieur, "give me that in writing, that I may send it
+to a cousin of mine who is lame."</p>
+
+<p>One day a friend visited the Sieur and found him asleep in his chair. "I
+slept," said he, "only to avoid idleness; for I must always be doing
+something."</p>
+
+<p>The Abb� of Poupet complained to him that the moles had spoiled a fine
+meadow, and he could find no remedy for them. "Why, cousin," said M.
+Gaulard, "it is but paving your meadow, and the moles will no more
+trouble you."</p>
+
+<p>M. Gaulard had a lackey belonging to Auvergne, who robbed him of twelve
+crowns and ran away, at which he was very angry, and said he would have
+nothing that came from that country. So he ordered all that was from
+Auvergne to be cast out of the house, even his mule; and to make the
+animal more ashamed, he caused his servants to take off its shoes and
+its saddle and bridle.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p79"></a>
+<p>Although Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i> is the most "original" of our old
+English jest-books&mdash;that is to say, it contains very few stories in
+common with preceding collections&mdash;yet some of the diverting tales he
+relates are traceable to very distant sources, more especially the
+following:</p>
+
+<p>A country fellow (that had not walked much in streets that were paved)
+came to London, where a dog came suddenly out of a house, and furiously
+ran at him. The fellow stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the dog,
+and finding them all fast rammed or paved in the ground, quoth he, "What
+a strange country am I in, where the people tie up the stones and let
+the dogs loose!"</p>
+
+<p>Three centuries and a half before the Water Poet heard this exquisitely
+humorous story, the great Persian poet Sa'd� related it in his
+<i>Gulist�n</i> (or Rose-garden), which was written A.D. 1278:</p>
+
+<p>A poor poet presented himself before the chief of a gang of robbers, and
+recited some verses in his praise. The robber-chief, however, instead of
+rewarding him, as he fondly expected, ordered him to be stripped of his
+clothes and expelled from the village. The dogs attacking him in the
+rear, the unlucky bard stooped to pick up a stone to throw at them, and
+finding the stones frozen in the ground, he exclaimed, "What a vile set
+of men are these, who set loose the dogs and fasten the stones!"</p>
+
+<p>Now here we have a very curious instance of the migration of a popular
+tale from Persia&mdash;perchance it first set out on its travels from India
+&mdash;in the thirteenth century, when grave and reverend seigniors wagged
+their beards and shook their portly sides at its recital, to London in
+the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed "the wisest fool
+in Christendom"!), when Taylor, the Water Poet, probably heard it told,
+in some river-side tavern, amidst the clinking of beer-cans and the
+fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado, and "put it in his book!"
+How it came into England it would be interesting to ascertain. It may
+have been brought to Europe by the Venetian merchants, who traded
+largely in the Levant and with the Moors in Northern Africa.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image011.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII01"><sup>1</sup></a> Powell and Magnusson's <i>Legends of Iceland</i>, Second Series, p.
+626.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII02"><sup>2</sup></a> <i>Dictionary of Kashm�r� Proverbs and Sayings</i>. Explained and
+illustrated from the rich and interesting folk-lore of the Valley. By
+the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles. Bombay: 1885.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII03"><sup>3</sup></a> This work was composed A.H. 776 (A.D. 1374-5), as the anonymous
+author takes care to inform us in his opening verses.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII04"><sup>4</sup></a> A still older form of the story occurs in the <i>Pancha Tantra</i>
+(Five Sections), a Sanskrit version of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai,
+in which a gluttonous ram is in the habit of going to the king's kitchen
+and devouring all food within his reach. One of the cooks beat him with
+a burning log of wood, and the ram rushed off with his blazing fleece
+and set the horses' stables on fire, and so forth. The story is most
+probably of Buddhist extraction.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII05"><sup>5</sup></a> A Sinhalese variant of the exploit of
+  the man of Norfolk and of the man of Gotham with the sack of meal. "See <i>ante</i>,
+  p. 19." [Transcriber's note: this approximates to the text reference for <a href="#chapII1">Chapter II
+  Footnote 1</a> in this etext.]</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII06"><sup>6</sup></a>  Mr. C.J.R. le Mesurier in <i>The Orientalist</i> (Kandy, Ceylon:
+1884), pp. 233-4.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII07"><sup>7</sup></a> <i>The Orientalist</i>, 1884, p. 234. A much fuller version, with
+subsequent incidents, is given in the same excellent periodical, pp.
+36-38.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIII08"><sup>8</sup></a> Archie Armstrong was Court jester to James I. of England. It is
+needless, perhaps, to say that he had no hand in this book of faceti�,
+which is composed for the most part of jests taken out of earlier
+collections.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapIVtitle"></a><img src="images/image012.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.<br/>
+  GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES <i>(continued)</i>.</h2>
+
+<p><img src="images/image013.png" width="94" height="96" alt="T"/>ALES of sharpers' tricks upon simpletons do not quite fall within the scope
+  of the present series of papers, but there is one, in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>&mdash;not
+  found, however, in our common English version of that fascinating story-book&mdash;which
+  deserves a place among noodle-stories, since it is so diverting, is not very
+  generally known, and is probably the original of the early Italian novel of
+  the <i>Monk Transformed</i>, which is ascribed to Michele Colombo:</p>
+
+<p>A rustic simpleton was walking homeward dragging his ass after him by
+the halter, which a brace of sharpers observing, one said to his fellow,
+"Come with me, and I will take the ass from that man." He then quietly
+advanced to the ass, unloosed it from the halter, and gave the animal to
+his companion, who went off with it, after which he put the halter over
+his own head, and allowed the rustic to drag him for some little
+distance, until he with the ass was fairly out of sight, when he
+suddenly stopped, and the man having tugged at the halter several times
+without effect, looked round, and, amazed to see a human being in place
+of his beast, exclaimed, "Who art thou?" The sharper answered, "I was
+thy ass; but hear my story, for it is wonderful. I had a good and pious
+mother, and one day I came home intoxicated. Grieved to see me in such a
+state, she gently reproved me, but I, instead of being penetrated with
+remorse, beat her with a stick, whereupon she prayed to Allah, and, in
+answer to her supplication, lo! I was transformed into an ass. In that
+shape I have continued until this day, when my mother, as it appears,
+has interceded for my restoration to human form, as before." The
+simpleton, believing every word of this strange story, raised his eyes
+to heaven, saying, "Of a truth there is no power but from Allah! But,
+pray, forgive me for having used thee as I have done." The sharper
+readily granted his forgiveness, and went off to rejoin his companion
+and dispose of the ass; while the simpleton returned home, and showing
+his wife the bridle, told her of the marvellous transformation which had
+occurred. His wife, in hopes of propitiating Heaven, gave alms and
+offered up many prayers to avert evil from them, on account of their
+having used a human being as an ass. At length the simpleton, having
+remained idle at home for some time, went one day to the market to
+purchase another ass, and on entering the place where all the animals
+were fastened, he saw with astonishment his old ass offered for sale.
+Putting his mouth to its ear, he whispered, "Woe to thee, unlucky!
+Doubtless thou hast again been intoxicated; but, by Allah, I will never
+buy thee!"</p>
+<a name="p83"></a>
+<p>Another noodle-story, of a different class, in the <i>Arabian
+Nights</i>, may be here cited in full from Sir R.F. Burton's
+translation of that delightful work, privately printed for the
+subscribers, and it will serve, moreover, as a fair specimen of the
+admirable manner in which that ripe scholar has represented in English
+the quaint style of his original:</p>
+
+<p>[Quoth one of the learned,] I passed once by a school wherein a
+schoolmaster was teaching children; so I entered, finding him a
+good-looking man, and a well-dressed, when he rose to me and made me sit
+with him. Then I examined him in the Koran, and in syntax and prosody,
+and lexicography; and behold, he was perfect in all required of him; and
+I said to him, "Allah strengthen thy purpose! Thou art indeed versed in
+all that is requisite." Thereafter I frequented him a while, discovering
+daily some new excellence in him, and quoth I to myself, "This is indeed
+a wonder in any dominie; for the wise are agreed upon a lack of wit in
+children's teachers."<a href="#chapIV01"><sup>1</sup></a> Then I separated myself from him, and sought
+him and visited him only every few days, till coming to see him one day,
+as of wont, I found the school shut, and made inquiry of his neighbours,
+who replied, "Some one is dead in his house." So I said in my mind, "It
+behoveth me to pay him a visit of condolence," and going to his house,
+knocked at the door, when a slave-girl came out to me and asked, "What
+dost thou want?" and I answered, "I want thy master." She replied, "He
+is sitting alone mourning;" and I rejoined, "Tell him that his friend
+So-and-so seeketh to console him." She went in and told him; and he
+said, "Admit him." So she brought me in to him, and I found him seated
+alone, and his head bound with mourning fillets. So I said to him,
+"Allah requite thee amply! This is a path all must perforce tread, and
+it behoveth thee to take patience," adding, "but who is dead unto thee?"
+He answered, "One who was dearest of the folk to me, and best beloved."
+"Perhaps thy father?" "No." "Thy brother?" "No." "One of thy kindred?"
+"No." Then asked I, "What relation was the dead to thee?" and he
+answered, "My lover." Quoth I to myself, "This is the first proof to
+swear by of his lack of wit." So I said to him, "Assuredly there be
+others than she, and fairer;" and he made answer, "I never saw her that
+I might judge whether or no there be others fairer than she." Quoth I to
+myself, "This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, "And how
+couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied,
+"Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo! there passed
+by a man, singing the following distich:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"'Umm Amr', thy boons Allah repay!<br/>
+  Give back my heart, be't where it may!'"</blockquote>
+
+<p>The schoolmaster continued, "When I heard the man humming these words as
+he passed along the street, I said to myself, 'Except this Umm Amru were
+without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and
+canzon.' So I fell in love with her; but two days after, the same man
+passed, singing the following couplet:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"'Ass and Umm Amr' went their way,<br/>
+  Nor she nor ass returned for aye.'</blockquote>
+
+<p>Thereupon I knew that she was dead, and mourned for her. This was three
+days ago, and I have been mourning ever since." So I left him and fared
+forth, having assured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinder's
+wit<a href="#chapIV02"><sup>2</sup></a>.</p>
+<a name="p86"></a>
+<p>Here, surely, was the very Father of Folly, but what shall we say of
+judges and magistrates being sometimes (represented as) equally witless?
+Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish K�z�, that two
+men came before him one of whom complained that the other had almost bit
+his ear off. The accused denied this, and declared that the fellow had
+bit his own ear. After pondering the matter for some time, the judge
+told them to come again two hours later. Then he went into his private
+room, and attempted to bring his ear and his mouth together; but all he
+did was to fall backwards and break his head. Wrapping a cloth round his
+head, he returned to court, and the two men coming in again presently,
+he thus decided the question: "No man can bite his own ear, but in
+trying to do so he may fall down and break his head."</p>
+
+<p>A Sinhalese story, which is also well known in various forms in India,
+furnishes a still more remarkable example of forensic sagacity. It is
+thus related by the able editor of <i>The Orientalist</i>, vol. i., p.
+191:</p>
+
+<p>One night some thieves broke into the house of a rich man, and carried
+away all his valuables. The man complained to the justice of the peace,
+who had the robbers captured, and when brought before him, inquired of
+them whether they had anything to say in their defence. "Sir," said
+they, "we are not to blame in this matter; the robbery was entirely due
+to the mason who built the house; for the walls were so badly made, and
+gave way so easily, that we were quite unable to resist the temptation
+of breaking in." Orders were then given to bring the mason to the
+court-house. On his arrival he was informed of the charge brought
+against him. "Ah," said he, "the fault is not mine, but that of the
+coolie, who made mortar badly." When the coolie was brought, he laid the
+blame on the potter, who, he said, had sold him a cracked chattie, in
+which he could not carry sufficient water to mix the mortar properly.
+Then the potter was brought before the judge, and he explained that the
+blame should not be laid upon him, but upon a very pretty woman, who, in
+a beautiful dress, was passing at the time he was making the chattie,
+and had so riveted his attention, that he forgot all about the work.
+When the woman appeared, she protested that the fault was not hers, for
+she would not have been in that neighbourhood at all had the goldsmith
+sent home her earrings at the proper time; the charge, she argued,
+should properly be brought against him. The goldsmith was brought, and
+as he was unable to offer any reasonable excuse, he was condemned to be
+hanged. Those in the court, however, begged the judge to spare the
+goldsmith's life; "for," said they, "he is very sick and ill-favoured,
+and would not make at all a pretty spectacle." "But," said the judge,
+"somebody must be hanged." Then they drew the attention of the court to
+the fact that there was a fat Moorman in a shop opposite, who was a much
+fitter subject for an execution, and asked that he might be hanged in
+the goldsmith's stead. The learned judge, considering that this
+arrangement would be very satisfactory, gave judgment accordingly.</p>
+<a name="p89"></a>
+<p>If some of the last-cited stories are not precisely Gothamite
+drolleries, though all are droll enough in their way, there can be no
+doubt whatever that we have a Sinhalese brother to the men of Gotham in
+the following: A villager in Ceylon, whose calf had got its head into a
+pot and could not get it out again, sent for a friend, celebrated for
+his wisdom, to release the poor animal. The sagacious friend, taking in
+the situation at a glance, cut off the calf's head, broke the pot, and
+then delivered the head to the owner of the calf, saying, "What will you
+do when I am dead and gone?"&mdash;And we have another Gothamite in the
+Kashm�r� who bought as much rice as he thought would suffice for a
+year's food, and finding he had only enough for eleven months, concluded
+it was better to fast the other month right off, which he did
+accordingly; but he died just before the month was completed, leaving
+eleven months' rice in his house.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p90"></a>
+<p>The typical noodle of the Turks, the Khoja Nasru-'d-D�n, is said to have
+been a subject of the independent prince of Karaman, at whose capital,
+Konya, he resided, and he is represented as a contemporary of Tim�r
+(Tamerlane), in the middle of the fourteenth century. The pleasantries
+which are ascribed to him are for the most part common to all countries,
+but some are probably of genuine Turkish origin. To cite a few
+specimens: The Khoja's wife said to him one day, "Make me a present of a
+kerchief of red Yemen silk, to put on my head." The Khoja stretched out
+his arms and said, "Like that? Is that large enough?" On her replying in
+the affirmative he ran off to the bazaar, with his arms still stretched
+out, and meeting a man on the road, he bawled to him, "Look where you
+are going, O man, or you will cause me to lose my measure!"</p>
+
+<p>Another day the Khoja's wife washed his caftan and spread it upon a tree
+in the garden of the house. That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he
+sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. "Give
+me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he
+shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into
+the house. Next morning, when he discovered that it was his own caftan
+he had shot at, he exclaimed, "By Allah, had I happened to be in it, I
+should have killed myself!"</p>
+<a name="p91"></a>
+<p>The Ettrick Shepherd's well-known story of the two Highlanders and the
+wild boar has its exact parallel in the Turkish jest-book, as follows:
+One day the Khoja went with his friend Sheragh Ahmed to the den of a
+wolf, in order to take the cubs. Said the Khoja to Ahmed, "Do you go in,
+and I will watch without;" and Ahmed went in, to take the cubs in the
+absence of the old wolf. But she came back presently, and had got
+half-way into her den when the Khoja seized hold of her tail. The wolf
+in her struggles cast up a great dust into the eyes of Ahmed, who called
+out to the Khoja, "Hallo! what does all this dust mean?" The Khoja
+replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks, you will soon know what the dust
+means!"</p>
+
+<p>Several of the jests closely resemble "Joe Millers" told of Irishmen,
+such as this: It happened one night, after the Khoja and a guest had
+lain down to sleep, that the taper went out. "O Khoja Effendi," said the
+guest, "the taper is gone out. But there is a taper at your right side.
+Pray bring it and let us light it." Quoth the Khoja, "You must surely be
+a fool to think that I should know my right hand in the dark." And this:
+A thief having stolen a piece of salted cheese from the Khoja, he ran
+immediately and seated himself on the border of a fountain. Said the
+people to him, "O Khoja, what have you come here to look for in such a
+hurry?" The Khoja replied, "The thief will certainly come here to drink
+as soon as he has eaten my salted cheese; I always do so myself."</p>
+<a name="p92"></a>
+<p>And here is one of the Gothamite class: One evening the Khoja went to
+the well to draw water, and seeing the moon reflected in the water, he
+exclaimed, "The moon has fallen into the well; I must pull it out." So
+he let down the rope and hook, and the hook became fastened to a stone,
+whereupon he exerted all his strength, and the rope broke, and he fell
+upon his back. Looking into the sky, he saw the moon, and cried out
+joyfully, "Praise be to Allah! I am sorely bruised, but the moon has got
+into its place again."</p>
+
+<p>There is a well-worn jest of an Irishman who, being observed by a friend
+to look exceedingly blank and perplexed, was asked what ailed him. He
+replied that he had had a dream. "Was it a good or a bad dream?"
+"Faith," said he, "it was a little of both; but I'll tell ye. I dreamt
+that I was with the Pope, who was the finest gentleman in the whole
+district; and after we had conversed a while, his Holiness axed me,
+Would I drink? Thinks I to myself, 'Would a duck swim?' So, seeing the
+whisky and the lemons and the sugar on the side-board, I said, I didn't
+mind if I took a drop of punch. 'Cold or hot?' says his Holiness. 'Hot,
+your Holiness,' says I. So on that he steps down to the kitchen for the
+boiling water, but, bedad, before he came back, I woke straight up; and
+now it's distressing me that I didn't take it cold!"</p>
+<a name="p93"></a>
+<p>We have somewhat of a parallel to this in a Turkish jest: The Khoja
+dreamt that some one gave him nine pieces of money, but he was not
+content, and said, "Make it ten." Then he awoke and found his hands
+empty. Instantly closing his eyes again, and holding out his hand, he
+said, "I repent; give me the nine pieces<a href="#chapIV03"><sup>3</sup></a>."</p>
+
+<p>But the Chinese relate the very counterpart of our Irishman's story. A
+confirmed drunkard dreamt that he had been presented with a cup of
+excellent wine, and set it by the fire to warm<a href="#chapIV04"><sup>4</sup></a>, that he should better
+enjoy the flavour of it; but just as he was about to drink off the
+delicious draught he awoke. "Fool that I am," he cried, "why was I not
+content to drink it cold?"<a href="#chapIV05"><sup>5</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p94"></a>
+<p>The Chinese seem to have as keen a sense of humour as any other people.
+They tell a story, for instance, of a lady who had been recently
+married, and on the third day saw her husband returning home, so she
+slipped quietly behind him and gave him a hearty kiss. The husband was
+annoyed, and said she offended all propriety. "Pardon! pardon!" said
+she. "I did not know it was you." Thus the excuse may sometimes be worse
+than the offence. There is exquisite humour in the following
+noodle-story: Two brothers were tilling the ground together. The elder,
+having prepared dinner, called his brother, who replied in a loud voice,
+"Wait till I have hidden my spade, and I shall at once be with you."
+When he joined his elder brother, the latter mildly reproached him,
+saying, "When one hides anything, one should keep silence, or at least
+should not cry aloud about it, for it lays one open to be robbed."
+Dinner over, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his
+spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and
+<i>whispered</i> mysteriously in his ear, "My spade is stolen!"&mdash;The
+passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed: A man who was
+fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false,
+expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the
+lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor
+Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he
+carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in
+the streets, "Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Ta�-Koung."</p>
+<a name="p95"></a>
+<hr />
+
+<p>Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest
+extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the <i>J�takas</i>,
+or Buddhist Birth-stories. Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad
+men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes
+when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to <i>J�taka</i>
+44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon
+the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every
+one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and
+injured one another. <a name="p96"></a>And nothing more foolish is recorded of the
+Schildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his <i>Kath� Sarit S�gara</i>,
+of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees: Being required to furnish
+the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was
+very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself,
+they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and
+having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up
+and planted them again, thinking they would grow.</p>
+
+<p>In illustration of the apothegm that "fools who attend only to the words
+of an order, and do not understand the meaning, cause much detriment,"
+is the story of the servants who kept the rain off the trunks: The camel
+of a merchant gave way under its load on a journey. He said to his
+servants, "I will go and buy another camel to carry the half of this
+camel's load. And you must remain here, and take particular care that if
+it clouds over the rain does not wet the leather of these trunks, which
+are full of clothes." With these words the merchant left the servants by
+the side of the camel and went off, and suddenly a cloud came up and
+began to discharge rain. Then the fools said, "Our master told us to
+take care that the rain did not touch the leather of the trunks;" and
+after they had made this sage reflection they dragged the clothes out of
+<a name="p97"></a>the trunks and wrapped them round the leather. The consequence was that
+the rain spoiled the clothes. Then the merchant returned, and in a rage
+said to his servants, "You rascals! Talk of water! Why, the whole stock
+of clothes is spoiled by the rain!" And they answered him, "You told us
+to keep the rain off the leather of the trunks. What fault have we
+committed?" He answered, "I told you that if the leather got wet the
+clothes would be spoiled. I told you so in order to save the clothes,
+not the leather."</p>
+
+<p>The story of the servant who looked after the door is a farther
+illustration of the same maxim. A merchant said to his foolish servant,
+"Take care of the door of my shop; I am going home for a short time."
+After his master was gone, the fool took the shop-door on his shoulder
+and went off to see an actor perform. As he was returning his master met
+him, and gave him a scolding, and he answered, "I have taken care of
+this door, as you told me."</p>
+
+<p>This jest had found its way into Europe three centuries ago. It is
+related of Giufa, the typical Sicilian booby, and probably came to
+England from Italy. This is how it is told in the <i>Sacke Full of
+Newes</i>, <a name="p98"></a>a jest-book originally printed in the sixteenth century: "In
+the countrey dwelt a Gentlewoman who had a French man dwelling with her,
+and he did ever use to go to Church with her; and upon a time he and his
+mistresse were going to church, and she bad him pull the doore after him
+and follow her to the church; and so he took the doore betweene his
+armes, and lifted it from the hooks, and followed his mistresse with it.
+But when she looked behinde her and saw him bring the doore upon his
+back, 'Why, thou foolish knave,' qd she, 'what wilt thou do with the
+door?' 'Marry, mistresse,' qd he, 'you bad me pull the doore after me.'
+'Why, fool,' qd she, 'I did command thee that thou shouldest make fast
+the doore after thee, and not bring it upon thy back after me.' But
+after this there was much good sport and laughing at his simplicity and
+foolishnesse therein."</p>
+
+<p>In the capacity of a merchant the simpleton does very wonderful things,
+and plumes himself on his sagacity, as we have already seen in the case
+of the Arab and his cow. And here are a brace of similar stories: A
+foolish man once went to the island of Kat�ha to trade, and among his
+wares was a quantity of fragrant aloes-wood. After he had sold his other
+goods, he could not find any one to take the aloes-wood off his hands,
+for the people who live there are not acquainted with that article of
+commerce. Then seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, he burnt
+his stock of aloes-wood <a name="p99"></a>and reduced it to charcoal. He sold it for the
+price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his
+cleverness, and became the laughing-stock of everybody.&mdash;Another
+blockhead went to the market to sell cotton, but no one would buy it
+from him, because it was not properly cleaned. In the meanwhile he saw
+in the bazaar a goldsmith selling gold which he had purified by heating
+it, and he saw it taken by a customer. Seeing that, he threw his cotton
+into the fire in order to purify it, and it was all burned to ashes.</p>
+
+<p> There must be few who have not heard of the Irishman who was hired by a
+Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship. As the vessel was about to
+sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, "Captain, I lost your shovel
+overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern,
+just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back."&mdash;A
+similar story is told of an Indian simpleton. He was sailing in a ship
+when he let a silver cup fall from his hand into the water. Having taken
+notes of the spot by observing the eddies and other signs in the water,
+he said to himself, "I will bring it up from the bottom when I return."
+As he was recrossing the sea, he saw the eddies and other signs, and
+thinking he recognised the spot, he plunged into the water again and
+again, to recover his cup, but he only got well laughed at for his
+pains.</p>
+<a name="p100"></a>
+<p>We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that "distress is sure to
+come from being in the company of fools" in the following, from the
+Canarese story-book entitled <i>Kath� Manjari</i>: A foolish fellow
+travelled with a shopkeeper. When it became dark, the fool lay down in
+the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree.
+Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet
+against the fool's legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions,
+"What is this? Is it a piece of wood?" The fool was angry, and said, "Go
+away! go away! Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the
+loins of a plank in your house?" The thieves then seized him, and took
+away his annas. As they were moving off, they asked if the money was
+good or bad, to which the noodle replied, "Ha! ha! is it of my money you
+speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad? Look&mdash;
+there is a shopkeeper in that tree," pointing with his finger&mdash;"show it
+to him." Then the thieves went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of
+two hundred pagodas.</p>
+<a name="p101"></a>
+<p>In our next story, of the villagers who ate the buffalo, is exemplified
+the fact that "fools, in the conceit of their folly, while they deny
+what need not be denied, reveal what it is their interest to suppress,
+in order to get themselves believed." Some villagers took a buffalo
+belonging to a certain man, and killed it in an enclosure outside the
+village, under a banyan tree, and dividing the flesh, ate it up. The
+owner of the buffalo went and complained to the king, and he had the
+villagers who had eaten the animal brought before him. The proprietor of
+the buffalo said before the king, in their presence, "These men took my
+buffalo under a banyan tree near the tank, and killed and ate it before
+my eyes," whereupon an old fool among the villagers said, "There is no
+tank or banyan tree in our village. He says what is not true; where did
+we kill his buffalo or eat it?" When the man heard this, he replied,
+"What! are there not a banyan tree and a tank on the east side of the
+village? Moreover, you ate my buffalo on the eighth day of the lunar
+month." The old fool then said, "There is no east side or eighth day in
+our village." On hearing this, the king laughed, and said, to encourage
+the fool, "You are a truthful person; you never say anything false; so
+tell me the truth: did you eat that buffalo, or did you not?" The old
+fool answered, "I was born three years after my father died, and he
+taught me skill in speaking. So I never say what is untrue, my king. It
+is true that we ate his buffalo, but all the rest that he alleges is
+false." When the king heard this, he and his courtiers could not
+restrain their laughter; but he restored the price of the buffalo to the
+man, and fined the villagers.</p>
+<a name="p102"></a>
+<p>But sometimes even kings have been arrant noodles, and their credulity
+quite as amusing&mdash;or amazing&mdash;as that of their subjects. Once on a time
+there was a king who had a handsome daughter, and he summoned his
+physicians, and said to them, "Make some preparation of salutary drugs,
+which will cause my daughter to grow up quickly, so that she may be
+married to a good husband." The physicians, wishing to get a living out
+of this royal fool, replied, "There is a medicine which will do this,
+but it can only be procured in a distant country; and while we are
+sending for it, we must shut up your daughter in concealment, for this
+is the treatment laid down in such cases." The king having consented,
+they placed his daughter in concealment for several years, pretending
+that they were engaged in procuring the medicine; and when she was grown
+up, they presented her to the king, saying that she had been made to
+grow by the preparation; so the king was highly pleased, and gave them
+much wealth.</p>
+<a name="p103"></a>
+<p>Between an Indian r�j� and an Indian dhobie, or washerman, there is the
+greatest possible difference socially, but individually&mdash;when both are
+noodles&mdash;there may be sometimes very little to choose; indeed, of the
+two, all things considered, the difference, if any, is perhaps in favour
+of the humble cleanser of body-clothes. A favourite story in various
+parts of India, near akin to that last cited, is of a poor washerman and
+his young ass. This simpleton one day, passing a school kept by a
+mullah, or Muhammedan doctor of laws, heard him scolding his pupils,
+exclaiming that they were still asses, although he had done so much to
+make them men. The washerman thought that here was a rare chance, for he
+happened to have the foal of the ass that carried his bundles of
+clothes, which, since he had no child, he should get the learned mullah
+to change into a boy. Thus thinking, he goes next day to the mullah, and
+asks him to admit his foal into his school, in order that it should be
+changed into the human form and nature. The preceptor, seeing the poor
+fellow's simplicity, answered that the task was very laborious, and he
+must have a fee of a hundred rup�s. So the washerman went home, and soon
+returned leading his foal, which, with the money, he handed over to the
+teacher, who told him to come again on such a day and hour, when he
+should find that the change he desired had been effected. But the
+washerman was so impatient that he went to the teacher several times
+before the day appointed, and was informed that the foal was beginning
+to learn manners, that its ears were already become very much shorter,
+and, in short, that it was making satisfactory progress.</p>
+
+<p>It happened, when the day came on which he was to receive his young ass
+transformed into a fine, well-educated boy, the simpleton was kept busy
+with his customers' clothes, but on the day following he found time to
+go to the teacher, who told him it was most unfortunate he had not come
+at the appointed hour, since the youth had quitted the school yesterday,
+refusing to submit any longer to authority; but the teacher had just
+learned that he had been made k�z� (or judge) in Cawnpore. At first the
+washerman was disposed to be angry, but reflecting that, after all, the
+business was better even than he anticipated, he thanked the preceptor
+for all his care and trouble, and returned home. Having informed his
+wife of his good luck, they resolved to visit their quondam young foal,
+and get him to make them some allowance out of his now ample means. So,
+shutting up their house, they travelled to Cawnpore, which they reached
+in safety. Being directed to the k�z�'s court, the washerman, leaving
+his wife outside, entered, and discovered the k�z� seated in great
+dignity, and before him were the pleaders, litigants, and officers of
+the court. He had brought a bridle in one hand and a wisp of hay in the
+other; but being unable, on account of the crowd, to approach the k�z�,
+he got tired of waiting, so, holding up the bridle and the hay, he cried
+out, "Khoor! khoor! khoor!" as he used to do in calling his donkeys,
+thinking this would induce the k�z� to come to him. But, instead of
+this, he was seized by the k�z�'s order and locked up for creating a
+disturbance.</p>
+
+<p>When the business of the court was over, the k�z�, pitying the supposed
+madman, sent for him to learn the reason of his strange behaviour, and
+in answer to his inquiries the simpleton said, "You don't seem to know
+me, sir, nor recognise this bridle, which has been in your mouth so
+often. <a name="p106"></a>You appear to forget that you are the foal of one of my asses,
+that I got changed into a man, for the fee of a hundred rupis, by a
+learned mullah who transforms asses into educated men. You forget what
+you were, and, I suppose, will be as little submissive to me as you were
+to the mullah when you ran away from him." All present were convulsed
+with laughter: such a "case" was never heard of before. But the k�z�,
+seeing how the mullah had taken advantage of the poor fellow's
+simplicity, gave him a present of a hundred rupis, besides sufficient
+for the expenses of his journey home, and so dismissed him.</p>
+
+<p> A party of rogues once found as great a blockhead in a rich Indian
+herdsman, to whom they said, "We have asked the daughter of a wealthy
+inhabitant of the town in marriage for you, and her father has promised
+to give her." He was much pleased to hear this, and gave them an ample
+reward for their trouble. After a few days they came again and told him
+that his marriage had taken place. Again he gave them rich presents for
+their good news. Some more days having passed, they said to him, "A son
+has been born to you," at which he was in ecstacies and gave them all
+his remaining wealth; but the next day, when he began to lament, saying,
+"I am longing to see my son," the people laughed at him on account of
+his having been cheated by the rogues, as if he had acquired the
+stupidity of cattle from having so much to do with them.</p>
+<a name="p107"></a>
+<p>It is not generally known that the incident which forms the subject of
+the droll Scotch song "The Barring of the Door," which also occurs in
+the <i>Nights</i> of Straparola, is of Eastern origin. In an Arabian
+tale, a blockhead, having married his pretty cousin, gave the customary
+feast to their relations and friends. When the festivities were over, he
+conducted his guests to the door, and from absence of mind neglected to
+shut it before returning to his wife. "Dear cousin," said his wife to
+him when they were alone, "go and shut the street door." "It would be
+strange indeed," he replied, "if I did such a thing. Am I just made a
+bridegroom, clothed in silk, wearing a shawl and a dagger set with
+diamonds, and am I to go and shut the door? Why, my dear, you are crazy.
+Go and shut it yourself." "Oh, indeed!" exclaimed the wife. "Am I,
+young, robed in a dress, with lace and precious stones&mdash;am I to go and
+shut the street door? No, indeed! It is you who are become crazy, and
+not I. Come, let us make a bargain," she continued; "and let the first
+who speaks go and fasten the door." "Agreed," said the husband, and
+immediately he became mute, and the wife too was silent, while they both
+sat down, dressed as they were in their nuptial attire, looking at each
+other and seated on opposite sofas. Thus they remained for two hours.
+Some thieves happened to pass by, and seeing the door open, entered and
+laid hold of whatever came to their hands. The silent couple heard
+footsteps in the house, but opened not their mouths. The thieves came
+into the room and saw them seated motionless and apparently indifferent
+to all that might take place. They continued their pillage, therefore,
+collecting together everything valuable, and even dragging away the
+carpets from beneath them; they laid hands on the noodle and his wife,
+taking from their persons every article of jewellery, while they, in
+fear of losing the wager, said not a word. Having thus cleared the
+house, the thieves departed quietly, but the pair continued to sit,
+uttering not a syllable. Towards morning a police officer came past on
+his tour of inspection, and seeing the door open, walked in. After
+searching all the rooms and finding no person, he entered their
+apartment, and inquired the meaning of what he saw. Neither of them
+would condescend to reply. The officer became angry, and ordered their
+heads to be cut off. The executioner's sword was about to perform its
+office, when the wife cried out, "Sir, he is my husband. Do not kill
+him!" "Oh, oh," exclaimed the husband, overjoyed and clapping his hands,
+"you have lost the wager; go and shut the door." He then explained the
+whole affair to the police officer, who shrugged his shoulders and went
+away.<a href="#chapIV06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p109"></a>
+<p>A party of noodles are substituted for the husband and wife in a Turkish
+version of the tale, in the <i>History of the Forty Vazirs. </i> Some
+bang-eaters,<a href="#chapIV07"><sup>7</sup></a> while out walking, found a sequin. They said, "Let us go
+to a cook, and buy food and eat." So they went and entered a cook's shop
+and said, "Master, give us a sequin's worth of food." The cook prepared
+all kinds of food, and loaded a porter with it; and the bang-eaters took
+him without the city, where there was a ruined tomb, which they entered
+and sat down in, and the porter deposited the food and went away. The
+bang-eaters began to partake of the food, when suddenly one of them
+said, "The door is open; do one of you shut it, else some other
+bang-eaters will come in and annoy us: even though they be friends, they
+will do the deeds of foes." One of them replied, "Go thou and shut the
+door," and they fell a-quarrelling. At length one said, "Come, let us
+agree that whichever of us speaks or laughs shall rise and fasten the
+door." They all agreed to this proposal, and left the food and sat quite
+still. Suddenly a great number of dogs came in; not one of the
+bang-eaters stirred or spoke, for if one spoke he would have to rise and
+shut the door, so they spoke not. The dogs made an end of the food, and
+ate it all up. Just then another dog leapt in from without, but no food
+remained. <a name="p111"></a>Now one of the bang-eaters had partaken of everything, and
+some of the food remained about his mouth and on his beard. That newly
+come dog licked up the particles of food that were on the bang-eater's
+breast, and while he was licking up those about his mouth, he took his
+lip for a piece of meat and bit it. The bang-eater did not stir, for he
+said within himself, "They will tell me to shut the door." But to ease
+his soul he cried, "Ough!" inwardly cursing the dog. When the other
+bang-eaters heard him make that noise, they said, "Rise, fasten the
+door." He replied, "After loss, attention! Now that the food is gone,
+and my lip is wounded, what is the use of shutting that door?" and
+crying, "Woe! alas!" they each went in a different direction.<a href="#chapIV08"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>A similar story is known in Kashmir: Five friends chanced to meet, and
+all having leisure, they decided to go to the bazaar and purchase a
+sheep's head, and have a great feast in the house of one of the party,
+each of whom subscribed four annas. The head was bought, but while they
+were returning to the house it was remembered that there was not any
+butter. On this one of the five proposed that the first of them that
+should break silence by speaking should go for the butter. Now it was no
+light matter to have to retrace one's steps back to the butter-shop, as
+the way was long and the day was very hot. So they all five kept strict
+silence. Pots were cleaned, the fire was prepared, and the head laid
+thereon. Now and then one would cough, and another would groan, but
+never a tongue uttered a word, though the fire was fast going out, and
+the head was getting burnt, owing to there being no fat or butter
+wherewith to grease the pot. Thus matters were when a policeman passed
+by, and, attracted by the smell of cooking, looked in at the window, and
+saw these five men perfectly silent and sitting around a burnt sheep's
+head. Not knowing the arrangement, he supposed that these men were
+either mad or were thieves, and so he inquired how they came there, and
+how they obtained the head. Not a word was uttered in reply. "Why are
+you squatting there in that stupid fashion?" shouted the policeman.
+Still no reply. Then the policeman, full of rage that these wretched men
+should thus mock at his authority, took them all off straight to the
+police inspectors office. On arrival the inspector asked them the reason
+of their strange behaviour, but he also got no reply. This rather tried
+the patience and temper of the man of authority, who was generally
+feared, and flattered, and bribed. So he ordered one of the five to be
+immediately flogged. The poor fool bore it bravely, and uttered never a
+sound; but when the blows repeatedly fell on the same wounded parts, he
+could endure no longer, and cried out, "Oh! oh! Why do you beat me?
+Enough, enough! Is it not enough that the sheep's head has been
+spoiled?"</p>
+
+<p>His four associates now cried out, "Go to the bazaar and fetch the
+butter."<a href="#chapIV09"><sup>9</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p113"></a>
+<p>There is quite as droll a version current among the people of Ceylon, to
+the following effect: A gentleman once had in his employment twenty-five
+idiots. In the old times it was customary with Sinhalese high families
+not to allow their servants to eat from plates, but every day they were
+supplied with plantain leaves, from which they took their food. After
+eating, they were accustomed to shape the leaf into the form of a cup
+and drink out of it. Now in this gentleman's house the duty of providing
+the leaves devolved upon the twenty-five idiots, who were scarcely fit
+for any other work. One day, when they had gone into the garden to cut
+the leaves, they spoke among themselves and said, "Why should we, every
+one of us, trouble ourselves to fetch plantain leaves, when one only
+could very easily do it? Let us therefore lie down on the ground and
+sleep like dead men, and let him who first utters a sound or opens his
+eyes undertake the work." It was no sooner said than done. The men lay
+in a heap like so many logs. At breakfast-time that day the hungry
+servants went to the kitchen for their rice, only to be disappointed. No
+leaves were forthcoming on which to distribute the food, and a complaint
+was made to the master that the twenty-five idiots had not returned to
+the house since they went out in the morning. Search was at once made,
+and they were found fast asleep in the garden. After vainly endeavouring
+to rouse them, the master concluded that they were dead, and ordered his
+servants to dig a deep hole and bury them. A grave was then dug, and the
+idiots were, one by one, thrown into it, but still there was no noise or
+motion on their part. At length, when they were all put into the grave,
+and were being covered up, a tool employed by one of the servants hit
+sharply by accident against the leg of one of the idiots, who then
+involuntarily moaned. Thereupon all the others exclaimed, "You were the
+first to utter a sound; therefore from henceforth you must take upon
+yourself the duty of providing the plantain leaves."<a href="#chapIV10"><sup>10</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p115"></a>
+<p>It has already been remarked that a literary Italian version of the
+Silent Couple is found in the <i>Nights</i> of Straparola, but there are
+other variants orally current among the common people in different parts
+of Italy. This is one from Venice: There were once a husband and a wife.
+The former said one day to the latter, "Let us have some fritters." She
+replied, "What shall we do for a frying-pan?" "Go and borrow one from my
+godmother." "You go and get it; it is only a little way off." "Go
+yourself, and I will take it back when we are done with it." So she went
+and borrowed the pan, and when she returned said to her husband, "Here
+is the pan, but you must carry it back." So they cooked the fritters,
+and after they had eaten, the husband said, "Now let us go to work, both
+of us, and the one who speaks first shall carry back the pan." Then she
+began to spin, and he to draw his thread&mdash;for he was a shoemaker&mdash;and
+all the time keeping silence, except that when he drew his thread he
+said, "Leuler�! leuler�!" and she, spinning, answered, "Picic�! picic�!
+picici�!" And they said not another word. Now there happened to pass
+that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any
+shoemaker in that street. She said there was one near by, and took him
+to the house. The, soldier asked the shoemaker to come and cut his horse
+a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but "Leuler�!
+leuler�!" and his wife "Picic�! picic�! picici�!" Then the soldier said,
+"Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." The
+shoemaker only answered, "Leuler�! leuler�!" and his wife "Picic�!
+picic�! picici�!" Then the soldier began to grow angry, and seized his
+sword, and said to the shoemaker, "Either come and cut my horse a girth,
+or I will cut your head off." But to no purpose. The shoemaker did not
+wish to be the first one to speak, and only replied, "Leuler�! leuler�!"
+and his wife "Picic�! picic�! picici�!" Then the soldier got mad in good
+earnest, seized the shoemaker's head, and was going to cut it off. When
+his wile saw that, she cried out, "Ah, don't, for mercy's sake!" "Good!"
+exclaimed her husband, "good! Now you go and carry the pan back to my
+godmother, and I will go and cut the horse's girth."</p>
+<a name="p116"></a>
+<p>In a Sicilian version the man and wife fry some fish, and then set about
+their respective work&mdash;shoemaking and spinning&mdash;and the one who finishes
+first the piece of work begun is to eat the fish. While they are singing
+and whistling at their work, a friend comes along, who knocks at the
+door, but receives no answer. Then he enters and speaks to them, but
+still no reply. Finally, in anger, he sits down at the table, and eats
+up all the fish himself.<a href="#chapIV11"><sup>11</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Thus, it will be observed, the droll incident which forms the subject of
+the old Scotch song of "The Barring of the Door" is of world-wide
+celebrity.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p117"></a>
+<p>Gothamite stories appear to have been familiar throughout Europe during
+the later Middle Ages, if we may judge from a chapter of the <i>Gesta
+Romanorum</i> in which the monkish compiler has curiously "moralised"
+the actions of three noodles:</p>
+
+<p>We read in the "Lives of the Fathers" that an angel showed to a certain
+holy man three men labouring under a triple fatuity. The first made a
+faggot of wood, and because it was too heavy for him to carry, he added
+to it more wood, hoping by such means to make it light.  The second drew
+water with great labour from a very deep well with a sieve, which he
+incessantly filled.  The third carried a beam in his chariot, and,
+wishing to enter his house, whereof the gate was so narrow and low that
+it would not admit him, he violently whipped his horse until they both
+fell together into a deep well. Having shown this to the holy man, the
+angel said, "What think you of these three men?" "That they are fools,"
+answered he. "Understand, however," returned the angel, "that they
+represent the sinners of this world. The first describes that kind of
+men who from day to day do add new sins to the old, because they cannot
+bear the weight of those which they already have. The second man
+represents those who do good, but do it sinfully, and therefore it is of
+no benefit. And the third person is he who would enter the kingdom of
+heaven with all his world of vanities, but is cast down into hell."</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p119"></a>
+<p>And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite class to
+conclude the present section. In M�lava there were two Br�hman brothers,
+and the wealth inherited from their father was left jointly between
+them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one
+having too little and one having too much, and they made a teacher
+learned in the Vedas arbitrator, and he said to them, "You must divide
+everything your father left into two halves, so that you may not quarrel
+about the inequality of the division." When the two fools heard this,
+they divided every single thing into two equal parts&mdash;house, beds, in
+fact, all their property, including their cattle. Henry Stephens (Henri
+Estienne), in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,<a href="#chapIV11"><sup>12</sup></a> relates
+some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his shins
+before the fire, and not having wit enough to go back from it, sent for
+masons to remove the chimney; of the fool who ate the doctor's
+prescription, because he was told to "take it;" of another wittol who,
+having seen one spit upon iron to try whether it was hot, did likewise
+with his porridge; and, best of all, he tells of a fellow who was hit on
+the back with a stone as he rode upon his mule, and cursed the animal
+for kicking him. This last exquisite jest has its analogue in that of
+the Irishman who was riding on an ass one fine day, when the beast, by
+kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet
+entangled in the stirrup, whereupon the rider dismounted, saying,
+"Faith, if you're going to get up, it's time I was getting down."</p>
+<a name="p120"></a>
+<p>The poet Ovid alludes to the story of Ino persuading the women of the
+country to roast the wheat before it was sown, which may have come to
+India through the Greeks, since we are told in the <i>Kath� Sarit
+S�gara</i> of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds,
+and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quantity of roasted
+seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in
+Coelho's <i>Contes Portuguezes</i>, and is probably of Buddhistic
+origin. And an analogous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens
+hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs!</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image014.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV01"><sup>1</sup></a> This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to
+have been entertained from ancient times, and to be still prevalent in
+the East; the so-called jests of Hierokles are all at the expense of
+pedants; and the Turkish typical noodle is Khoja <i>(i.e.,</i> Teacher)
+Nasru-'d-D�n, some of whose "witless devices" shall be cited presently.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV02"><sup>2</sup></a> <i>Elf Laylawa Layla</i>, or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a
+Night. Translated, with Introduction, Notes on the Manners and Customs
+of Moslem Men, and a Terminal Essay on the History of <i>The Nights</i>,
+by R.F. Burton. Vol. v.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV03"><sup>3</sup></a> The Khoja, however, was not such a fool as we might conclude from
+the foregoing examples of his sayings and doings; for, being asked one
+day what musical instrument he liked best, he answered, "I am very fond
+of the music of plates and saucepans."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV04"><sup>4</sup></a> In China wine is almost invariably taken hot, according to Davis, in
+his work on the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV05"><sup>5</sup></a> This and the following specimens of Chinese stories of simpletons
+are from "Contes et Bon Mots extraits d'un livre chinois intitule
+<i>Siao li Siao</i>, traduit par M. Stanislas Julien," (<i>Journal
+Asiatique</i>, tom. iv., 1824).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV06"><sup>6</sup></a> In another Arabian version, the man desires his wife to moisten some
+stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an
+altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and
+moisten the bread.  A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds
+the couple dumb; he kisses the wife, but the man says nothing; he gives
+the man a blow, but still he says nothing; he has the man taken before
+the k�z�, but even yet he says nothing; the k�z� orders him to be
+hanged, and he is led off to execution, when the wife rushes up and
+cries out, "Oh, save my poor husband!"  "You wretch," says the man, "go
+home and moisten the bread!"</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV07"><sup>7</sup></a>  Bang is a preparation of hemp and coarse opium.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV08"><sup>8</sup></a> From Mr. E.J.W. Gibb's translation of the <i>Forty Vazirs</i>
+(London: 1886).</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV09"><sup>9</sup></a> Knowles' <i>Dictionary of Kashm�r� Proverbs and Sayings</i>, pp.
+197-8. The article bought by the five men is called a <i>hir</i>, which
+Mr. Knowles says "is the head of any animal used for food," and a
+<i>sheep's</i> head were surely fitting food for such noodles. Mr.
+Knowles makes it appear that the whole affair of keeping silence was a
+mere jest, but we have before seen that it is decidedly meant for a
+noodle-story.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV10"><sup>10</sup></a> <i>The Orientalist</i>, 1884, p. 136.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV11"><sup>11</sup></a> Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 284-5.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapIV12"><sup>12</sup></a> A separate work from the <i>Apologie pour Herodote</i> Such was the
+exasperation of the French clerics at the bitter truths set forth in it,
+that the author had to flee the country. An English translation,
+entitled "<i>A World of Wonders;</i> or, an introduction to a Treatise
+tovching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a
+Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,'" etc., was
+published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio.
+The <i>Apologie pour Herodote</i> was printed at the Hague.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapVtitle"></a><img src="images/image015.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.<br/>
+
+THE SILLY SON.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image016.png" width="94" height="94" alt="A"/>MONG the favourite jests
+  of all peoples, from Iceland to Japan, from India to England, are the droll
+  adventures and mishaps of the silly son, who contrives to muddle everything
+  he is set to do. In vain does his poor mother try to direct him in "the way
+  he should go": she gets him a wife, as a last resource; but a fool he is still,
+  and a fool he will always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny
+  chap-books and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how</p>
+
+<blockquote>Simple Simon went a-fishing<br/>
+    For to catch a whale,<br/>
+  But all the water he had got<br/>
+    Was in his mother's pail?</blockquote>
+
+<p>an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still
+more celebrated prototypes:</p>
+
+<blockquote>Three men of Gotham<br/>
+  Went to sea in a bowl;<br/>
+  If the bowl had been stronger,<br/>
+  My tale had been longer.</blockquote>
+<a name="p122"></a>
+<p>Then there is the prose history of <i>Simple Simon's Misfortunes; or,
+his Wife Marjory's Outrageous Cruelty</i>, which tells (1) of Simon's
+wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his
+roast-meat clothes <i>(i.e., </i> Sunday clothes) the very next morning
+after he was married; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a
+basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him
+look like a red herring; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was
+going to the mill to have it ground; (4) how Simon went to market with a
+basket of eggs, but broke them by the way: also how he was put into the
+stocks; (5) how Simon's wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money
+for the eggs; (6) how Simon lost his wife's pail and burnt the bottom of
+her kettle; (7) how Simon's wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but
+going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river: also how a
+ragman ran away with his clothes. No wonder if, after this crowning
+misfortune, poor Simon "drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as
+being weary of his life"!</p>
+<a name="p123"></a>
+<p>Again, we have <i>The Unfortunate Son; or, a Kind Wife is worth Gold,
+being full of Mirth and Pastime</i>, which commences thus:</p>
+
+<blockquote>There was a man but one son had,<br/>
+    And he was all his joy;<br/>
+  But still his fortune was but bad,<br/>
+    Though he was a pretty boy.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>His father sent him forth one day<br/>
+    To feed a flock of sheep,<br/>
+  And half of them were stole away<br/>
+    While he lay down asleep!</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>Next day he went with one Tom Goff<br/>
+    To reap as he was seen,<br/>
+  When he did cut his fingers off,<br/>
+    The sickle was so keen!</blockquote>
+
+<p>Another of the chap-book histories of noodles is that of <i>Simple John
+and his Twelve Misfortunes</i>, an imitation of <i>Simple Simon</i>; it
+was still popular amongst the rustics of Scotland fifty years ago.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The adventures of Silly Matt, the Norwegian counterpart of our typical
+English booby, as related in Asbjornson's collection of Norse
+folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular
+fictions:</p>
+
+<p>The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge across
+  the river and take toll of every one who wished to go over it; so he sets to
+  work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at one end&mdash;"at
+  the receipt of custom." Three men come up with loads of hay, and Matt demands
+  toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay. Next comes a pedlar, with
+  all sorts of small wares in his pack, and Matt gets from him two needles. On
+  his return home his mother asks him what he has got that day. "Hay and needles,"
+  says Matt. Well! and what had he done with the hay? "I put some of it in my
+  mouth," quoth he, "and as it tasted like grass, I threw it into the river."
+  She says he ought to have spread it on the byre-floor. "Very good," replies
+  the dutiful Matt; "I'll remember that next time." And what had he done with
+  the needles? He stuck them into the hay. "Ah," says the mother, "you should
+  rather have stuck them in and out of your cap, and brought them home to me."
+  Well! well! Matt will not forget to do so next time. The following day a man
+  comes to the bridge with a sack of meal and gives Matt a pound of it; then comes
+  a smith, who gives him a gimlet: the meal he spread on the byre-floor, and the
+  gimlet he stuck in and out of his cap. His mother tells him he should have come
+  home for a bucket to hold the meal, and the gimlet he should have put up his
+  sleeve. Very good! Matt will not forget next time. Another day some men come
+  to the bridge with kegs of brandy, of which Matt gets a pint, and pours it into
+  his sleeve; next comes a man driving some goats and their young ones, and gives
+  Matt a kid, which he treads down into a bucket. His mother says he should have
+  led the goat home with a cord round its neck, and put the brandy in a pail.
+  Next day he gets a pat of butter and drags it home with a string. After this
+  his mother despairs of his improvement, till it occurs to her that he might
+  not be such a noodle if he had a wife. So she bids him go and see whether he
+  cannot find some lass who will take him for a husband. Should he meet any folk
+  on his way, he ought to say to them, "God's peace!" Matt accordingly sets off
+  in quest of a wife, and meets a she-wolf and her seven cubs. "God's peace!"
+  says Matt, and then returns home. When his mother learns of this, she tells
+  him he should have cried, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" Next day he goes off again,
+  and meeting a bridal party, he cries, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" and goes back
+  to his mother and acquaints her of this fresh adventure. "O you great silly!"
+  says she; "you should have said, 'Ride happily, bride and bridegroom!'" Once
+  more Matt sets out to seek a wife, and seeing on the road a bear taking a ride
+  on a horse, he exclaims joyfully, "Ride happily, bride and bridegroom!" and
+  then returns home. His mother, on hearing of this new piece of folly, tells
+  him he should have cried, "To the devil with you!" Again he sets out, and meeting
+  a funeral procession, he roars, "To the devil with you!" His mother says he
+  should have cried, "May your poor soul have mercy!" and sends him off for the
+  fifth time to look for a lass. On the road he sees some gipsies busy skinning
+  a dead dog, upon which he piously exclaims, "May your poor soul have mercy!"
+  His mother now goes herself to get him a wife, finds a lass that is willing
+  to marry him, and invites her to dinner. She privately tells Matt how he should
+  comport himself in the presence of his sweetheart; he should cast an eye at
+  her now and then. Matt understands her instruction most literally:<a name="p126"></a>
+  stealing into the sheepfold, he plucks out the eyes of all the sheep and goats,
+  and puts them in his pocket. When he is seated beside his sweetheart, he casts
+  a "sheep's eye" at her, which hits her on the nose.<a href="#chapV01"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>This last incident, as we have seen, occurs in the <i>Tales of the Men
+of Gotham ("ante</i>, p. 41" in original. This section is to be found
+immediately after the reference to <a href="#chapII9">Chapter II, Footnote 9</a> in this
+e-text), and it is also found in a Venetian story (Bernoni,
+<i>Fiabe</i>, No. 11) entitled "The Fool," of which the following is the
+first part:</p>
+<a name="p127"></a>
+<p>Once upon a time there was a mother who had a son with little brains.
+One morning she said, "We must get up early, for we have to make bread."
+So they both rose early, and began to make bread. The mother made the
+loaves, but took no pains to make them the same size. Her son said to
+her finally, "How small you have made this loaf, mother." "Oh," said
+she, "it does not matter whether they are big or little, for the proverb
+says, 'Large and small, all must go to mass.'" "Good! good!" said her
+son. When the bread was made, instead of taking it to the baker's, the
+son took it to the church, for it was the hour for mass, saying, "My
+mother said that, 'large and small, all must go to mass.'" So he threw
+the loaves down in the middle of the church. Then he went home to his
+mother, and said, "I have done what you told me to do," "Good! Did you
+take the bread to the baker's?" "O mother, if you had seen how they all
+looked at me!" "You might also have cast an eye on them in return," said
+his mother. "Wait; wait. I will cast an eye at them too," he exclaimed,
+and went to the stable and cut out the eyes of all the animals, and
+putting them in a handkerchief, went to the church, and when any man or
+woman looked at him, he threw an eye at them.<a href="#chapV02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p128"></a>
+<p>Silly Matt has a brother in Russia, according to M. Leger's <i>Contes
+Populaires Slaves</i>, published at Paris in 1882: An old man and his
+wife had a son, who was about as great a noodle as could be. One day his
+mother said to him, "My son, thou shouldst go about among people, to get
+thyself sharpened and rubbed down a little." "Yes, mother," says he;
+"I'm off this moment." So he went to the village, and saw two men
+threshing pease. He ran up to them, and rubbed himself now on one and
+then on the other. "No nonsense!" cried the men. "Get away." But he
+continued to rub himself on them, till at last they would stand it no
+longer, and beat him with their flails so lustily that he could hardly
+crawl home. "What art thou crying about, child?" asked his mother. He
+related his misfortune. "Ah, my child," said she, "how silly thou art!
+Thou shouldst have said to them, 'God aid you, good men! Do you wish me
+to help you to thresh?' and then they would have given thee some pease
+for thy trouble, and we should have had them to cook and eat." On
+another occasion the noodle again went through the village, and met some
+people carrying a dead man. "May God aid you, good men!" he exclaimed.
+"Do you wish me to help you to thresh?" But he got himself well thrashed
+once more for this ill-timed speech. When he reached home, he howled,
+"They've felled me to the ground, beaten me, and plucked my beard and
+hair!" and told of his new mishap. "Ah, noodle!" said his mother, "thou
+shouldst have said, 'God give peace to his soul!' Thou shouldst have
+taken off thy bonnet, wept, and fallen upon thy knees. They would then
+have given thee meat and drink." Again he went to the village, and met a
+marriage procession. So he took off his bonnet, and cried with all his
+might, "God grant peace to his soul!" and then burst into tears. "What
+brute is this?" said the wedding company. "We laugh and amuse ourselves,
+and he laments as if he were at a funeral." So they leaped out of the
+carriages, and beat him soundly on the ribs. Home he returned, crying,
+"They've beaten me, thrashed me, and torn my beard and hair!" and
+related what had happened. "My son," said his mother, "thou shouldst
+have leaped and danced with them." The next time he went to the village
+he took his bagpipe under his arm.<a name="p130"></a> At the end of the street a cart-shed
+was on fire. The noodle ran to the spot, and began to play on his
+bagpipe and to dance and caper about, for which he was abused as before.
+Going back to his mother in tears, he told her how he had fared. "My
+son," said she, "thou shouldst have carried water and thrown it on the
+fire, like the other folks." Three days later, when his ribs were well
+again, the noodle went through the village once more, and seeing a man
+roasting a little pig, he seized a vessel of water, ran up with it, and
+threw the water on the fire. This time also he was beaten, and when he
+got home, and told his mother of his ill-luck, she resolved never again
+to allow him to go abroad; so he remains by the fireside, as great a
+fool as ever.</p>
+
+<p> This species of noodle is also known in Japan. He is the hero of a
+farce entitled <i>Hone Kaha</i>, or Ribs and Skin, which has been done
+into English by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in his <i>Classical Poetry
+of the Japanese</i>. The rector of a Buddhist temple tells his curate
+that he feels he is now getting too old for the duties of his office,
+and means to resign the benefice in his favour. Before retiring to his
+private chamber, he desires the curate to let him know if any persons
+visit the temple, and bids him, should he be in want of information
+regarding any matter, to come to him. A parishioner calls to borrow an
+umbrella. The curate lends him a new one, and then goes to the rector
+and informs him of this visitor. "You have done wrong," says the rector.
+"You ought to have said that you should have been happy to comply with
+such a small request, but, unfortunately, the rector was walking out
+with it the other day, when, at a place where four roads meet, a sudden
+gust of wind blew the skin to one side and the ribs to another; we have
+tied the ribs and skin together in the middle, and hung it from the
+ceiling. Something like that," adds the rector, "something with an air
+of truth about it, is what you should have said." Next comes another
+parishioner, who wishes to borrow a horse. The curate replies with great
+politeness, "The request with which you honour me is a mere trifle, but
+the rector took it out with him a few days since, and coming to the
+junction of four cross roads, a gust of wind blew the ribs to one side
+and the skin to another, and we have tied them together, and hung them
+from the ceiling; so I fear it would not suit your purpose." "It is a
+horse I want," said the man. "Precisely&mdash;a horse: I am aware of it,"
+quoth the curate, and the man went off, not a little perplexed, after
+which the curate reports this new affair to the rector, who says it was
+to an umbrella, not to a horse, that such a story was applicable. Should
+any one come again to borrow a horse, he ought to say, "I much regret
+that I cannot comply with your request. The fact is, we lately turned
+him out to grass, and becoming frolicsome, he dislocated his thigh, and
+is now lying, covered with straw, in a corner of the stable." "Something
+like that," adds the rector, "something with an air of truth about it,
+is what you should say." A third parishioner comes to invite the rector
+and the curate to a feast at his house. "For myself," says the curate,
+"I promise to come; but I fear it will not be convenient for the rector
+to accompany me." "I presume then," says the man, "that he has some
+particular business on hand?" "No, not any particular business," answers
+the curate; "but the truth is, we lately turned him out to grass, and
+becoming frisky, he dislocated his thigh, and now lies in a corner of
+the stable, covered with straw." "I spoke of the rector," says the
+parishioner. "Yes, of the rector. I quite understand," responds the
+curate, very complaisantly, upon which the man goes away, not knowing
+what to make of such a strange account of the rector's condition. This
+last affair puts the rector into a fury, and he cuffs his intended
+successor, exclaiming, "When was I ever frisky, I should like to know?"</p>
+<a name="p133"></a>
+<p> As great a jolterhead as any of the foregoing was the hero of a story
+in Cazotte's "Continuation" of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, entitled
+"L'Imb�cille; ou, L'Histoire de Xailoun,"<a href="#chapV03"><sup>3</sup></a> This noodle's wife said to
+him one day, "Go and buy some pease, and don't forget that it is pease
+you are to buy; continually repeat 'Pease!' till you reach the
+market-place." So he went off, with "Pease! pease!" always in his mouth.
+He passed the corner of a street where a merchant who had pearls for
+sale was proclaiming his wares in a loud voice, saying, "In the name of
+the Prophet, pearls!" Xailoun's attention was at once attracted by the
+display of pearls, and at the same time he was occupied in retaining the
+lesson his wife had taught him, and putting his hand in the box of
+pearls, he cried out, "Pease! pease!" The merchant, supposing Xailoun
+played upon him and depreciated his pearls by wishing to make them pass
+for false ones, struck him a severe blow. "Why do you strike me?" said
+Xailoun. "Because you insult me," answered the merchant. "Do you suppose
+I am trying to deceive people?" "No," said the noodle. "But what must I
+say, then?" "If you will cry properly, say as I do, 'Pearls, in the name
+of the Prophet!'" He next passed by the shop of a merchant from whom
+some pearls had been stolen, and his manner of crying, "Pearls!" etc.,
+which was not nearly so loud as usual, appeared to the merchant very
+suspicious. "The man who has stolen my pearls," thought he, "has
+probably recognised me, and when he passes my shop lowers his voice in
+crying the goods." Upon this suspicion he ran after Xailoun, and
+stopping him, said, "Show me your pearls." The poor fool was in great
+confusion, and the merchant thought he had got the thief. The supposed
+seller of pearls was soon surrounded by a great crowd, and the merchant
+at last discovered that he was a perfect simpleton. "Why," said he, "do
+you cry that you sell pearls?" "What should I say, then?" asked Xailoun.
+"It is not true," said the merchant, not listening to him.  "It is not
+true," exclaimed the noodle. "Let me repeat, 'It is not true,' that I
+may not forget it;" and as he went on he kept crying, "It is not true."
+His way led him towards a place where a man was proclaiming, "In the
+name of the Prophet, lentils!" Xailoun, induced by curiosity, went up to
+the man, his mouth full of the last words he remembered, and putting his
+hand into the sack, cried, "It is not true." The sturdy villager gave
+him a blow that caused him to stagger, saying, "What d'ye mean by giving
+me the lie about my goods, which I both sowed and reaped myself?" Quoth
+the noodle, "I have only tried to say what I ought to say." "Well,
+then," rejoined the dealer, "you ought to say, as I do, 'Lentils, in the
+name of the Prophet!'" So our noodle at once took up this new cry, and
+proceeded on his way till he came to the bank of the river, where a
+fisherman had been casting his net for hours, and had frequently changed
+his place, without getting any fish. Xailoun, who was amused with every
+new thing he saw, began to follow the fisherman, and, that he should not
+forget his lesson, continued to repeat, "Lentils, in the name of the
+Prophet!" Suddenly the fisherman made a pretence of spreading his net,
+in order to wring and dry it, and having folded in his hand the rope to
+which it was fastened, he took hold of the simpleton and struck him some
+furious blows with it, saying, "Vile sorcerer! cease to curse my
+fishing." Xailoun struggled, and at length disengaged himself. "I am no
+sorcerer," said he. "Well, if you are not," answered the fisherman, "why
+do you cause me bad luck by your words every time I throw my net?" "I
+didn't mean to bring you bad luck," said the noodle. "I only repeat what
+I was told to repeat." The fisherman then concluded that some of his
+enemies, who wished to do him an ill turn without exposing themselves,
+had prevailed upon this poor fellow to come and curse his fishing, so he
+said, "I am sorry, brother, for having beaten you, but you were wrong to
+pronounce the words you did, thereby bringing bad luck to me, who never
+did you any harm." Quoth the simpleton, "I only tried to say the words
+my wife told me not to forget." "Do you know them?" "Yes." "Well, place
+yourself beside me, and each time I cast my net you must say, 'In the
+name of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!'"
+But Xailoun thought what his wife had said was not so long as that.
+"Oh, yes, it was," said the fisherman; "and take care you don't miss a
+single word, and I shall give you some of the fish to take home with
+you." That he might not forget, Xailoun repeated it very loud, but as
+'he was afraid of the cord whenever he saw the fisherman drawing in his
+net, he ran away as fast as he could, but still repeating, "In the name
+of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!" These
+words he pronounced in the midst of a crowd of people, through which the
+corpse of the k�z� (magistrate, or judge) was being carried to the
+burying ground, and the mullahs who surrounded the bier, scandalised by
+what they thought a horrible imprecation, exclaimed, "How darest thou,
+wicked wretch, thus blaspheme? Is it not enough that Death has taken one
+of the greatest men of Baghd�d?" The poor simpleton was skulking off in
+fear and trembling, when his sleeve was pulled by an aged slave, who
+told him that he ought to say, "May Allah preserve his body and save his
+soul!" So our noodle went on, repeating this new cry till he came to a
+street where a dead ass was being carted away. "May Allah preserve his
+body and save his soul!"' he exclaimed. "How he blasphemes!" said the
+folk, and they set upon him with their fists and sticks, and gave him a
+sound drubbing. At length he got clear of them, and by chance came to
+the house of his wife's mother, but he only ventured to stand at the
+door and peep within. He was recognised, however, and asked what he
+would have to eat&mdash;goat's flesh? rice? <i>pease?</i> Yes, it was pease
+he wanted, and having got some, he hastened home, and after relating all
+his mishaps, informed his wife, that her sister was very sick. His wife,
+having prepared herself to go to her mother's house, tells the simpleton
+to rock the baby should it awake and cry; feed the hen that was sitting;
+if the ass was thirsty, give her to drink; shut the door, and take care
+not to go to sleep, lest robbers should come and plunder the house. The
+baby awakes, and Xailoun rocks it to sleep again; so far, well. The hen
+seems uneasy; he concludes she is troubled with insects, like himself.
+So he takes up the hen, and thinking the best way to kill the insects
+was to stick a pin into them, he unluckily kills the hen. This was a
+serious matter, and while he considers what he should do in the
+circumstances, the ass begins to bray. "Ah," says he, "I've no time to
+attend to you just now; but when I am on your back, you can carry me to
+the river." Then he opened the door and let out the ass and her colt.
+After this he sat down on the eggs, and took the baby in his arms. His
+wife returning, knocks at the door. "Let me in, you fool," she cries. "I
+can't, for I am nursing the baby and hatching the eggs." <a name="p139"></a>At length she
+contrived to force open the door, and running up to her idiot of a
+husband, fetched him a blow that caused him to crush all the
+half-hatched eggs. Luckily she had met the ass and her foal on the road,
+so the amount of mischief done by her stupid spouse in her absence was
+not so great, all things considered.<a href="#chapV04"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The misadventures of the Arabian idiot in his expedition to purchase
+pease present a close analogy to those of the typical English booby,
+only the latter end tragically:</p>
+
+<p>A woman sent her son one day to buy a sheep's head and pluck, and, lest
+he should forget his message, he kept bawling loudly as he went along,
+"Sheep's head and pluck! sheep's head and pluck!" In getting over a
+stile he fell and hurt himself, and forgot what he was sent for, so he
+stood a little to consider; and at last he thought he recollected it,
+and began to shout, "Liver and lights and gall and all!" which he was
+repeating when he came up to a man who was very sick. The man, thinking
+the booby was mocking him, laid hold of him, and after cuffing him, bade
+the booby cry, "Pray God, send no more up!" So he ran along uttering
+these words till he came to a field where a man was sowing wheat, who,
+on hearing what he took for a curse upon his labour, seized and thrashed
+him, and told him to repeat, "Pray God, send plenty more!" So the young
+jolterhead at once "changed his tune," and was loudly singing out these
+words when he met a funeral. The chief mourner punished him for what he
+thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to
+heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be
+hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his
+seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he
+and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating
+this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When
+the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave him many a good thump,
+and bade him say, "I wish you much joy!" This he was crying at the top
+of his voice when he came to a pit into which two labourers had fallen,
+and one of them, enraged at what he thought his mockery of their
+misfortune, exerted all his strength and scrambled out, then beat the
+poor simpleton, and told him to say, "The one is out; I wish the other
+was!" Glad to be set free, the booby went on shouting these words till
+he met with a one-eyed man, who, like the others, taking what he was
+crying for a personal insult, gave him another drubbing, and then bade
+him cry, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" So
+he adopted this new cry, and continued his adventurous journey till he
+came to a house, one side of which was on fire. The people, hearing him
+bawling, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" at
+once concluded that he had set the house a-blazing; so they put him in
+prison, and the end was, the judge put on the black cap and condemned
+him to be hanged!<a href="#chapV05"><sup>5</sup></a></p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p141"></a>
+<p>When the noodle is persuaded, as in the following case of a Sinhalese
+wittol, by a gang of thieves to join them in a plundering expedition,
+they have little reason to be pleased with him, for he does not make a
+good "cat's-paw." The Sinhalese noodle joined some thieves, took readily
+to their ways, and was always eager to accompany them on their marauding
+excursions. One night they took him with them, and boring a large hole
+in the wall of a house,<a href="#chapV06"><sup>6</sup></a> they sent him in, telling him to hand out the
+heaviest article he could lay hands upon. He readily went in, and seeing
+a large kurakkan-grinder,<a href="#chapV07"><sup>7</sup></a> thought that was the heaviest thing in the
+room, and attempted to remove it. But it proved too much for him alone,
+so he gently awoke a man who was sleeping in the room, and said to him,
+"My friend, pray help me to remove this kurakkan-grinder." The man
+immediately guessed that thieves had entered the house, and gave the
+alarm. The thieves, who were waiting outside quite expectant, rushed
+away, and the noodle somehow or other managed to escape with them.</p>
+
+<p>Next night they again took him along with them, and after boring a hole
+in the wall of another house, sent him in with strict injunctions not to
+make a noise or wake anybody. He crept in noiselessly and entered a
+large room, in which was an old woman, fast asleep by the fire, with
+wide-open mouth. An earthen chattie, a wooden spoon, and a small bag of
+pease were also placed by the fire. The noodle first proceeded to roast
+some pease in the chattie. When they were roasted to a nice brownish
+colour, and emitted a very tempting smell, he thought that the old woman
+might also enjoy a mouthful. He considered for a while how he might best
+offer some to her. He did not wish to wake her, as he was ordered not to
+wake anybody. Suddenly a bright idea struck him. Why should he not feed
+her? There she was sleeping with her mouth wide open. Surely it would be
+no difficult task to put some pease into her mouth. Taking some of the
+hot, smoking pease into the wooden spoon, he put the contents into her
+mouth. The woman awoke, screaming with all her might. The noise roused
+the other inmates of the house, who came rushing to the spot to see what
+was the matter. This time also the noodle managed to escape with the
+thieves; but in a subsequent adventure he, as well as the thieves, came
+to grief.<a href="#chapV08"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p144"></a>
+<p>The silly son of Italian popular tales is represented as being sent by
+his mother to sell a piece of linen which she had woven, saying to him,
+"Now listen attentively to what I say: Walk straight along the road.
+Don't take less than such a price for this linen. Don't have any
+dealings with women who chatter. Whether you sell it to any one you meet
+on the way, or carry it into the market, offer it only to some quiet
+sort of body whom you may see standing apart and not gossiping or
+prating, for such as they will persuade you to take some sort of price
+that won't suit me at all." The booby answers, "Yes, mamma," and goes
+off on his errand, keeping straight on, instead of taking the turnings
+leading to villages. It happened, as he went along, that the wife of the
+syndic of the next town was driving out with her maids, and had got out
+of the carriage, to walk a short distance, as the day was fine. Her maid
+tells her that there goes the simple son of the poor widow by the brook.
+"What are you going to do, my good lad?" kindly asks the lady. "I'm not
+going to tell you," says the booby, "because you were chattering." "I
+see your mother has sent you to sell this linen," continues the lady; "I
+will buy it of you," and she offers to pay twice as much as his mother
+had said she wanted. "Can't sell it to you," replies he, "for you were
+chattering," and he continues his journey. Farther along he comes to a
+plaster statue by the roadside, so he says to himself, "Here's one who
+stands apart and doesn't chatter; this is the one to sell the linen to,"
+then aloud, "Will you buy my linen, good friend?" The statue maintained
+its usual taciturnity, and the booby concluded, as it did not speak, it
+was all right, so he said, "The price is so-and-so; have the money ready
+by the time I come back, as I have to go on and buy some yarn for
+mother." On he went accordingly, and bought the yarn, and then came back
+to the statue. Some one passing by had in the meantime taken the linen.
+Finding it gone, "It's all right," says he to himself; "she's taken it,"
+then aloud, "Where's the money I told you to have ready?" The statue
+remained silent. "If you don't give me the money, I'll hit you on the
+head," he exclaimed, and raising his stick, he knocked the head off, and
+found it filled with gold coin. "That's where you keep your money, is
+it? All right; I can pay myself." So saying, he filled his pockets with
+the coin and went home. When he handed his mother the money, and told
+her of his adventure with the quiet body by the roadside, she was afraid
+lest the neighbours should learn of her windfall if the booby knew its
+value, so she said to him, "You've only brought me a lot of rusty nails;
+but never mind: you'll know better what to do next time," and put the
+money in an earthen jar. In her absence, a ragman comes to the house,
+and the booby asks him, "Will you buy some rusty nails?" The man desires
+to see them. "Well," quoth he on beholding the treasure, "they're not
+much worth, but I'll give you twelve pauls for the lot," and having
+handed over the sum, went off with his prize. When his mother comes
+home, the booby tells her what a bargain he had made for the rusty
+nails. "Nails!" she echoes, in consternation. "Why, you foolish thing,
+they were gold coins!" "Can't help that now, mamma," he answers
+philosophically; "you told me they were old rusty nails." By another
+lucky adventure, however, the booby is enabled to make up his mother's
+loss, finding a treasure which a party of robbers had left behind them
+at the foot of a tree.</p>
+<a name="p146"></a>
+<p>The incident of a simpleton selling something to an inanimate object and
+discovering a hidden treasure occurs, in different forms, in the
+folk-tales of Asiatic as well as European countries. In a manuscript
+text of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, brought from Constantinople by
+Wortley Montague, and now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a
+more elaborate version of the Italian booby's adventure with the statue
+is found, in the "Story of the Bang-eater and his Wife:"</p>
+<a name="p147"></a>
+<p>In former times there lived not far from Baghdad a half-witted fellow,
+who was much addicted to the use of bang. Being reduced to poverty, he
+was obliged to sell his cow, which he took to the market one day, but
+the animal being in such a poor condition, no one would buy it, and
+after waiting till he was weary he returned homeward. On the way he
+stopped to repose himself under a tree, and tied the cow to one of the
+branches, while he ate some bread, and drank an infusion of his bang,
+which he always carried with him. In a short time it began to operate,
+so as to bereave him of the little sense he had, and his head was filled
+with ridiculous reveries. While he was musing, a bird beginning to
+chatter from her nest in the tree, he fancied it was a human voice, and
+that some woman had offered to purchase his cow, upon which he said,
+"Reverend mother of Solomon,<a href="#chapV09"><sup>9</sup></a> dost thou wish to buy my cow?" The bird
+again chattered. "Well," replied he, "what wilt thou give? I will sell
+her a bargain." The bird repeated her noise. "Never mind," said the
+fool, "for though thou hast forgotten to bring thy purse, yet, as I
+daresay thou art an honest woman, and hast bidden me ten dinars, I will
+trust thee with the cow, and call on Friday for the money." The bird
+renewed her chattering; so, leaving the cow tied to a branch of the
+tree, he returned home, exulting in the good bargain he had made for the
+animal. When he entered the house, his wife inquired what he had got for
+the cow, and he replied that he had sold her to an honest woman, who had
+promised to pay him ten pieces of gold next Friday. The wife was
+contented; and when Friday arrived, her noodle of a husband having, as
+usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird
+chattering as before, said, "Well, good mother, hast thou brought the
+gold?" The bird croaked. The blockhead, supposing the imaginary woman
+refused to pay him, became angry, and threw up a stone, which
+frightening the bird, it flew from its nest in the tree and alighted on
+a heap of ruins at some little distance. He now concluded that the woman
+had desired him to take his money from the heap, into which he
+accordingly dug, and found a copper vessel full of coin. This discovery
+convinced him he was right, and being withal an honest fellow, he only
+took ten pieces; then replacing the soil, "May Allah requite thee for
+thy punctuality, good mother!" he exclaimed, and returned to his wife,
+to whom he gave the money, informing her at the same time of the great
+treasure his friend the imaginary old woman possessed, and where it was
+concealed.</p>
+
+<p>The wife waited till night, when she brought away the pot of gold, which
+her foolish husband observing, he said, "It is dishonest to rob one who
+has paid us so punctually; and if thou dost not return it to its place,
+I will inform the wal�" (governor of the city). She laughed at his
+simplicity, but fearing that he would execute his threat, she planned a
+stratagem to render it of no avail. Going to market, she purchased some
+meat and fish ready cooked, which she brought privately home, and
+concealed in the house. At night, while her husband was sleeping off the
+effects of his favourite narcotic, she strewed the provisions she had
+brought outside the door, and then awakening him, cried out, "Dear
+husband, a most wonderful thing has occurred: there has been a violent
+storm while you slept, and, strange to tell, it has rained pieces of
+broiled meat and fish, which now lie at the door!" The blockhead got up,
+and seeing the food, was persuaded of the truth of his wife's story. The
+flesh and fish were gathered up, and he partook with much glee of the
+miraculous treat, but still said he would tell the wal� of her having
+stolen the treasure of the honest old woman.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning he actually repaired to the wal�, and informed him that
+his wife had stolen a pot of gold, which she had still in her
+possession. Upon this the wal� had the woman apprehended. She denied the
+accusation, and was then threatened with death. "My lord," said she,
+"the power is in your hands; but I am an injured woman, as you will find
+by questioning my husband, who is deranged in his intellect. Ask him
+when I committed the theft." The wal� did so, and the simpleton
+answered, "It was the evening of that night when it rained broiled fish
+and ready-cooked flesh." On hearing this, "Wretch!" exclaimed the wal�
+in a fury, "dost thou dare to utter falsehoods before me? Who ever saw
+it rain anything but water?" "As I hope for life," replied the fool, "I
+speak the truth; for my wife and myself ate of the fish and flesh which
+fell from the clouds." The woman, being appealed to, denied the
+assertion of her husband.<a name="p151"></a>The wal�, now convinced that the man was
+crazy, released the woman, and sent her husband to the madhouse, where
+he remained for some days, till his wife, pitying his condition,
+contrived to get him set at liberty. She visited her husband, and
+counselled him, should any one ask him if he had seen it rain fish and
+flesh, to answer, "No; who ever saw it rain anything but water?" Then
+she informed the keeper that he was come to his senses, and suggested he
+should question him; and on the poor fellow answering properly he was
+released.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In a Russian variant, an old man had three sons, one of whom was a
+noodle. When the old man died, his property was shared between the
+brothers, but all that the simpleton received was one ox, which he took
+to the market to sell. On his way he chanced to pass an old birch-tree,
+which creaked and groaned in the wind. He thinks the tree is offering to
+buy his ox, and so he says, "Well, you shall have it for twenty
+roubles." But the tree only creaked and creaked, and he fancied it was
+asking the ox on credit. "Very good," says he. "You'll pay me tomorrow?
+I'll wait till then." So he ties the ox to the tree and goes home. His
+brothers question him about his ox, and he tells them he has sold it for
+twenty roubles and is to get the money to-morrow, at which they laugh;
+he is, they think; a greater fool than ever. Next morning he went to the
+birch-tree, and found the ox was gone, for, in truth, the wolves had
+eaten it. He demanded his money, but the tree only creaked and groaned,
+as usual. "You'll pay me to-morrow?" he exclaimed. "That's what you said
+yesterday. I'll have no more of your promises." So saying, he struck the
+old birch-tree with his hatchet and sent the chips flying about. Now the
+tree was hollow, and it soon split asunder from his blows; and in the
+hollow trunk he found a pot full of gold, which some robbers had hidden
+there. Taking some of the gold, he returns home, and shows it to his
+brothers, who ask him how he got so much money. "A neighbour," he
+replies, "gave it to me for my ox. But this is nothing like the whole of
+it. Come along, brothers, and let us get the rest." They go, and fetch
+the rest of the treasure, and on their way home they meet a diachok (one
+of the inferior members of the Russian clerical body, though not one of
+the clergy), who asks them what they are carrying. "Mushrooms," say the
+two clever brothers; but the noodle cries, "That's not true; we're
+carrying money: here, look at it." The diachok, with an exclamation,
+flung himself upon the gold and began stuffing it into his pockets. At
+this the noodle grew angry, dealt him a blow with his hatchet, and
+killed him on the spot. The brothers dragged the body to an empty
+cellar, and flung it in. Later in the evening the eldest said to the
+other, "This business is sure to turn out badly. When they look for the
+diachok, Simpleton will be sure to tell them all about it. So we had
+better hide the body in some other place, and kill a goat and bury it in
+the cellar." This they did accordingly. And after several days had
+passed the people asked the noodle if he had seen the diachok. "Yes," he
+answered. "I killed him some time ago with my hatchet, and my brothers
+carried him to the cellar." They seize upon him and compel him to go
+down into the cellar and bring out the body. He gets hold of the goat's
+head, and asks, "Was your diachok dark-haired?" "He was." "Had he a
+beard?" "Yes." "And horns?" "What horns are you talking of?" "Well, see
+for yourselves," said he, tossing up the head to them. They saw it was a
+goat's head, and went away home.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<a name="p154"></a>
+<p>The reader cannot fail to remark the close resemblance there is between
+the first parts of the Arabian and Russian stories; and the second parts
+of both reappear in many tales of the Silly Son. The goat's carcase
+substituted for the dead man occurs, for instance, in the Norse story of
+Silly Matt; in the Sicilian story of Giufa; in M. Rivi�re's <i>Contes
+Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura</i>; and "Foolish Sach�li," in
+Miss Stokes' <i>Indian Fairy Tales</i>. The incident of the pretended
+shower of broiled fish and flesh is found in Campbell's <i>Tales of the
+West Highlands</i> (porridge and pancakes); in Rivi�re's Tales of the
+Kaba�l (fritters); "Foolish Sach�li" (sweetmeats); Giuf�, the Sicilian
+Booby (figs and raisins); and in M. Leger's <i>Contes Populaires
+Slaves</i>, where, curiously enough, the trick is played by a husband
+upon his wife. It is perhaps worth while reproducing the Russian story
+from Leger, in a somewhat abridged form, as follows:</p>
+
+<p>In tilling the ground a labourer found a treasure, and carrying it home,
+said to his wife, "See! Heaven has sent us a fortune. But where can we
+conceal it?" She suggested he should bury it under the floor, which he
+did accordingly. Soon after this the wife went out to fetch water, and
+the labourer reflected that his wife was a dreadful gossip, and by
+to-morrow night all the village would know their secret.  So he removed
+the treasure from its hiding-place and buried it in his barn, beneath a
+heap of corn. When the wife came back from the well, he said to her
+quite gravely, "To-morrow we shall go to the forest to seek fish; they
+say there's plenty there at present." "What! fish in the forest?" she
+exclaimed. "Of course," he rejoined; "and you'll see them there." Very
+early next morning he got up, and took some fish, which he had concealed
+in a basket. He went to the grocer's and bought a quantity of sweet
+cakes. He also caught a hare and killed it. The fish and cakes he
+disposed of in different parts of the wood, and the hare he hooked on a
+fishing-line, and then threw it in the river. After breakfast he took
+his wife with him into the wood, which they had scarcely entered when
+she found a pike, then a perch, and then a roach, on the ground. With
+many exclamations of surprise, she gathered up the fish and put them in
+her basket. Presently they came to a pear-tree, from the branches of
+which hung sweet cakes. "See!" she cried. "Cakes on a pear-tree!" "Quite
+natural," replied he; "it has rained cakes, and some have remained on
+this tree; travellers have picked up the rest." Continuing their way to
+the village, they passed near a stream. "Wait a little," said the
+husband; "I set my line early this morning, and I'll look if anything is
+caught on it." He then pulled in the line, and behold, there was a hare
+hooked on to it! "How extraordinary!" cries the good wife&mdash;"a hare in
+the water!" "Why," says he, "don't you know there are hares in the water
+as well as rats?" "No, indeed, I knew it not." They now returned home,
+and the wife set about preparing all the nice eatables for supper. In a
+day or two the labourer found from the talk of his acquaintances that
+his finding the treasure was no secret in the village, and in less than
+a week he was summoned to the castle. "Is it true," said the lord, "that
+you have found a treasure?" "It is not true," was his reply. "But your
+wife has told me all." "My wife does not know what she says&mdash;she is mad,
+my lord." Hereupon the woman cries, "It is the truth, my lord; he has
+found a treasure and buried it beneath the floor of our cottage."
+"When?" "On the eve before the day we went into the forest to look for
+fish." "What do you say?" "Yes; it was on the day that it rained cakes;
+we gathered a basketful of them, and coming home, my husband fished a
+fine hare out of the river." My lord declared the woman to be an idiot;
+nevertheless he caused his servants to search under the labourer's
+cottage floor, but nothing was found there, and so the shrewd fellow
+secured his treasure.</p>
+<a name="p157"></a>
+<p>The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a
+number of fools' exploits are strung together and ascribed to one
+individual, as in the tale of "Foolish Sach�li;" but generally they are
+told as separate stories. The following adventure of Sach�li is also
+found, in varied form, in Beschi's <i>Gooroo Paramartan</i>: One day
+Sach�li climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting
+off the branch between the tree and himself. A man passing by called to
+him, saying, "What are you doing up there? You will be killed if you cut
+that branch off." "What do you say?" asked the booby, coming down. "When
+shall I die?" "How can I tell?" said the man. "Let me go." "I will not
+let you go until you tell me when I shall die." At last the man, in
+order to get rid of him, said, "When you find a scarlet thread on your
+jacket, then you will die." After this Sach�li went to the
+<i>bazaar</i>, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away
+shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes. "Now I shall die!"
+exclaimed the fool. "How do you know that?" the tailors inquired, when
+he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they
+all laughed. Nevertheless, Sach�li went and dug a grave in the jungle
+and lay down in it.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of <i>ghi</i>, or clarified
+butter, which he engages Sach�li to carry for him, and the noodle, of
+course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to
+which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.</p>
+
+<p>The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated
+seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical
+Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-D�n, and there exist German, Saxon,
+and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon,
+and the following is a version from a Hind� work entitled <a name="p158"></a><i>Bharataka
+Dw�trinsati</i>, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:</p>
+
+<p>In El�kapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named
+Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure
+a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and
+he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there
+came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, "O
+monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you
+yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will
+fall down and die." After saying this the travellers went their way. The
+monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut
+the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch
+broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, "Those
+travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened
+just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead." So he remained on
+the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he
+even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him
+up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could
+not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your
+associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks
+in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him
+up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had
+gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided
+itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others
+said, "It is to the right that we must go." Thus a dispute arose among
+them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The "dead" monk,
+who was borne on a bier, said, "Friends, quarrel not among yourselves;
+when I was alive, I always went by the left road." Then said some, "He
+always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple
+fact. Let us therefore take the left road." This was agreed upon, and as
+they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to
+be present said, "O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that
+ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive." They
+answered, "Nay, but he is dead." Then the bystanders said, "He cannot be
+dead, seeing that he yet speaks." They then set down the bier on the
+ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and
+related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the
+travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained
+quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka
+was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the
+bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in
+inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and
+went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.<a href="#chapV11"><sup>11</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>A diverting story in the <i>Faceti�</i> of Poggius, entitled "Mortuus
+Loqueus," from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini
+and in our old collection <i>Tales and Quicke Answeres</i>, has a near
+affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of
+stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of
+his property. In the early English jest-book,<a href="#chapV12"><sup>12</sup></a> it is, in effect, as
+follows:</p>
+<a name="p161"></a>
+<p>There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party
+of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their
+plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was
+not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth
+the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way.
+Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if
+he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The
+poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was
+convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be
+in his bed&mdash;he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca
+stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague,"
+when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying
+man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he
+did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers
+came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his
+pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.<a href="#chapV13"><sup>13</sup></a> Then,
+standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking
+fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the
+ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast,
+and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though
+he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through
+the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were
+carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a
+taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the
+mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard
+himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you
+scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a
+false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set
+down the "body" and ran away&mdash;leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole
+affair to the marvelling multitude.<a href="#chapV14"><sup>14</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p163"></a>
+<p>We read of another silly son, in the <i>Kath� Manjari</i>, whose father said
+  to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem to have much
+  sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go, therefore, to the
+  tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad accordingly went to the tank,
+  and having <a name="p164"></a>caused all the water&mdash;which was required
+  for the irrigation of his father's fields&mdash;to run to waste, he picked up
+  from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to his father, not
+  a little proud of his exploit.&mdash;In the <i>Kath� Sarit S�gara</i> it is
+  related that a Br�hman told his foolish son one evening that he must send him
+  to the village early on the morrow, and thither the lad went, without asking
+  what he was to do. Returning home at night very tired, he said to his father,
+  "I have been to the village." "Yes," said the Br�hman, "you went thither without
+  an object, and have done no good by it."&mdash;And in the Buddhist <i>J�takas</i>
+  we find what is probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping
+  a felled tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely.
+  Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is a mosquito
+  stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear&mdash;drive it off." "Wait a bit,
+  father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow." Then he took up
+  an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking to kill the mosquito
+  with the axe, he only killed his father.</p>
+<a name="p165"></a>
+<p>Among numerous variants is the story of the Sicilian booby, Giuf�, who
+was annoyed by the flies, and complained of them to the judge, who told
+him that he was at liberty to kill a fly wherever he saw it: just then a
+fly happened to alight on the judge's nose, which Giuf� observing, he
+immediately aimed at it so furious a blow with his fist, that he smashed
+his worship's nose!</p>
+
+<p>The hopelessness of attempting to impart instruction to the silly son is
+farther illustrated by the story in a Sinhalese collection: A g�r� was
+engaged in teaching one of his disciples, but whilst he was teaching the
+youth was watching the movements of a rat which was entering its hole.
+As soon as the g�r� had finished his teaching, he said, "Well, my son,
+has all entered in?" to which the youth replied, "Yes, all has entered
+in except the tail." And from the same work is the following choice
+example of "a happy family": A priest went one day to the house of one
+of his followers, and amongst other things he said, "Tell me now, which
+of your four children is the best-behaved?" The father replied, "Look,
+sir, at that boy who has climbed to the top of that thatched building,
+and is waving aloft a firebrand. Among them all, he is the divinely
+excellent one." Whereupon the priest placed his finger on his nose, drew
+a deep, deep sigh, and said, "Is it indeed so? What, then, must the
+other three be?"</p>
+<a name="p166"></a>
+<p>The Turkish romance of the Forty Vaz�rs&mdash;the plan of which is similar to
+that of the Book of Sindib�d and its derivatives&mdash;furnishes us with two
+stories of the same class, one of which is as follows, according to my
+friend Mr. Gibb's complete translation (the first that has been made in
+English), recently published:<a href="#chapV15"><sup>15</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>They have told that in bygone times there was a king, and he had a
+skilful minstrel. One day a certain person gave to the latter a little
+boy, that he might teach him the science of music. The boy abode a long
+time by him, and though the master instructed him, he succeeded not in
+learning, and the master could make nothing of him. He arranged a scale,
+and said, "Whatsoever thou sayest to me, say in this scale." So
+whatsoever the boy said he used to say in that scale. Now one day a
+spark of fire fell on the master's turban. The boy saw it and chanted,
+"O master, I see something; shall I say it or no?" and he went over the
+whole scale. Then the master chanted, "O boy, what dost thou see?
+Speak!" and he too went over all that the boy had gone over. Then the
+turn came to the boy, and he chanted, "O master, a spark has fallen on
+thy turban, and it is burning." The master straightway tore off his
+turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew
+out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said
+to the boy, "What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its
+own place," and he admonished him.<a href="#chapV16"><sup>16</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p167"></a>
+<p>The other story tells how a king had a stupid son, and placed him in
+charge of a cunning master, learned in the sciences, who declared it
+would be easy for him to teach the boy discretion, and, before
+dismissing him, the king gave the sage many rich gifts. After the boy
+has been long under the tuition of his learned master, the latter,
+conceiving him to be well versed in all the sciences, takes him to the
+king, his father, who says to him, "O my son, were I to hold a certain
+thing hidden in my hand, couldst thou tell me what it is?" "Yes,"
+answers the youth. Upon this the king secretly slips the ring off his
+finger, and hides it in his hand, and then asks the boy, "What have I in
+my hand?" Quoth the clever youth, "O father, it first came from the
+hills." (The king thinks to himself, "He knows that mines are in the
+hills.") "And it is a round thing," continues he&mdash;"it must be a
+millstone." "Blockhead!" exclaims the irate king, "could a millstone be
+hidden in a man's hand?" Then addressing the learned man, "Take him
+away," he says, "and <i>teach</i> him."</p>
+<a name="p168"></a>
+<p>Lastly, we have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the
+doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so
+ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits
+to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had
+been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to
+deny it;&mdash;you have been eating beans." On their way home, the
+apprentice, admiring his master's sagacity, begged to be informed how he
+knew that the patient had been eating beans. "Boy," said the doctor,
+loftily, "I drew an inference." "An inference!" echoed this youth of
+inquiring mind; "and what is an inference?" Quoth the doctor, "Listen:
+when we came to the door, I observed the shells of beans lying about,
+and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner."
+Another day it chanced that the doctor did not take his apprentice with
+him when he went his rounds, and in his absence a message came for him
+to visit a person who had been taken suddenly ill. "Here," thought the
+apprentice, "is a chance for my putting master's last lesson into
+practice;" so off he went to the sick man, and assuming as "knowing" an
+air as he could, he felt his pulse, and then said to him severely,
+"Don't deny it; I see by your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I
+shall send you some medicine." When the doctor returned home he inquired
+of his hopeful pupil, whether any person had called for him, upon which
+the wittol proudly told him of his own exploit. "Eaten a horse!"
+exclaimed the man of physic. "In the name of all that's wonderful, what
+induced you to say such a thing?" Quoth the youth, simpering, "Why, sir,
+I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer&mdash;I drew
+an inference." "You drew an inference, did you? And how did you draw the
+inference that the man had eaten a horse?" "Why, very readily, sir; for
+as I entered the house I saw a saddle hanging on the wall."<a href="#chapV17"><sup>17</sup></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image017.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV01"><sup>1</sup></a> Abridged from the story of "Silly Matt" in Sir George W. Dasent's
+<i>Tales from the Fjeld</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV02"><sup>2</sup></a> Professor Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, p. 302. This actual
+throwing of eyes occurs in the folk-tales of Europe generally.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV03"><sup>3</sup></a> In <i>Le Cabinet des F�es, 1788</i> (tome xxxviii., p. 337 ff.).&mdash;
+There can be no such name as Xailoun in Arabic; that of the noodle's
+wife, Oitba, may be intended for "Utba." Cazotte has so Frenchified the
+names of the characters in his tales as to render their identification
+with the Arabic originals (where he had any such) often impossible.
+Although this story is not found in any known Arabian text of the
+<i>Book of the Thousand and One Nights</i>, yet the incidents for the
+most part occur in several Eastern story-books.</p>
+
+<p> <a name="chapV04"><sup>4</sup></a> On a similar occasion Giuf�, the Sicilian brother to the Arabian
+fool, did somewhat more mischief. Once his mother went to church and
+told him to make some porridge for his baby-sister. Giuf� made a great
+pot of porridge and fed the baby with it, and burned her mouth so that
+she died. Another time his mother on leaving home told him to feed the
+hen that was sitting and put her back in the nest, so that the eggs
+should not get cold. Giuf� stuffed the hen with food so that he killed
+her, and then sat on the eggs himself until his mother returned.&mdash;See
+Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 296-7.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV05"><sup>5</sup></a> Abridged and modified from a version in the <i>Folk-Lore Record</i>,
+vol. iii., pp. 153-5.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV06"><sup>6</sup></a> The usual mode by which in the East thieves break into houses, which
+are for the most part constructed of clay. See Job xxiv. 16.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV07"><sup>7</sup></a> Kurakkan is a species of grain.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV08"><sup>8</sup></a> <i>The Orientalist</i>, June, 1884, pp. 137-8.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV09"><sup>9</sup></a> Ummu Sulayman. In Arabia the mother is generally addressed in this
+way as a mark of respect for having borne children, and the eldest gives
+the title. Our bang-eater supposed he was addressing an old woman who
+had (or might have had) a son named Solomon.</p>
+
+<p><sup><a name="ralston"></a>10</sup> See Ralston's <i>Russian Folk-Tales.</i>
+  [Transcriber's note: Footnote reference missing from original, p. 153]</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV11"><sup>11</sup></a> From a paper on "Comparative Folk-lore," by W. Goonetilleke, in
+<i>The Orientalist</i>, i., p. 122.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV12"><sup>12</sup></a> <i>Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant
+to be Readde.</i> Imprinted at London by H. Wykes, 1567.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV13"><sup>13</sup></a> Thus, too, Scogin and his "chamber-fellow" successively declared to
+a rustic that the sheep he was driving were pigs. In Fortini's novels,
+in like manner, a simpleton is persuaded that the kid he offered for
+sale was a capon; and in the Spanish <i>El Conde Lucanor</i>, and the
+German <i>Tyl Eulenspiegel</i>, a countryman is cheated out of a piece
+of cloth. The original form of the incident is found in the
+<i>Hitopadesa</i>, where three sharpers persuade a Br�hman that the goat
+he is carrying for a sacrifice is a dog. This story of the Florentine
+noodle&mdash;or rather Poggio's version&mdash;may have been suggested by a tale in
+the <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>, in which the emperor's physician is made to
+believe that he had leprosy. See my <i>Popular Tales and Fictions</i>,
+where these and similar stories are compared in a paper entitled "The
+Sharpers and the Simpleton."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV14"><sup>14</sup></a> In Powell and Magnusson's <i>Legends of Iceland</i> (Second Series,
+p. 627), a woman makes her husband believe that he is dressed in fine
+clothes when he is naked; another persuades her husband that he is dead,
+and as he is being carried to the burying-ground, he perceives the naked
+man, who asserts that he is dressed, upon which he exclaims, "How I
+should laugh if I were not dead!" And in a <i>fabliau</i> by Jean de
+Boves, "Le Villain de Bailleul; <i>ali�s</i>, Le Femme qui fit croire �
+son Mari qu'il �tait mort," the husband exclaims, "Rascal of a priest,
+you may well thank Heaven that I am dead, else I would belabour you
+soundly with my stick."&mdash;See M. Le Grand's <i>Fabliaux</i>, ed. 1781,
+tome v., pp. 192, 193.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV15"><sup>15</sup></a> <i>History of the Forty Viziers; or, The Forty Morns and Forty
+Eves.</i> Translated from the Turkish, by E.J.W. Gibb, M.R.A.S. London:
+G. Redway, 1886.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV16"><sup>16</sup></a> A variant of this is found in John Bromyard's <i>Summa
+Pr�dicantium</i>, A 26, 34, as follows:</p>
+
+<p>Quidam sedebat juxta igneum, cujus vestem ignis intrabat. Dixit socius
+suus, "Vis audire rumores?" "Ita," inquit, "bonos et non alios." Cui
+alius, "Nescio nisi malos." "Ergo," inquit, "nolo audire." Et quum bis
+aut ter ei hoc diceret, semper idem respondit. In fine, quum sentiret
+vestem combustam, iratus ait socio, "Quare non dixisti mihi?" "Quia
+(inquit) dixista quod noluisti audire rumores nisi placentes et illi non
+erant tales."</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapV17"><sup>17</sup></a> Under the title of "The Phisitian that bare his Paciente in honde
+that he had eaten an Asse" this jest occurs in <i>Merry Tales and Quicke
+Answeres</i>, and Professor Crane gives a Sicilian version in his
+<i>Italian Popular Tales</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapVItitle"></a><img src="images/image018.png" width="465" height="75" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.<br/>
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BR�HMANS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>[As a sort of supplement to the sayings and doings of the silly son, the
+following highly diverting Indian tale is here inserted, from the Abb�
+Dubois' French rendering of the Tamil original, appended, with others,
+to his selections from the <i>Panchatantra</i>. The story is known in
+the north as well as in the south of India: in the Panj�bi version there
+are, however, but three noodle-heroes. It will be seen that the third
+Br�hman's tale is another of the numerous silent couple class, and it
+may possibly be the original form.]</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Introduction.</i></p>
+
+<p><img src="images/image019.png" width="95" height="97" alt="I"/>N a certain district, proclamation
+  had been made of a Samaradanam being about to be held.<a href="#chapVI01"><sup>1</sup></a>
+  Four Br�hmans, from different villages, going thither, fell in upon the road,
+  and, finding that they were all upon the same errand, they agreed to proceed
+  in company. A soldier, happening to meet them, saluted them in the usual way,
+  by touching hands and pronouncing the words always applied on such occasions
+  to Br�hmans, "<i>Dandamarya</i>!" or "Health to my lord!" The four travellers
+  made the customary return, "<i>Asirvadam!</i>" and going on, they came to a
+  well, where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the shade of
+  some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of conversation, one
+  of them asked the others, whether they did not remark how particularly the soldier
+  had distinguished him by his polite salutation. "You!" said another; "it was
+  not you that he saluted, but me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for
+  you may remember that when the soldier said, '<i>Dandamarya!</i>' he cast his
+  eyes upon me." "Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was I only he saluted;
+  otherwise, should I have answered him as I did, by saying, '<i>Asirvadam</i>'?"</p>
+
+<p>Each maintained his argument obstinately; and as none of them would
+yield, the dispute had nearly come to blows, when the least stupid of
+the four, seeing what was likely to happen, put an end to the brawl by
+the following advice: "How foolish it is in us," said he, "thus to put
+ourselves in a passion! After we have said all the ill of one another
+that we can invent&mdash;nay, after going stoutly to fisticuffs, like Sudra
+rabble, should we be at all nearer to the decision of our difference?
+The fittest person to determine the controversy, I think, would be the
+man who occasioned it. The soldier, who chose to salute one of us,
+cannot yet be far off: let us therefore run after him as quickly as we
+can, and we shall soon know for which of us he intended his salutation."</p>
+
+<p>This advice appeared wise to them all, and was immediately adopted. The
+whole of them set off in pursuit of the soldier, and at last overtook
+him, after running a league, and all out of breath. As soon as they came
+in sight of him, they cried out to him to stop; and before they had well
+approached him, they had put him in full possession of the nature of
+their dispute, and prayed him to terminate it, by saying to which of
+them he had directed his salutation. The soldier instantly perceiving
+the character of the people he had to do with, and being willing to
+amuse himself a little at their expense, coolly replied, that he
+intended his salutation for the greatest fool of all four, and then,
+turning on his heel, he continued his journey.</p>
+
+<p>The Br�hmans, confounded at this answer, turned back in silence. But all
+of them had deeply at heart the distinction of the salutation of the
+soldier, and the dispute was gradually renewed. Even the awkward
+decision of the warrior could not prevent each of them from arrogating
+to himself the pre-eminence of being noticed by him, to the exclusion of
+the others. The contention, therefore, now became, which of the four was
+the stupidest; and strange to say, it grew as warm as ever, and must
+have come to blows, had not the person who gave the former advice, to
+follow the soldier, interposed again with his wisdom, and spoken as
+follows: "I think myself the greatest fool of us all. Each of you thinks
+the same thing of himself. And after a fight, shall we be a bit nearer
+the decision of the question? Let us, therefore, have a little patience.
+We are within a short distance of Dharmapuri, where there is a choultry,
+at which all little causes are tried by the heads of the village; and
+let ours be judged among the rest."</p>
+
+<p>The others agreed in the soundness of this advice; and having arrived at
+the village, they eagerly entered the choultry, to have their business
+settled by the arbitrator. They could not have come at a better season.
+The chiefs of the district, Br�hmans and others, had already met in the
+choultry; and no other cause being brought forward, they proceeded
+immediately to that of the four Br�hmans, who advanced into the middle
+of the court, and stated that a sharp contest having arisen among them,
+they were come to have it decided with fairness and impartiality. The
+court desired them to proceed and explain the ground of their
+controversy. Upon this, one of them stood forward and related to the
+assembly all that had happened, from their meeting with the soldier to
+the present state of the quarrel, which rested on the superior degree of
+stupidity of one of their number. The detail created a general shout of
+laughter. The president, who was of a gay disposition, was delighted
+beyond measure to have fallen in with so diverting an incident. But he
+put on a grave face, and laid it down, as the peculiarity of the cause,
+that it could not be determined on the testimony of witnesses, and that,
+in fact, there was no other way of satisfying the minds of the judges
+than by each, in his turn, relating some particular occurrence of his
+life, on which he could best establish his claim to superior folly. He
+clearly showed that there could be no other means of determining to
+which of them the salutation of the soldier could with justice be
+awarded. The Br�hmans assented, and upon a sign being made to one of
+them to begin, and the rest to keep silence, the first thus spoke:</p>
+
+<p><i>Story of the First Br�hman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I am poorly provided with clothing, as you see; and it is not to-day
+only that I have been covered with rags. A rich and very charitable
+Br�hman merchant once made a present of two pieces of cloth to attire
+me&mdash;the finest that had ever been seen in our village. I showed them to
+the other Br�hmans of the village, who all congratulated me on so
+fortunate an acquisition. They told me it must be the fruit of some good
+deeds that I had done in a preceding generation. Before I should put
+them on, I washed them, according to the custom, in order to purify them
+from the soil of the weaver's touch, and hung them up to dry, with the
+ends fastened to two branches of a tree. A dog, then happening to come
+that way, ran under them, and I could not discover whether he was high
+enough to touch the clothes or not. I asked my children, who were
+present, but they said they were not quite certain. How, then, was I to
+discover the fact? I put myself upon all-fours, so as to be of the
+height of the dog, and in that posture I crawled under the clothing.
+"Did I touch it?" said I to the children, who were observing me. They
+answered, "No," and I was filled with joy at the news. But after
+reflecting a while, I recollected that the dog had a turned-up tail, and
+that by elevating it above the rest of his body, it might well have
+reached my cloth. To ascertain that, I fixed a leaf in my loin-cloth,
+turning upwards, and then, creeping again on all-fours, I passed a
+second time under the clothing. The children immediately cried out that
+the point of the leaf on my back had touched the cloth. This proved to
+me that the point of the dog's tail must have done so too, and that my
+garments were therefore polluted. In my rage I pulled down the beautiful
+raiment, and tore it in a thousand pieces, loading with curses both the
+dog and his master.</p>
+
+<p>When this foolish act was known, I became the laughing-stock of all the
+world, and I was universally treated as a madman. "Even if the dog had
+touched the cloth," said they, "and so brought defilement upon it, might
+not you have washed it a second time, and so have removed the stain? Or
+might you not have given it to some poor Sudra, rather than tear it in
+pieces? After such egregious folly, who will give you clothes another
+time?" This was all true; for ever since, when I have begged clothing of
+any one, the constant answer has been, that, no doubt, I wanted a piece
+of cloth to pull to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>He was going on, when a bystander interrupted him by remarking that he
+seemed to understand going on all-fours. "Exceedingly well," said he,
+"as you shall see;" and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the
+unbounded laughter of the spectators. "Enough! enough!" said the
+president. "What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his
+favour. But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in
+proof of his stupidity." The second accordingly began by expressing his
+confidence that if what they had just heard appeared to them to be
+deserving of the salutation of the soldier, what he had to say would
+change their opinion.</p>
+
+<p> <i>Story of the Second Br�hman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Having got my hair and beard shaven one day, in order to appear decent
+at a public festival of the Br�hmans, which had been proclaimed
+throughout the district, I desired my wife to give the barber a penny
+for his trouble. She heedlessly gave him a couple. I asked him to give
+me one of them back, but he refused. Upon that we quarrelled, and began
+to abuse each other; but the barber at length pacified me, by offering,
+in consideration of the double fee, to shave my wife also. I thought
+this a fair way of settling the difference between us. But my wife,
+hearing the proposal, and seeing the barber in earnest, tried to make
+her escape by flight. I took hold of her, and forced her to sit down,
+while he shaved her poll in the same manner as they serve widows.<a href="#chapVI02"><sup>2</sup></a>
+During the operation she cried out bitterly; but I was inexorable,
+thinking it less hard that my wife should be close-shaven than that my
+penny should be given away for nothing. When the barber had finished, I
+let her go, and she retired immediately to a place of concealment,
+pouring down curses on me and the barber. He took his departure, and
+meeting my mother in his way, told her what he had done, which made her
+hasten to the house, to inquire into the outrage; and when she saw that
+it was all true she also loaded me with incivilities.</p>
+
+<p>The barber published everywhere what had happened at our house; and the
+villain added to the story that I had caught her with another man, which
+was the cause of my having her shaved; and people were no doubt
+expecting, according to our custom in such a case, to see her mounted on
+an ass, with her face turned towards the tail. They came running to my
+dwelling from all quarters, and actually brought an ass to make the
+usual exhibition in the streets. The report soon reached my
+father-in-law, who lived at a distance of ten or twelve leagues, and
+he, with his wife, came also to inquire into the affair. Seeing their
+poor daughter in that degraded state, and being apprised of the only
+reason, they reproached me most bitterly; which I patiently endured,
+being conscious that I was in the wrong. They persisted, however, in
+taking her with them, and keeping her carefully concealed from every eye
+for four whole years; when at length they restored her to me.</p>
+
+<p>This little accident made me lose the Samaradanam, for which I had been
+preparing by a fast of three days; and it was a great mortification to
+me to be excluded from it, as I understood it was a most splendid
+entertainment. Another Samaradanam was announced to be held ten days
+afterwards, at which I expected to make up for my loss. But I was
+received with the hisses of six hundred Br�hmans, who seized my person,
+and insisted on my giving up the accomplice of my wife, that he might be
+prosecuted and punished, according to the severe rules of the caste.</p>
+
+<p>I solemnly attested her innocence, and told the real cause of the
+shaving of her hair; when a universal burst of surprise took place,
+every one exclaiming, how monstrous it was that a married woman should
+be so degraded, without having committed the crime of infidelity.
+"Either this man," said they, "must be a liar, or he is the greatest
+fool on the face of the earth!" Such, I daresay, gentlemen, you will
+think me, and I am sure you will consider my folly [looking with great
+disdain on the first speaker] as being far superior to that of the
+render of body-clothing.</p>
+
+<p>The court agreed that the speaker had put in a very strong case; but
+justice required that the other two should also be heard. The third
+claimant was indeed burning with impatience for his turn, and as soon as
+he had permission, he thus spoke:</p>
+
+<p> <i>Story of the Third Brahman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>My name was originally Anantya; now all the world call me Betel Anantya,
+and I will tell you how this nickname arose. My wife, having been long
+detained at her father's house, on account of her youth, had cohabited
+with me but about a month when, going to bed one evening, I happened to
+say (carelessly, I believe), that all women were babblers. She retorted,
+that she knew men who were not less babblers than women. I perceived at
+once that she alluded to myself; and being somewhat piqued at the
+sharpness of her retort, I said, "Now let us see which of us shall speak
+first." "Agreed," quoth she; "but what shall be the forfeit?" "A leaf of
+betel," said I. Our wager being thus made, we both addressed ourselves
+to sleep, without speaking another word.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, as we did not appear at our usual hour, after some
+interval, they called us, but got no answer. They again called, and then
+roared stoutly at the door, but with no success. The alarm began to
+spread in the house. They began to fear that we had died suddenly. The
+carpenter was called with his tools. The door of our room was forced
+open, and when they got in they were not a little surprised to find both
+of us wide awake, in good health, and at our ease, though without the
+faculty of speech. My mother was greatly alarmed, and gave loud vent to
+her grief. All the Br�hmans in the village, of both sexes, assembled, to
+the number of one hundred; and after close examination, every one drew
+his own conclusion on the accident which was supposed to have befallen
+us. The greater number were of opinion that it could have arisen only
+from the malevolence of some enemy who had availed himself of magical
+incantations to injure us. For this reason, a famous magician was
+called, to counteract the effects of the witchcraft, and to remove it.
+As soon as he came, after steadfastly contemplating us for some time, he
+began to try our pulses, by putting his finger on our wrists, on our
+temples, on the heart, and on various other parts of the body; and after
+a great variety of grimaces, the remembrance of which excites my
+laughter, as often as I think of him, he decided that our malady arose
+wholly from the effect of malevolence. He even gave the name of the
+particular devil that possessed my wife and me and rendered us dumb. He
+added that the devil was very stubborn and difficult to allay, and that
+it would cost three or four pagodas for the offerings necessary for
+compelling him to fly.</p>
+
+<p>My relations, who were not very opulent, were astonished at the grievous
+imposition which the magician had laid on them. Yet, rather than we
+should continue dumb, they consented to give him whatsoever should be
+necessary for the expense of his sacrifice; and they farther promised
+that they would reward him for his trouble as soon as the demon by whom
+we were possessed should be expelled. He was on the point of commencing
+his magical operations, when a Br�hman, one of our friends, who was
+present, maintained, in opposition to the opinion of the magician and
+his assistants, that our malady was not at all the effect of witchcraft,
+but arose from some simple and ordinary cause, of which he had seen
+several instances, and he undertook to cure us without any expense.</p>
+
+<p>He took a chafing-dish filled with burning charcoal, and heated a small
+bar of gold very hot. This he took up with pincers, and applied to the
+soles of my feet, then to my elbows, and the crown of my head. I endured
+these cruel operations without showing the least symptom of pain, or
+making any complaint; being determined to bear anything, and to die, if
+necessary, rather than lose the wager I had laid.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us try the effect on the woman," said the doctor, astonished at my
+resolution and apparent insensibility. And immediately taking the bit of
+gold, well heated, he applied it to the sole of her foot. She was not
+able to endure the pain for a moment, but instantly screamed out,
+"Enough!" and turning to me, "I have lost my wager," she said; "there is
+your leaf of betel."  "Did I not tell you," said I, taking the leaf,
+"that you would be the first to speak out, and that you would prove by
+your own conduct that I was right in saying yesterday, when we went to
+bed, that women are babblers?"</p>
+
+<p>Every one was surprised at the proceeding; nor could any of them
+comprehend the meaning of what was passing between my wife and me; until
+I explained the kind of wager we had made overnight, before going to
+sleep. "What!" they exclaimed, "was it for a leaf of betel that you have
+spread this alarm through your own house and the whole village?&mdash;for a
+leaf of betel that you showed such constancy, and suffered burning from
+the feet to the head upwards? Never in the world was there seen such
+folly!" And so, from that time, I have been constantly known by the name
+of Betel Anantya.</p>
+
+<p>The narrative being finished, the court were of opinion that so
+transcendent a piece of folly gave him high pretensions in the depending
+suit; but it was necessary also to hear the fourth and last of the
+suitors, who thus addressed them:</p>
+
+<p> <i>Story of the Fourth Br�hman</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The maiden to whom I was betrothed, having remained six or seven years
+at her father's house, on account of her youth, we were at last apprised
+that she was become marriageable; and her parents informed mine that she
+was in a situation to fulfil all the duties of a wife, and might
+therefore join her husband. My mother being at that time sick, and the
+house of my father-in-law being at the distance of five or six leagues
+from ours, she was not able to undertake the journey. She therefore
+committed to myself the duty of bringing home my wife, and counselled me
+so to conduct myself, in words and actions, that they might not see that
+I was only a brute. "Knowing thee as I do," said my mother, as I took
+leave of her, "I am very distrustful of thee." But I promised to be on
+my good behaviour; and so I departed.</p>
+
+<p>I was well received by my father-in-law, who gave a great feast to all
+the Br�hmans of the village on the occasion. He made me stay three days,
+during which there was nothing but festivity. At length the time of our
+departure having arrived, he suffered my wife and myself to leave him,
+after pouring out blessings on us both, and wishing us a long and happy
+life, enriched with a numerous progeny. When we took leave of him, he
+shed abundance of tears, as if he had foreseen the misery that awaited
+us.</p>
+
+<p>It was then the summer solstice, and the day was exceedingly hot. We had
+to cross a sandy plain of more than two leagues; and the sand, being
+heated by the burning sun, scorched the feet of my young wife, who,
+being brought up too tenderly in her father's house, was not accustomed
+to such severe trials. She began to cry, and being unable to go on, she
+lay down on the ground, saying she wished to die there. I was in
+dreadful trouble, and knew not what step to take; when a merchant came
+up, travelling the contrary way. He had a train of fifty bullocks,
+loaded with various kinds of merchandise. I ran to meet him, and told
+him the cause of my anxiety with tears in my eyes; and entreated him to
+aid me with his good advice in the distressing circumstances in which I
+was placed. He immediately answered, that a young and delicate woman,
+such as my wife was, could neither remain where she lay nor proceed on
+her journey, under a hot sun, without being exposed to certain death.
+Rather than that I should see her perish, and run the hazard of being
+suspected of having killed her myself, and being guilty of one of the
+five crimes which the Br�hmans consider as the most heinous, he advised
+me to give her to him, and then he would mount her on one of his cattle
+and take her along with him.  That I should be a loser, he admitted;
+but, all things considered, it was better to lose her, with the merit of
+having saved her life, than equally to lose her, under the suspicion of
+being her murderer. "Her trinkets," he said, "may be worth fifteen
+pagodas; take these twenty and give me your wife."</p>
+
+<p>The merchant's arguments appeared unanswerable; so I yielded to them,
+and delivered to him my wife, whom he placed on one of his best oxen,
+and continued his journey without delay. I continued mine also, and got
+home in the evening, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and with my feet
+almost roasted with the burning sand, over which I had walked the
+greater part of the day. Frightened to see me alone, "Where is your
+wife?" cried my mother. I gave her a full account of everything that had
+happened from the time I left her. I spoke of the agreeable and
+courteous manner in which my father-in-law had received me, and how, by
+some delay, we had been overtaken by the scorching heat of the sun at
+noon, so that my wife must have perished and myself suspected of having
+caused her death, had we proceeded; and that I had preferred to sell her
+to a merchant who met us for twenty pagodas. And I showed my mother the
+money.</p>
+
+<p>When I had done, my mother fell into an ecstasy of fury. She lifted up
+her voice against me with cries of rage, and overwhelmed me with
+imprecations and awful curses. Having given way to these first emotions
+of despair, she sank into a more moderate tone: "What hast thou done!
+Sold thy wife, hast thou! Delivered her to another man! A Br�hmanari is
+become the concubine of a vile merchant! Ah, what will her kindred and
+ours say when they hear the tale of this brutish stupidity&mdash;of folly so
+unexampled and degrading?"</p>
+
+<p>The relations of my wife were soon informed of the sad adventure that
+had befallen their unhappy girl. They came over to attack me, and would
+certainly have murdered me and my innocent mother, if we had not both
+made a sudden escape. Having no direct object to wreak their vengeance
+upon, they brought the matter before the chiefs of the caste, who
+unanimously fined me in two hundred pagodas, as a reparation to my
+father-in-law, and issued a proclamation against so great a fool being
+ever allowed to take another wife; denouncing the penalty of expulsion
+from the caste against any one who should assist me in such an attempt.
+I was therefore condemned to remain a widower all my life, and to pay
+dear for my folly. Indeed, I should have been excluded for ever from my
+caste, but for the high consideration in which the memory of my late
+father is still held, he having lived respected by all the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now that you have heard one specimen of the many follies of my life, I
+hope you will not consider me as beneath those who have spoken before
+me, nor my pretensions altogether undeserving of the salutation of the
+soldier.</p>
+
+<p> <i>Conclusion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The heads of the assembly, several of whom were convulsed with laughter
+while the Br�hmans were telling their stories, decided, after hearing
+them all, that each had given such absolute proofs of folly as to be
+entitled, in justice, to a superiority in his own way: that each of
+them, therefore, should be at liberty to call himself the greatest fool
+of all, and to attribute to himself the salutation of the soldier. Each
+of them having thus gained his suit, it was recommended to them all to
+continue their journey, if it were possible, in amity. The delighted
+Brahmans then rushed out of court, each exclaiming that he had gained
+his cause.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image020.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVI01"><sup>1</sup></a> A Samaradanam is one of the public festivals given by pious people,
+and sometimes by those in power, to the Br�hmans, who on such occasions
+assemble in great numbers from all quarters.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVI02"><sup>2</sup></a> In a Sinhalese story, referred to on ["p. 68" in original. This
+approximates to the text reference to <a href="#chapIII5">Chapter III, Footnote 5</a> in this
+e-text], it is, curiously enough, the woman herself "who has her head
+shaved, so as not to lose the services of the barber for the day when he
+came, and her husband was away from home." The story probably was
+introduced into Ceylon by the Tamils; both versions are equally good as
+noodle-stories.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="chapVIItitle"></a><img src="images/image121.png" alt="Chapter Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.<br/>
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image122.png" width="95" height="95" alt="F"/>EW folk-tales are more widely
+  diffused than that of the man who set out in quest of as great noodles as those
+  of his own household. The details may be varied more or less, but the fundamental
+  outline is identical, wherever the story is found; and, whether it be an instance
+  of the transmission of popular tales from one country to another, or one of
+  those "primitive fictions" which are said to be the common heritage of the Aryans,
+  its independent development by different nations and in different ages cannot
+  be reasonably maintained.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in one Gaelic version of this diverting story&mdash;in which our old
+friends the Gothamites reappear on the scene to enact their unconscious
+drolleries&mdash;a lad marries a farmer's daughter, and one day while they
+are all busily engaged in peat-cutting, she is sent to the house to
+fetch the dinner. On entering the house, she perceives the speckled
+pony's packsaddle hanging from the roof, and says to herself, "Oh, if
+that packsaddle were to fall and kill me, what should I do?" and here
+she began to cry, until her mother, wondering what could be detaining
+her, comes, when she tells the old woman the cause of her grief,
+whereupon the mother, in her turn, begins to cry, and when the old man
+next comes to see what is the matter with his wife and daughter, and is
+informed about the speckled pony's packsaddle, he, too, "mingles his
+tears" with theirs. At last the young husband arrives, and finding the
+trio of noodles thus grieving at an imaginary misfortune, he there and
+then leaves them, declaring his purpose not to return until he has found
+three as great fools as themselves. In the course of his travels he
+meets with some strange folks: men whose wives make them believe
+whatever they please&mdash;one, that he is dead; another, that he is clothed,
+when he is stark naked; a third, that he is not himself. He meets with
+the twelve fishers who always miscounted their number; the noodles who
+went to drown an eel in the sea; and a man trying to get his cow on the
+roof of his house, in order that she might eat the grass growing there.
+But the most wonderful incident was a man coming with a cow in a cart:
+and the people had found out that the man had stolen the cow, and that a
+court should be held upon him, and so they did; and the justice they did
+was to put the horse to death for carrying the cow.<a href="#chapVII01"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In another Gaelic version a young husband had provided his house with a
+cradle, in natural anticipation that such an interesting piece of
+furniture would be required in due time. In this he was disappointed,
+but the cradle stood in the kitchen all the same. One day he chanced to
+throw something into the empty cradle, upon which his wife, his mother,
+and his wife's mother set up loud lamentations, exclaiming, "Oh, if
+<i>he</i> had been there, he had been killed!" alluding to a potential
+son. The man was so much shocked at such an exhibition of folly that he
+left the country in search of three greater noodles. Among other
+adventures, he goes into a house and plays tricks on some people there,
+telling them his name is "<i>Saw ye ever my like</i>?" When the old man
+of the house comes home he finds his people tied upon tables, and asks,
+"What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye ever my like?" says the first. Then
+going to a second man, he asks, "What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye
+ever my like?" says the second. "I saw thy like in the kitchen," replies
+the old man, and then he goes to the third: "What's the reason of this?"
+"Saw ye ever my like?" says the third. "I have seen plenty of thy like,"
+quoth the old man; "but never before this day," and then he understood
+that some one had been playing tricks on his people.<a href="#chapVII02"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p195"></a>
+<p>In Russian variants the old parents of a youth named Lutonya weep over
+the supposititious death of a potential grandchild, thinking how sad it
+would have been if a log which the old woman had dropped had killed that
+hypothetical infant. The parents' grief appears to Lutonya so uncalled
+for that he leaves the house, declaring he will not return until he has
+met with people more foolish than they. He travels long and far, and
+sees several foolish doings. In one place a horse is being inserted into
+its collar by sheer force; in another, a woman is fetching milk from the
+cellar a spoonful at a time; and in a third place some carpenters are
+attempting to stretch a beam which is not long enough, and Lutonya earns
+their gratitude by showing them how to join a piece to it.<a href="#chapVII03"><sup>3</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>A well-known English version is to this effect: There was a young man
+who courted a farmer's daughter, and one evening when he came to the
+house she was sent to the cellar for beer. Seeing an axe stuck in a beam
+above her head, she thought to herself, "Suppose I were married and had
+a son, and he were to grow up, and be sent to this cellar for beer, and
+this axe were to fall and kill him&mdash;oh dear! oh dear!" and there she sat
+crying and crying, while the beer flowed all over the cellar-floor,
+until her old father and mother come in succession and blubber along
+with her about the hypothetical death of her imaginary grown-up son. The
+young man goes off in quest of three bigger fools, and sees a woman
+hoisting a cow on to the roof of her cottage to eat the grass that grew
+among the thatch, and to keep the animal from falling off, she ties a
+rope round its neck, then goes into the kitchen, secures at her waist
+the rope, which she had dropped down the chimney, and presently the cow
+stumbles over the roof, and the woman is pulled up the flue till she
+sticks half-way. In an inn he sees a man attempting to jump into his
+trousers&mdash;a favourite incident in this class of stories; and farther
+along he meets with a party raking the moon out of a pond.</p>
+
+<p>Another English variant relates that a young girl having been left alone
+in the house, her mother finds her in tears when she comes home, and
+asks the cause of her distress. "Oh," says the girl, "while you were
+away, a brick fell down the chimney, and I thought, if it had fallen on
+me I might have been killed!" The only novel adventure which the girl's
+betrothed meets with, in his quest of three bigger fools, is an old
+woman trying to drag an oven with a rope to the table where the dough
+lay.</p>
+<a name="p197"></a>
+<p>Several versions are current in Italy and Sicily, which present a close
+analogy to those of other European countries. The following is a
+translation of one in Bernoni's Venetian collection:</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time there were a husband and a wife who had a son. This son
+grew up, and said one day to his mother, "Do you know, mother, I would
+like to marry?" "Very well, marry! Whom do you want to take?" He
+answered, "I want the gardener's daughter." "She is a good girl&mdash;take
+her; I am willing." So he went, and asked for the girl, and her parents
+gave her to him. They were married, and when they were in the midst of
+their dinner, the wine gave out. The husband said, "There is no more
+wine!" The bride, to show that she was a good housekeeper, said, "I will
+go and get some." She took the bottles and went to the cellar, turned
+the cock, and began to think, "Suppose I should have a son, and we
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die! Oh, how grieved I should
+be! oh, how grieved I should be!" And thereupon she began to weep and
+weep; and meanwhile the wine was running all over the cellar.</p>
+
+<p>When they saw that the bride did not return, the mother said, "I will go
+and see what the matter is." So she went into the cellar, and saw the
+bride, with the bottle in her hand, and weeping. "What is the matter
+with you that you are weeping?" "Ah, my mother, I was thinking that if I
+had a son, and should name him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" The mother, too, began to weep,
+and weep, and weep; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.</p>
+
+<p>When the people at the table saw that no one brought the wine, the
+groom's father said, "I will go and see what is the matter. Certainly
+something wrong has happened to the bride." He went and saw the whole
+cellar full of wine, and the mother and bride weeping. "What is the
+matter?" he said; "has anything wrong happened to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the bride; "but I was thinking that if I had a son, and
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I should grieve!
+oh, how I should grieve!" Then he, too, began to weep, and all three
+wept; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.</p>
+
+<p>When the groom saw that neither the bride, nor the mother, nor the
+father came back, he said, "Now I will go and see what the matter is
+that no one returns." He went into the cellar and saw all the wine
+running over the cellar. He hastened and stopped the cask, and then
+asked, "What is the matter that you are all weeping, and have let the
+wine run all over the cellar?" Then the bride said, "I was thinking that
+if I had a son and called him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" Then the groom said, "You
+stupid fools! Are you weeping at this and letting all the wine run into
+the cellar? Have you nothing else to think of? It shall never be said
+that I remained with you. I will roam about the world, and until I find
+three fools greater than you, I will not return home."</p>
+
+<p>He had a bread-cake made, took a bottle of wine, a sausage, and some
+linen, and made a bundle, which he put on a stick and carried over his
+shoulder. He journeyed and journeyed, but found no fool. At last he
+said, worn out, "I must turn back, for I see I cannot find a greater
+fool than my wife." He did not know what to do, whether to go on or turn
+back. "Oh," said he, "it is better to try and go a little farther." So
+he went on, and shortly saw a man in his shirt-sleeves at a well, all
+wet with perspiration, and water. "What are you doing, sir, that you are
+so covered with water and in such a sweat?" "Oh, let me alone," the man
+answered; "for I have been here a long time drawing water to fill this
+pail, and I cannot fill it." "What are you drawing the water in?" he
+asked him. "In this sieve," he said. "What are you thinking about, to
+draw water in that sieve? Just wait!" He went to a house near by and
+borrowed a bucket, with which he returned to the well and filled the
+pail. "Thank you, good man. God knows how long I should have had to
+remain here!"&mdash;"Here," thought he, "is one who is a greater fool than my
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>He continued his journey, and after a time he saw at a distance a man in
+his shirt, who was jumping down from a tree. He drew near, and saw a
+woman under the same tree, holding a pair of breeches. He asked them
+what they were doing, and they said that they had been there a long
+time, and that the man was trying on those breeches and did not know how
+to get into them. "I have jumped and jumped," said the man, "until I am
+tired out, and I cannot imagine how to get into those breeches." "Oh,"
+said the traveller, "you might stay here as long as you wished, for you
+would never get into them this way. Come down and lean against the
+tree." Then he took his legs and put them in the breeches, and after he
+had put them on, he said, "Is that right?" "Very good; bless you; for if
+it had not been for you, God knows how long I should have had to jump."
+Then the traveller said to himself, "I have seen two greater fools than
+my wife."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went his way, and as he approached a city, he heard a great
+noise. When he drew near he asked what it was, and was told it was a
+marriage, and that it was the custom in that city for the brides to
+enter the city gate on horseback, and that there was a great discussion
+on this occasion between the groom and the owner of the horse, for the
+bride was tall and the horse high, and they could not get through the
+gate; so that they must either cut off the bride's head or the horse's
+legs. The groom did not wish his bride's head cut off, and the owner of
+the horse did not wish his horse's legs cut off, and hence this
+disturbance. Then the traveller said, "Just wait," and came up to the
+bride and gave her a slap that made her lower her head, and then he gave
+the horse a kick, and so they passed through the gate and entered the
+city. The groom and the owner of the horse asked the traveller what he
+wanted, for he had saved the groom his bride and the owner of the horse
+his horse. He answered that he did not wish anything, and said to
+himself, "Two and one make three! that is enough. Now I will go home."
+He did so, and said to his wife, "Here I am, my wife; I have seen three
+greater fools than you;&mdash;now let us remain in peace, and think of
+nothing else." They renewed the wedding, and always remained in peace.
+After a time the wife had a son, whom they named Bastianelo, and
+Bastianelo did not die, but still lives with his father and mother.<a href="#chapVII04"><sup>4</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p202"></a>
+<p>There is (Professor Crane remarks) a Sicilian version in Pitr�'s
+collection, called "The Peasant of Larc�ra," in which the bride's mother
+imagines that her daughter has a son who falls into the cistern. The
+groom&mdash;they are not yet married&mdash;is disgusted, and sets out on his
+travels with no fixed purpose of returning if he finds some fools
+greater than his mother-in-law, as in the Venetian tale. The first fool
+he meets is a mother, whose child, in playing the game called
+<i>nocciole</i>.<a href="#chapVII05"><sup>5</sup></a> tries to get his hand out of the hole whilst his
+fist is full of stones. He cannot, of course, and the mother thinks they
+will have to cut off his hand. The traveller tells the child to drop the
+stones, and then he draws out his hand easily enough. Next he finds a
+bride who cannot enter the church because she is very tall and wears a
+high comb. The difficulty is settled as in the former story. After a
+while he comes to a woman who is spinning and drops her spindle. She
+calls out to the pig, whose name is Tony, to pick it up for her. The pig
+does nothing but grunt, and the woman in anger cries, "Well, you won't
+pick it up? May your mother die!" The traveller, who had overheard all
+this, takes a piece of paper, which he folds up like a letter, and then
+knocks at the door. "Who is there?" "Open the door, for I have a letter
+for you from Tony's mother, who is ill and wishes to see her son before
+she dies." The woman wonders that her imprecation has taken effect so
+soon, and readily consents to Tony's visit. Not only this, but she loads
+a mule with everything necessary for the comfort of the body and soul of
+the dying pig. The traveller leads away the mule with Tony, and returns
+home so pleased with having found that the outside world contains so
+many fools that he marries as he had first intended.<a href="#chapVII06"><sup>6</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In other Italian versions, a man is trying to jump into his stockings;
+another endeavours to put walnuts into a sack with a fork; and a woman
+dips a knotted rope into a deep well, and then having drawn it up,
+squeezes the water out of the knots into a pail. The final adventure of
+the traveller in quest of the greatest noodles is thus related in Miss
+Busk's <i>Folk-lore of Rome</i>:</p>
+<a name="p204"></a>
+<p>Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage, where he knocked, and
+asked for a night's lodging. "I can't give you that," said a voice from
+the inside; "for I am a lone widow. I can't take a man in to sleep
+here." "But I am a pilgrim," replied he; "let me in at least to cook a
+bit of supper."</p>
+
+<p>"That I don't mind doing," said the good wife, and she opened the door.
+"Thanks, good friend," said the pilgrim, as he sat down by the stove.
+"Now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan." So she gave him a
+pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the
+six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan too. Presently,
+when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs
+swimming in the pan instead of two, she said, "Lack-a-day! you must
+surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know
+So-and-so?" naming her husband. "Oh yes," said he, enjoying the joke; "I
+know him very well: he lives just next to me." "Only to think of that!"
+replied the poor woman. "And, do tell me, how do you get on in the other
+world? What sort of a life is it?" "Oh, not so very bad; it depends what
+sort of a place you get. The part where we are is pretty good, except
+that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly
+starved." "No, really?" cried the good wife, clasping her hands. "Only
+fancy, my good husband starving out there, so fond as he was of a good
+dinner, too!" Then she added, coaxingly, "As you know him so well,
+perhaps you wouldn't mind doing him the charity of taking him a little
+somewhat, to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could
+easily send him." "Oh dear, no, not at all. I'll do so with pleasure,"
+answered he. "But I'm not going back till to-morrow, and if I don't
+sleep here I must go on farther, and then I shan't come by this way."
+"That's true," replied the widow. "Ah, well, I mustn't mind what the
+folks say; for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You
+must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning
+I'll load a donkey with provisions for my poor husband." "Oh, no,"
+replied the pilgrim, "you shan't be disturbed in your bed. Only let me
+sleep on the hearth&mdash;that will do for me; and as I am an early riser, I
+can be gone before any one's astir, so folks won't have anything to
+say."</p>
+
+<p>So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up, loading the
+donkey with the best of her stores&mdash;ham, macaroni, flour, cheese, and
+wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying, "You'll send the
+donkey back, won't you?" "Of course I would send him back," he replied;
+"he'd be of no use to me out there. But I shan't get out again myself
+for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won't find his way back
+alone, for it's no easy way to find." "To be sure not; I ought to have
+thought of that," replied the widow. "Ah, well, so as my poor husband
+gets a good meal, never mind the donkey." So the pretended pilgrim from
+the other world went his way. He hadn't gone a hundred yards before the
+widow called him back. "Ah, she's beginning to think better of it," said
+he to himself, and he continued his way, pretending not to hear. "Good
+pilgrim," shouted the widow, "I forgot one thing: would money be of any
+use to my poor husband?" "Oh dear, yes," said he, "all the use in the
+world. You can always get anything for money anywhere." "Oh, do come
+back, then, and I'll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him." He went
+back, willingly, for the hundred scudi, which the widow counted out to
+him. "There's no help for it," said he to himself as he went his way: "I
+must go back to those at home."</p>
+<a name="p207"></a>
+<p>From sunny Italy to bleak Norway is certainly a "far cry," yet the
+adventure of the "Pilgrim from Paradise" is also known to the Norse
+peasants, in connection with the quest of the greatest noodles: A goody
+goes to market, with a cow and a hen for sale. She wants five shillings
+for the cow and ten pounds for the hen. A butcher buys the cow, but
+doesn't want the hen. As she cannot find a buyer for the hen, she goes
+back to the butcher, who treats her to so much brandy that she gets
+dead-drunk, and in this condition the butcher tars and feathers her.
+When she awakes, she fancies that she must be some strange bird, and
+cries out, "Is this me, or is it not me? I'll go home, and if our dog
+barks, then it is not me." Thus far we have a variant of our favourite
+nursery rhyme:</p>
+
+<blockquote>There was an old woman, as I've heard tell,<br/>
+  She went to market her eggs for to sell;<br/>
+  She went to market, all on a market-day,<br/>
+  And she fell asleep on the king's highway.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>There came a pedlar, whose name was Stout,<br/>
+  He cut her petticoats all round about;<br/>
+  He cut her petticoats up to the knees,<br/>
+  Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>When the little woman first did wake,<br/>
+  She began to shiver and she began to shake;<br/>
+  She began to wonder, and she began to cry,<br/>
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this is none of I!"</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>"But if this be I, as I do hope it be,<br/>
+  I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me;<br/>
+  If it be I, he'll wag his little tail,<br/>
+  And if it be not I, he loudly bark and wail."</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>Home went the little woman all in the dark,<br/>
+  Up got the little dog, and began to bark;<br/>
+  He began to bark, and she began to cry,<br/>
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this can't be I!"</blockquote>
+
+<p>To return to the Norse tale. As in our nursery rhyme, when the goody
+reaches home, the dog barks at her; then she goes to the calves' house,
+but the calves, having sniffed the tar with which she was smeared, turn
+away from her in disgust. She is now fully convinced that she has been
+transformed into some outlandish bird, so she climbs on to the roof of a
+shed, and begins to flap her arms as if she were about to fly, when out
+comes her goodman, and seeing a suspicious-looking creature on the roof
+of the shed, he fetches his gun and is going to shoot at his goody, when
+he recognises her voice. Amazed at such a piece of folly, he resolves to
+leave her and not come back till he has found three goodies as silly. He
+meets with a female descendant of the Schildburgers, evidently, carrying
+into her cottage sunshine in a sieve, there being no window in the
+house: he cuts out a window for her and is well paid for his trouble. He
+next comes to a house where an old woman is thumping her goodman on the
+head with a beetle, in order to force over him a shirt without a slit
+for the neck, which she had drawn over his head: he cuts a slit in the
+shirt with a pair of scissors, and is amply rewarded for his ingenuity.
+His third adventure is similar to that of the "pilgrim" in the Italian
+version:</p>
+<a name="p210"></a>
+<p>At another house he informs the goody that he came from Paradise Place&mdash;
+which was the name of his own farm&mdash;and she asks him if he knew her
+second husband in paradise. (She had been married twice before she took
+her present husband, who was an old curmudgeon, and she liked her second
+husband best&mdash;she was sure he had gone to heaven.) He replies that he
+knew him very intimately, but, poor man, he was far from well off,
+having to go about begging from house to house. The goody gives him a
+cart-load of clothes and a box of shining dollars, for her dear second
+husband; for why should he go about begging in paradise when there was
+so much of everything in their house? So the stranger, jumps into the
+cart and drives off, as fast as possible. But Peter, the goody's third
+husband, sees him on the road, and recognising his own horse and cart,
+hastens home to his wife, and asks why a stranger has gone off with his
+property. She explains the whole affair, upon which he mounts a horse
+and gallops away after the rogue who had thus taken advantage of his
+wife's simplicity. The stranger, perceiving him approach, hides the
+horse and cart behind a high hedge, takes part of the horse's tail and
+hangs it on the branches of a birch-tree, and then lays himself down on
+his back and gazes up into the sky. When Peter comes up to him, he
+exclaims, still looking at the sky, "What a wonder! there is a man going
+straight to heaven on a black horse!" Peter can see no such thing. "Can
+you not?" says the stranger. "See, there is his tail, still on the
+birch-tree. You must lie down in this very spot, and look straight up,
+and don't for a moment take your eyes off the sky, and then you'll see&mdash;
+what you'll see." So Peter lies down and gazes up at the sky very
+intently, looking for the man going straight to heaven on a black horse.
+Meanwhile the traveller escapes, with the cart-load of clothes and the
+box of shining dollars, and the second horse besides. Peter, when he
+reaches home, tells his wife that he had given the man from paradise the
+other horse for her second husband to ride about on, for he was ashamed
+to confess that he had been cheated as well as herself.<a href="#chapVII07"><sup>7</sup></a> As to our
+traveller, having found three goodies as great fools as his own, he
+returned home, and saw that all his fields had been ploughed and sown;
+so he asked his wife where she had got the seed from. "Oh," says she, "I
+have always heard that what a man sows he shall also reap, so I sowed
+the salt that our friends the north-countrymen laid up with us, and if
+we only have rain, I fancy it will come up nicely."<a href="#chapVII08"><sup>8</sup></a> "Silly you are,"
+said her husband, "and silly you will be as long as you live. But that
+is all one now, for the rest are not a bit wiser than you;&mdash;<i>there is
+not a pin to choose between you</i>!"<a href="#chapVII09"><sup>9</sup></a></p>
+<a name="p212"></a>
+<p>Now, if it be "a far cry" from Italy to Norway, it is still farther from
+Norway to India; and yet it is in the southern provinces of our great
+Asiatic empire that a story is current among the people, which, strange
+as it may seem, is almost the exact counterpart of the Norse version of
+the pretended pilgrim from paradise, of which the above is an abstract.
+It is found in Pandit S.M. Nat�sa S�str�'s <i>Folk-lore in Southern
+India</i>, now in course of publication at Bombay; a work which, when
+completed, will be of very great value, to students of comparative
+folk-tales, as well as prove an entertaining story-book for general
+readers. After condensation in some parts, this story&mdash;which the Pandit
+entitles "The Good Wife and the Bad Husband"&mdash;runs thus:</p>
+
+<p>In a secluded village there lived a rich man, who was very miserly, and
+his wife, who was very kind-hearted and charitable, but a stupid little
+woman that believed everything she heard. And there lived in the same
+village a clever rogue, who had for some time watched for an opportunity
+for getting something from this simple woman during her husband's
+absence. So one day, when he had seen the old miser ride out to inspect
+his lands, this rogue of the first water came to the house, and fell
+down at the threshold as if overcome by fatigue. The woman ran up to him
+at once and inquired whence he came. "I am come from Kail�sa,"<a href="#chapVII10"><sup>10</sup></a> said
+he; "having been sent down by an old couple living there, for news of
+their son and his wife." "Who are those fortunate dwellers in Siva's
+mountain?" she asked. And the rogue gave the names of her husband's
+deceased parents, which he had taken good care, of course, to learn from
+the neighbours. "Do you really come from them?" said the simple woman.
+"Are they doing well there? Dear old people! How glad my husband would
+be to see you, were he here! Sit down, please, and rest until he
+returns. How do they live there? Have they enough to eat and dress
+themselves withal?" These and a hundred other questions she put to the
+rogue, who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible,
+knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return
+while he was there. So he replied, "Mother, language has no words to
+describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have
+not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten
+nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see
+them." The rogue's pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly
+believed that he had come down from Kail�sa, a messenger from the old
+couple to herself. "Why should they so suffer," said she, "when their
+son has plenty to eat and clothe himself withal, and when their
+daughter-in-law wears all sorts of costly garments?" So saying, she went
+into the house, and soon came out again with two boxes containing all
+her own and her husband's clothes, which she handed to the rogue,
+desiring him to deliver them to the poor old couple in Kail�sa. She also
+gave him her jewel-box, to be presented to her mother-in-law. "But dress
+and jewels will not fill their hungry stomachs," said the rogue. "Very
+true; I had forgot: wait a moment," said the simple woman, going into
+the house once more. Presently returning with her husband's cash chest,
+she emptied its glittering contents into the rogue's skirt, who now took
+his leave in haste, promising to give everything to the good old couple
+in Kail�sa; and having secured all the booty in his upper garment, he
+made off at the top of his speed as soon as the silly woman had gone
+indoors.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this the husband returned home, and his wife's pleasure at
+what she had done was so great that she ran to meet him at the door, and
+told him all about the arrival of the messenger from Kail�sa, how his
+parents were without clothes and food, and how she had sent them clothes
+and jewels and store of money. On hearing this, the anger of the husband
+was great; but he checked himself, and inquired which road the messenger
+from Kail�sa had taken, saying that he wished to follow him with a
+further message for his parents. So she very readily pointed out the
+direction in which the rogue had gone. With rage in his heart at the
+trick played upon his stupid wife, he rode off in hot haste, and after
+having proceeded a considerable distance, he caught sight of the flying
+rogue, who, finding escape hopeless, climbed up into a <i>pipal</i>
+tree.</p>
+
+<p>The husband soon reached the foot of the tree, when he shouted to the
+rogue to come down. "No, I cannot," said he; "this is the way to
+Kail�sa," and then climbed to the very top of the tree. Seeing there was
+no chance of the rogue coming down, and there being no one near to whom
+he could call for help, the old miser tied his horse to a neighbouring
+tree, and began to climb up the <i>p�pal</i> himself. When the rogue
+observed this, he thanked all his gods most fervently, and having waited
+until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle
+of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached
+the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser's horse and with his
+bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be
+discovered. Being thus balked the miser came down the <i>p�pal</i> tree
+slowly cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover
+the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at
+leisure. His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a
+joyous countenance, and cried, "I thought as much: you have sent away
+your horse to Kail�sa, to be used by your old father." Vexed at his
+wife's words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his
+own folly.</p>
+<a name="p217"></a>
+<p>Through the Tamils it is probable this story reached Ceylon, where it
+exists in a slightly different form: A young girl, named Kaluh�mi, had
+lately died, when a beggar came to the parents' house, and on being
+asked by the mother where he had come from, he said that he had just
+come from the other world to this world, meaning that he had only just
+recovered from severe illness. "Then," said the woman, "since you have
+come from the other world, you must have seen my daughter Kaluh�mi
+there, who died but a few days ago. Pray tell me how she is." The
+beggar, seeing how simple she was, replied, "She is my wife, and lives
+with me at present, and she has sent me to you for her dowry." The woman
+at once gave him all the money and jewels that were in the house, and
+sent him away delighted with his unexpected good luck. Soon after, the
+woman's husband returned, and learning how silly she had been, mounted
+his horse and rode after the beggar. The rest of the story corresponds
+to the Tamil version, as above, with the exception that when the husband
+saw the beggar slide down the tree, get on his horse, and ride off, he
+cried out to him, "Hey, son-in-law, you may tell Kaluh�mi that the money
+and jewels are from her mother, and that the horse is from me;" which is
+altogether inconsistent, since he is represented as the reverse of a
+simpleton in pursuing the beggar, on hearing what his wife had done. It
+is curious, also, to observe that in the Tamil version the man goes to
+the house with the deliberate purpose of deceiving the simple woman,
+while in the Sinhalese the beggar is evidently tempted by her mistaking
+the meaning of his words. But both present very close points of
+resemblance to the Norwegian story of the pretended pilgrim from
+paradise. There are indeed few instances of a story having travelled so
+far and lost so little of its original details, allowing for the
+inevitable local colouring.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image123.png" alt="Chapter Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII01"><sup>1</sup></a> Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>, vol. ii., pp.
+373-381. In a note to these adventures Campbell gives a story of some
+women who, as judges, doomed a horse to be hanged: the thief who stole
+the horse got off, because it was his first offence; the horse went back
+to the house of the thief, because he was the better master, and was
+condemned for stealing himself!</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII02"><sup>2</sup></a>: Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>, vol. ii.,
+pp. 385&mdash;387.</p>
+
+<p>In a Northumberland popular tale a child in bed sees a little fairy come
+down the chimney, and the child tells the creature that his name is
+My-ainsel. They play together, and the little fairy is burnt with a
+cinder, and on its mother appearing when it cries, and asking it who had
+hurt it, the imp answers, "It was My-ainsel."&mdash;There is a somewhat
+similar story current in Finland: A man is moulding lead buttons, when
+the Devil appears, and asks him what he is doing. "Making eyes." "Could
+you make me new ones?" "Yes." So he ties the Devil to a bench, and, in
+reply to the fiend, tells him that his name is Myself <i>(Issi)</i>, and
+then pours lead into his eyes. The Devil starts up with the bench on his
+back, and runs off howling. Some people working in a field ask him who
+did it. Quoth the fiend, "Myself did it" (<i>Issi teggi</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Cf. the <i>Odyssey</i>, Book ix., where Ulysses informs the Cyclops that
+his name is No-man, and when the monster, after having had his eye put
+out in his sleep, awakes in agony, he roars to his comrades for help:</p>
+
+<p class="i2">"Friends, No-man kills me, No-man, in the hour
+  Of sleep, oppresses me with fraudful power!"
+  "If no man hurt thee, but the hand divine
+  Inflict disease, it fits thee to resign;&mdash;
+  To Jove, or to thy father, Neptune, pray,"
+  The brethren cried, and instant strode away.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII03"><sup>3</sup></a> Ralston's <i>Russian Folk-Tales</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII04"><sup>4</sup></a> Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 279&mdash;282.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII05"><sup>5</sup></a> A game played with peach-pits, which are thrown into holes made in
+the ground, and to which certain numbers are attached.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII06"><sup>6</sup></a> Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, pp. 282-3.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII07"><sup>7</sup></a> The same story is told in Brittany, with no important variations.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII08"><sup>8</sup></a> Quite as literally did the rustic understand the priest's assurance,
+that whatsoever one gave in charity, for the love of God, should be
+repaid him twofold: next day he takes his cow to the priest, who accepts
+it as sent by Heaven&mdash;and the poor man did <i>not</i> get two cows in
+return. The story is known in various forms all over Europe; it was a
+special favourite in medi�val times. See Le Grand's <i>Fabliaux</i>,
+tome iii., 376: "La Vache du Cur�," by the trouv�re Jean de Boves;
+Wright's <i>Latin Stories; Icelandic Legends</i>, etc.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII09"><sup>9</sup></a> Dasent's <i>Popular Tales from the Norse</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="chapVII10"><sup>10</sup></a> "See note, p. 49" in original. This is <a href="#chapII13">Chapter II, Footnote 13</a> in
+this e-text.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="appendix"></a><img src="images/image124.png" alt="Appendix Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h2>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><img src="images/image125.png" width="99" height="97" alt="T"/>HE idea of the old
+  English jest-book, <i>Jacke of Dover His Quest of Inquirie, or His Privy Search
+  for the Veriest Foole in England</i> (London: 1604), may perhaps have been suggested
+  by such popular tales as those of the man going about in quest of three greater
+  fools than his wife, father-in-law, and mother-in-law. It is, however, simply
+  a collection of humorous anecdotes, not specially examples of folly or stupidity,
+  most of which are found in earlier jest-books. The introduction is rather curious:</p>
+
+<p>"When merry Jacke of Dover had made his privy search for the Foole of
+all Fooles, and making his inquirie in most of the principal places in
+England, at his return home he was adjudged to be the fool himself; but
+now wearied with the motley coxcombe, he hath undertaken in some place
+or other to find a verier foole than himself. But first of all, coming
+to London, he went into Paul's Church, where walking very melancholy in
+the middle aisle with Captain Thingut and his fellowes, he was invited
+to dine at Duke Humphry's ordinary,<a href="#appendix01"><sup>1</sup></a> where, amongst other good
+stomachs that repaired to his bountiful feast, there came a whole jury
+of penniless poets, who being fellows of a merry disposition (but as
+necessary in a commonwealth as a candle in a straw bed), he accepted of
+their company, and as from poets cometh all kind of folly, so he hoped
+by their good directions to find out his Foole of Fooles, so long looked
+for. So, thinking to pass away the dinner-hour with some pleasant chat
+(lest, being overcloyed with too many dishes, they should surfeit), he
+discovered to them his merry meaning, who, being glad of so good an
+occasion of mirth, instead of a cup of sack and sugar for digestion,
+these men of little wit began to make inquiry and to search for the
+aforesaid fool, thinking it a deed of charity to ease him of so great a
+burden as his motley coxcomb was, and because such weak brains as are
+now resident almost in every place, might take benefit hereat. In this
+manner began the inquiry:</p>
+
+<p><i><a name="p221"></a>The Foole of Hereford.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'Upon a time (quoth one of the jury) it was my chance to be in the city
+of Hereford, when, lodging at an inn, I was told of a certain
+silly-witted gentleman there dwelling, that would assuredly believe all
+things that he heard for a truth; to whose house I went upon a
+sleeveless errand, and finding occasion to be acquainted with him, I was
+well entertained, and for three days' space had my bed and board in his
+house; where, amongst many other fooleries, I, being a traveller, made
+him believe that the steeple of Brentwood, in Essex, sailed in one night
+as far as Calais, in France, and afterwards returned again to its proper
+place. Another time I made him believe that in the forest of Sherwood,
+in Nottinghamshire, were seen five hundred of the King of Spain's
+galleys, which went to besiege Robin Hood's Well, and that forty
+thousand scholars with elder squirts performed such a piece of service
+as they were all in a manner taken and overthrown in the forest. Another
+time I made him believe that Westminster Hall, for suspicion of treason,
+was banished for ten years into Staffordshire. And last of all, I made
+him believe that a tinker should be baited to death at Canterbury for
+getting two and twenty children in a year; whereupon, to prove me a
+liar, he took his horse and rode thither, and I, to verify him a fool,
+took my horse and rode hither.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' quoth Jacke of Dover, 'this in my mind was pretty foolery, but
+yet the Foole of all Fooles is not here found that I looked for.'</p>
+
+<p><i><a name="p222"></a>The Fool of Huntington.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'And it was my chance (quoth another of the jury) upon a time to be at
+Huntington, where I heard tell of a simple shoemaker there dwelling, who
+having two little boys whom he made a vaunt to bring up to learning, the
+better to maintain themselves when they were men; and having kept them a
+year or two at school, he examined them saying, "My good boy," quoth he
+to one of them, "what dost thou learn and where is thy lesson?" "O
+father," said the boy, "I am past grace." "And where art thou?" quoth he
+to the other boy, who likewise answered that he was at the devil and all
+his works. "Now Lord bless us," quoth the shoemaker, "whither are my
+children learning? The one is already past grace and the other at the
+devil and all his works!" Whereupon he took them both from school and
+set them to his own occupation.<a href="#appendix02"><sup>2</sup></a>'"</p>
+
+<p>A number of others of the jury of penniless poets having related their
+stories, at last it is agreed that if the Foole of all Fooles cannot be
+found among those before named, one of themselves must be the fool, for
+there cannot be a verier fool than a poet, "for poets have good wits,
+but cannot use them, great store of money, but cannot keep it," etc.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It is doubtful what the name "Jack of Dover" imports, as that of the
+imaginary inquirer after fools. The author of the Cook's Tale of
+Gamelyn&mdash;which is generally considered as a spurious "Canterbury" tale&mdash;
+represents, in the prologue, mine host of the Tabard as saying to Roger
+the Cook:</p>
+
+<blockquote>"Full many a pastie hast thou lettin blode;<br/>
+  And many a jack of Dovyr hast thou sold,<br/>
+  That hath ben twic� hot and twic� cold."</blockquote>
+
+<p>Dr. Brewer says&mdash;apparently on the strength of these lines&mdash;that a "Jack
+of Dover" is a fish that has been cooked a second time. But it may have
+been a name of a particular kind of fish caught in the waters off Dover.
+If, however, a "Jack of Dover" is a twice-cooked fish, the title of the
+jest-book is not inappropriate, since all the stories it comprises are
+at least "twice-told."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image126.png" alt="Appendix Footer"/></div>
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<p><a name="appendix01"><sup>1</sup></a> To "dine with Duke Humphry" meant not to dine at all. See Brewer's
+<i>Dictionary of Phrase and Fable</i> for the origin of the expression.</p>
+
+<p><a name="appendix02"><sup>2</sup></a> The jest is thus told in some parts of Scotland: An old gentleman,
+walking in the country, met three small boys on their way home from
+school, and asked them how they progressed in their learning. The
+youngest&mdash;referring, of course, to the <i>Shorter Catechism</i>&mdash;replied
+that he was "in a state of sin and misery;" the second, that he was past
+"redemption;" and the eldest, that he was "in the pains of hell for
+ever."</p>
+
+<a name="chindex"></a><div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image127.png" alt="Index Header"/></div>
+
+
+<h3>INDEX.</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Abdera, Man of, <a href="#p06">6.</a></p>
+
+<p>Alewife and her Hens, <a href="#p73">73.</a></p>
+
+<p>Alfonsus, Peter, <a href="#p57">45.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arab and his Cow, <a href="#p70">70.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arab Schoolmaster, <a href="#p83">83.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arabian Idiot, <a href="#p133">133.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Arabian Nights</i>, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81,</a> <a href="#p83">83,</a> <a href="#p133">133,</a> <a href="#p146">146.</a></p>
+
+<p>Arabian Noodles, <a href="#p70">70,</a> <a href="#p75">75,</a> <a href="#p146">146.</a> <a href="#p147">147.</a></p>
+
+<p>Armstrong's, Archie, <i>Banquet of Jests</i>, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Ashton, John, <a href="#ashton">xiv</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ass and the Two Sharpers, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p>Austwick, Carles of, <a href="#p17">17,</a> <a href="#p53">53,</a> <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Avad�nas</i>, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Babrius, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bakki, Brothers of, <a href="#p32">32,</a> <a href="#p64">64.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bang-eater and his Wife, <a href="#p147">147.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bang-eaters and the Dogs, <a href="#p109">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Barrett, F.T., <a href="#p109">9.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Barrin' o' the Door</i>, <a href="#p107">107.</a></p>
+
+<p>Belmont, Fools of, <a href="#chapIIItitle">55.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Beryn, Tale of</i>, <a href="#chapII09">40.</a></p>
+
+<p>Beschi, Father,<a href="#p29"> 29.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Bharataka Dwatrinsati</i>, <a href="#p158">158.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Bizarrures of the Sieur Gaulard</i>,<a href="#p8"> 8,</a> <a href="#p12">12,</a>
+  <a href="#p20">20,</a> <a href="#p76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bidpa�'s Fables, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Birth-Stories&mdash;<i>see</i> <a href="#jatakas">J�takas.</a></p>
+
+<p>Boccaccio's <i>Decameron</i>, <a href="#chapII08">39</a>.</p>
+
+<p>"Boiling" River, <a href="#p29">30,</a> <a href="#p43">43.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bond, The Lord's, <a href="#p17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Borde, Andrew,<a href="#p23"> 23</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Br�hmans, Four Simple, <a href="#chapVItitle">171</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Bromyard, John, <a href="#chapV16">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Buddha's Five Precepts, <a href="#p69">69.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bull and the Gate, <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p>Bull of Siva, <a href="#p48">48</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Burton's <i>Arabian Nights</i>, <a href="#p83">83.</a> </p>
+
+<p>Busk's <i>Folk-Lore of Rome</i>, <a href="#p204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Butter eaten by a Dog, <a href="#p18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Buzzard, The Gothamite's, <a href="#p38">38</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Cabbage-Tree, <a href="#p47">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Caftan on Tree,<a href="#p90"> 90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Calf's Head in a Pot, <a href="#p89">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Campbell's <i>Popular Tales of the West Highlands</i>, <a href="#p32">32</a>,
+  <a href="#p33">33</a>, <a href="#p34">34</a>, <a href="#p35">35</a>, <a href="#p36">36</a>,
+  <a href="#p154">154,</a> <a href="#chapVII01">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cat and old Woman, <a href="#p65">65</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cat, Men of Schilda's, <a href="#p61">61</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cazotte's <i>New Arabian Nights</i>, <a href="#p133">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Ceylon&mdash;<i>see</i> <a href="#sinhal">Sinhalese Noodles</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chamberlain, B.H., <a href="#p130">130</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cheese, The Gothamite's, <a href="#p34">34</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cheese on the Highway, <a href="#p40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cheese, The Stolen, <a href="#p91">91</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Chinese Noodles, <a href="#p93">93</a>, <a href="#p94">94</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Coelho's <i>Contes Portuguezes</i>, <a href="#p120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Colombo, Michele, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p>Countryman and Dog,<a href="#p79"> 79</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cozens, F.W.,<a href="#chapI01"> 9</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Council-House, Dark,<a href="#p57"> 57</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Crane's <i>Italian Popular Tales</i>, <a href="#chapIV11">117</a>, <a href="#chapV02">128</a>,
+  <a href="#chapV04">139</a>, <a href="#chapVII04">202</a>, <a href="#p204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cuckoo, Hedging in the, <a href="#p26">26</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Cumeans and the bath, <a href="#p4">4</a>;<br/>
+  and the father's corpse,<a href="#p15">15</a>;<br/>
+  and the fig-tree, <a href="#p10">10</a>;<br/>
+  and the pot of honey, <a href="#p19">19</a>;<br/>
+  and the stolen clothes, <a href="#p4">4</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dark Council-House, <a href="#p57">57</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dasent's <i>Norse Tales</i>, <a href="#chapV01">126</a>, <a href="#chapVII09">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dekker's <i>Gul's Horn Book</i>,<a href="#p26"> 26</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Devil in the Meadow, <a href="#p42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Disciplina Clericalis</i>, <a href="#p45">45</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor and Patients, <a href="#p5">5</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor's Apprentice, <a href="#p168">168</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dog that ate Honey, <a href="#p18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Door, Taking Care of the, <a href="#p97">97</a>, <a href="#p98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dreams, The Good, <a href="#p92">92</a>, <a href="#p93">93</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Dubois, Abb�, <a href="#chapVItitle">171</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Ear, Biting one's own, <a href="#p86">86</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Eberhard's <i>Hieraclis</i>, <a href="#p4">3</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Eel, Drowning the, <a href="#p33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>El Conde Lucanor</i>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>English typical booby, <a href="#p139">139</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Fabliaux</i>, Le Grand's, <a href="#chapII08">39</a>,<a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Family, Best of the, <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Farmer and his Pigs, <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p>Fisher, Indian Silly Son as, <a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fishers, Gothamite, <a href="#p28">28</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fleas, Bit by, <a href="#p14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Folk-Lore in Southern India</i>, <a href="#p212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fool and the aloes-wood, <a href="#p98">98;</a><br/>
+  and the birch-tree, <a href="#p151">151</a>;<br/>
+  and the cotton, <a href="#p99">99</a>;<br/>
+  and the cup lost in the sea, <a href="#p99">99</a>;<br/>
+  and the elephant-driver, <a href="#p51">51</a>;<br/>
+  and his porridge, <a href="#p119">119</a>;<br/>
+  and the <i>Ramayana</i>, <a href="#p70">70</a>;<br/>
+  and the sack of meal, <a href="#p19">19</a>, <a href="#p26">25</a>, <a href="#chapIII05">68</a>;<br/>
+  and the shopkeeper, <a href="#p100">100</a>;<br/>
+  at his fireside, <a href="#p119">119</a>;<br/>
+  kicked by his mule, <a href="#p119">119</a>;<br/>
+  of Hereford, <a href="#p221">221</a>;<br/>
+  of Huntingdon, <a href="#p222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fools and the buffalo, <a href="#p101">101</a>;<br/>
+  and the Bull of Siva, <a href="#p48">48</a>;<br/>
+  and their inheritance, <a href="#p119">118</a>;<br/>
+  and the mosquitoes, <a href="#p95">95</a>;<br/>
+  and the palm-trees, <a href="#p96">96</a>;<br/>
+  and the trunks, <a href="#p96">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fortini's Italian Novels, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fuller, Thomas, on the Gothamites, <a href="#p20">20</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Fumivall, F.J., <a href="#p23">23</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Gaulard, The Sieur,<a href="#p8"> 8,</a> <a href="#p12">12</a>, <a href="#p20">20,</a>
+  <a href="#p76">76.</a></p>
+
+<p>Geese and Tortoise, <a href="#p52">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gesta Romanorum</i>, <a href="#p117">117</a>,<a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gibb's <i>Forty. Vaz�rs</i>, <a href="#p109">109</a>, <a href="#p166">166</a>,
+  <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Giuf�, the Sicilian Booby, <a href="#p97">97</a>, <a href="#p130">130</a>,
+  <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Goat and Old Woman, <a href="#p66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gooroo Paramartan</i>, <a href="#p29">29</a>, <a href="#p37">37</a>, <a href="#p157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Gossips and their late Husbands, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Gossips at the Alehouse, <a href="#p43">43</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gotham, Tales of the Mad Men of</i>, <a href="#ashton">xiii</a>., <a href="#p20">20</a>,
+  <a href="#p24">24</a>-<a href="#p44">44</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Grazzini's Florentine Fool, <a href="#p161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Grecian Noodles, <a href="#chapItitle">1</a>-<a href="#p15">15</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Halliwell-Phillipps, J.O., <a href="#ashton">xiii</a>., <a href="#chapI06">13</a>,
+  <a href="#p22">22</a>, <a href="#p27">27</a>, <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Hama and Hums, Men of, <a href="#p75">75.</a></p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt, W.C., <a href="#ashton">xiii</a>., <a href="#p12">12</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven, Sorry he has gone to, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Herdsman, The Foolish, <a href="#p106">106</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Herodotus, Stephens' <i>Apology</i> for, <a href="#chapIV12">Footnote</a>,
+  <a href="#p119">119</a> </p>
+
+<p>Hierokles, Jests of, <a href="#chapItitle">2</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hitopadesa</i>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Honey, Pot of, <a href="#p06">6,</a> <a href="#p18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Hunter's Dream of a Boar, <a href="#p4">4</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Icelandic Noodles, <a href="#p32">32</a>, <a href="#p64">64</a>, <a href="#chapV14">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Indian Noodles, <a href="#p29">29</a>, <a href="#p37">37</a>, <a href="#chapII10">44</a>,
+  <a href="#p48">48</a>, <a href="#p51">51</a>, <a href="#p70">70</a>, <a href="#p96">96</a>,
+  <a href="#p97">97</a>-<a href="#p106">106</a>, <a href="#p111">111</a>, <a href="#p119">118</a>,
+  <a href="#p158">158</a>, <a href="#p161">l6l</a>, <a href="#p163">163</a>, <a href="#p168">170</a>,
+  <a href="#p212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Italian Noodles, <a href="#p115">115</a>, <a href="#p127">127</a>, <a href="#p144">143</a>,
+  <a href="#p161">160</a>, <a href="#p197">197</a>, <a href="#p202">202</a>, <a href="#p204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irish Labourer and Farmer, <a href="#p8">8</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman and his ass, <a href="#p119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman and his hens, <a href="#p120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman and lost shovel, <a href="#p99">99</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishmen and mosquitoes, <a href="#p14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Irishman's Dream, <a href="#p92">92</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Jack of Dover's Quest, <a href="#appendix">219</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Japanese Noodle, <a href="#p130">130</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="jatakas"></a>Jatakas (Buddhist Birth-Stories), <a href="#p52">52</a>,
+  <a href="#p65">65</a>, <a href="#p95">95</a>, <a href="#p164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jests of Scogin</i>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Miller's Jest-Book, <a href="#chapItitle">1, 2</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Judge and Thieves, <a href="#p86">87</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Kaba�l Tales, <a href="#p37">37</a>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p>Kashm�r� Tales, <a href="#p65">65</a>, <a href="#p89">89</a>, <a href="#p111">111</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Katha Manjari</i>, <a href="#p10">11</a>, <a href="#p70">70</a>, <a href="#p100">100</a>,
+  <a href="#p163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Katha Sarit Sagara</i>, <a href="#p48">48</a>, <a href="#p53">53,</a> <a href="#p120">120</a>,
+  <a href="#p164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Kerchief, The, <a href="#p90">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, <a href="#p89">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>King's Stupid Son, The, <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Knite, 'The Gothamites', <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Knowles, J.H., <a href="#chapIII02">66</a>, <a href="#chapIV09">113</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Laird of Logan</i>, <a href="#p12">13</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Leger's <i>Contes Populaires Slaves</i>, <a href="#p128">128</a>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+
+<p>Marie de France, <a href="#chapII11">46</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres</i>, <a href="#p161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Miller's Jest-Book, <a href="#chapItitle">1, 2</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Millstone of the Schildburgers, <a href="#p57">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Minstrel and Pupil, <a href="#p166">166</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Monk Transformed, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p>Moon a green cheese, <a href="#p44">44</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Moon in the well, <a href="#p92">92</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Moon swallowed by an ass, <a href="#p45">46</a>.</p>
+
+<p>"Mortuus Loquens," <a href="#p161">160</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Mummy, The, <a href="#p15">15</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Nasr-ed-Din Khoja, <a href="#p89">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Natesa Sastri Pandit, <a href="#p212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Needham's <i>Hieroclis</i>, <a href="#p4">3</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Noodles, The Three Great, <a href="#chapVIItitle">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Norfolk Noodles, <a href="#p17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Norse Noodles, <a href="#p123">123</a>, <a href="#p207">207</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Notts Bridge, <a href="#p24">24</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Orientalist, The</i>, <a href="#chapIII07">69</a>, <a href="#p86">87</a>,
+  <a href="#chapIV10">114</a>, <a href="#chapV08">143</a>, <a href="#chapV11">160</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Pancha Tantra</i>, <a href="#chapIII04">67</a>, <a href="#chapVItitle">171</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Paradise, Man who came from, <a href="#p204">204</a>, <a href="#p210">210</a>,
+  <a href="#p212">212</a>, <a href="#p217">217</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pedant, bald man, and barber, <a href="#p06">6</a>;<br/>
+  and the lost book, <a href="#p12">13</a>;<br/>
+  and his dream, <a href="#p5">5</a>,<a href="#p06">6;</a><br/>
+  and the jar of feathers, <a href="#p53">5</a>;<br/>
+  and his jar of wine, <a href="#p09">9</a>;<br/>
+  and the mirror, <a href="#p09">9</a>;<br/>
+  and the two slave-boys, <a href="#p4">4</a>;<br/>
+  and his slave who died, <a href="#p8">8</a>;<br/>
+  and the sparrows, <a href="#p5">5</a>;<br/>
+  and the twin-brothers, <a href="#p12">12</a>;<br/>
+  and his tomb, <a href="#p8">8</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Persian Noodle, <a href="#p07">7</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Persian Tales, <a href="#p07">7</a>, <a href="#p66">66</a>, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Philotimus</i>, <a href="#p27">27</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Poet and the Dogs, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Poggius' <i>Faceti�</i> <a href="#p161">160</a>, <a href="#chapV13">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Priest of Gotham, <a href="#p42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Princess caused to grow, <a href="#p102">102</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Pupil, The Attentive, <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Ralston's <i>Russian Folk-Tales,</i> <a href="#p48">48</a>, <a href="#ralston">153</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Relic-hunter, <a href="#p95">95</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Rents of Gothamites, <a href="#p27">27</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Right Hand or Left, <a href="#p91">91</a>.</p>
+
+<p>River, "Boiling," <a href="#p29">30</a>, <a href="#p43">43</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Riviere's <i>Contes Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura</i>, <a href="#p37">37</a>,
+  <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p>Russian Noodles, <a href="#p47">47</a>, <a href="#p128">128</a>, <a href="#p151">151</a>,
+  <a href="#p154">154,</a> <a href="#p195">195</a></p>
+
+<p>Rustic and the Dog, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Sacke Full of Newes</i>, <a href="#p45">46</a>, <a href="#p97">97</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sa'd�'s <i>Gulist�n</i>, xi, <a href="#p79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Schilda, The Men of, <a href="#chapIIItitle">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Schoolmaster's Lady-love, <a href="#p83">83.</a></p>
+
+<p>Sesame, Roasted, <a href="#p120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sheep's Eyes, Casting, <a href="#chapII9">41</a>, <a href="#p126">126</a>,
+  <a href="#p127">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Sicilian Boobies, <a href="#p97">97</a>, <a href="#p116">116</a>, <a href="#p139">139</a>,
+  <a href="#p165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Silent Noodles, <a href="#p107">107</a>-<a href="#p117">117</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Silly Matt, <a href="#p123">123</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Silly Son, The, <a href="#chapVtitle">121.</a></p>
+
+<p>Simple Simon, <a href="#chapVtitle">121,</a> <a href="#p122">122</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Simpleton and Sharpers, <a href="#chapIVtitle">81.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Sindib�d N�ma</i>, <a href="#p66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="sinhal"></a>Sinhalese Noodles, <a href="#p67">67-69</a>, <a href="#p86">87</a>,
+  <a href="#p89">89</a>, <a href="#p113">113</a>, <a href="#p141">141</a>, <a href="#p165">165</a>,
+  <a href="#chapVI02">179</a>, <a href="#p217">217</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Smith, Alexander, <a href="#chapI01">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spade, The Stolen, <a href="#p94">94</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Spinning-Wheel, The, <a href="#p36">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stephens, Henry, Tales by, <a href="#p119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Stokes' <i>Indian Fairy Tales</i>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Summa Pra�dicantium</i>, The, <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Tabourot, Etienne, <a href="#chapI01">8</a>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Tales and Quicke Answeres</i>, <a href="#p161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Tawney, C.H., <a href="#chapII12">48</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Taylor's <i>Wit and Mirth</i>, <a href="#p09">9</a>, <a href="#p10">10</a>,
+  <a href="#p74">74,</a> <a href="#p79">78</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thief on a Tree, <a href="#p10">11</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thoms, W.J., <a href="#thoms">xii</a>.,<a href="#chapIIItitle"> 56</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thoroton's <i>History of Nottinghamshire</i>, <a href="#p20">21</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Three Greatest Noodles, <a href="#chapVIItitle">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Treasure Trove, <a href="#p144">144</a>, <a href="#p151">151</a>, <a href="#p154">154.</a></p>
+
+<p>Trivet, The Gothamite's, <a href="#p36">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Turkish Noodles, 11, <a href="#p86">86</a>, <a href="#p90">90</a>, <a href="#p93">93</a>,
+  <a href="#p109">109</a>, <a href="#p166">166</a>, <a href="#p167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve Fishers, The, <a href="#p28">28</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Twin Brothers, <a href="#p12">12</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Vives, Ludovicus, <a href="#chapII10">46</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p>Warton's <i>History of English Poetry</i>, <a href="#p22">22</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Washerman and his young Ass, <a href="#p103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wasp's Nest, <a href="#p40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p>"Whittle to the Tree," <a href="#p53">53.</a></p>
+
+<p>Widows, The Two, <a href="#p74">74.</a></p>
+
+<p>Wiltshire Noodles, <a href="#p17">17</a>, <a href="#p54">54.</a></p>
+
+<p>Wither's <i>Abuses Whipt and Stript</i>, <a href="#p26">26</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wolf's Tail, The, <a href="#p91">91</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wood, Anthony, on the Gotham Tales, <a href="#p23">23</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Worsted Balls, The, <a href="#p35">35</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wrestler and the Wag, <a href="#p07">7</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Wrong Man wakened, <a href="#p06">6</a>, <a href="#p07">7</a>.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/image128.png" alt="Index Footer"/></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Noodles, by W. A. Clouston
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,5795 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Noodles, by W. A. Clouston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Book of Noodles
+       Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies
+
+Author: W. A. Clouston
+
+Release Date: July 26, 2004 [EBook #13032]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF NOODLES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bob Jones, Frank van Drogen, Carol David and PG
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+BOOK OF NOODLES:
+
+_STORIES OF SIMPLETONS; OR,
+FOOLS AND THEIR FOLLIES_.
+
+BY
+W.A. CLOUSTON,
+
+_Author of "Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and
+Transformations_"
+
+"Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling when all
+is done."--_Twelfth Night_.
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
+
+1888.
+
+
+
+
+Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 67-24351
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND
+
+DAVID ROSS, LL.D., M.A., B.Sc.,
+
+PRINCIPAL OF THE
+CHURCH OF SCOTLAND TRAINING COLLEGE,
+GLASGOW,
+
+THIS COLLECTION OF FACETIAE
+
+IS DEDICATED.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_PREFACE_.
+
+
+_Like popular tales in general, the original sources of stories of
+simpletons are for the most part not traceable. The old Greek jests of
+this class had doubtless been floating about among different peoples
+long before they were reduced to writing. The only tales and apologues
+of noodles or stupid folk to which an approximate date can be assigned
+are those found in the early Buddhist books, especially in the
+"Jatakas," or Birth-stories, which are said to have been related to his
+disciples by Gautama, the illustrious founder of Buddhism, as incidents
+which occurred to himself and others in former births, and were
+afterwards put into a literary form by his followers. Many of the
+"Jatakas" relate to silly men and women, and also to stupid animals, the
+latter being, of course, men re-born as beasts, birds, or reptiles. But
+it is not to be supposed that all are of Buddhist invention; some had
+doubtless been current for ages among the Hindus before Gautama
+promulgated his mild doctrines. Scholars are, however, agreed that these
+fictions date at latest from a century prior to the Christian era._
+
+_Of European noodle-stories, as of other folk-tales, it may be said
+that, while they are numerous, yet the elements of which they are
+composed are comparatively very few. The versions domiciled in different
+countries exhibit little originality, farther than occasional
+modifications in accordance with local manners and customs. Thus for the
+stupid Brahman of Indian stories the blundering, silly son is often
+substituted in European variants; for the brose in Norse and Highland
+tales we find polenta or macaroni in Italian and Sicilian versions. The
+identity of incidents in the noodle-stories of Europe with those in what
+are for us their oldest forms, the Buddhist and Indian books, is very
+remarkable, particularly so in the case of Norse popular fictions,
+which, there is every reason to believe, were largely introduced through
+the Mongolians; and the similarity of Italian and West Highland stories
+to those of Iceland and Norway would seem to indicate the influence of
+the Norsemen in the Western Islands of Scotland and in the south of
+Europe._
+
+_It were utterly futile to attempt to trace the literary history of
+most of the noodle-stories which appear to have been current throughout
+European countries for many generations, since they have practically
+none. Soon after the invention of printing collections of facetiae were
+rapidly multiplied, the compilers taking their material from oral as
+well as written sources, amongst others, from mediaeval collections of
+"exempla" designed for the use of preachers and the writings of the
+classical authors of antiquity. With the exception of those in Buddhist
+works, it is more than probable that the noodle-stories which are found
+among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere
+amusement. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the "witless devices" of
+the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction? Only the monkish
+writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if
+reproduced in these days, must be "printed for private circulation"!_
+
+_Yet may the typical noodle of popular tales "point a moral," after a
+fashion. Poor fellow! he follows his instructions only too literally,
+and with a firm conviction that he is thus doing a very clever thing.
+But the consequence is almost always ridiculous. He practically shows
+the fallacy of the old saw that "fools learn by experience," for his
+next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every
+caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does
+everything, like the man in the play, "with the best intentions." His
+mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time; but to
+that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw: he cannot
+be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it;
+and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however,
+which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster
+to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to unexpected good fortune.
+He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet Sadi alludes when he
+says, in his charming "Gulistan," or Rose Garden, "The alchemist died of
+grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin."
+Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood"'; the
+noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries.
+In brief, he is--in stories, at least--a standing illustration of the
+"vanity of human life"!_
+
+_And now a few words as to the history and design of the following
+work. When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the
+late Mr. W.J. Thoms, who was one of the leading men in its formation,
+promised to edit for the Society the "Merry Tales of the Mad Men of
+Gotham," furnishing notes of analogous stories, a task which he was
+peculiarly qualified to perform. As time passed on, however, the
+infirmities of old age doubtless rendered the purposed work less and
+less attractive to him, and his death, after a long, useful, and
+honourable career, left it still undone. What particular plan he had
+sketched out for himself I do not know; but there can be no doubt that
+had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And,
+since he did not perform his self-allotted task, his death is surely a
+great loss, perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of
+comparative folk-lore._
+
+_More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set
+about the work, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape
+of Oriental noodle-stories; but from a remark in his reply I feared
+there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That
+fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered
+as a humble substitute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is
+displaced by a more worthy one._
+
+_Since the "Tales of the Men of Gotham" ceased to be reproduced in
+chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840,
+with an introduction by Mr. J.O. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillipps);
+and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies
+themselves: the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the
+Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the
+"Shakespeare Jest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew
+Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John
+Ashton's "Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century" (1882)._
+
+_It did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite
+analogues or variants of the Gothamite Tales; nor, on the other hand,
+was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the
+Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet
+all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be
+found in the chapters entitled "Gothamite Drolleries," of which they
+form, indeed, but a small portion._
+
+_My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources,
+many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers,
+the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing
+Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are
+current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be
+thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been
+omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an
+amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of
+popular fictions from country to country. In this design I was assisted
+by Captain R.C. Temple, one of the editors of the "Indian Antiquary,"
+and one of the authors of "Wide-awake Stories," from the Punjab and
+Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some
+curious Oriental parallels to European stories of simpletons._
+
+_W.A.C._
+
+
+*.* _While my "Popular Tales and Fictions" was passing through the
+press, in 1886, I made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present
+work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has
+had unavoidably to defer its publication till now._
+
+_W.A.C_.
+
+GLASGOW, _March_, 1888.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES                                            1-15
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES:
+
+Reputed communities of stupids in different countries--The noodles of
+Norfolk: their lord's bond; the dog and the honey; the fool and his sack
+of meal--Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham: Andrew Borde not the author--
+The two Gothamites at Notts Bridge--The hedging of the cuckoo--How the
+men of Gotham paid their rents--The twelve fishers and the courtier--The
+_Guru Paramartan_--The brothers of Bakki--Drowning the eel--The
+Gothamite and his cheese--The trivet--The buzzard--The gossips at the
+alehouse--The cheese on the highway--The wasp's nest--Casting sheep's
+eyes--The devil in the meadow--The priest of Gotham--The "boiling"
+river--The moon a green cheese--The "carles of Austwick"--The Wiltshire
+farmer and his pigs
+                                                                  16-55
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_):
+
+The men of Schilda: the dark council-house; the mill-stone; the cat--
+Sinhalese noodles: the man who observed Buddha's five precepts--The fool
+and the _Ramayana_--The two Arabian noodles--The alewife and her
+hens--"Sorry he has gone to heaven"--The man of Hama and the man of
+Hums--_Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard--The rustic and the dog
+                                                                  56-80
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_):
+
+The simpleton and the sharpers--The schoolmaster's lady-love--The judge
+and the thieves--The calf's head--The Kashmiri and his store of rice--
+The Turkish noodle: the kerchief; the caftan; the wolf's tail; the right
+hand and the left; the stolen cheese; the moon in the well--The good
+dreams--Chinese noodles: the lady and her husband; the stolen spade; the
+relic-hunter--Indian noodles: the fools and the mosquitoes; the fools
+and the palm-trees; the servants and the trunks; taking care of the
+door; the fool and the aloes-wood; the fool and the cotton; the cup lost
+in the sea; the fool and the thieves; the simpletons who ate the
+buffalo; the princess who was made to grow; the washerman's ass
+transformed; the foolish herdsman--Noodle-stories moralised--The
+brothers and their heritage--Sowing roasted sesame
+                                                                 81-120
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SILLY SON:
+
+Simple Simon--The Norse booby--The Russian booby--The Japanese noodle--
+The Arabian idiot--The English silly son--The Sinhalese noodle with the
+robbers--The Italian booby--The Arab simpleton and his cow--The Russian
+fool and the birch-tree--The silly wife deceived by her husband--The
+Indian fool on the tree-branch--The Indian monk who believed he was
+dead--The Florentine fool and the young men--The Indian silly son as a
+fisher; as a messenger; killing a mosquito; as a pupil--The best of the
+family--The doctor's apprentice
+                                                                121-170
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BRAHMANS:
+
+Introduction                                                        171
+Story of the first Brahman                                          176
+Story of the second Brahman                                         178
+Story of the third Brahman                                          181
+Story of the fourth Brahman                                         185
+Conclusion                                                          190
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES                                         191-218
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+JACK OF DOVER'S QUEST OF THE FOOL OF ALL FOOLS                      219
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOK OF NOODLES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES.
+
+
+"Old as the days of Hierokles!" is the exclamation of the "classical"
+reader on hearing a well-worn jest; while, on the like occasion, that of
+the "general" reader--a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies
+one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"--is, that it is "a Joe
+Miller;" both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in
+_joke-ology_ to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him
+as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of
+Hierokles are _old_ there can be no doubt whatever; that they were
+collected by the Alexandrian sage of that name is more than doubtful;
+while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in
+which he flourished, namely, the fifth century: it is very possible that
+some may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians! It
+is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the
+comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which
+his name is associated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's
+trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and
+cranks, and quiddities," _Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade
+Mecum_. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Miller," he
+should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it
+is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller"
+are, at least, "as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the
+man who trained his horse to live on a straw _per diem_, when it
+suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about
+a brick as a specimen of it.
+
+The collection of facetiae ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it was
+made, is composed of very short anecdotes of the sayings and doings of
+pedants, who are represented as noodles, or simpletons. In their
+existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the
+ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular facetiae of Europe
+through the churchmen of the Middle Ages, and, after having circulated
+long orally, passed into literature, whence, like other kinds of tales,
+they once more returned to the people. We find in them the indirect
+originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times
+been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also,
+perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type: as brave men lived
+before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very
+ancient pedigree! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now
+pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in
+ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which
+utterly fail to tickle our "sense of humour" in these double-distilled
+days. Of the [Greek: Asteia], or facetiae, of Hierokles, twenty-eight
+only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of
+his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, and
+published at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with
+other Greek jests--of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, Cumae, etc.--has
+been edited by Eberhard, under the title of _Philogelos Hieraclis el
+Philagrii Facetia_ which was published at Berlin in 1869.
+
+In attempting to classify the best of these relics of ancient wit--or
+witlessness, rather--it is often difficult to decide whether a
+particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an
+example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles
+or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to
+place the story of the men of Cumae, who were expecting shortly to be
+visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they
+filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order
+that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.
+
+But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on
+going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen
+years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you
+one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his
+father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done
+me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's
+estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred
+years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.
+
+Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was the hunter who was constantly
+disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep
+with him. Another, surely, was the man of Cumae who wished to sell some
+clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should
+not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of
+Abdera who punished a runaway ass for having got into the gymnasium and
+upset the olive oil. Having brought all the asses of the town together,
+as a caution, they flogged the delinquent ass before his fellows.
+
+Some of the jests of Hierokles may be considered either as witticisms or
+witless sayings of noodles; for example, the story of the man who
+recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and
+afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor
+whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should
+not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of the pedant who
+said to the doctor, "Pardon me for not having been sick so long;" or
+this, "I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night:" quoth the
+other, "By the gods, I was so busy, I did not hear you."
+
+But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some
+sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe,
+and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like
+ripe fruit again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he
+had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after
+stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the
+cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to
+him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You
+may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and
+again, in the man of Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the rope
+broke, and he hurt his head; but after having the wound dressed by the
+doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a
+trace of them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had
+pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up; when he told a
+friend of his mishap, he said, "Why do you sleep barefooted?"
+
+The following jest is spread--_mutatis mutandis_--over all Europe:
+A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in company, agreed
+to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He
+propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time
+came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, "What a fool is
+this barber," he cried, "for he has roused the bald man instead of me!"
+
+A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the
+heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro.
+Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when
+he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up,
+he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a
+rage, "Tuts, tuts! The silly body has waukened the wrang man."
+
+In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a
+Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in
+forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew
+near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, "I
+shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I
+have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a
+pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young
+wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to
+spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the
+pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In
+the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his
+companion's leg, he called to him, "Hey! get up, for I am perplexed in
+my mind. Who am I, and who are you? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin
+on your leg? And if you are yourself, why is the pumpkin not on my leg?"
+
+Modern counterparts of the following jest are not far to seek: Quoth a
+man to a pedant, "The slave I bought of you has died." Rejoined the
+other, "By the gods, I do assure you that he never once played me such a
+trick while I had him." The old Greek pedant is transformed into an
+Irishman, in our collections of facetiae, who applied to a farmer for
+work. "I'll have nothing to do with you," said the farmer, "for the last
+five Irishmen I had all died on my hands." Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can
+bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen I've worked for that I
+never did such a thing." And the jest is thus told in an old translation
+of _Les Contes Facetieux de Sieur Gaulard_: "Speaking of one of his
+Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said, Truly it
+was one of the handsomest and best Curtails in all the Country; he neuer
+shewed me such a trick before in all his life."[1]
+
+Equally familiar is the jest of the pedant who was looking out for a
+place to prepare a tomb for himself, and on a friend indicating what he
+thought to be a suitable spot, "Very true," said the pedant, "but it is
+unhealthy." And we have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the
+following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it
+below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his
+wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had
+communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor
+had not been drawn off from below. "Why, you fool," said he, "it is not
+the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off."
+
+It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that
+he might know how he looked when asleep--a jest which reappears in
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ in this form: "A wealthy monsieur in
+France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his
+man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry
+with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be
+true; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so,
+except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes; and therefore
+I will have a great Looking glasse at my bed's feet for the purpose to
+try whether thou art a lying knaue or not."[2]
+
+Not unlike some of our "Joe Millers" is the following: A citizen of
+Cumae, on an ass, passed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree
+loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the ass went on,
+leaving him suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him
+what he did there. The man replied, "I fell off the ass."--An analogue
+to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, entitled _Katha
+Manjari_: One day a thief climbed up a cocoa-nut tree in a garden to
+steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running
+from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the
+tree. "Why were you up that tree?" asked the gardener. The thief
+replied, "My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf." "Ha! ha!
+is there grass, then, on a cocoa-nut tree?" said the gardener. "No,"
+quoth the thief; "but I did not know; therefore I came down again."--And
+we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went
+into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of
+vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom.
+The gardener, coming suddenly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said,
+"What are you seeking here?" The simpleton replied, "For some days past
+a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither." "But who
+pulled up these vegetables?" "As the wind blew very violently, it cast
+me here and there; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving
+myself remained in my hands." "Ah," said the gardener, "but who filled
+this sack with them?" "Well, that is the very question I was about to
+ask myself when you came up."
+
+The propensity with which Irishmen are credited of making ludicrous
+bulls is said to have its origin, not from any lack of intelligence, but
+rather in the fancy of that lively race, which often does not wait for
+expression until the ideas have taken proper verbal form. Be this as it
+may, a considerable portion of the bulls popularly ascribed to Irishmen
+are certainly "old as the jests of Hierokles," and are, moreover,
+current throughout Europe. Thus in Hierokles we read that one of
+twin-brothers having recently died, a pedant, meeting the survivor,
+asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased.--Taylor has
+this in his _Wit and Mirth_, and he probably heard it from some one
+who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard: "A nobleman of
+France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he
+said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remember I haue often seene
+thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore
+tenants, and my name is T.J. I remember better now (said my Lord); there
+were two brothers of you, but one is dead; I pray, which of you doth
+remaine alive?"--Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the notes to his edition of
+Taylor's collection _(Shakespeare Jest Books_, Third Series), cites
+a Scotch parallel from _The Laird of Logan_: "As the Paisley
+steamer came alongside the quay[3] at the city of the Seestus,[4] a
+denizen of St. Mirren's hailed one of the passengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu
+hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the
+old nursery rhyme,--
+
+  "Ho, Master Teague, what is your story?
+  I went to the wood, and killed a tory;[5]
+  I went to the wood, and killed another:
+  Was it the same, or was it his brother?"[6]
+
+We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and
+sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating
+lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards
+meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to
+him, "Don't grieve; buy some lettuces; eat them at a corner; turn round
+it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there
+anything like this in "Joe Miller"?--Two lazy fellows were sleeping
+together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with
+it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up,
+and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead,"
+replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster,
+and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?--A pedant's
+little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom
+he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."
+
+An epigram in the _Anthologia_ may find a place among noodle
+stories:
+
+  "A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light,
+  And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"
+
+This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two
+Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept
+their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did
+not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus
+puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the
+other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his
+bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's
+one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"
+
+Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the
+old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cumae having died at Alexandria,
+the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at
+the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of
+bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any
+peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol
+replied, "He had a cough."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Etienne Tabourot, the author of this amusing little book,
+who was born at Dijon in 1549 and died in 1590, is said to have written
+the tales in ridicule of the inhabitants of Franche Comte, who were then
+the subjects of Spain, and reputed to be stupid and illiterate. From a
+manuscript translation, entitled _Bizarrures; or, The Pleasant and
+Witlesse and Simple Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy_,
+purporting to be made by "J.B., of Charterhouse," probably about the
+year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London,
+fifty copies, edited, with a preface, by "A.S." (Alexander Smith), were
+printed at Glasgow in 1884. I am indebted to the courtesy of my friend
+Mr. F.T. Barrett, Librarian of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for
+directing my attention to this curious work, a copy of which is among
+the treasures of that already important institution.
+
+[2] "_Wit and Mirth_. Chargeably collected out of Taverns,
+Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Allyes, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops,
+Highwayes, and Water-passages. Made up and fashioned into Clinches,
+Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips, and Jerkes. Apothegmatically bundled vp
+and garbled at the request of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635)--such is the
+elaborate title of the collection of jests made by John Taylor, the
+Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The
+above story had, however, been told previously in the _Bizarrures_
+of the Sieur Gaulard: "His cousine Dantressesa reproued him one day that
+she had found him sleeping in an ill posture with his mouth open, to
+order which for the tyme to come he commanded his seruant to hang a
+looking glasse upon the curtaine at his Bed's feet, that he might
+henceforth see if he had a good posture in his sleep."
+
+[3] Only a Liliputian steamer could go up the "river" Cart!
+
+[4] "Seestu" is a nickname for Paisley, the good folks of that busy town
+being in the habit of frequently interjecting, "Seestu?"--_i.e.,_
+"Seest thou?"--in their familiar colloquies.
+
+[5] "Tory" is said to be the Erse term for a robber.
+
+[6] Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes of England_, vol. iv. of Percy
+Society's publications.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES, WITH VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES.
+
+
+It seems to have been common to most countries, from very ancient times,
+for the inhabitants of a particular district, town, or village to be
+popularly regarded as pre-eminently foolish, arrant noodles or
+simpletons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly sayings and doings
+of the people of Baeotia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs the
+folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The
+Kabail, or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad
+as little better than idiots. The Schildburgers are the noodles of
+German popular tales. In Switzerland the townsmen of Belmont, near
+Lausanne, are typical blockheads. And England has her "men of Gotham"--a
+village in Nottinghamshire--who are credited with most of the noodle
+stories which have been current among the people for centuries past,
+though other places share to some extent in their not very enviable
+reputation: in Yorkshire the "carles" of Austwick, in Craven; some
+villages near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire; and in the counties of
+Sutherland and Ross, the people of Assynt.
+
+But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a
+similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we
+learn from a curious Latin poem, _Descriptio Norfolciensium_,
+written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of
+Peterborough, which is printed in Wright's _Early Mysteries and Other
+Latin Poems_. This poem sets out with stating that Caesar having
+despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were
+bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the
+most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other
+peoples. Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of
+Norfolk is the following: Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a
+large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future
+burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of
+green wax. To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk.
+When it became dark, they had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure
+one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should
+use the wax seal of the bond for a candle--they should still have the
+words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate; so they made
+the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their
+merry-making. This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he
+reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice,
+at the same time producing the bond. The lord calls a clerk to examine
+the document, who pronounces it to be null and void in the absence of
+the lord's seal, and so their oppression continues.
+
+Another story is of a man of Norfolk who put some honey in a jar, and in
+his absence his dog came and ate it all up. When he returned home and
+was told of this, he took the dog and forced him to disgorge the honey,
+put it back into the jar, and took it to market. A customer having
+examined the honey, declared it to be putrid. "Well," said the
+simpleton, "it was in a vessel that was not very clean."--Wright has
+pointed out that this reappears in an English jest-book of the
+seventeenth century. "A cleanly woman of Cambridgeshire made a good
+store of butter, and whilst she went a little way out of the town about
+some earnest occasions, a neighbour's dog came in in the meantime, and
+eat up half the butter. Being come home, her maid told her what the dog
+had done, and that she had locked him up in the dairy-house. So she took
+the dog and hang'd him up by the heels till she had squeez'd all the
+butter out of his throat again, whilst she, pretty, cleanly soul, took
+and put it to the rest of the butter, and made it up for Cambridge
+market. But her maid told her she was ashamed to see such a nasty trick
+done. 'Hold your peace, you fool!' says she; ''tis good enough for
+schollards. Away with it to market!'"[1]--Perhaps the original form is
+found in the _Philogelos Hieraclis et Philagrii Facetiae_, edited by
+Eberhard. A citizen of Cumae was selling honey. Some one came up and
+tasted it, and said that it was all bad. He replied, "If a mouse had not
+fallen into it, I would not sell it."
+
+The well-known Gothamite jest of the man who put a sack of meal on his
+own shoulders to save his horse, and then got on the animal's back and
+rode home, had been previously told of a man of Norfolk, thus:
+
+  "Ad foram ambulant diebus singulis;
+  Saccum de lolio portant in humeris,
+  Jumentis ne noccant: bene fatuis,
+  Ut prolocutiis sum acquantur bestiis."
+
+It reappears in the _Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard:[2] "Seeing
+one day his mule charged with a verie great Portmantle, [he] said to his
+groome that was upon the back of the mule, thou lasie fellowe, hast thou
+no pitie upon that poore Beast? Take that portmantle upon thine owne
+shoulders to ease the poore Beast." And in our own time it is told of an
+Irish exciseman with a keg of smuggled whisky.
+
+How such stories came to be transferred to the men of Gotham, it were
+fruitless to inquire.[3] Similar jests have been long current in other
+countries of Europe and throughout Asia, and accident or malice may have
+fixed the stigma of stupidity on any particular spot. There is probably
+no ground whatever for crediting the tale of the origin of the proverb,
+"As wise as the men of Gotham," although it is reproduced in Thoroton's
+_Nottinghamshire_, i. 42-3:
+
+"King John, intending to pass through this place, towards Nottingham,
+was prevented by the inhabitants, they apprehending that the ground over
+which a king passed was for ever after to become a public road. The
+King, incensed at their proceedings, sent from his court soon afterwards
+some of his servants to inquire of them the reason of their incivility
+and ill-treatment, that he might punish them. The villagers, hearing of
+the approach of the King's servants, thought of an expedient to turn
+away his Majesty's displeasure from them. When the messengers arrived at
+Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to
+drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts
+upon a large barn to shade the wood from the sun; and others were
+engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush.
+In short, they were all employed in some foolish way or other, which
+convinced the King's servants that it was a village of fools."
+
+The fooleries ascribed to the men of Gotham were probably first
+collected and printed in the sixteenth century; but that jests of the
+"fools of Gotham" were current among the people long before that period
+is evident from a reference to them in the _Widkirk Miracle Plays_,
+the only existing MS. of which was written about the reign of Henry VI.:
+
+  "Foles al sam;
+  Sagh I never none so fare
+  Bote the soles of Gotham."
+
+The oldest known copy of the _Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam_
+was printed in 1630, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
+Warton, in his _History of English Poetry_, mentions an edition,
+which he says was printed about 1568, by Henry Wikes, but he had never
+seen it. But Mr. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillips), in his _Notices
+of Popular English Histories_, cites one still earlier, which he
+thinks was probably printed between 1556 and 1566: "Merie Tales of the
+Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A.B., of Phisike Doctour.
+[colophon:] Imprinted at London, in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at
+the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n.d. 12 deg., black
+letter." The book is mentioned in _A Briefe and Necessary
+Introduction_, etc., by E.D. (8vo, 1572), among a number of other
+folk-books: "Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, Arthur of the Round
+Table, Huon of Bourdeaux, Oliver of the Castle, The Four Sonnes of
+Amond, The Witles Devices of Gargantua, Howleglas, Esop, Robyn Hoode,
+Adam Bell, Frier Rushe, The Fooles of Gotham, and a thousand such
+other."[4] And Anthony a Wood, in his _Athenae Oxonienses_ (1691-2),
+says it was "printed at London in the time of K. Hen. 8, in whose reign
+and after it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by scholars and
+gentlemen. Afterwards being often printed, [it] is now sold only on the
+stalls of ballad-singers." It is likely that the estimation in which the
+book was held "by scholars and gentlemen" was not a little due to the
+supposition that "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," by whom the tales were said
+to have been "gathered together," was none other than Andrew Borde, or
+Boorde, a Carthusian friar before the Reformation, one of the physicians
+to Henry VIII., a great traveller, even beyond the bounds of
+Christendom, "a thousand or two and more myles," a man of great
+learning, withal "of fame facete." For to Borde have the _Merie Tales
+of the Mad Men of Gotham_ been generally ascribed down to our own
+times. There is, however, as Dr. F.J. Furnivall justly remarks, "no good
+external evidence that the book was written by Borde, while the internal
+evidence is against his authorship."[5] In short, the ascription of its
+compilation to "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," was clearly a device of the
+printer to sell the book.[6]
+
+The _Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham_ continued to be printed as a
+chap-book down to the close of the first quarter of the present century;
+and much harmless mirth they must have caused at cottage firesides in
+remote rural districts occasionally visited by the ubiquitous pedlar, in
+whose well-filled pack of all kinds of petty merchandise such drolleries
+were sure to be found. Unlike other old collections of facetiae, the
+little work is remarkably free from objectionable stories; some are
+certainly not very brilliant, having, indeed, nothing in them
+particularly "Gothamite," and one or two seem to have been adapted from
+the Italian novelists. Of the twenty tales comprised in the collection,
+the first is certainly one of the most humorous:
+
+There were two men of Gotham, and one of them was going to the market at
+Nottingham to buy sheep, and the other was coming from the market, and
+both met on Nottingham bridge. "Well met!" said the one to the other.
+"Whither are you a-going?" said he that came from Nottingham. "Marry,"
+said he that was going thither, "I am going to the market to buy sheep."
+"Buy sheep!" said the other. "And which way will you bring them home?"
+"Marry," said the other, "I will bring them over this bridge." "By Robin
+Hood," said he that came from Nottingham, "but thou shalt not." "By Maid
+Marian," said he that was going thither, "but I will." "Thou shalt not,"
+said the one. "I will," said the other. Then they beat their staves
+against the ground, one against the other, as if there had been a
+hundred sheep betwixt them. "Hold them there," said the one. "Beware of
+the leaping over the bridge of my sheep," said the other. "They shall
+all come this way," said one. "But they shall not," said the other. And
+as they were in contention, another wise man that belonged to Gotham
+came from the market, with a sack of meal upon his horse; and seeing and
+hearing his neighbours at strife about sheep, and none betwixt them,
+said he, "Ah, fools, will you never learn wit? Then help me," said he
+that had the meal, "and lay this sack upon my shoulder." They did so,
+and he went to the one side of the bridge and unloosed the mouth of the
+sack, and did shake out all the meal into the river. Then said he, "How
+much meal is there in the sack, neighbours?" "Marry," answered they,
+"none." "Now, by my faith," answered this wise man, "even so much wit is
+there in your two heads to strive for the thing which you have not." Now
+which was the wisest of these three persons, I leave you to judge.
+
+Allusions to these tales are of frequent occurrence in our literature of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dekker, in his _Gul's Horn
+Book_ (1609), says, "It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy
+head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, but rather set it
+on faster, bestowing upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise
+men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should
+not be able to compare with thine;" and Wither, in his _Abuses_,
+says,
+
+  "And he that tryes to doe it might have bin
+  One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,"
+
+alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols:
+
+On a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she
+should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge
+round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it,
+and said, "Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor
+drink." The cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself encompassed within
+the hedge, flew away. "A vengeance on her!" said they. "We made not our
+hedge high enough."
+
+The tales had, however, attained popular favour much earlier. Mr.
+Halliwell-Phillipps has pointed out that in _Philotimus_ (1583) the
+men of Gotham are remembered as having "tied their rentes in a purse
+about an hare's necke, and bade her to carrie it to their landlord," an
+excellent plan, which is thus described:
+
+On a time the men of Gotham had forgotten to pay their rent to their
+landlord. The one said to the other, "To-morrow is our payday, and what
+remedy shall we find to send our money to our lord?" The one said, "This
+day I have taken a quick [i.e., live] hare, and she shall carry it, for
+she is light of foot." "Be it so," said all. "She shall have a letter
+and a purse to put in our money, and we shall direct her the ready way."
+And when the letters were written, and the money put in a purse, they
+did tie them about the hare's neck, saying, "First thou must go to
+Loughborough, and then to Leicester; and at Newark there is our lord,
+and commend us to him, and there is his duty [i.e., due]." The hare, as
+soon as she was out of their hands, she did run a clean contrary way.
+Some cried to her, saying, "Thou must go to Loughborough first." Some
+said, "Let the hare alone; she can tell a nearer way than the best of us
+all do: let her go." Another said, "It is a noble hare; let her alone;
+she will not keep the highway for fear of the dogs."
+
+The well-worn "Joe Miller" of the Irishman who tried to count the party
+to which he belonged, and always forgot to count himself, which is also
+known in Russia and in the West Highlands of Scotland, is simply a
+variant of this drollery:
+
+On a certain day there were twelve men of Gotham that went to fish, and
+some stood on dry land; and in going home one said to the other, "We
+have ventured wonderfully in wading: I pray God that none of us come
+home and be drowned." "Nay, marry," said one to the other, "let us see
+that; for there did twelve of us come out." Then they told (i.e.,
+counted) themselves, and every one told eleven. Said one to the other,
+"There is one of us drowned." They went back to the brook where they had
+been fishing, and sought up and down for him that was wanting, making
+great lamentation. A courtier, coming by, asked what it was they sought
+for, and why they were sorrowful. "Oh," said they, "this day we went to
+fish in the brook; twelve of us came out together, and one is drowned."
+Said the courtier, "Tell [count] how many there be of you." One of them
+said, "Eleven," and he did not tell himself. "Well," said the courtier,
+"what will you give me, and I will find the twelfth man?" "Sir," said
+they, "all the money we have got." "Give me the money," said the
+courtier, and began with the first, and gave him a stroke over the
+shoulders with his whip, which made him groan, saying, "Here is one,"
+and so served them all, and they all groaned at the matter. When he came
+to the last, he paid him well, saying, "Here is the twelfth man." "God's
+blessing on thy heart," said they, "for thus finding our dear brother!"
+
+This droll adventure is also found in the _Gooroo Paramartan_, a
+most amusing work, written in the Tamil language by Beschi, an Italian
+Jesuit, who was missionary in India from 1700 till his death, in 1742.
+The Gooroo (teacher) and his five disciples, who are, like himself,
+noodles, come to a river which they have to cross, and which, as the
+Gooroo informs them, is a very dangerous stream. To ascertain whether it
+is at present "asleep," one of them dips his lighted cheroot in the
+water, which, of course, extinguishes it, upon which he returns to the
+Gooroo and reports that the river is still in a dangerous mood. So they
+all sit down, and begin to tell stories of the destructive nature of
+this river. One relates how his grandfather and another man were
+journeying together, driving two asses laden with bags of salt, and
+coming to this river, they resolved to bathe in it, and the asses,
+tempted by the coolness of the water, at the same time knelt down in it.
+When the men found that their salt had disappeared, they congratulated
+themselves on their wonderful escape from the devouring stream, which
+had eaten up all their salt without even opening the bags. Another
+disciple relates a story similar to the so-called AEsopian fable of the
+dog and his shadow, this river being supposed to have devoured a piece
+of meat which the dog had dropped into it. At length the river is found
+to be quiescent, a piece of charred wood having been plunged into it
+without producing any effect like that of the former experiment; and
+they determine to ford it, but with great caution. Arrived on the other
+side, they count their number, like the men of Gotham, and discover that
+one is not present. A traveller, coming up, finds the missing man by
+whacking each of them over the shoulder. The Gooroo, while gratified
+that the lost one was found, was grumbling at his sore bones--for the
+traveller had struck pretty hard--when an old woman, on learning of
+their adventure, told them that, in her young days, she and her female
+companions were once returning home from a grand festival, and adopted
+another plan for ascertaining if they were all together. Gathering some
+of the cattle-droppings, they kneaded them into a cake, in which they
+each made a mark with the tip of the nose, and then counted the marks--a
+plan which the Gooroo and his disciples should make use of on future
+occasions.
+
+The Abbe Dubois has given a French translation of the Adventures of the
+Gooroo Paramartan among the _Contes Divers_ appended to his not
+very valuable selection of tales and apologues from Tamil, Telegu, and
+Cannada versions of the _Panchatantra_ (Five Chapters, not "Cinq
+Ruses," as he renders it), a Sanskrit form of the celebrated Fables of
+Bidpai, or Pilpay. An English rendering of Beschi's work, by Babington,
+forms one of the publications of the Oriental Translation Fund. Dubois
+states that he found the tales of the Gooroo current in Indian countries
+where Beschi's name was unknown, and he had no doubt of their Indian
+origin. However this may be, the work was probably designed, as
+Babington thinks, to satirise the Brahmans, as well as to furnish a
+pleasing vehicle of instruction to those Jesuits in India whose duties
+required a knowledge of the Tamil language.
+
+A story akin to that of the Gothamite fishers, if not, indeed, an older
+form of it, is told in Iceland of the Three Brothers of Bakki, who came
+upon one of the hot springs which abound in that volcanic island, and
+taking off their boots and stockings, put their feet into the water and
+began to bathe them. When they would rise up, they were perplexed to
+know each his own feet, and so they sat disconsolate, until a wayfarer
+chanced to pass by, to whom they told their case, when he soon relieved
+their minds by striking the feet of each, for which important service
+they gave him many thanks.[7] This story reappears, slightly modified,
+in Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_: A party of
+masons, engaged in building a dyke, take shelter during a heavy shower,
+and when it has passed, they continue sitting, because their legs had
+got mixed together, and none knew his own, until they were put right by
+a traveller with a big stick. We have here an evident relic of the
+Norsemen's occupation of the Hebrides.
+
+Several of the tales of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in
+Gaelic. That of the twelve fishers has been already mentioned, and here
+is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in
+similar terms in his _Tales of the West Highlands_:
+
+When that Good Friday was come, the men of Gotham did cast their heads
+together what to do with their white herring, their red herring, their
+sprats, and salt fish. One consulted with the other, and agreed that
+such fish should be cast into a pond or pool (the which was in the
+middle of the town), that it might increase the next year; and every man
+did cast them into the pool. The one said, "I have thus many white
+herrings;" another said, "I have thus many sprats;" another said, "I
+have thus many salt fishes; let us all go together into the pool, and we
+shall fare like lords the next Lent." At the beginning of next Lent the
+men did draw the pond, to have their fish, and there was nothing but a
+great eel. "Ah," said they all, "a mischief on this eel, for he hath eat
+up all our fish!" "What shall we do with him?" said the one to the
+other. "Kill him!" said one of them. "Chop him all to pieces!" said
+another. "Nay, not so," said the other; "let us drown him." "Be it so,"
+said all. They went to another pool, and did cast the eel into the
+water. "Lie there," said they, "and shift for thyself, for no help thou
+shalt have of us;" and there they left the eel to be drowned.
+
+Campbell's Gaelic story differs so little from the above that we must
+suppose it to have been derived directly from the English chap-book.
+Oral tradition always produces local variations from a written story, of
+which we have an example in a Gaelic version of this choice exploit:
+
+There was a man of Gotham who went to the market of Nottingham to sell
+cheese; and as he was going down the hill to Nottingham Bridge, one of
+his cheeses fell out of his wallet and ran down the hill. "Ah," said the
+fellow, "can you run to the market alone? I will now send one after the
+other;" then laying down the wallet and taking out the cheeses, he
+tumbled them down the hill one after the other; and some ran into one
+bush, and some into another; so at last he said, "I do charge you to
+meet me in the market-place." And when the man came into the market to
+meet the cheeses, he stayed until the market was almost done, then went
+and inquired of his neighbours and other men if they did see his cheeses
+come to market. "Why, who should bring them?" said one of the
+neighbours. "Marry, themselves," said the fellow; "they knew the way
+well enough," said he: "a vengeance on them! For I was afraid to see my
+cheeses run so fast, that they would run beyond the market. I am
+persuaded that they are at this time almost as far as York." So he
+immediately takes a horse and rides after them to York; but to this day
+no man has ever heard of the cheeses.
+
+In one Gaelic variant a woman is going to Inverness with a basket filled
+with balls of worsted of her own spinning, and going down a hill, one of
+the balls tumbles out and rolls along briskly, upon which she sends the
+others after it, holding the ends of each in her hand; and when she
+reaches the town, she finds a "ravelled hank" instead of her neat balls
+of worsted. In another version a man goes to market with two bags of
+cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. After waiting at
+the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his
+misfortune. She goes to the foot of the hill and finds all the cheese.
+
+The next Gothamite tale also finds its counterpart in the Gaelic
+stories: There was a man of Gotham who bought at Nottingham a trivet, or
+brandiron, and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the
+carriage thereof, and he set it down; and seeing that it had three feet,
+he said, "Ha! hast thou three feet, and I but two? Thou shalt bear me
+home, if thou wilt," and set himself down thereupon, and said to the
+trivet, "Bear me as long as I have borne thee; but if thou do not, thou
+shalt stand still for me." The man of Gotham did see that his trivet
+would not go farther. "Stand still, in the mayor's name," said he, "and
+follow me if thou wilt. I will tell thee right the way to my home." When
+he did come to his house, his wife said, "Where is my trivet?" The man
+said, "He hath three legs, and I have but two; and I did teach him the
+way to my house. Let him come home if he will." "Where left ye the
+trivet?" said the woman. "At Gotham hill," said the man. His wife did
+run and fetch home the trivet her own self, or else she had lost it
+through her husband's wit.
+
+In Campbell's version a man having been sent by his wife with her
+spinning-wheel to get mended, as he was returning home with it the wind
+set the wheel in motion, so he put it down, and bidding it go straight
+to his house, set off himself. When he reached home, he asked his wife
+if the spinning-wheel had arrived yet, and on her replying that it had
+not, "I thought as much," quoth he, "for I took the shorter way."
+
+A somewhat similar story is found in Riviere's French collection of
+tales of the Kabail, Algeria, to this effect: The mother of a youth of
+the Beni-Jennad clan gave him a hundred reals to buy a mule; so he went
+to market, and on his way met a man carrying a water-melon for sale.
+"How much for the melon?" he asks. "What will you give?" says the man.
+"I have only got a hundred reals," answered the booby; "had I more, you
+should have it." "Well," rejoined the man, "I'll take them." Then the
+youth took the melon and handed over the money. "But tell me," says he,
+"will its young one be as green as it is?" "Doubtless," answered the
+man, "it will be green." As the booby was going home, he allowed the
+melon to roll down a slope before him. It burst on its way, when up
+started a frightened hare. "Go to my house, young one," he shouted.
+"Surely a green animal has come out of it." And when he got home, he
+inquired of his mother if the young one had arrived.
+
+In the _Gooroo Paramartan_ there is a parallel incident to this
+last. The noodles are desirous of providing their Gooroo with a horse,
+and a man sells them a pumpkin, telling them it is a mare's egg, which
+only requires to be sat upon for a certain time to produce a fine young
+horse. The Gooroo himself undertakes to hatch the mare's egg, since his
+disciples have all other matters to attend to; but as they are carrying
+it through a jungle, it falls down and splits into pieces; just then a
+frightened hare runs before them; and they inform the Gooroo that, a
+fine young colt came out of the mare's egg, with very long ears, and ran
+off with the speed of the wind. It would have proved a fine horse for
+their revered Gooroo, they add; but he consoles himself for the loss by
+reflecting that such an animal would probably have run away with him.
+
+A number of the Gothamite tales in the printed collection are not only
+inferior to those which are preserved orally, but can be considered in
+no sense examples of preeminent folly. Three consist of tricks played by
+women upon their husbands, such as are found in the ordinary jest-books
+of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In one a man, who had taken
+a buzzard, invites some friends to dine with him. His wife, with two of
+her gossips, having secretly eaten the buzzard, kills and cooks an old
+goose, and sets it before him and his guests; the latter call him a
+knave to mock them thus with an old goose, and go off in great anger.
+The husband, resolved to put himself right with his friends, stuffs the
+buzzard's feathers into a sack, in order to show them that they were
+mistaken in thinking he had tried to deceive them with an old goose
+instead of a fine fat buzzard. But before he started on this business,
+his wife contrived to substitute the goose's feathers, which he
+exhibited to his friends as those of the buzzard, and was soundly
+cudgelled for what they believed to be a second attempt to mock them.--
+Two other stories seem to be derived from the Italian novelists: of the
+man who intended cutting off his wife's hair[8] and of the man who
+defied his wife to cuckold him. Two others turn upon wrong responses at
+a christening and a marriage, which have certainly nothing Gothamite in
+them. Another is a dull story of a Scotchman who employed a carver to
+make him as a sign of his inn a boar's head, the tradesman supposing
+from his northern pronunciation that he meant _bare_ head.--In the
+nineteenth tale, a party of gossips are assembled at the alehouse, and
+each relates in what manner she is profitable to her husband: one saves
+candles by sending all her household to bed in daylight; another, like
+the old fellow and Tib his wife in _Jolly Good Ale and Old_, eats
+little meat, but can swig a gallon or two of ale, and so forth.
+
+We have, however, our Gothamite once more in the story of him who,
+seeing a fine cheese on the ground as he rode along the highway, tried
+to pick it up with his sword, and finding his sword too short, rode back
+to fetch a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found
+the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it!" quoth he. "If I had had this
+sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it!" Also
+in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch
+of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down
+the smithy--a story which has done duty in modern days to "point a
+moral" in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place of
+the honest Gothamite![9]
+
+The following properly belongs to stories of the "silly son" class:
+There was a young man of Gotham the which should go wooing to a fair
+maid. His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, "When thou dost look
+upon her, cast a sheep's-eye, and say, 'How do ye, sweet pigsnie?'" The
+fellow went to the butcher's and bought seven or eight sheep's eyes; and
+when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a
+sheep's eye, saying, "How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?" "How do I?"
+said the wench. "Swine's-face, why dost thou cast the sheep's eye upon
+me?" "O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" "I defy thee,
+Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, "What,
+sweet pigsnie! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou
+wilt be a foul sow." "Walk, knave, walk!" said she; "for if thou live
+till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool."
+
+It is very evident that the men of Gotham were of "honest" Jack
+Falstaff's opinion that the better part of valour is discretion: On a
+time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great
+grasshopper. He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his
+neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in
+the grass. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with
+halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper. When
+they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one
+to the other, "Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will
+not meddle with him." And so they returned again, and said, "We were all
+blessed this day that we went no farther." "Ah, cowards," said he that
+had his scythe in the mead, "help me to fetch my scythe." "No," said
+they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin: better it is to lose thy
+scythe than to mar us all."
+
+There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed
+collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednesday the
+priest said to the men of Gotham, "If I should enjoin you to prayer,
+there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too
+old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not
+eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour
+all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will
+come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he
+did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after
+another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might
+have part of his meat. "And as for alms," said the priest, "ye be
+beggars all, except one or two; therefore bestow alms on yourselves."
+
+Among the numerous stories of the Gothamites preserved orally, but not
+found in the collection of "A.B., of Phisicke Doctour," is the
+following, which seems to be of Indian extraction:
+
+One day some men of Gotham were walking by the riverside, and came to a
+place where the contrary currents caused the water to boil as in a
+whirlpool. "See how the water boils!" says one. "If we had plenty of
+oatmeal," says another, "we might make enough porridge to serve all the
+village for a month." So it was resolved that part of them should go to
+the village and fetch their oatmeal, which was soon brought and thrown
+into the river. But there presently arose the question of how they were
+to know when the porridge was ready. This difficulty was overcome by the
+offer of one of the company to jump in, and it was agreed that if he
+found it ready for use, he should signify the same to his companions.
+The man jumped in, and found the water deeper than he expected. Thrice
+he rose to the surface, but said nothing. The others, impatient at his
+remaining so long silent, and seeing him smack his lips, took this for
+an avowal that the porridge was good, and so they all jumped in after
+him and were drowned.
+
+Another traditional Gothamite story is related of a villager coming home
+at a late hour and, seeing the reflection of the moon in a horse-pond,
+believed it to be a green cheese, and roused all his neighbours to help
+him to draw it out. They raked and raked away until a passing cloud sank
+the cheese, when they returned to their homes grievously
+disappointed.[10]--This is also related of the villagers near the
+Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire, and the _sobriquet_ of
+"moon-rakers," applied to Wiltshire folk in general, is said to have had
+its origin in the incident; but they assert that it was a keg of
+smuggled brandy, which had been sunk in a pond, that the villagers were
+attempting to fish up, when the exciseman coming suddenly upon the
+scene, they made him believe they were raking the reflection of the
+moon, thinking it a green cheese, an explanation which is on a par with
+the apocryphal tale of the Gothamites and the messengers of King John.
+
+The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable
+antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is
+referred to by Rabelais, and was doubtless the subject of a popular
+French tale in his time. In the twenty-second story of the _Disciplina
+Clericalis_ of Peter Alfonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was baptised in
+1106, a fox leaves a wolf in a well, looking after a supposed cheese,
+made by the image of the moon in the water; and the same fable had been
+told by the Talmudists in the fifth century.[11] The well-known "Joe
+Miller" of the party of Irishmen who endeavoured to reach a "green
+cheese" in the river by hanging one by another's legs finds its parallel
+in a Mecklenburg story, in which some men by the same contrivance tried
+to get a stone from the bottom of a well, and the incident is thus
+related in the old English jest-book entitled _The Sacke Full of
+Newes_:
+
+There were three young men going to Lambeth along by the waterside, and
+one played with the other, and they cast each other's caps into the
+water in such sort as they could not get their caps again. But over the
+place where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did
+cover a great deal of the water. One of them said to the rest, "Sirs, I
+have found a notable way to come by them. First I will make myself fast
+by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is
+with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take
+hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands
+he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand." And so they
+did; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he
+that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, "Soft, sirs! My girdle
+slacketh." "Make it fast quickly," said they. But as he was untying it
+to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well
+washed for their pains.
+
+Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who
+planted a cabbage-head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage,
+and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky. He climbs up the
+cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky. There he sees a mill, which gives
+a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the
+top. The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill; then he lies down to
+sleep. By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.
+
+He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him
+to take her with him. She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in
+his teeth and begins to climb up. The old woman, becoming tired, asked
+him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, "Not much
+farther," the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman
+fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.
+
+There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr.
+Ralston's most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian
+folk-tales), but observe the very close resemblance which it bears to
+the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the
+_Katha Sarit Sagara_ (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand
+collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh
+century, from a similar work entitled _Vrihat Katha_ (Great Story),
+written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century:[12]
+
+In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was
+the greatest fool of the lot. He once heard in a treatise on law, which
+was being read aloud, that a man who has a tank made gains a great
+reward in the next world. Then, as he had a large fortune, he had made a
+large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent. One
+day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and
+perceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature. The next
+day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part
+of the tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, "I will
+watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and
+I will find out what creature it is that does this." After he had formed
+this resolution, he came there early next morning, and watched, until at
+last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its
+horns. He thought, "This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to
+heaven with it?" And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands
+laid hold of the tail behind. Then the holy bull lifted up, with the
+utmost force, the foolish man who was clinging to its tail, and carried
+him in a moment to its home in Kailasa.[13] There the foolish man lived
+for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties,
+sweetmeats, and other things which he obtained. And seeing that the bull
+kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny,
+thought, "I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my
+friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return
+in the same way." Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung
+to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned
+to the surface of the earth. When he entered the convent, the other
+blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been,
+and he told them. Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of
+his adventures, made this petition to him: "Be kind, and take us also
+there; enable us also to feast on sweetmeats." He consented, and told
+them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the
+tank, and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail of
+the bull with his two hands, and another took hold of his feet, and a
+third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by
+hanging on to one another's feet, the bull flew rapidly up into the air.
+And while the bull was going along, with all the fools clinging to its
+tail, it happened that one of the fools said to the principal fool,
+"Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats
+which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in
+heaven?" Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in
+hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and
+exclaimed in answer, "So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the
+bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were
+killed; and the bull returned to Kailasa; but the people who saw it were
+much amused.[14]
+
+"Thus," remarks the story-teller, "fools do themselves injury by asking
+questions and giving answers without reflection"; he then proceeds to
+relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that "association with
+fools brings prosperity to no man":
+
+A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when
+he asked the way, the people said to him, "Take the path that goes up by
+the tree on the bank of the river." Then the fool went and got on the
+trunk of that tree, and said to himself, "The men told me that my way
+lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the
+bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to
+avoid falling by clinging to it. While he was clinging to it, there came
+that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on
+his back. And the fool called to him, saying, "Great sir, take me down."
+The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to
+take him down from the tree. Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the
+driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fool, who was clinging
+to the end of the tree. Then said the fool to the driver, "Sing
+something, in order that the people may hear, and come at once and take
+us down." So the elephant-driver, thus appealed to, began to sing, and
+he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased; and in his desire to
+applaud him, he forgot what he was about, let go his hold of the tree,
+and prepared to clap him with both his hands; and immediately he and the
+elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned.
+
+The germ of all stories of this class is perhaps found in the
+_Jatakas_, or Buddhist Birth Stories: A pair of geese resolve to
+migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise,
+their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills,
+and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth.  As they are
+flying over Banares, the people exclaim in wonder to one another at such
+a strange sight, and the tortoise, unable to maintain silence, opens his
+mouth to rebuke them, and by so doing falls to the ground, and is dashed
+into pieces. This fable is also found in Babrius. (115); in the _Katha
+Sarit Sagara_; in the several versions of the Fables of Bidpai; and
+in the _Avadanas_, translated into French from the Chinese by
+Stanislas Julien.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To return to Gothamite stories. According to one of those which are
+current orally, the men of Gotham had but one knife among them, which
+was stuck in a tree in the middle of the village for their common use,
+and many amusing incidents, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, arose out of
+their disputes for the use of this knife. The "carles" of Austwick, in
+Yorkshire, are said also to have had but one knife, or "whittle," which
+was deposited under a tree, and if it was not found there when wanted,
+the "carle" requiring it called out, "Whittle to the tree!" This plan
+did very well for some years, until it was taken one day by a party of
+labourers to a neighbouring moor, to be used for cutting their bread and
+cheese. When the day's labour was done, they resolved to leave the knife
+at the place, to save themselves the trouble of carrying it back, as
+they should want it again next day; so they looked about for some object
+to mark the spot, and stuck it into the ground under a black cloud that
+happened to be the most remarkable object in sight. But next day, when
+they returned to the place, the cloud was gone, and the "whittle" was
+never seen again.
+
+When an Austwick "carle" comes into any of the larger towns of
+Yorkshire, it is said he is greeted with the question, "Who tried to
+lift the bull over the gate?" in allusion to the following story: An
+Austwick farmer, wishing to get a bull out of a field--how the animal
+got into it, the story does not inform us--procured the assistance of
+nine of his neighbours to lift the animal over the gate. After trying in
+vain for some hours, they sent one of their number to the village for
+more help. In going out he opened the gate, and after he had gone away,
+it occurred to one of those who remained that the bull might be allowed
+to go out in the same manner.
+
+Another Austwick farmer had to take a wheelbarrow to a certain town,
+and, to save a hundred yards by going the ordinary road, he went through
+the fields, and had to lift the barrow over twenty-two stiles.
+
+It was a Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined
+to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the
+branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted
+up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck
+broken, until at last there were none left.--And quite as witless,
+surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired to move
+their church three yards farther westward, so they carefully marked the
+exact distance by leaving their coats on the ground. Then they set to
+work to push with all their might against the eastern wall. In the
+meantime a thief had gone round to the west side and stolen their coats.
+"Diable!" exclaimed they on finding that their coats were gone, "we have
+pushed too far!"
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Coffee House Jests_. Fifth edition. London. 1688. P. 36.
+
+[2] "See _ante_, p. 8, note." [Transcriber's note: This is Chapter I,
+Footnote 1 in this etext.]
+
+[3] Fuller, while admitting that "an hundred fopperies are forged and
+fathered on the townsfolk of Gotham," maintains that "Gotham doth breed
+as wise people as any which laugh at their simplicity."
+
+[4] Collier's _Bibliographical Account_, etc., vol. i., p. 327.
+
+[5] Forewords to Borde's _Introduction of Knowledge_, etc., edited,
+for the Early English Text Society, by F.J. Furnivall.
+
+[6] It is equally certain that Borde had no hand either in the _Jests
+of Scogin_ or _The Mylner of Abyngton_, the latter an imitation
+of Chaucer's _Reve's Tale_.
+
+[7] Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_, Second Series.
+
+[8] An imitation of Boccaccio, _Decameron_, Day vii., nov. 8, who
+perhaps borrowed the story from Guerin's _fabliau_ "De la Dame qui
+fit accroire a son Mari qu'il avait reve; _alias_, Les Cheveux
+Coupes" (Le Grand's _Fabliaux_, ed. 1781, tome ii., 280).
+
+[9] A slightly different version occurs in the _Tale of Beryn_,
+which is found in a unique MS. of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and
+which forms the first part of the old French romance of the _Chevalier
+Berinus_. In the English poem Beryn, lamenting his misfortunes, and
+that he had disinherited himself, says:
+
+  "But I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies]
+  He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies,
+  And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase,
+  Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase
+  Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was,
+  And kissid so the evese, that brent was al the plase."
+
+It is certain that the author of the French original of the _Tale of
+Beryn_ did not get this story out of our jests of the men of Gotham.
+
+[10] There is an analogous Indian story of a youth who went to a tank to
+drink, and observing the reflection of a golden-crested bird that was
+sitting on a tree, he thought it was gold in the water, and entered the
+tank to take it up, but he could not lay hold of it as it appeared and
+disappeared in the water. But as often as he ascended the bank he again
+saw it in the water, and again he entered the tank to lay hold of it,
+and still he got nothing. At length his father saw and questioned him,
+then drove away the bird, and explaining the matter to him, took the
+foolish fellow home.
+
+We have already seen that the men of Abdera (p. 5) flogged an ass before
+its fellows for upsetting a jar of olive oil, but what is that compared
+with the story of the ass that drank up the moon? According to Ludovicus
+Vives, a learned Spanish writer, certain townspeople imprisoned an ass
+for drinking up the moon, whose reflection, appearing in the water, was
+covered with a cloud while the ass was drinking. Next day the poor beast
+was brought to the bar to be sentenced according to his deserts. After
+the grave burghers had discussed the affair for some time, one at length
+rose up and declared that it was not fit the town should lose its moon,
+but rather that the ass should be cut open and the moon he had swallowed
+taken out of him, which, being cordially approved by the others, was
+done accordingly.
+
+[11] This is also one of the Fables of Marie de France (thirteenth
+century).
+
+[12] A complete translation of the _Katha Sarit Sagara_, by
+Professor C.H. Tawney, with notes of variants, which exhibit his wide
+acquaintance with the popular fictions of all lands, has been recently
+published at Calcutta (London agents, Messrs. Truebner and Co.), a work
+which must prove invaluable to every English student of comparative
+folk-lore.
+
+[13] Siva's paradise, according to Hindu mythology, is on Mount Kailasa,
+in the Himalyas, north of Manasa.
+
+[14] Tawney's translation, which is used throughout this work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_).
+
+
+The Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gothamites of
+Germany, and the stories of their stupidity, after being orally current
+for years among the people, were collected near the close of the
+sixteenth century, the earliest known edition being that of 1597. In a
+most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances"
+(_Foreign Quarterly Review_, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms
+has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from
+which the following particulars and tales are extracted: "There have
+been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from
+one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally
+gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils
+of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their
+circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and
+then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered
+affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity,
+and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as
+to prove 'plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this
+strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the
+Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and
+receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and
+signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn
+themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the
+Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by
+which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on
+which some of their descendants, who may be known by their
+characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."
+
+Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows.
+When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, "saw
+they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a
+state of things; and having in vain gone outside and examined the
+building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to hold a
+council upon the subject on the following day. At the time appointed
+they assembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating
+himself, he stuck in his hat. After much discussion, one genius,
+brighter than the rest, decided that they could not see for want of
+daylight, and that they ought on the morrow to carry in as much of it as
+possible. Accordingly, the next day, when the sun shone, all the sacks,
+bags, boxes, baskets, tubs, pans, etc. of the village were filled with
+its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied
+there, but with no good effect. After this they removed the roof, by the
+advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion. This
+plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter
+fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, they found the house
+just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in
+their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting
+the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell
+through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had
+never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get
+daylight in by making a window.
+
+Another tale relates how the boors of Schilda contrived to get their
+millstone twice down from a high mountain:
+
+The boors of Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour
+they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the
+summit of a high mountain; and when the stone was finished, they carried
+it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the
+bottom, it occurred to one of them that they might have spared
+themselves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down.
+"Verily," said he, "we are the stupidest of fools to take these
+extraordinary pains to do that which we might have done with so little
+trouble. We will carry it up, and then let it roll down the hill by
+itself, as we did before with the tree which we felled for the
+council-house."
+
+This advice pleased them all, and with greater labour they carried the
+stone to the top of the mountain again, and were about to roll it down,
+when one of them said, "But how shall we know where it runs to? Who will
+be able to tell us aught about it?" "Why," said the bailiff, who had
+advised the stone being carried up again, "this is very easily managed.
+One of us must stick in the hole [for the millstone, of course, had a
+hole in the middle], and run down with it." This was agreed to, and one
+of them, having been chosen for the purpose, thrust his head through the
+hole, and ran down the hill with the millstone. Now at the bottom of the
+mountain was a deep fish-pond, into which the stone rolled, and the
+simpleton with it, so that the Schildburgers lost both stone and man,
+and not one among them knew what had become of them. And they felt
+sorely angered against their old companion who had run down the hill
+with the stone, for they considered that he had carried it off for the
+purpose of disposing of it. So they published a notice in all the
+neighbouring boroughs, towns, and villages, calling on them, that "if
+any one come there with a millstone round his neck, they should treat
+him as one who had stolen the common goods, and give him to justice."
+But the poor fellow lay in the pond, dead. Had he been able to speak, he
+would have been willing to tell them not to worry themselves on his
+account, for he would give them their own again. But his load pressed so
+heavily upon him, and he was so deep in the water, that he, after
+drinking water enough--more, indeed, than was good for him--died; and he
+is dead at the present day, and dead he will, shall, and must remain!
+
+The forty-seventh chapter recounts "How the Schildburgers purchased a
+mouser, and with it their own ruin":
+
+Now it happened that there were no cats in Schilda, and so many mice
+that nothing was safe, even in the bread-basket, for whatsoever they put
+there was sure to be gnawed or eaten; and this grieved them sorely. And
+upon a time there came a traveller into the village, carrying a cat in
+his arms, and he entered the hostel. The host asked him, "What sort of a
+beast is that?" Said he, "It is a mouser." Now the mice at Schilda were
+so quiet and so tame that they never fled before the people, but ran
+about all day long, without the slightest fear. So the traveller let the
+cat run, who, in the sight of the host, soon caught numbers of mice. Now
+when the people were told this by the host, they asked the man whether
+the mouser was to be sold, for they would pay him well for it. He said,
+"It certainly was not to be sold; but seeing that it would be so useful
+to them, he would let them have it if they would pay him what was
+right," and he asked a hundred florins for it. The boors were glad to
+find that he asked so little, and concluded a bargain with him, he
+agreeing to take half the money down, and to come again in six months to
+fetch the rest. As soon as the bargain was struck on both sides, they
+gave the traveller the half of the money, and he carried the mouser into
+the granary, where they kept their corn, for there were most mice there.
+The traveller went off with the money at full speed, for he feared
+greatly lest they should repent them of the bargain, and want their
+money back again; and as he went along he kept looking behind him to see
+that no one was following him. Now the boors had forgotten to ask what
+the cat was to be fed upon, so they sent one after him in haste to ask
+him the question. But when he with the gold saw that some one was
+following him, he hastened so much the more, so that the boor could by
+no means overtake him, whereupon he called out to him from afar off,
+"What does it eat?" "What you please! What you please!" quoth the
+traveller. But the peasant understood him to say, "Men and beasts! Men
+and beasts!" Therefore he returned home in great affliction, and said as
+much to his worthy masters.
+
+On learning this they became greatly alarmed, and said, "When it has no
+more mice to eat, it will eat our cattle; and when they are gone, it
+will eat us! To think that we should lay out our good money in buying
+such a thing!" And they held counsel together and resolved that the cat
+should be killed. But no one would venture to lay hold of it for that
+purpose, whereupon it was determined to burn the granary, and the cat in
+it, seeing that it was better they should suffer a common loss than all
+lose life and limb. So they set fire to the granary. But when the cat
+smelt the fire, it sprang out of a window and fled to another house, and
+the granary was burned to the ground. Never was there sorrow greater
+than that of the Schildburgers when they found that they could not kill
+the cat. They counselled with one another, and purchased the house to
+which the cat had fled, and burned that also. But the cat sprang out
+upon the roof, and sat there, washing itself and putting its paws behind
+its ears, after the manner of cats; and the Schildburgers understood
+thereby that the cat lifted up its hands and swore an oath that it would
+not leave their treatment of it unrevenged. Then one of them took a long
+pole and struck at the cat, but the cat caught hold of the pole, and
+began to clamber down it, whereupon all the people grew greatly alarmed
+and ran away, and left the fire to burn as it might. And because no one
+regarded the fire, nor sought to put it out, the whole village was
+burned to a house, and notwithstanding that, the cat escaped. And the
+Schildburgers fled with their wives and children to a neighbouring
+forest. And at this time was burned their chancery and all the papers
+therein, which is the reason why their history is not to be found
+described in a more regular manner.
+
+Thus ended the career of the Schildburgers as a community, according to
+the veracious chronicle of their marvellous exploits, the first of
+which, their carrying sunshine into the council-house, is a favourite
+incident in the noodle-stories of many countries, and has its parallel
+in the Icelandic story of the Three Brothers of Bakki: They had observed
+that in winter the weather was colder than in summer, also that the
+larger the windows of a house were the colder it was. All frost and
+sharp cold, therefore, they thought sprang from the fact that houses had
+windows in them. So they built themselves a house on a new plan, without
+windows in it at all. It followed, of course, that there was always
+pitch darkness in it. They found that this was rather a fault in the
+house, but comforted themselves with the certainty that in winter it
+would be very warm; and as to light, they thought they could contrive
+some easy means of getting the house lighted. One fine day in the middle
+of summer, when the sunshine was brightest, they began to carry the
+darkness out of the house in their caps, and emptied it out when they
+came into the sunshine, which they then carried into the dark room. Thus
+they worked hard the whole day, but in the evening, when they had done
+all their best, they were not a little disappointed to find that it was
+as dark as before, so much so that they could not tell one hand from the
+other.[1]
+
+There is a Kashmiri story which bears a slight resemblance to the
+exploit of the Schildburgers with the cat. A poor old woman used to beg
+her food by day and cook it at night. Half of the food she would eat in
+the morning, and the other half in the evening. After a while a cat got
+to know of this arrangement, and came and ate the meal for her. The old
+woman was very patient, but at last could no longer endure the cat's
+impudence, and so she laid hold of it. She argued with herself as to
+whether she should kill it or not. "If I slay it," she thought, "it will
+be a sin; but if I keep it alive, it will be to my heavy loss." So she
+determined only to punish it. She procured some cotton wool and some
+oil, and soaking the one in the other, tied it on to the cat's tail and
+then set it on fire. Away rushed the cat across the yard, up the side of
+the window, and on to the roof, where its flaming tail ignited the
+thatch and set the whole house on fire. The flames soon spread to other
+houses, and the whole village was destroyed.[2]
+
+An older form of this incident is found in the introduction to a Persian
+poetical version of the Book of Sindibad (_Sindibad Nama_), of
+which a unique MS. copy, very finely illuminated, but imperfect, is
+preserved in the Library of the India Office:[3] In a village called
+Buzina-Gird (i.e., Monkey Town) there was a goat that was in the habit
+of butting at a certain old woman whenever she came into the street. One
+day the old woman had been to ask fire from a neighbour, and on her
+return the goat struck her so violently with his horns when she was off
+her guard as to draw blood. Enraged at this, she applied the fire which
+she held to the goat's fleece, which kindled, and the animal ran to the
+stables of the elephant-keeper, and rubbed his sides against the reeds
+and willows. They caught fire, which the wind soon spread, and the heads
+and faces of the warlike elephants were scorched. With the sequel--how
+the king caused all the monkeys to be slaughtered, as their fat was
+required to cure the scorched elephants--we have no concern at
+present.[4]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Ceylon whole districts, such as Tumpane, in the central province,
+Morora Korle, in the southern province, and Rayigam Korle, in the
+western province, are credited with being the abode of fools. A learned
+writer on the proverbial sayings of the Sinhalese states that these
+often refer to "popular stories of stupid people to which foolish
+actions are likened. The stories of the Tumpane villagers who tried to
+unearth and carry off a well because they saw a bees' nest reflected in
+the water; of the Morora Korle boatmen who mistook a bend in the river
+for the sea, left their cargo there, and returned home; of the Rayigam
+Korle fools who threw stones at the moon to frighten her off one fine
+moonlight night when they thought she was coming too near, and that
+there was danger of her burning their crops, are well known, and it is
+customary to ask a man if he was born in one of these places if he has
+done anything particularly foolish. The story of the double-fool--i.e.,
+of the man who tried to lighten the boat by carrying his pingo load over
+his shoulders;[5] of the man who stretched out his hands to be warmed by
+the fire on the other side of the river; of the rustic's wife who had
+her own head shaved, so as not to lose the barber's services for the day
+when he came, and her husband was away from home; of the villagers who
+tied up their mortars in the village in the belief that the elephant
+tracks in the rice fields were caused by the mortars wandering about at
+night; of the man who would not wash his body in order to spite the
+river; of the people who flogged the elk-skin at home to avenge
+themselves on the deer that trespassed in the fields at night; and of
+the man who performed the five precepts--all these are popular stories
+of foolish people which have passed into proverbs."[6]
+
+The last of the stories referred to in the above extract is as follows:
+A woman once rebuked her husband for not performing the five (Buddhist)
+precepts. "I don't know what they are," he replied. "Oh, it's very
+easy," she said; "all you have to do is to go to the priest and repeat
+what he says after him." "Is that all?" he answered. "Then I'll go and
+do it at once." Off he went, and as he neared the temple the priest saw
+him and called out, "Who are you?" to which he replied, "Who are you?"
+"What do you want?" demands the priest. "What do you want?" the
+blockhead answers dutifully. "Are you mad?" roared the priest. "Are you
+mad?" returned the rustic. "Here," said the priest to his attendants,
+"take and beat him well;" and notwithstanding that he carefully repeated
+the words again, taken and thoroughly well thrashed he was, after which
+he crawled back to his wife and said, "What a wonderful woman you are!
+You manage to repeat the five precepts every day, and are strong and
+healthy, while I, who have only said them once, am nearly dead with
+fever from the bruises."[7]
+
+To this last may be added a story in the _Katha Manjari_, a
+Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the _Ramayana_, one
+of the two great Hindu epics: One day a man was reading the
+_Ramayana_ in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might
+be instructed by hearing it, sent him there. He went, and stood leaning
+on his crook--for he was a shepherd--when presently a practical joker,
+seeing his simplicity, jumped upon his shoulders, and he stood with the
+man on his back until the discourse was concluded. When he reached home,
+his wife asked him how he liked the _Ramayana_. "Alas!" said he,
+"it was not easy; it was a man's load."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The race of Gothamites is indeed found everywhere--in popular tales, if
+not in actual life; and their sayings and doings are not less diverting
+when husband and wife are well mated, as in the following story:
+
+An Arab observing one morning that his house was ready to tumble about
+his ears from decay, and being without the means of repairing it, went
+with a long face to his wife, and informed her of his trouble. She said,
+"Why, my dear, need you distress yourself about so small a matter? You
+have a cow worth thirty dirhams; take her to the market and sell her for
+that sum. I have some thread, which I will dispose of to-day, and I
+warrant you that between us both we shall manage very well." The man at
+once drove the cow to the market, and gave her over for sale to the
+appraiser of cattle. The salesman showed her to the bystanders, directed
+their attention to all her good points, expatiated on all her good
+qualities, and, in short, passed her off as a cow of inestimable value.
+To all this the simpleton listened with delight and astonishment; he
+heard his cow praised for qualities that no other cow ever possessed,
+and determined in his own mind not to lose so rare a bargain, but
+purchase her himself and balk the chapmen. He therefore called out to
+the appraiser, and asked him what she was going at. The salesman
+replied, "At fifteen dirhams and upwards." "By the head of the Prophet,"
+exclaimed the wittol, "had I known that my cow was such a prodigy of
+excellence, you should not have caught me in the market with her for
+sale." Now it happened that he had just fifteen dirhams, and no more,
+and these he thrust upon the broker, exclaiming, "The cow is mine; I
+have the best claim to her." He then seized the cow and drove her home,
+exulting all the way as if he had found a treasure. On reaching home he
+inquired eagerly for his wife, to inform her of his adventure, but was
+told she was not returned from market. He waited impatiently for her
+return, when he sprang up to meet her, crying, "Wife, I have done
+something to-day that will astonish you. I have performed a marvellous
+exploit!" "Patience!" says his wife. "Perhaps I have done something
+myself to match it. But hear my story, and then talk of cleverness, if
+you please." The husband desired her to proceed.
+
+"When I went to market," says she, "I found a man in want of thread. I
+showed him mine, which he approved of, and having bargained for it, he
+agreed to pay me according to the weight. I told him it weighed so much,
+which he seemed to discredit, and weighed it himself. Observing it to
+fall short of the weight I had mentioned, and fearing I should lose the
+price I at first expected, I requested him to weigh it over again, and
+make certain. In the meantime, taking an opportunity unobserved, I
+stripped off my silver bracelets and put them slily into the scale with
+my thread. The scale, of course, now preponderated, and I received the
+full price I had demanded." Having finished her story, she cried out,
+"Now, what do you think of your wife?" "Amazing! amazing!" said he.
+"Your capacity is supernatural. And now, if you please, I will give you
+a specimen of mine," and he related his adventure at the market. "O
+husband," she exclaimed when he had told his story, "had we not
+possessed such consummate wisdom and address, how could we have
+contrived means to repair our old house? In future vex not yourself
+about domestic concerns, since by the exercise of our talents we need
+never want for anything!"
+
+The exploits of that precious pair may be compared with the following:
+An alewife went to the market with a brood of chickens and an old black
+hen. For the hen and one chicken she could not find a purchaser; so,
+before leaving the town, she called upon a surgeon, to try to effect a
+sale. He bought the chicken, but declined taking the hen. She then asked
+him if he would draw a tooth for it. The tooth was drawn, and he
+expressed his surprise on finding it was perfectly sound. "Oh," said
+she, "I knew it was sound; but it was worth while having it drawn for
+the old hen." She then called upon another surgeon, and had a second
+tooth drawn, as sound as the other. "What's to pay?" she inquired. "A
+shilling," said the surgeon. "Very well," rejoined the hostess, with a
+chuckle; "you left a shilling due in my house the other night, and now
+we are quits." "Certainly we are," responded the perplexed tooth-drawer,
+and the delighted old woman returned to her hostelry, to acquaint all
+her gossips of how cleverly she had outwitted the doctors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ferrier says, in his _Illustrations of Sterne_, that the facetious
+tales of the Sieur Gaulard laid the foundation of some of the jests in
+our old English collections. A few of them found their way somehow into
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_, and this is one: A monsieur chanced to
+meet a lady of his acquaintance, and asked her how she did and how her
+good husband fared, at which she wept, saying that her husband was in
+heaven. "In heaven!" quoth he. "It is the first time that I heard of it,
+and I am sorry for it with all my heart."
+
+Similar in its point is a story in _Archie Armstrong's Banquet of
+Jests_:[8] Sitting over a cup of ale in a winter night, two widows
+entered into discourse of their dead husbands, and after ripping up
+their good and bad qualities, saith one of them to the maid, "I prithee,
+wench, reach us another light, for my husband (God rest his soul!) above
+all things loved to see good lights about the house. God grant him light
+everlasting!" "And I pray you, neighbour," said the other, "let the maid
+lay on some more coals or stir up the fire, for my husband in his
+lifetime ever loved to see a good fire. God grant him fire everlasting!"
+
+This seems cousin-german to the Arabian story of two men, one of whom
+hailed from the town of Hama (ancient Hamath), the other from Hums
+(ancient Emessa). Those towns are not far apart, but the people of the
+former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the
+latter are proverbially as stupid. (And for the proper understanding of
+the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb _hama_
+means to "protect" or "defend," the verb _hamasa_ to "roast" or
+"toast.") These men had some business of importance with the nearest
+magistrate, and set out together on their journey. The man of Hums,
+conscious of his own ignorance, begged his companion to speak first in
+the audience, in order that he might get a hint as to how such a formal
+matter should be conducted. Accordingly, when they came into the pasha's
+presence, the man of Hama went forward, and the pasha asked him, "Where
+are you from?" "Your servant is from Hama," said he. "May Allah PROTECT
+(_hama_) your excellency!" The pasha then turned to the other man,
+and asked, "And where are you from?" to which he answered, "Your servant
+is from Hums. May Allah ROAST _(hamasa)_ your excellency!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not a few of the _Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard are the
+prototypes of bulls and foolish sayings of the typical Irishman, which
+go their ceaseless round in popular periodicals, and are even
+audaciously reproduced as original in our "comic" journals--save the
+mark! To cite some examples:
+
+A friend one day told M. Gaulard that the Dean of Besancon was dead.
+"Believe it not," said he; "for had it been so he would have told me
+himself, since he writes to me about everything."
+
+M. Gaulard asked his secretary one evening what hour it was. "Sir,"
+replied the secretary, "I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun
+is set." "Well," quoth M. Gaulard, "and can you not see by the candle?"
+
+On another occasion the Sieur called from his bed to a servant desiring
+him to see if it was daylight yet. "There is no sign of daylight," said
+the servant. "I do not wonder," rejoined the Sieur, "that thou canst not
+see day, great fool as thou art. Take a candle and look with it out at
+the window, and thou shalt see whether it be day or not."
+
+In a strange house, the Sieur found the walls of his bedchamber full of
+great holes. "This," exclaimed he in a rage, "is the cursedest chamber
+in all the world. One may see day all the night through."
+
+Travelling in the country, his man, to gain the fairest way, rode
+through a field sowed with pease, upon which M. Gaulard cried to him,
+"Thou knave, wilt thou burn my horse's feet? Dost thou not know that
+about six weeks ago I burned my mouth with eating pease, they were so
+hot?"
+
+A poor man complained to him that he had had a horse stolen from him.
+"Why did you not mark his visage," asked M. Gaulard, "and the clothes he
+wore?" "Sir," said the man, "I was not there when he was stolen." Quoth
+the Sieur, "You should have left somebody to ask him his name, and in
+what place he resided."
+
+M. Gaulard felt the sun so hot in the midst of a field at noontide in
+August that he asked of those about him, "What means the sun to be so
+hot? How should it not keep its heat till winter, when it is cold
+weather?"
+
+A proctor, discoursing with M. Gaulard, told him that a dumb, deaf, or
+blind man could not make a will but with certain additional forms. "I
+pray you," said the Sieur, "give me that in writing, that I may send it
+to a cousin of mine who is lame."
+
+One day a friend visited the Sieur and found him asleep in his chair. "I
+slept," said he, "only to avoid idleness; for I must always be doing
+something."
+
+The Abbe of Poupet complained to him that the moles had spoiled a fine
+meadow, and he could find no remedy for them. "Why, cousin," said M.
+Gaulard, "it is but paving your meadow, and the moles will no more
+trouble you."
+
+M. Gaulard had a lackey belonging to Auvergne, who robbed him of twelve
+crowns and ran away, at which he was very angry, and said he would have
+nothing that came from that country. So he ordered all that was from
+Auvergne to be cast out of the house, even his mule; and to make the
+animal more ashamed, he caused his servants to take off its shoes and
+its saddle and bridle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Although Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ is the most "original" of our old
+English jest-books--that is to say, it contains very few stories in
+common with preceding collections--yet some of the diverting tales he
+relates are traceable to very distant sources, more especially the
+following:
+
+A country fellow (that had not walked much in streets that were paved)
+came to London, where a dog came suddenly out of a house, and furiously
+ran at him. The fellow stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the dog,
+and finding them all fast rammed or paved in the ground, quoth he, "What
+a strange country am I in, where the people tie up the stones and let
+the dogs loose!"
+
+Three centuries and a half before the Water Poet heard this exquisitely
+humorous story, the great Persian poet Sa'di related it in his
+_Gulistan_ (or Rose-garden), which was written A.D. 1278:
+
+A poor poet presented himself before the chief of a gang of robbers, and
+recited some verses in his praise. The robber-chief, however, instead of
+rewarding him, as he fondly expected, ordered him to be stripped of his
+clothes and expelled from the village. The dogs attacking him in the
+rear, the unlucky bard stooped to pick up a stone to throw at them, and
+finding the stones frozen in the ground, he exclaimed, "What a vile set
+of men are these, who set loose the dogs and fasten the stones!"
+
+Now here we have a very curious instance of the migration of a popular
+tale from Persia--perchance it first set out on its travels from India
+--in the thirteenth century, when grave and reverend seigniors wagged
+their beards and shook their portly sides at its recital, to London in
+the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed "the wisest fool
+in Christendom"!), when Taylor, the Water Poet, probably heard it told,
+in some river-side tavern, amidst the clinking of beer-cans and the
+fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado, and "put it in his book!"
+How it came into England it would be interesting to ascertain. It may
+have been brought to Europe by the Venetian merchants, who traded
+largely in the Levant and with the Moors in Northern Africa.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_, Second Series, p.
+626.
+
+[2] _Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings_. Explained and
+illustrated from the rich and interesting folk-lore of the Valley. By
+the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles. Bombay: 1885.
+
+[3] This work was composed A.H. 776 (A.D. 1374-5), as the anonymous
+author takes care to inform us in his opening verses.
+
+[4] A still older form of the story occurs in the _Pancha Tantra_
+(Five Sections), a Sanskrit version of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai,
+in which a gluttonous ram is in the habit of going to the king's kitchen
+and devouring all food within his reach. One of the cooks beat him with
+a burning log of wood, and the ram rushed off with his blazing fleece
+and set the horses' stables on fire, and so forth. The story is most
+probably of Buddhist extraction.
+
+[5]  A Sinhalese variant of the exploit of the man of Norfolk and of the
+man of Gotham with the sack of meal. "See _ante_, p. 19." [Transcriber's
+note: this approximates to the text reference for Chapter II
+Footnote 1 in this etext.]
+
+[6]  Mr. C.J.R. le Mesurier in _The Orientalist_ (Kandy, Ceylon:
+1884), pp. 233-4.
+
+[7] _The Orientalist_, 1884, p. 234. A much fuller version, with
+subsequent incidents, is given in the same excellent periodical, pp.
+36-38.
+
+[8] Archie Armstrong was Court jester to James I. of England. It is
+needless, perhaps, to say that he had no hand in this book of facetiae,
+which is composed for the most part of jests taken out of earlier
+collections.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES _(continued)._
+
+
+Tales of sharpers' tricks upon simpletons do not quite fall within the
+scope of the present series of papers, but there is one, in the
+_Arabian Nights_--not found, however, in our common English version
+of that fascinating story-book--which deserves a place among
+noodle-stories, since it is so diverting, is not very generally known,
+and is probably the original of the early Italian novel of the _Monk
+Transformed_, which is ascribed to Michele Colombo:
+
+A rustic simpleton was walking homeward dragging his ass after him by
+the halter, which a brace of sharpers observing, one said to his fellow,
+"Come with me, and I will take the ass from that man." He then quietly
+advanced to the ass, unloosed it from the halter, and gave the animal to
+his companion, who went off with it, after which he put the halter over
+his own head, and allowed the rustic to drag him for some little
+distance, until he with the ass was fairly out of sight, when he
+suddenly stopped, and the man having tugged at the halter several times
+without effect, looked round, and, amazed to see a human being in place
+of his beast, exclaimed, "Who art thou?" The sharper answered, "I was
+thy ass; but hear my story, for it is wonderful. I had a good and pious
+mother, and one day I came home intoxicated. Grieved to see me in such a
+state, she gently reproved me, but I, instead of being penetrated with
+remorse, beat her with a stick, whereupon she prayed to Allah, and, in
+answer to her supplication, lo! I was transformed into an ass. In that
+shape I have continued until this day, when my mother, as it appears,
+has interceded for my restoration to human form, as before." The
+simpleton, believing every word of this strange story, raised his eyes
+to heaven, saying, "Of a truth there is no power but from Allah! But,
+pray, forgive me for having used thee as I have done." The sharper
+readily granted his forgiveness, and went off to rejoin his companion
+and dispose of the ass; while the simpleton returned home, and showing
+his wife the bridle, told her of the marvellous transformation which had
+occurred. His wife, in hopes of propitiating Heaven, gave alms and
+offered up many prayers to avert evil from them, on account of their
+having used a human being as an ass. At length the simpleton, having
+remained idle at home for some time, went one day to the market to
+purchase another ass, and on entering the place where all the animals
+were fastened, he saw with astonishment his old ass offered for sale.
+Putting his mouth to its ear, he whispered, "Woe to thee, unlucky!
+Doubtless thou hast again been intoxicated; but, by Allah, I will never
+buy thee!"
+
+Another noodle-story, of a different class, in the _Arabian
+Nights_, may be here cited in full from Sir R.F. Burton's
+translation of that delightful work, privately printed for the
+subscribers, and it will serve, moreover, as a fair specimen of the
+admirable manner in which that ripe scholar has represented in English
+the quaint style of his original:
+
+[Quoth one of the learned,] I passed once by a school wherein a
+schoolmaster was teaching children; so I entered, finding him a
+good-looking man, and a well-dressed, when he rose to me and made me sit
+with him. Then I examined him in the Koran, and in syntax and prosody,
+and lexicography; and behold, he was perfect in all required of him; and
+I said to him, "Allah strengthen thy purpose! Thou art indeed versed in
+all that is requisite." Thereafter I frequented him a while, discovering
+daily some new excellence in him, and quoth I to myself, "This is indeed
+a wonder in any dominie; for the wise are agreed upon a lack of wit in
+children's teachers."[1] Then I separated myself from him, and sought
+him and visited him only every few days, till coming to see him one day,
+as of wont, I found the school shut, and made inquiry of his neighbours,
+who replied, "Some one is dead in his house." So I said in my mind, "It
+behoveth me to pay him a visit of condolence," and going to his house,
+knocked at the door, when a slave-girl came out to me and asked, "What
+dost thou want?" and I answered, "I want thy master." She replied, "He
+is sitting alone mourning;" and I rejoined, "Tell him that his friend
+So-and-so seeketh to console him." She went in and told him; and he
+said, "Admit him." So she brought me in to him, and I found him seated
+alone, and his head bound with mourning fillets. So I said to him,
+"Allah requite thee amply! This is a path all must perforce tread, and
+it behoveth thee to take patience," adding, "but who is dead unto thee?"
+He answered, "One who was dearest of the folk to me, and best beloved."
+"Perhaps thy father?" "No." "Thy brother?" "No." "One of thy kindred?"
+"No." Then asked I, "What relation was the dead to thee?" and he
+answered, "My lover." Quoth I to myself, "This is the first proof to
+swear by of his lack of wit." So I said to him, "Assuredly there be
+others than she, and fairer;" and he made answer, "I never saw her that
+I might judge whether or no there be others fairer than she." Quoth I to
+myself, "This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, "And how
+couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied,
+"Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo! there passed
+by a man, singing the following distich:
+
+  "'Umm Amr', thy boons Allah repay!
+  Give back my heart, be't where it may!'"
+
+The schoolmaster continued, "When I heard the man humming these words as
+he passed along the street, I said to myself, 'Except this Umm Amru were
+without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and
+canzon.' So I fell in love with her; but two days after, the same man
+passed, singing the following couplet:
+
+  "'Ass and Umm Amr' went their way,
+  Nor she nor ass returned for aye.'
+
+Thereupon I knew that she was dead, and mourned for her. This was three
+days ago, and I have been mourning ever since." So I left him and fared
+forth, having assured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinder's
+wit[2].
+
+Here, surely, was the very Father of Folly, but what shall we say of
+judges and magistrates being sometimes (represented as) equally witless?
+Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish Kazi, that two
+men came before him one of whom complained that the other had almost bit
+his ear off. The accused denied this, and declared that the fellow had
+bit his own ear. After pondering the matter for some time, the judge
+told them to come again two hours later. Then he went into his private
+room, and attempted to bring his ear and his mouth together; but all he
+did was to fall backwards and break his head. Wrapping a cloth round his
+head, he returned to court, and the two men coming in again presently,
+he thus decided the question: "No man can bite his own ear, but in
+trying to do so he may fall down and break his head."
+
+A Sinhalese story, which is also well known in various forms in India,
+furnishes a still more remarkable example of forensic sagacity. It is
+thus related by the able editor of _The Orientalist_, vol. i., p.
+191:
+
+One night some thieves broke into the house of a rich man, and carried
+away all his valuables. The man complained to the justice of the peace,
+who had the robbers captured, and when brought before him, inquired of
+them whether they had anything to say in their defence. "Sir," said
+they, "we are not to blame in this matter; the robbery was entirely due
+to the mason who built the house; for the walls were so badly made, and
+gave way so easily, that we were quite unable to resist the temptation
+of breaking in." Orders were then given to bring the mason to the
+court-house. On his arrival he was informed of the charge brought
+against him. "Ah," said he, "the fault is not mine, but that of the
+coolie, who made mortar badly." When the coolie was brought, he laid the
+blame on the potter, who, he said, had sold him a cracked chattie, in
+which he could not carry sufficient water to mix the mortar properly.
+Then the potter was brought before the judge, and he explained that the
+blame should not be laid upon him, but upon a very pretty woman, who, in
+a beautiful dress, was passing at the time he was making the chattie,
+and had so riveted his attention, that he forgot all about the work.
+When the woman appeared, she protested that the fault was not hers, for
+she would not have been in that neighbourhood at all had the goldsmith
+sent home her earrings at the proper time; the charge, she argued,
+should properly be brought against him. The goldsmith was brought, and
+as he was unable to offer any reasonable excuse, he was condemned to be
+hanged. Those in the court, however, begged the judge to spare the
+goldsmith's life; "for," said they, "he is very sick and ill-favoured,
+and would not make at all a pretty spectacle." "But," said the judge,
+"somebody must be hanged." Then they drew the attention of the court to
+the fact that there was a fat Moorman in a shop opposite, who was a much
+fitter subject for an execution, and asked that he might be hanged in
+the goldsmith's stead. The learned judge, considering that this
+arrangement would be very satisfactory, gave judgment accordingly.
+
+If some of the last-cited stories are not precisely Gothamite
+drolleries, though all are droll enough in their way, there can be no
+doubt whatever that we have a Sinhalese brother to the men of Gotham in
+the following: A villager in Ceylon, whose calf had got its head into a
+pot and could not get it out again, sent for a friend, celebrated for
+his wisdom, to release the poor animal. The sagacious friend, taking in
+the situation at a glance, cut off the calf's head, broke the pot, and
+then delivered the head to the owner of the calf, saying, "What will you
+do when I am dead and gone?"--And we have another Gothamite in the
+Kashmiri who bought as much rice as he thought would suffice for a
+year's food, and finding he had only enough for eleven months, concluded
+it was better to fast the other month right off, which he did
+accordingly; but he died just before the month was completed, leaving
+eleven months' rice in his house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The typical noodle of the Turks, the Khoja Nasru-'d-Din, is said to have
+been a subject of the independent prince of Karaman, at whose capital,
+Konya, he resided, and he is represented as a contemporary of Timur
+(Tamerlane), in the middle of the fourteenth century. The pleasantries
+which are ascribed to him are for the most part common to all countries,
+but some are probably of genuine Turkish origin. To cite a few
+specimens: The Khoja's wife said to him one day, "Make me a present of a
+kerchief of red Yemen silk, to put on my head." The Khoja stretched out
+his arms and said, "Like that? Is that large enough?" On her replying in
+the affirmative he ran off to the bazaar, with his arms still stretched
+out, and meeting a man on the road, he bawled to him, "Look where you
+are going, O man, or you will cause me to lose my measure!"
+
+Another day the Khoja's wife washed his caftan and spread it upon a tree
+in the garden of the house. That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he
+sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. "Give
+me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he
+shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into
+the house. Next morning, when he discovered that it was his own caftan
+he had shot at, he exclaimed, "By Allah, had I happened to be in it, I
+should have killed myself!"
+
+The Ettrick Shepherd's well-known story of the two Highlanders and the
+wild boar has its exact parallel in the Turkish jest-book, as follows:
+One day the Khoja went with his friend Sheragh Ahmed to the den of a
+wolf, in order to take the cubs. Said the Khoja to Ahmed, "Do you go in,
+and I will watch without;" and Ahmed went in, to take the cubs in the
+absence of the old wolf. But she came back presently, and had got
+half-way into her den when the Khoja seized hold of her tail. The wolf
+in her struggles cast up a great dust into the eyes of Ahmed, who called
+out to the Khoja, "Hallo! what does all this dust mean?" The Khoja
+replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks, you will soon know what the dust
+means!"
+
+Several of the jests closely resemble "Joe Millers" told of Irishmen,
+such as this: It happened one night, after the Khoja and a guest had
+lain down to sleep, that the taper went out. "O Khoja Effendi," said the
+guest, "the taper is gone out. But there is a taper at your right side.
+Pray bring it and let us light it." Quoth the Khoja, "You must surely be
+a fool to think that I should know my right hand in the dark." And this:
+A thief having stolen a piece of salted cheese from the Khoja, he ran
+immediately and seated himself on the border of a fountain. Said the
+people to him, "O Khoja, what have you come here to look for in such a
+hurry?" The Khoja replied, "The thief will certainly come here to drink
+as soon as he has eaten my salted cheese; I always do so myself."
+
+And here is one of the Gothamite class: One evening the Khoja went to
+the well to draw water, and seeing the moon reflected in the water, he
+exclaimed, "The moon has fallen into the well; I must pull it out." So
+he let down the rope and hook, and the hook became fastened to a stone,
+whereupon he exerted all his strength, and the rope broke, and he fell
+upon his back. Looking into the sky, he saw the moon, and cried out
+joyfully, "Praise be to Allah! I am sorely bruised, but the moon has got
+into its place again."
+
+There is a well-worn jest of an Irishman who, being observed by a friend
+to look exceedingly blank and perplexed, was asked what ailed him. He
+replied that he had had a dream. "Was it a good or a bad dream?"
+"Faith," said he, "it was a little of both; but I'll tell ye. I dreamt
+that I was with the Pope, who was the finest gentleman in the whole
+district; and after we had conversed a while, his Holiness axed me,
+Would I drink? Thinks I to myself, 'Would a duck swim?' So, seeing the
+whisky and the lemons and the sugar on the side-board, I said, I didn't
+mind if I took a drop of punch. 'Cold or hot?' says his Holiness. 'Hot,
+your Holiness,' says I. So on that he steps down to the kitchen for the
+boiling water, but, bedad, before he came back, I woke straight up; and
+now it's distressing me that I didn't take it cold!"
+
+We have somewhat of a parallel to this in a Turkish jest: The Khoja
+dreamt that some one gave him nine pieces of money, but he was not
+content, and said, "Make it ten." Then he awoke and found his hands
+empty. Instantly closing his eyes again, and holding out his hand, he
+said, "I repent; give me the nine pieces[3]."
+
+But the Chinese relate the very counterpart of our Irishman's story. A
+confirmed drunkard dreamt that he had been presented with a cup of
+excellent wine, and set it by the fire to warm[4], that he should better
+enjoy the flavour of it; but just as he was about to drink off the
+delicious draught he awoke. "Fool that I am," he cried, "why was I not
+content to drink it cold?"[5]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chinese seem to have as keen a sense of humour as any other people.
+They tell a story, for instance, of a lady who had been recently
+married, and on the third day saw her husband returning home, so she
+slipped quietly behind him and gave him a hearty kiss. The husband was
+annoyed, and said she offended all propriety. "Pardon! pardon!" said
+she. "I did not know it was you." Thus the excuse may sometimes be worse
+than the offence. There is exquisite humour in the following
+noodle-story: Two brothers were tilling the ground together. The elder,
+having prepared dinner, called his brother, who replied in a loud voice,
+"Wait till I have hidden my spade, and I shall at once be with you."
+When he joined his elder brother, the latter mildly reproached him,
+saying, "When one hides anything, one should keep silence, or at least
+should not cry aloud about it, for it lays one open to be robbed."
+Dinner over, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his
+spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and
+_whispered_ mysteriously in his ear, "My spade is stolen!"--The
+passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed: A man who was
+fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false,
+expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the
+lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor
+Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he
+carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in
+the streets, "Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Tai-Koung."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Indian fiction abounds in stories of simpletons, and probably the oldest
+extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the _Jatakas_,
+or Buddhist Birth-stories. Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad
+men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes
+when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to _Jataka_
+44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon
+the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every
+one; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and
+injured one another. And nothing more foolish is recorded of the
+Schildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his _Katha Sarit Sagara_,
+of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees: Being required to furnish
+the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was
+very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself,
+they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and
+having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up
+and planted them again, thinking they would grow.
+
+In illustration of the apothegm that "fools who attend only to the words
+of an order, and do not understand the meaning, cause much detriment,"
+is the story of the servants who kept the rain off the trunks: The camel
+of a merchant gave way under its load on a journey. He said to his
+servants, "I will go and buy another camel to carry the half of this
+camel's load. And you must remain here, and take particular care that if
+it clouds over the rain does not wet the leather of these trunks, which
+are full of clothes." With these words the merchant left the servants by
+the side of the camel and went off, and suddenly a cloud came up and
+began to discharge rain. Then the fools said, "Our master told us to
+take care that the rain did not touch the leather of the trunks;" and
+after they had made this sage reflection they dragged the clothes out of
+the trunks and wrapped them round the leather. The consequence was that
+the rain spoiled the clothes. Then the merchant returned, and in a rage
+said to his servants, "You rascals! Talk of water! Why, the whole stock
+of clothes is spoiled by the rain!" And they answered him, "You told us
+to keep the rain off the leather of the trunks. What fault have we
+committed?" He answered, "I told you that if the leather got wet the
+clothes would be spoiled. I told you so in order to save the clothes,
+not the leather."
+
+The story of the servant who looked after the door is a farther
+illustration of the same maxim. A merchant said to his foolish servant,
+"Take care of the door of my shop; I am going home for a short time."
+After his master was gone, the fool took the shop-door on his shoulder
+and went off to see an actor perform. As he was returning his master met
+him, and gave him a scolding, and he answered, "I have taken care of
+this door, as you told me."
+
+This jest had found its way into Europe three centuries ago. It is
+related of Giufa, the typical Sicilian booby, and probably came to
+England from Italy. This is how it is told in the _Sacke Full of
+Newes_, a jest-book originally printed in the sixteenth century: "In
+the countrey dwelt a Gentlewoman who had a French man dwelling with her,
+and he did ever use to go to Church with her; and upon a time he and his
+mistresse were going to church, and she bad him pull the doore after him
+and follow her to the church; and so he took the doore betweene his
+armes, and lifted it from the hooks, and followed his mistresse with it.
+But when she looked behinde her and saw him bring the doore upon his
+back, 'Why, thou foolish knave,' qd she, 'what wilt thou do with the
+door?' 'Marry, mistresse,' qd he, 'you bad me pull the doore after me.'
+'Why, fool,' qd she, 'I did command thee that thou shouldest make fast
+the doore after thee, and not bring it upon thy back after me.' But
+after this there was much good sport and laughing at his simplicity and
+foolishnesse therein."
+
+In the capacity of a merchant the simpleton does very wonderful things,
+and plumes himself on his sagacity, as we have already seen in the case
+of the Arab and his cow. And here are a brace of similar stories: A
+foolish man once went to the island of Kataha to trade, and among his
+wares was a quantity of fragrant aloes-wood. After he had sold his other
+goods, he could not find any one to take the aloes-wood off his hands,
+for the people who live there are not acquainted with that article of
+commerce. Then seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, he burnt
+his stock of aloes-wood and reduced it to charcoal. He sold it for the
+price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his
+cleverness, and became the laughing-stock of everybody.--Another
+blockhead went to the market to sell cotton, but no one would buy it
+from him, because it was not properly cleaned. In the meanwhile he saw
+in the bazaar a goldsmith selling gold which he had purified by heating
+it, and he saw it taken by a customer. Seeing that, he threw his cotton
+into the fire in order to purify it, and it was all burned to ashes.
+
+ There must be few who have not heard of the Irishman who was hired by a
+Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship. As the vessel was about to
+sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, "Captain, I lost your shovel
+overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern,
+just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back."--A
+similar story is told of an Indian simpleton. He was sailing in a ship
+when he let a silver cup fall from his hand into the water. Having taken
+notes of the spot by observing the eddies and other signs in the water,
+he said to himself, "I will bring it up from the bottom when I return."
+As he was recrossing the sea, he saw the eddies and other signs, and
+thinking he recognised the spot, he plunged into the water again and
+again, to recover his cup, but he only got well laughed at for his
+pains.
+
+We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that "distress is sure to
+come from being in the company of fools" in the following, from the
+Canarese story-book entitled _Kathe Manjari_: A foolish fellow
+travelled with a shopkeeper. When it became dark, the fool lay down in
+the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree.
+Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet
+against the fool's legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions,
+"What is this? Is it a piece of wood?" The fool was angry, and said, "Go
+away! go away! Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the
+loins of a plank in your house?" The thieves then seized him, and took
+away his annas. As they were moving off, they asked if the money was
+good or bad, to which the noodle replied, "Ha! ha! is it of my money you
+speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad? Look--
+there is a shopkeeper in that tree," pointing with his finger--"show it
+to him." Then the thieves went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of
+two hundred pagodas.
+
+In our next story, of the villagers who ate the buffalo, is exemplified
+the fact that "fools, in the conceit of their folly, while they deny
+what need not be denied, reveal what it is their interest to suppress,
+in order to get themselves believed." Some villagers took a buffalo
+belonging to a certain man, and killed it in an enclosure outside the
+village, under a banyan tree, and dividing the flesh, ate it up. The
+owner of the buffalo went and complained to the king, and he had the
+villagers who had eaten the animal brought before him. The proprietor of
+the buffalo said before the king, in their presence, "These men took my
+buffalo under a banyan tree near the tank, and killed and ate it before
+my eyes," whereupon an old fool among the villagers said, "There is no
+tank or banyan tree in our village. He says what is not true; where did
+we kill his buffalo or eat it?" When the man heard this, he replied,
+"What! are there not a banyan tree and a tank on the east side of the
+village? Moreover, you ate my buffalo on the eighth day of the lunar
+month." The old fool then said, "There is no east side or eighth day in
+our village." On hearing this, the king laughed, and said, to encourage
+the fool, "You are a truthful person; you never say anything false; so
+tell me the truth: did you eat that buffalo, or did you not?" The old
+fool answered, "I was born three years after my father died, and he
+taught me skill in speaking. So I never say what is untrue, my king. It
+is true that we ate his buffalo, but all the rest that he alleges is
+false." When the king heard this, he and his courtiers could not
+restrain their laughter; but he restored the price of the buffalo to the
+man, and fined the villagers.
+
+But sometimes even kings have been arrant noodles, and their credulity
+quite as amusing--or amazing--as that of their subjects. Once on a time
+there was a king who had a handsome daughter, and he summoned his
+physicians, and said to them, "Make some preparation of salutary drugs,
+which will cause my daughter to grow up quickly, so that she may be
+married to a good husband." The physicians, wishing to get a living out
+of this royal fool, replied, "There is a medicine which will do this,
+but it can only be procured in a distant country; and while we are
+sending for it, we must shut up your daughter in concealment, for this
+is the treatment laid down in such cases." The king having consented,
+they placed his daughter in concealment for several years, pretending
+that they were engaged in procuring the medicine; and when she was grown
+up, they presented her to the king, saying that she had been made to
+grow by the preparation; so the king was highly pleased, and gave them
+much wealth.
+
+Between an Indian raja and an Indian dhobie, or washerman, there is the
+greatest possible difference socially, but individually--when both are
+noodles--there may be sometimes very little to choose; indeed, of the
+two, all things considered, the difference, if any, is perhaps in favour
+of the humble cleanser of body-clothes. A favourite story in various
+parts of India, near akin to that last cited, is of a poor washerman and
+his young ass. This simpleton one day, passing a school kept by a
+mullah, or Muhammedan doctor of laws, heard him scolding his pupils,
+exclaiming that they were still asses, although he had done so much to
+make them men. The washerman thought that here was a rare chance, for he
+happened to have the foal of the ass that carried his bundles of
+clothes, which, since he had no child, he should get the learned mullah
+to change into a boy. Thus thinking, he goes next day to the mullah, and
+asks him to admit his foal into his school, in order that it should be
+changed into the human form and nature. The preceptor, seeing the poor
+fellow's simplicity, answered that the task was very laborious, and he
+must have a fee of a hundred rupis. So the washerman went home, and soon
+returned leading his foal, which, with the money, he handed over to the
+teacher, who told him to come again on such a day and hour, when he
+should find that the change he desired had been effected. But the
+washerman was so impatient that he went to the teacher several times
+before the day appointed, and was informed that the foal was beginning
+to learn manners, that its ears were already become very much shorter,
+and, in short, that it was making satisfactory progress.
+
+It happened, when the day came on which he was to receive his young ass
+transformed into a fine, well-educated boy, the simpleton was kept busy
+with his customers' clothes, but on the day following he found time to
+go to the teacher, who told him it was most unfortunate he had not come
+at the appointed hour, since the youth had quitted the school yesterday,
+refusing to submit any longer to authority; but the teacher had just
+learned that he had been made kazi (or judge) in Cawnpore. At first the
+washerman was disposed to be angry, but reflecting that, after all, the
+business was better even than he anticipated, he thanked the preceptor
+for all his care and trouble, and returned home. Having informed his
+wife of his good luck, they resolved to visit their quondam young foal,
+and get him to make them some allowance out of his now ample means. So,
+shutting up their house, they travelled to Cawnpore, which they reached
+in safety. Being directed to the kazi's court, the washerman, leaving
+his wife outside, entered, and discovered the kazi seated in great
+dignity, and before him were the pleaders, litigants, and officers of
+the court. He had brought a bridle in one hand and a wisp of hay in the
+other; but being unable, on account of the crowd, to approach the kazi,
+he got tired of waiting, so, holding up the bridle and the hay, he cried
+out, "Khoor! khoor! khoor!" as he used to do in calling his donkeys,
+thinking this would induce the kazi to come to him. But, instead of
+this, he was seized by the kazi's order and locked up for creating a
+disturbance.
+
+When the business of the court was over, the kazi, pitying the supposed
+madman, sent for him to learn the reason of his strange behaviour, and
+in answer to his inquiries the simpleton said, "You don't seem to know
+me, sir, nor recognise this bridle, which has been in your mouth so
+often. You appear to forget that you are the foal of one of my asses,
+that I got changed into a man, for the fee of a hundred rupis, by a
+learned mullah who transforms asses into educated men. You forget what
+you were, and, I suppose, will be as little submissive to me as you were
+to the mullah when you ran away from him." All present were convulsed
+with laughter: such a "case" was never heard of before. But the kazi,
+seeing how the mullah had taken advantage of the poor fellow's
+simplicity, gave him a present of a hundred rupis, besides sufficient
+for the expenses of his journey home, and so dismissed him.
+
+ A party of rogues once found as great a blockhead in a rich Indian
+herdsman, to whom they said, "We have asked the daughter of a wealthy
+inhabitant of the town in marriage for you, and her father has promised
+to give her." He was much pleased to hear this, and gave them an ample
+reward for their trouble. After a few days they came again and told him
+that his marriage had taken place. Again he gave them rich presents for
+their good news. Some more days having passed, they said to him, "A son
+has been born to you," at which he was in ecstacies and gave them all
+his remaining wealth; but the next day, when he began to lament, saying,
+"I am longing to see my son," the people laughed at him on account of
+his having been cheated by the rogues, as if he had acquired the
+stupidity of cattle from having so much to do with them.
+
+It is not generally known that the incident which forms the subject of
+the droll Scotch song "The Barring of the Door," which also occurs in
+the _Nights_ of Straparola, is of Eastern origin. In an Arabian
+tale, a blockhead, having married his pretty cousin, gave the customary
+feast to their relations and friends. When the festivities were over, he
+conducted his guests to the door, and from absence of mind neglected to
+shut it before returning to his wife. "Dear cousin," said his wife to
+him when they were alone, "go and shut the street door." "It would be
+strange indeed," he replied, "if I did such a thing. Am I just made a
+bridegroom, clothed in silk, wearing a shawl and a dagger set with
+diamonds, and am I to go and shut the door? Why, my dear, you are crazy.
+Go and shut it yourself." "Oh, indeed!" exclaimed the wife. "Am I,
+young, robed in a dress, with lace and precious stones--am I to go and
+shut the street door? No, indeed! It is you who are become crazy, and
+not I. Come, let us make a bargain," she continued; "and let the first
+who speaks go and fasten the door." "Agreed," said the husband, and
+immediately he became mute, and the wife too was silent, while they both
+sat down, dressed as they were in their nuptial attire, looking at each
+other and seated on opposite sofas. Thus they remained for two hours.
+Some thieves happened to pass by, and seeing the door open, entered and
+laid hold of whatever came to their hands. The silent couple heard
+footsteps in the house, but opened not their mouths. The thieves came
+into the room and saw them seated motionless and apparently indifferent
+to all that might take place. They continued their pillage, therefore,
+collecting together everything valuable, and even dragging away the
+carpets from beneath them; they laid hands on the noodle and his wife,
+taking from their persons every article of jewellery, while they, in
+fear of losing the wager, said not a word. Having thus cleared the
+house, the thieves departed quietly, but the pair continued to sit,
+uttering not a syllable. Towards morning a police officer came past on
+his tour of inspection, and seeing the door open, walked in. After
+searching all the rooms and finding no person, he entered their
+apartment, and inquired the meaning of what he saw. Neither of them
+would condescend to reply. The officer became angry, and ordered their
+heads to be cut off. The executioner's sword was about to perform its
+office, when the wife cried out, "Sir, he is my husband. Do not kill
+him!" "Oh, oh," exclaimed the husband, overjoyed and clapping his hands,
+"you have lost the wager; go and shut the door." He then explained the
+whole affair to the police officer, who shrugged his shoulders and went
+away.[6]
+
+A party of noodles are substituted for the husband and wife in a Turkish
+version of the tale, in the _History of the Forty Vazirs. _ Some
+bang-eaters,[7] while out walking, found a sequin. They said, "Let us go
+to a cook, and buy food and eat." So they went and entered a cook's shop
+and said, "Master, give us a sequin's worth of food." The cook prepared
+all kinds of food, and loaded a porter with it; and the bang-eaters took
+him without the city, where there was a ruined tomb, which they entered
+and sat down in, and the porter deposited the food and went away. The
+bang-eaters began to partake of the food, when suddenly one of them
+said, "The door is open; do one of you shut it, else some other
+bang-eaters will come in and annoy us: even though they be friends, they
+will do the deeds of foes." One of them replied, "Go thou and shut the
+door," and they fell a-quarrelling. At length one said, "Come, let us
+agree that whichever of us speaks or laughs shall rise and fasten the
+door." They all agreed to this proposal, and left the food and sat quite
+still. Suddenly a great number of dogs came in; not one of the
+bang-eaters stirred or spoke, for if one spoke he would have to rise and
+shut the door, so they spoke not. The dogs made an end of the food, and
+ate it all up. Just then another dog leapt in from without, but no food
+remained. Now one of the bang-eaters had partaken of everything, and
+some of the food remained about his mouth and on his beard. That newly
+come dog licked up the particles of food that were on the bang-eater's
+breast, and while he was licking up those about his mouth, he took his
+lip for a piece of meat and bit it. The bang-eater did not stir, for he
+said within himself, "They will tell me to shut the door." But to ease
+his soul he cried, "Ough!" inwardly cursing the dog. When the other
+bang-eaters heard him make that noise, they said, "Rise, fasten the
+door." He replied, "After loss, attention! Now that the food is gone,
+and my lip is wounded, what is the use of shutting that door?" and
+crying, "Woe! alas!" they each went in a different direction.[8]
+
+A similar story is known in Kashmir: Five friends chanced to meet, and
+all having leisure, they decided to go to the bazaar and purchase a
+sheep's head, and have a great feast in the house of one of the party,
+each of whom subscribed four annas. The head was bought, but while they
+were returning to the house it was remembered that there was not any
+butter. On this one of the five proposed that the first of them that
+should break silence by speaking should go for the butter. Now it was no
+light matter to have to retrace one's steps back to the butter-shop, as
+the way was long and the day was very hot. So they all five kept strict
+silence. Pots were cleaned, the fire was prepared, and the head laid
+thereon. Now and then one would cough, and another would groan, but
+never a tongue uttered a word, though the fire was fast going out, and
+the head was getting burnt, owing to there being no fat or butter
+wherewith to grease the pot. Thus matters were when a policeman passed
+by, and, attracted by the smell of cooking, looked in at the window, and
+saw these five men perfectly silent and sitting around a burnt sheep's
+head. Not knowing the arrangement, he supposed that these men were
+either mad or were thieves, and so he inquired how they came there, and
+how they obtained the head. Not a word was uttered in reply. "Why are
+you squatting there in that stupid fashion?" shouted the policeman.
+Still no reply. Then the policeman, full of rage that these wretched men
+should thus mock at his authority, took them all off straight to the
+police inspectors office. On arrival the inspector asked them the reason
+of their strange behaviour, but he also got no reply. This rather tried
+the patience and temper of the man of authority, who was generally
+feared, and flattered, and bribed. So he ordered one of the five to be
+immediately flogged. The poor fool bore it bravely, and uttered never a
+sound; but when the blows repeatedly fell on the same wounded parts, he
+could endure no longer, and cried out, "Oh! oh! Why do you beat me?
+Enough, enough! Is it not enough that the sheep's head has been
+spoiled?"
+
+His four associates now cried out, "Go to the bazaar and fetch the
+butter."[9]
+
+There is quite as droll a version current among the people of Ceylon, to
+the following effect: A gentleman once had in his employment twenty-five
+idiots. In the old times it was customary with Sinhalese high families
+not to allow their servants to eat from plates, but every day they were
+supplied with plantain leaves, from which they took their food. After
+eating, they were accustomed to shape the leaf into the form of a cup
+and drink out of it. Now in this gentleman's house the duty of providing
+the leaves devolved upon the twenty-five idiots, who were scarcely fit
+for any other work. One day, when they had gone into the garden to cut
+the leaves, they spoke among themselves and said, "Why should we, every
+one of us, trouble ourselves to fetch plantain leaves, when one only
+could very easily do it? Let us therefore lie down on the ground and
+sleep like dead men, and let him who first utters a sound or opens his
+eyes undertake the work." It was no sooner said than done. The men lay
+in a heap like so many logs. At breakfast-time that day the hungry
+servants went to the kitchen for their rice, only to be disappointed. No
+leaves were forthcoming on which to distribute the food, and a complaint
+was made to the master that the twenty-five idiots had not returned to
+the house since they went out in the morning. Search was at once made,
+and they were found fast asleep in the garden. After vainly endeavouring
+to rouse them, the master concluded that they were dead, and ordered his
+servants to dig a deep hole and bury them. A grave was then dug, and the
+idiots were, one by one, thrown into it, but still there was no noise or
+motion on their part. At length, when they were all put into the grave,
+and were being covered up, a tool employed by one of the servants hit
+sharply by accident against the leg of one of the idiots, who then
+involuntarily moaned. Thereupon all the others exclaimed, "You were the
+first to utter a sound; therefore from henceforth you must take upon
+yourself the duty of providing the plantain leaves."[10]
+
+It has already been remarked that a literary Italian version of the
+Silent Couple is found in the _Nights_ of Straparola, but there are
+other variants orally current among the common people in different parts
+of Italy. This is one from Venice: There were once a husband and a wife.
+The former said one day to the latter, "Let us have some fritters." She
+replied, "What shall we do for a frying-pan?" "Go and borrow one from my
+godmother." "You go and get it; it is only a little way off." "Go
+yourself, and I will take it back when we are done with it." So she went
+and borrowed the pan, and when she returned said to her husband, "Here
+is the pan, but you must carry it back." So they cooked the fritters,
+and after they had eaten, the husband said, "Now let us go to work, both
+of us, and the one who speaks first shall carry back the pan." Then she
+began to spin, and he to draw his thread--for he was a shoemaker--and
+all the time keeping silence, except that when he drew his thread he
+said, "Leulero! leulero!" and she, spinning, answered, "Picici! picici!
+picicio!" And they said not another word. Now there happened to pass
+that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any
+shoemaker in that street. She said there was one near by, and took him
+to the house. The, soldier asked the shoemaker to come and cut his horse
+a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but "Leulero!
+leulero!" and his wife "Picici! picici! picicio!" Then the soldier said,
+"Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." The
+shoemaker only answered, "Leulero! leulero!" and his wife "Picici!
+picici! picicio!" Then the soldier began to grow angry, and seized his
+sword, and said to the shoemaker, "Either come and cut my horse a girth,
+or I will cut your head off." But to no purpose. The shoemaker did not
+wish to be the first one to speak, and only replied, "Leulero! leulero!"
+and his wife "Picici! picici! picicio!" Then the soldier got mad in good
+earnest, seized the shoemaker's head, and was going to cut it off. When
+his wile saw that, she cried out, "Ah, don't, for mercy's sake!" "Good!"
+exclaimed her husband, "good! Now you go and carry the pan back to my
+godmother, and I will go and cut the horse's girth."
+
+In a Sicilian version the man and wife fry some fish, and then set about
+their respective work--shoemaking and spinning--and the one who finishes
+first the piece of work begun is to eat the fish. While they are singing
+and whistling at their work, a friend comes along, who knocks at the
+door, but receives no answer. Then he enters and speaks to them, but
+still no reply. Finally, in anger, he sits down at the table, and eats
+up all the fish himself.[11]
+
+Thus, it will be observed, the droll incident which forms the subject of
+the old Scotch song of "The Barring of the Door" is of world-wide
+celebrity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gothamite stories appear to have been familiar throughout Europe during
+the later Middle Ages, if we may judge from a chapter of the _Gesta
+Romanorum_ in which the monkish compiler has curiously "moralised"
+the actions of three noodles:
+
+We read in the "Lives of the Fathers" that an angel showed to a certain
+holy man three men labouring under a triple fatuity. The first made a
+faggot of wood, and because it was too heavy for him to carry, he added
+to it more wood, hoping by such means to make it light.  The second drew
+water with great labour from a very deep well with a sieve, which he
+incessantly filled.  The third carried a beam in his chariot, and,
+wishing to enter his house, whereof the gate was so narrow and low that
+it would not admit him, he violently whipped his horse until they both
+fell together into a deep well. Having shown this to the holy man, the
+angel said, "What think you of these three men?" "That they are fools,"
+answered he. "Understand, however," returned the angel, "that they
+represent the sinners of this world. The first describes that kind of
+men who from day to day do add new sins to the old, because they cannot
+bear the weight of those which they already have. The second man
+represents those who do good, but do it sinfully, and therefore it is of
+no benefit. And the third person is he who would enter the kingdom of
+heaven with all his world of vanities, but is cast down into hell."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite class to
+conclude the present section. In Malava there were two Brahman brothers,
+and the wealth inherited from their father was left jointly between
+them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one
+having too little and one having too much, and they made a teacher
+learned in the Vedas arbitrator, and he said to them, "You must divide
+everything your father left into two halves, so that you may not quarrel
+about the inequality of the division." When the two fools heard this,
+they divided every single thing into two equal parts--house, beds, in
+fact, all their property, including their cattle. Henry Stephens (Henri
+Estienne), in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[12] relates
+some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his shins
+before the fire, and not having wit enough to go back from it, sent for
+masons to remove the chimney; of the fool who ate the doctor's
+prescription, because he was told to "take it;" of another wittol who,
+having seen one spit upon iron to try whether it was hot, did likewise
+with his porridge; and, best of all, he tells of a fellow who was hit on
+the back with a stone as he rode upon his mule, and cursed the animal
+for kicking him. This last exquisite jest has its analogue in that of
+the Irishman who was riding on an ass one fine day, when the beast, by
+kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet
+entangled in the stirrup, whereupon the rider dismounted, saying,
+"Faith, if you're going to get up, it's time I was getting down."
+
+The poet Ovid alludes to the story of Ino persuading the women of the
+country to roast the wheat before it was sown, which may have come to
+India through the Greeks, since we are told in the _Katha Sarit
+Sagara_ of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds,
+and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quantity of roasted
+seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in
+Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, and is probably of Buddhistic
+origin. And an analogous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens
+hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to
+have been entertained from ancient times, and to be still prevalent in
+the East; the so-called jests of Hierokles are all at the expense of
+pedants; and the Turkish typical noodle is Khoja _(i.e.,_ Teacher)
+Nasru-'d-Din, some of whose "witless devices" shall be cited presently.
+
+[2] _Elf Laylawa Layla_, or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a
+Night. Translated, with Introduction, Notes on the Manners and Customs
+of Moslem Men, and a Terminal Essay on the History of _The Nights_,
+by R.F. Burton. Vol. v.
+
+[3] The Khoja, however, was not such a fool as we might conclude from
+the foregoing examples of his sayings and doings; for, being asked one
+day what musical instrument he liked best, he answered, "I am very fond
+of the music of plates and saucepans."
+
+[4] In China wine is almost invariably taken hot, according to Davis, in
+his work on the Chinese.
+
+[5] This and the following specimens of Chinese stories of simpletons
+are from "Contes et Bon Mots extraits d'un livre chinois intitule
+_Siao li Siao_, traduit par M. Stanislas Julien," (_Journal
+Asiatique_, tom. iv., 1824).
+
+[6] In another Arabian version, the man desires his wife to moisten some
+stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an
+altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and
+moisten the bread.  A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds
+the couple dumb; he kisses the wife, but the man says nothing; he gives
+the man a blow, but still he says nothing; he has the man taken before
+the kazi, but even yet he says nothing; the kazi orders him to be
+hanged, and he is led off to execution, when the wife rushes up and
+cries out, "Oh, save my poor husband!"  "You wretch," says the man, "go
+home and moisten the bread!"
+
+[7]  Bang is a preparation of hemp and coarse opium.
+
+[8] From Mr. E.J.W. Gibb's translation of the _Forty Vazirs_
+(London: 1886).
+
+[9] Knowles' _Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings_, pp.
+197-8. The article bought by the five men is called a _hir_, which
+Mr. Knowles says "is the head of any animal used for food," and a
+_sheep's_ head were surely fitting food for such noodles. Mr.
+Knowles makes it appear that the whole affair of keeping silence was a
+mere jest, but we have before seen that it is decidedly meant for a
+noodle-story.
+
+[10] _The Orientalist_, 1884, p. 136.
+
+[11] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 284-5.
+
+[12] A separate work from the _Apologie pour Herodote_ Such was the
+exasperation of the French clerics at the bitter truths set forth in it,
+that the author had to flee the country. An English translation,
+entitled "_A World of Wonders;_ or, an introduction to a Treatise
+tovching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a
+Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,'" etc., was
+published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio.
+The _Apologie pour Herodote_ was printed at the Hague.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE SILLY SON.
+
+
+Among the favourite jests of all peoples, from Iceland to Japan, from
+India to England, are the droll adventures and mishaps of the silly son,
+who contrives to muddle everything he is set to do. In vain does his
+poor mother try to direct him in "the way he should go": she gets him a
+wife, as a last resource; but a fool he is still, and a fool he will
+always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny chap-books
+and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how
+
+  Simple Simon went a-fishing
+    For to catch a whale,
+  But all the water he had got
+    Was in his mother's pail?
+
+an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still
+more celebrated prototypes:
+
+  Three men of Gotham
+  Went to sea in a bowl;
+  If the bowl had been stronger,
+  My tale had been longer.
+
+Then there is the prose history of _Simple Simon's Misfortunes; or,
+his Wife Marjory's Outrageous Cruelty_, which tells (1) of Simon's
+wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his
+roast-meat clothes (_i.e.,_ Sunday clothes) the very next morning
+after he was married; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a
+basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him
+look like a red herring; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was
+going to the mill to have it ground; (4) how Simon went to market with a
+basket of eggs, but broke them by the way: also how he was put into the
+stocks; (5) how Simon's wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money
+for the eggs; (6) how Simon lost his wife's pail and burnt the bottom of
+her kettle; (7) how Simon's wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but
+going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river: also how a
+ragman ran away with his clothes. No wonder if, after this crowning
+misfortune, poor Simon "drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as
+being weary of his life"!
+
+Again, we have _The Unfortunate Son; or, a Kind Wife is worth Gold,
+being full of Mirth and Pastime_, which commences thus:
+
+  There was a man but one son had,
+    And he was all his joy;
+  But still his fortune was but bad,
+    Though he was a pretty boy.
+
+  His father sent him forth one day
+    To feed a flock of sheep,
+  And half of them were stole away
+    While he lay down asleep!
+
+  Next day he went with one Tom Goff
+    To reap as he was seen,
+  When he did cut his fingers off,
+    The sickle was so keen!
+
+Another of the chap-book histories of noodles is that of _Simple John
+and his Twelve Misfortunes_, an imitation of _Simple Simon_; it
+was still popular amongst the rustics of Scotland fifty years ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The adventures of Silly Matt, the Norwegian counterpart of our typical
+English booby, as related in Asbjornson's collection of Norse
+folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular
+fictions:
+
+The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge
+across the river and take toll of every one who wished to go over it; so
+he sets to work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at
+one end--"at the receipt of custom." Three men come up with loads of
+hay, and Matt demands toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay.
+Next comes a pedlar, with all sorts of small wares in his pack, and Matt
+gets from him two needles. On his return home his mother asks him what
+he has got that day. "Hay and needles," says Matt. Well! and what had he
+done with the hay? "I put some of it in my mouth," quoth he, "and as it
+tasted like grass, I threw it into the river." She says he ought to have
+spread it on the byre-floor. "Very good," replies the dutiful Matt;
+"I'll remember that next time." And what had he done with the needles?
+He stuck them into the hay. "Ah," says the mother, "you should rather
+have stuck them in and out of your cap, and brought them home to me."
+Well! well! Matt will not forget to do so next time. The following day a
+man comes to the bridge with a sack of meal and gives Matt a pound of
+it; then comes a smith, who gives him a gimlet: the meal he spread on
+the byre-floor, and the gimlet he stuck in and out of his cap. His
+mother tells him he should have come home for a bucket to hold the meal,
+and the gimlet he should have put up his sleeve. Very good! Matt will
+not forget next time. Another day some men come to the bridge with kegs
+of brandy, of which Matt gets a pint, and pours it into his sleeve; next
+comes a man driving some goats and their young ones, and gives Matt a
+kid, which he treads down into a bucket. His mother says he should have
+led the goat home with a cord round its neck, and put the brandy in a
+pail. Next day he gets a pat of butter and drags it home with a string.
+After this his mother despairs of his improvement, till it occurs to her
+that he might not be such a noodle if he had a wife. So she bids him go
+and see whether he cannot find some lass who will take him for a
+husband. Should he meet any folk on his way, he ought to say to them,
+"God's peace!" Matt accordingly sets off in quest of a wife, and meets a
+she-wolf and her seven cubs. "God's peace!" says Matt, and then returns
+home. When his mother learns of this, she tells him he should have
+cried, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" Next day he goes off again, and
+meeting a bridal party, he cries, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf!" and goes
+back to his mother and acquaints her of this fresh adventure. "O you
+great silly!" says she; "you should have said, 'Ride happily, bride and
+bridegroom!'" Once more Matt sets out to seek a wife, and seeing on the
+road a bear taking a ride on a horse, he exclaims joyfully, "Ride
+happily, bride and bridegroom!" and then returns home. His mother, on
+hearing of this new piece of folly, tells him he should have cried, "To
+the devil with you!" Again he sets out, and meeting a funeral
+procession, he roars, "To the devil with you!" His mother says he should
+have cried, "May your poor soul have mercy!" and sends him off for the
+fifth time to look for a lass. On the road he sees some gipsies busy
+skinning a dead dog, upon which he piously exclaims, "May your poor soul
+have mercy!" His mother now goes herself to get him a wife, finds a lass
+that is willing to marry him, and invites her to dinner. She privately
+tells Matt how he should comport himself in the presence of his
+sweetheart; he should cast an eye at her now and then. Matt understands
+her instruction most literally: stealing into the sheepfold, he plucks
+out the eyes of all the sheep and goats, and puts them in his pocket.
+When he is seated beside his sweetheart, he casts a "sheep's eye" at
+her, which hits her on the nose.[1]
+
+This last incident, as we have seen, occurs in the _Tales of the Men
+of Gotham ("ante_, p. 41" in original. This section is to be found
+immediately after the reference to Chapter II, Footnote 9 in this
+e-text), and it is also found in a Venetian story (Bernoni,
+_Fiabe_, No. 11) entitled "The Fool," of which the following is the
+first part:
+
+Once upon a time there was a mother who had a son with little brains.
+One morning she said, "We must get up early, for we have to make bread."
+So they both rose early, and began to make bread. The mother made the
+loaves, but took no pains to make them the same size. Her son said to
+her finally, "How small you have made this loaf, mother." "Oh," said
+she, "it does not matter whether they are big or little, for the proverb
+says, 'Large and small, all must go to mass.'" "Good! good!" said her
+son. When the bread was made, instead of taking it to the baker's, the
+son took it to the church, for it was the hour for mass, saying, "My
+mother said that, 'large and small, all must go to mass.'" So he threw
+the loaves down in the middle of the church. Then he went home to his
+mother, and said, "I have done what you told me to do," "Good! Did you
+take the bread to the baker's?" "O mother, if you had seen how they all
+looked at me!" "You might also have cast an eye on them in return," said
+his mother. "Wait; wait. I will cast an eye at them too," he exclaimed,
+and went to the stable and cut out the eyes of all the animals, and
+putting them in a handkerchief, went to the church, and when any man or
+woman looked at him, he threw an eye at them.[2]
+
+Silly Matt has a brother in Russia, according to M. Leger's _Contes
+Populaires Slaves_, published at Paris in 1882: An old man and his
+wife had a son, who was about as great a noodle as could be. One day his
+mother said to him, "My son, thou shouldst go about among people, to get
+thyself sharpened and rubbed down a little." "Yes, mother," says he;
+"I'm off this moment." So he went to the village, and saw two men
+threshing pease. He ran up to them, and rubbed himself now on one and
+then on the other. "No nonsense!" cried the men. "Get away." But he
+continued to rub himself on them, till at last they would stand it no
+longer, and beat him with their flails so lustily that he could hardly
+crawl home. "What art thou crying about, child?" asked his mother. He
+related his misfortune. "Ah, my child," said she, "how silly thou art!
+Thou shouldst have said to them, 'God aid you, good men! Do you wish me
+to help you to thresh?' and then they would have given thee some pease
+for thy trouble, and we should have had them to cook and eat." On
+another occasion the noodle again went through the village, and met some
+people carrying a dead man. "May God aid you, good men!" he exclaimed.
+"Do you wish me to help you to thresh?" But he got himself well thrashed
+once more for this ill-timed speech. When he reached home, he howled,
+"They've felled me to the ground, beaten me, and plucked my beard and
+hair!" and told of his new mishap. "Ah, noodle!" said his mother, "thou
+shouldst have said, 'God give peace to his soul!' Thou shouldst have
+taken off thy bonnet, wept, and fallen upon thy knees. They would then
+have given thee meat and drink." Again he went to the village, and met a
+marriage procession. So he took off his bonnet, and cried with all his
+might, "God grant peace to his soul!" and then burst into tears. "What
+brute is this?" said the wedding company. "We laugh and amuse ourselves,
+and he laments as if he were at a funeral." So they leaped out of the
+carriages, and beat him soundly on the ribs. Home he returned, crying,
+"They've beaten me, thrashed me, and torn my beard and hair!" and
+related what had happened. "My son," said his mother, "thou shouldst
+have leaped and danced with them." The next time he went to the village
+he took his bagpipe under his arm. At the end of the street a cart-shed
+was on fire. The noodle ran to the spot, and began to play on his
+bagpipe and to dance and caper about, for which he was abused as before.
+Going back to his mother in tears, he told her how he had fared. "My
+son," said she, "thou shouldst have carried water and thrown it on the
+fire, like the other folks." Three days later, when his ribs were well
+again, the noodle went through the village once more, and seeing a man
+roasting a little pig, he seized a vessel of water, ran up with it, and
+threw the water on the fire. This time also he was beaten, and when he
+got home, and told his mother of his ill-luck, she resolved never again
+to allow him to go abroad; so he remains by the fireside, as great a
+fool as ever.
+
+ This species of noodle is also known in Japan. He is the hero of a
+farce entitled _Hone Kaha_, or Ribs and Skin, which has been done
+into English by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in his _Classical Poetry
+of the Japanese_. The rector of a Buddhist temple tells his curate
+that he feels he is now getting too old for the duties of his office,
+and means to resign the benefice in his favour. Before retiring to his
+private chamber, he desires the curate to let him know if any persons
+visit the temple, and bids him, should he be in want of information
+regarding any matter, to come to him. A parishioner calls to borrow an
+umbrella. The curate lends him a new one, and then goes to the rector
+and informs him of this visitor. "You have done wrong," says the rector.
+"You ought to have said that you should have been happy to comply with
+such a small request, but, unfortunately, the rector was walking out
+with it the other day, when, at a place where four roads meet, a sudden
+gust of wind blew the skin to one side and the ribs to another; we have
+tied the ribs and skin together in the middle, and hung it from the
+ceiling. Something like that," adds the rector, "something with an air
+of truth about it, is what you should have said." Next comes another
+parishioner, who wishes to borrow a horse. The curate replies with great
+politeness, "The request with which you honour me is a mere trifle, but
+the rector took it out with him a few days since, and coming to the
+junction of four cross roads, a gust of wind blew the ribs to one side
+and the skin to another, and we have tied them together, and hung them
+from the ceiling; so I fear it would not suit your purpose." "It is a
+horse I want," said the man. "Precisely--a horse: I am aware of it,"
+quoth the curate, and the man went off, not a little perplexed, after
+which the curate reports this new affair to the rector, who says it was
+to an umbrella, not to a horse, that such a story was applicable. Should
+any one come again to borrow a horse, he ought to say, "I much regret
+that I cannot comply with your request. The fact is, we lately turned
+him out to grass, and becoming frolicsome, he dislocated his thigh, and
+is now lying, covered with straw, in a corner of the stable." "Something
+like that," adds the rector, "something with an air of truth about it,
+is what you should say." A third parishioner comes to invite the rector
+and the curate to a feast at his house. "For myself," says the curate,
+"I promise to come; but I fear it will not be convenient for the rector
+to accompany me." "I presume then," says the man, "that he has some
+particular business on hand?" "No, not any particular business," answers
+the curate; "but the truth is, we lately turned him out to grass, and
+becoming frisky, he dislocated his thigh, and now lies in a corner of
+the stable, covered with straw." "I spoke of the rector," says the
+parishioner. "Yes, of the rector. I quite understand," responds the
+curate, very complaisantly, upon which the man goes away, not knowing
+what to make of such a strange account of the rector's condition. This
+last affair puts the rector into a fury, and he cuffs his intended
+successor, exclaiming, "When was I ever frisky, I should like to know?"
+
+ As great a jolterhead as any of the foregoing was the hero of a story
+in Cazotte's "Continuation" of the _Arabian Nights_, entitled
+"L'Imbecille; ou, L'Histoire de Xailoun,"[3] This noodle's wife said to
+him one day, "Go and buy some pease, and don't forget that it is pease
+you are to buy; continually repeat 'Pease!' till you reach the
+market-place." So he went off, with "Pease! pease!" always in his mouth.
+He passed the corner of a street where a merchant who had pearls for
+sale was proclaiming his wares in a loud voice, saying, "In the name of
+the Prophet, pearls!" Xailoun's attention was at once attracted by the
+display of pearls, and at the same time he was occupied in retaining the
+lesson his wife had taught him, and putting his hand in the box of
+pearls, he cried out, "Pease! pease!" The merchant, supposing Xailoun
+played upon him and depreciated his pearls by wishing to make them pass
+for false ones, struck him a severe blow. "Why do you strike me?" said
+Xailoun. "Because you insult me," answered the merchant. "Do you suppose
+I am trying to deceive people?" "No," said the noodle. "But what must I
+say, then?" "If you will cry properly, say as I do, 'Pearls, in the name
+of the Prophet!'" He next passed by the shop of a merchant from whom
+some pearls had been stolen, and his manner of crying, "Pearls!" etc.,
+which was not nearly so loud as usual, appeared to the merchant very
+suspicious. "The man who has stolen my pearls," thought he, "has
+probably recognised me, and when he passes my shop lowers his voice in
+crying the goods." Upon this suspicion he ran after Xailoun, and
+stopping him, said, "Show me your pearls." The poor fool was in great
+confusion, and the merchant thought he had got the thief. The supposed
+seller of pearls was soon surrounded by a great crowd, and the merchant
+at last discovered that he was a perfect simpleton. "Why," said he, "do
+you cry that you sell pearls?" "What should I say, then?" asked Xailoun.
+"It is not true," said the merchant, not listening to him.  "It is not
+true," exclaimed the noodle. "Let me repeat, 'It is not true,' that I
+may not forget it;" and as he went on he kept crying, "It is not true."
+His way led him towards a place where a man was proclaiming, "In the
+name of the Prophet, lentils!" Xailoun, induced by curiosity, went up to
+the man, his mouth full of the last words he remembered, and putting his
+hand into the sack, cried, "It is not true." The sturdy villager gave
+him a blow that caused him to stagger, saying, "What d'ye mean by giving
+me the lie about my goods, which I both sowed and reaped myself?" Quoth
+the noodle, "I have only tried to say what I ought to say." "Well,
+then," rejoined the dealer, "you ought to say, as I do, 'Lentils, in the
+name of the Prophet!'" So our noodle at once took up this new cry, and
+proceeded on his way till he came to the bank of the river, where a
+fisherman had been casting his net for hours, and had frequently changed
+his place, without getting any fish. Xailoun, who was amused with every
+new thing he saw, began to follow the fisherman, and, that he should not
+forget his lesson, continued to repeat, "Lentils, in the name of the
+Prophet!" Suddenly the fisherman made a pretence of spreading his net,
+in order to wring and dry it, and having folded in his hand the rope to
+which it was fastened, he took hold of the simpleton and struck him some
+furious blows with it, saying, "Vile sorcerer! cease to curse my
+fishing." Xailoun struggled, and at length disengaged himself. "I am no
+sorcerer," said he. "Well, if you are not," answered the fisherman, "why
+do you cause me bad luck by your words every time I throw my net?" "I
+didn't mean to bring you bad luck," said the noodle. "I only repeat what
+I was told to repeat." The fisherman then concluded that some of his
+enemies, who wished to do him an ill turn without exposing themselves,
+had prevailed upon this poor fellow to come and curse his fishing, so he
+said, "I am sorry, brother, for having beaten you, but you were wrong to
+pronounce the words you did, thereby bringing bad luck to me, who never
+did you any harm." Quoth the simpleton, "I only tried to say the words
+my wife told me not to forget." "Do you know them?" "Yes." "Well, place
+yourself beside me, and each time I cast my net you must say, 'In the
+name of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!'"
+But Xailoun thought what his wife had said was not so long as that.
+"Oh, yes, it was," said the fisherman; "and take care you don't miss a
+single word, and I shall give you some of the fish to take home with
+you." That he might not forget, Xailoun repeated it very loud, but as
+'he was afraid of the cord whenever he saw the fisherman drawing in his
+net, he ran away as fast as he could, but still repeating, "In the name
+of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best!" These
+words he pronounced in the midst of a crowd of people, through which the
+corpse of the kazi (magistrate, or judge) was being carried to the
+burying ground, and the mullahs who surrounded the bier, scandalised by
+what they thought a horrible imprecation, exclaimed, "How darest thou,
+wicked wretch, thus blaspheme? Is it not enough that Death has taken one
+of the greatest men of Baghdad?" The poor simpleton was skulking off in
+fear and trembling, when his sleeve was pulled by an aged slave, who
+told him that he ought to say, "May Allah preserve his body and save his
+soul!" So our noodle went on, repeating this new cry till he came to a
+street where a dead ass was being carted away. "May Allah preserve his
+body and save his soul!"' he exclaimed. "How he blasphemes!" said the
+folk, and they set upon him with their fists and sticks, and gave him a
+sound drubbing. At length he got clear of them, and by chance came to
+the house of his wife's mother, but he only ventured to stand at the
+door and peep within. He was recognised, however, and asked what he
+would have to eat--goat's flesh? rice? _pease?_ Yes, it was pease
+he wanted, and having got some, he hastened home, and after relating all
+his mishaps, informed his wife, that her sister was very sick. His wife,
+having prepared herself to go to her mother's house, tells the simpleton
+to rock the baby should it awake and cry; feed the hen that was sitting;
+if the ass was thirsty, give her to drink; shut the door, and take care
+not to go to sleep, lest robbers should come and plunder the house. The
+baby awakes, and Xailoun rocks it to sleep again; so far, well. The hen
+seems uneasy; he concludes she is troubled with insects, like himself.
+So he takes up the hen, and thinking the best way to kill the insects
+was to stick a pin into them, he unluckily kills the hen. This was a
+serious matter, and while he considers what he should do in the
+circumstances, the ass begins to bray. "Ah," says he, "I've no time to
+attend to you just now; but when I am on your back, you can carry me to
+the river." Then he opened the door and let out the ass and her colt.
+After this he sat down on the eggs, and took the baby in his arms. His
+wife returning, knocks at the door. "Let me in, you fool," she cries. "I
+can't, for I am nursing the baby and hatching the eggs." At length she
+contrived to force open the door, and running up to her idiot of a
+husband, fetched him a blow that caused him to crush all the
+half-hatched eggs. Luckily she had met the ass and her foal on the road,
+so the amount of mischief done by her stupid spouse in her absence was
+not so great, all things considered.[4]
+
+The misadventures of the Arabian idiot in his expedition to purchase
+pease present a close analogy to those of the typical English booby,
+only the latter end tragically:
+
+A woman sent her son one day to buy a sheep's head and pluck, and, lest
+he should forget his message, he kept bawling loudly as he went along,
+"Sheep's head and pluck! sheep's head and pluck!" In getting over a
+stile he fell and hurt himself, and forgot what he was sent for, so he
+stood a little to consider; and at last he thought he recollected it,
+and began to shout, "Liver and lights and gall and all!" which he was
+repeating when he came up to a man who was very sick. The man, thinking
+the booby was mocking him, laid hold of him, and after cuffing him, bade
+the booby cry, "Pray God, send no more up!" So he ran along uttering
+these words till he came to a field where a man was sowing wheat, who,
+on hearing what he took for a curse upon his labour, seized and thrashed
+him, and told him to repeat, "Pray God, send plenty more!" So the young
+jolterhead at once "changed his tune," and was loudly singing out these
+words when he met a funeral. The chief mourner punished him for what he
+thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to
+heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be
+hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his
+seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he
+and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating
+this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When
+the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave him many a good thump,
+and bade him say, "I wish you much joy!" This he was crying at the top
+of his voice when he came to a pit into which two labourers had fallen,
+and one of them, enraged at what he thought his mockery of their
+misfortune, exerted all his strength and scrambled out, then beat the
+poor simpleton, and told him to say, "The one is out; I wish the other
+was!" Glad to be set free, the booby went on shouting these words till
+he met with a one-eyed man, who, like the others, taking what he was
+crying for a personal insult, gave him another drubbing, and then bade
+him cry, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" So
+he adopted this new cry, and continued his adventurous journey till he
+came to a house, one side of which was on fire. The people, hearing him
+bawling, "The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!" at
+once concluded that he had set the house a-blazing; so they put him in
+prison, and the end was, the judge put on the black cap and condemned
+him to be hanged![5]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the noodle is persuaded, as in the following case of a Sinhalese
+wittol, by a gang of thieves to join them in a plundering expedition,
+they have little reason to be pleased with him, for he does not make a
+good "cat's-paw." The Sinhalese noodle joined some thieves, took readily
+to their ways, and was always eager to accompany them on their marauding
+excursions. One night they took him with them, and boring a large hole
+in the wall of a house,[6] they sent him in, telling him to hand out the
+heaviest article he could lay hands upon. He readily went in, and seeing
+a large kurakkan-grinder,[7] thought that was the heaviest thing in the
+room, and attempted to remove it. But it proved too much for him alone,
+so he gently awoke a man who was sleeping in the room, and said to him,
+"My friend, pray help me to remove this kurakkan-grinder." The man
+immediately guessed that thieves had entered the house, and gave the
+alarm. The thieves, who were waiting outside quite expectant, rushed
+away, and the noodle somehow or other managed to escape with them.
+
+Next night they again took him along with them, and after boring a hole
+in the wall of another house, sent him in with strict injunctions not to
+make a noise or wake anybody. He crept in noiselessly and entered a
+large room, in which was an old woman, fast asleep by the fire, with
+wide-open mouth. An earthen chattie, a wooden spoon, and a small bag of
+pease were also placed by the fire. The noodle first proceeded to roast
+some pease in the chattie. When they were roasted to a nice brownish
+colour, and emitted a very tempting smell, he thought that the old woman
+might also enjoy a mouthful. He considered for a while how he might best
+offer some to her. He did not wish to wake her, as he was ordered not to
+wake anybody. Suddenly a bright idea struck him. Why should he not feed
+her? There she was sleeping with her mouth wide open. Surely it would be
+no difficult task to put some pease into her mouth. Taking some of the
+hot, smoking pease into the wooden spoon, he put the contents into her
+mouth. The woman awoke, screaming with all her might. The noise roused
+the other inmates of the house, who came rushing to the spot to see what
+was the matter. This time also the noodle managed to escape with the
+thieves; but in a subsequent adventure he, as well as the thieves, came
+to grief.[8]
+
+The silly son of Italian popular tales is represented as being sent by
+his mother to sell a piece of linen which she had woven, saying to him,
+"Now listen attentively to what I say: Walk straight along the road.
+Don't take less than such a price for this linen. Don't have any
+dealings with women who chatter. Whether you sell it to any one you meet
+on the way, or carry it into the market, offer it only to some quiet
+sort of body whom you may see standing apart and not gossiping or
+prating, for such as they will persuade you to take some sort of price
+that won't suit me at all." The booby answers, "Yes, mamma," and goes
+off on his errand, keeping straight on, instead of taking the turnings
+leading to villages. It happened, as he went along, that the wife of the
+syndic of the next town was driving out with her maids, and had got out
+of the carriage, to walk a short distance, as the day was fine. Her maid
+tells her that there goes the simple son of the poor widow by the brook.
+"What are you going to do, my good lad?" kindly asks the lady. "I'm not
+going to tell you," says the booby, "because you were chattering." "I
+see your mother has sent you to sell this linen," continues the lady; "I
+will buy it of you," and she offers to pay twice as much as his mother
+had said she wanted. "Can't sell it to you," replies he, "for you were
+chattering," and he continues his journey. Farther along he comes to a
+plaster statue by the roadside, so he says to himself, "Here's one who
+stands apart and doesn't chatter; this is the one to sell the linen to,"
+then aloud, "Will you buy my linen, good friend?" The statue maintained
+its usual taciturnity, and the booby concluded, as it did not speak, it
+was all right, so he said, "The price is so-and-so; have the money ready
+by the time I come back, as I have to go on and buy some yarn for
+mother." On he went accordingly, and bought the yarn, and then came back
+to the statue. Some one passing by had in the meantime taken the linen.
+Finding it gone, "It's all right," says he to himself; "she's taken it,"
+then aloud, "Where's the money I told you to have ready?" The statue
+remained silent. "If you don't give me the money, I'll hit you on the
+head," he exclaimed, and raising his stick, he knocked the head off, and
+found it filled with gold coin. "That's where you keep your money, is
+it? All right; I can pay myself." So saying, he filled his pockets with
+the coin and went home. When he handed his mother the money, and told
+her of his adventure with the quiet body by the roadside, she was afraid
+lest the neighbours should learn of her windfall if the booby knew its
+value, so she said to him, "You've only brought me a lot of rusty nails;
+but never mind: you'll know better what to do next time," and put the
+money in an earthen jar. In her absence, a ragman comes to the house,
+and the booby asks him, "Will you buy some rusty nails?" The man desires
+to see them. "Well," quoth he on beholding the treasure, "they're not
+much worth, but I'll give you twelve pauls for the lot," and having
+handed over the sum, went off with his prize. When his mother comes
+home, the booby tells her what a bargain he had made for the rusty
+nails. "Nails!" she echoes, in consternation. "Why, you foolish thing,
+they were gold coins!" "Can't help that now, mamma," he answers
+philosophically; "you told me they were old rusty nails." By another
+lucky adventure, however, the booby is enabled to make up his mother's
+loss, finding a treasure which a party of robbers had left behind them
+at the foot of a tree.
+
+The incident of a simpleton selling something to an inanimate object and
+discovering a hidden treasure occurs, in different forms, in the
+folk-tales of Asiatic as well as European countries. In a manuscript
+text of the _Arabian Nights_, brought from Constantinople by
+Wortley Montague, and now preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, a
+more elaborate version of the Italian booby's adventure with the statue
+is found, in the "Story of the Bang-eater and his Wife:"
+
+In former times there lived not far from Baghdad a half-witted fellow,
+who was much addicted to the use of bang. Being reduced to poverty, he
+was obliged to sell his cow, which he took to the market one day, but
+the animal being in such a poor condition, no one would buy it, and
+after waiting till he was weary he returned homeward. On the way he
+stopped to repose himself under a tree, and tied the cow to one of the
+branches, while he ate some bread, and drank an infusion of his bang,
+which he always carried with him. In a short time it began to operate,
+so as to bereave him of the little sense he had, and his head was filled
+with ridiculous reveries. While he was musing, a bird beginning to
+chatter from her nest in the tree, he fancied it was a human voice, and
+that some woman had offered to purchase his cow, upon which he said,
+"Reverend mother of Solomon,[9] dost thou wish to buy my cow?" The bird
+again chattered. "Well," replied he, "what wilt thou give? I will sell
+her a bargain." The bird repeated her noise. "Never mind," said the
+fool, "for though thou hast forgotten to bring thy purse, yet, as I
+daresay thou art an honest woman, and hast bidden me ten dinars, I will
+trust thee with the cow, and call on Friday for the money." The bird
+renewed her chattering; so, leaving the cow tied to a branch of the
+tree, he returned home, exulting in the good bargain he had made for the
+animal. When he entered the house, his wife inquired what he had got for
+the cow, and he replied that he had sold her to an honest woman, who had
+promised to pay him ten pieces of gold next Friday. The wife was
+contented; and when Friday arrived, her noodle of a husband having, as
+usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird
+chattering as before, said, "Well, good mother, hast thou brought the
+gold?" The bird croaked. The blockhead, supposing the imaginary woman
+refused to pay him, became angry, and threw up a stone, which
+frightening the bird, it flew from its nest in the tree and alighted on
+a heap of ruins at some little distance. He now concluded that the woman
+had desired him to take his money from the heap, into which he
+accordingly dug, and found a copper vessel full of coin. This discovery
+convinced him he was right, and being withal an honest fellow, he only
+took ten pieces; then replacing the soil, "May Allah requite thee for
+thy punctuality, good mother!" he exclaimed, and returned to his wife,
+to whom he gave the money, informing her at the same time of the great
+treasure his friend the imaginary old woman possessed, and where it was
+concealed.
+
+The wife waited till night, when she brought away the pot of gold, which
+her foolish husband observing, he said, "It is dishonest to rob one who
+has paid us so punctually; and if thou dost not return it to its place,
+I will inform the wali" (governor of the city). She laughed at his
+simplicity, but fearing that he would execute his threat, she planned a
+stratagem to render it of no avail. Going to market, she purchased some
+meat and fish ready cooked, which she brought privately home, and
+concealed in the house. At night, while her husband was sleeping off the
+effects of his favourite narcotic, she strewed the provisions she had
+brought outside the door, and then awakening him, cried out, "Dear
+husband, a most wonderful thing has occurred: there has been a violent
+storm while you slept, and, strange to tell, it has rained pieces of
+broiled meat and fish, which now lie at the door!" The blockhead got up,
+and seeing the food, was persuaded of the truth of his wife's story. The
+flesh and fish were gathered up, and he partook with much glee of the
+miraculous treat, but still said he would tell the wali of her having
+stolen the treasure of the honest old woman.
+
+In the morning he actually repaired to the wali, and informed him that
+his wife had stolen a pot of gold, which she had still in her
+possession. Upon this the wali had the woman apprehended. She denied the
+accusation, and was then threatened with death. "My lord," said she,
+"the power is in your hands; but I am an injured woman, as you will find
+by questioning my husband, who is deranged in his intellect. Ask him
+when I committed the theft." The wali did so, and the simpleton
+answered, "It was the evening of that night when it rained broiled fish
+and ready-cooked flesh." On hearing this, "Wretch!" exclaimed the wali
+in a fury, "dost thou dare to utter falsehoods before me? Who ever saw
+it rain anything but water?" "As I hope for life," replied the fool, "I
+speak the truth; for my wife and myself ate of the fish and flesh which
+fell from the clouds." The woman, being appealed to, denied the
+assertion of her husband. The wali, now convinced that the man was
+crazy, released the woman, and sent her husband to the madhouse, where
+he remained for some days, till his wife, pitying his condition,
+contrived to get him set at liberty. She visited her husband, and
+counselled him, should any one ask him if he had seen it rain fish and
+flesh, to answer, "No; who ever saw it rain anything but water?" Then
+she informed the keeper that he was come to his senses, and suggested he
+should question him; and on the poor fellow answering properly he was
+released.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a Russian variant, an old man had three sons, one of whom was a
+noodle. When the old man died, his property was shared between the
+brothers, but all that the simpleton received was one ox, which he took
+to the market to sell. On his way he chanced to pass an old birch-tree,
+which creaked and groaned in the wind. He thinks the tree is offering to
+buy his ox, and so he says, "Well, you shall have it for twenty
+roubles." But the tree only creaked and creaked, and he fancied it was
+asking the ox on credit. "Very good," says he. "You'll pay me tomorrow?
+I'll wait till then." So he ties the ox to the tree and goes home. His
+brothers question him about his ox, and he tells them he has sold it for
+twenty roubles and is to get the money to-morrow, at which they laugh;
+he is, they think; a greater fool than ever. Next morning he went to the
+birch-tree, and found the ox was gone, for, in truth, the wolves had
+eaten it. He demanded his money, but the tree only creaked and groaned,
+as usual. "You'll pay me to-morrow?" he exclaimed. "That's what you said
+yesterday. I'll have no more of your promises." So saying, he struck the
+old birch-tree with his hatchet and sent the chips flying about. Now the
+tree was hollow, and it soon split asunder from his blows; and in the
+hollow trunk he found a pot full of gold, which some robbers had hidden
+there. Taking some of the gold, he returns home, and shows it to his
+brothers, who ask him how he got so much money. "A neighbour," he
+replies, "gave it to me for my ox. But this is nothing like the whole of
+it. Come along, brothers, and let us get the rest." They go, and fetch
+the rest of the treasure, and on their way home they meet a diachok (one
+of the inferior members of the Russian clerical body, though not one of
+the clergy), who asks them what they are carrying. "Mushrooms," say the
+two clever brothers; but the noodle cries, "That's not true; we're
+carrying money: here, look at it." The diachok, with an exclamation,
+flung himself upon the gold and began stuffing it into his pockets. At
+this the noodle grew angry, dealt him a blow with his hatchet, and
+killed him on the spot. The brothers dragged the body to an empty
+cellar, and flung it in. Later in the evening the eldest said to the
+other, "This business is sure to turn out badly. When they look for the
+diachok, Simpleton will be sure to tell them all about it. So we had
+better hide the body in some other place, and kill a goat and bury it in
+the cellar." This they did accordingly. And after several days had
+passed the people asked the noodle if he had seen the diachok. "Yes," he
+answered. "I killed him some time ago with my hatchet, and my brothers
+carried him to the cellar." They seize upon him and compel him to go
+down into the cellar and bring out the body. He gets hold of the goat's
+head, and asks, "Was your diachok dark-haired?" "He was." "Had he a
+beard?" "Yes." "And horns?" "What horns are you talking of?" "Well, see
+for yourselves," said he, tossing up the head to them. They saw it was a
+goat's head, and went away home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reader cannot fail to remark the close resemblance there is between
+the first parts of the Arabian and Russian stories; and the second parts
+of both reappear in many tales of the Silly Son. The goat's carcase
+substituted for the dead man occurs, for instance, in the Norse story of
+Silly Matt; in the Sicilian story of Giufa; in M. Riviere's _Contes
+Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_; and "Foolish Sachuli," in
+Miss Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_. The incident of the pretended
+shower of broiled fish and flesh is found in Campbell's _Tales of the
+West Highlands_ (porridge and pancakes); in Riviere's Tales of the
+Kabail (fritters); "Foolish Sachuli" (sweetmeats); Giufa, the Sicilian
+Booby (figs and raisins); and in M. Leger's _Contes Populaires
+Slaves_, where, curiously enough, the trick is played by a husband
+upon his wife. It is perhaps worth while reproducing the Russian story
+from Leger, in a somewhat abridged form, as follows:
+
+In tilling the ground a labourer found a treasure, and carrying it home,
+said to his wife, "See! Heaven has sent us a fortune. But where can we
+conceal it?" She suggested he should bury it under the floor, which he
+did accordingly. Soon after this the wife went out to fetch water, and
+the labourer reflected that his wife was a dreadful gossip, and by
+to-morrow night all the village would know their secret.  So he removed
+the treasure from its hiding-place and buried it in his barn, beneath a
+heap of corn. When the wife came back from the well, he said to her
+quite gravely, "To-morrow we shall go to the forest to seek fish; they
+say there's plenty there at present." "What! fish in the forest?" she
+exclaimed. "Of course," he rejoined; "and you'll see them there." Very
+early next morning he got up, and took some fish, which he had concealed
+in a basket. He went to the grocer's and bought a quantity of sweet
+cakes. He also caught a hare and killed it. The fish and cakes he
+disposed of in different parts of the wood, and the hare he hooked on a
+fishing-line, and then threw it in the river. After breakfast he took
+his wife with him into the wood, which they had scarcely entered when
+she found a pike, then a perch, and then a roach, on the ground. With
+many exclamations of surprise, she gathered up the fish and put them in
+her basket. Presently they came to a pear-tree, from the branches of
+which hung sweet cakes. "See!" she cried. "Cakes on a pear-tree!" "Quite
+natural," replied he; "it has rained cakes, and some have remained on
+this tree; travellers have picked up the rest." Continuing their way to
+the village, they passed near a stream. "Wait a little," said the
+husband; "I set my line early this morning, and I'll look if anything is
+caught on it." He then pulled in the line, and behold, there was a hare
+hooked on to it! "How extraordinary!" cries the good wife--"a hare in
+the water!" "Why," says he, "don't you know there are hares in the water
+as well as rats?" "No, indeed, I knew it not." They now returned home,
+and the wife set about preparing all the nice eatables for supper. In a
+day or two the labourer found from the talk of his acquaintances that
+his finding the treasure was no secret in the village, and in less than
+a week he was summoned to the castle. "Is it true," said the lord, "that
+you have found a treasure?" "It is not true," was his reply. "But your
+wife has told me all." "My wife does not know what she says--she is mad,
+my lord." Hereupon the woman cries, "It is the truth, my lord; he has
+found a treasure and buried it beneath the floor of our cottage."
+"When?" "On the eve before the day we went into the forest to look for
+fish." "What do you say?" "Yes; it was on the day that it rained cakes;
+we gathered a basketful of them, and coming home, my husband fished a
+fine hare out of the river." My lord declared the woman to be an idiot;
+nevertheless he caused his servants to search under the labourer's
+cottage floor, but nothing was found there, and so the shrewd fellow
+secured his treasure.
+
+The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a
+number of fools' exploits are strung together and ascribed to one
+individual, as in the tale of "Foolish Sachuli;" but generally they are
+told as separate stories. The following adventure of Sachuli is also
+found, in varied form, in Beschi's _Gooroo Paramartan_: One day
+Sachuli climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting
+off the branch between the tree and himself. A man passing by called to
+him, saying, "What are you doing up there? You will be killed if you cut
+that branch off." "What do you say?" asked the booby, coming down. "When
+shall I die?" "How can I tell?" said the man. "Let me go." "I will not
+let you go until you tell me when I shall die." At last the man, in
+order to get rid of him, said, "When you find a scarlet thread on your
+jacket, then you will die." After this Sachuli went to the
+_bazaar_, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away
+shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes. "Now I shall die!"
+exclaimed the fool. "How do you know that?" the tailors inquired, when
+he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they
+all laughed. Nevertheless, Sachuli went and dug a grave in the jungle
+and lay down in it.
+
+Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of _ghi_, or clarified
+butter, which he engages Sachuli to carry for him, and the noodle, of
+course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to
+which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.
+
+The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated
+seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical
+Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, and there exist German, Saxon,
+and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon,
+and the following is a version from a Hindu work entitled _Bharataka
+Dwatrinsati_, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:
+
+In Elakapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named
+Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure
+a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and
+he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there
+came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, "O
+monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you
+yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will
+fall down and die." After saying this the travellers went their way. The
+monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut
+the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch
+broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, "Those
+travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened
+just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead." So he remained on
+the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he
+even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him
+up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could
+not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your
+associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks
+in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him
+up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had
+gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided
+itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others
+said, "It is to the right that we must go." Thus a dispute arose among
+them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The "dead" monk,
+who was borne on a bier, said, "Friends, quarrel not among yourselves;
+when I was alive, I always went by the left road." Then said some, "He
+always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple
+fact. Let us therefore take the left road." This was agreed upon, and as
+they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to
+be present said, "O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that
+ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive." They
+answered, "Nay, but he is dead." Then the bystanders said, "He cannot be
+dead, seeing that he yet speaks." They then set down the bier on the
+ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and
+related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the
+travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained
+quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka
+was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the
+bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in
+inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and
+went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.[11]
+
+A diverting story in the _Facetiae_ of Poggius, entitled "Mortuus
+Loqueus," from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini
+and in our old collection _Tales and Quicke Answeres_, has a near
+affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of
+stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of
+his property. In the early English jest-book,[12] it is, in effect, as
+follows:
+
+There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party
+of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their
+plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was
+not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth
+the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way.
+Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if
+he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The
+poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was
+convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be
+in his bed--he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca
+stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague,"
+when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying
+man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he
+did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers
+came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his
+pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.[13] Then,
+standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking
+fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the
+ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast,
+and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though
+he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through
+the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were
+carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a
+taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the
+mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard
+himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you
+scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a
+false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set
+down the "body" and ran away--leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole
+affair to the marvelling multitude.[14]
+
+We read of another silly son, in the _Katha Manjari_, whose father
+said to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem
+to have much sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go,
+therefore, to the tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad
+accordingly went to the tank, and having caused all the water--which was
+required for the irrigation of his father's fields--to run to waste, he
+picked up from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to
+his father, not a little proud of his exploit.--In the _Katha Sarit
+Sagara_ it is related that a Brahman told his foolish son one evening
+that he must send him to the village early on the morrow, and thither
+the lad went, without asking what he was to do. Returning home at night
+very tired, he said to his father, "I have been to the village." "Yes,"
+said the Brahman, "you went thither without an object, and have done no
+good by it."--And in the Buddhist _Jatakas_ we find what is
+probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled
+tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely.
+Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is
+a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear--drive it off."
+"Wait a bit, father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow."
+Then he took up an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking
+to kill the mosquito with the axe, he only killed his father.
+
+Among numerous variants is the story of the Sicilian booby, Giufa, who
+was annoyed by the flies, and complained of them to the judge, who told
+him that he was at liberty to kill a fly wherever he saw it: just then a
+fly happened to alight on the judge's nose, which Giufa observing, he
+immediately aimed at it so furious a blow with his fist, that he smashed
+his worship's nose!
+
+The hopelessness of attempting to impart instruction to the silly son is
+farther illustrated by the story in a Sinhalese collection: A guru was
+engaged in teaching one of his disciples, but whilst he was teaching the
+youth was watching the movements of a rat which was entering its hole.
+As soon as the guru had finished his teaching, he said, "Well, my son,
+has all entered in?" to which the youth replied, "Yes, all has entered
+in except the tail." And from the same work is the following choice
+example of "a happy family": A priest went one day to the house of one
+of his followers, and amongst other things he said, "Tell me now, which
+of your four children is the best-behaved?" The father replied, "Look,
+sir, at that boy who has climbed to the top of that thatched building,
+and is waving aloft a firebrand. Among them all, he is the divinely
+excellent one." Whereupon the priest placed his finger on his nose, drew
+a deep, deep sigh, and said, "Is it indeed so? What, then, must the
+other three be?"
+
+The Turkish romance of the Forty Vazirs--the plan of which is similar to
+that of the Book of Sindibad and its derivatives--furnishes us with two
+stories of the same class, one of which is as follows, according to my
+friend Mr. Gibb's complete translation (the first that has been made in
+English), recently published:[15]
+
+They have told that in bygone times there was a king, and he had a
+skilful minstrel. One day a certain person gave to the latter a little
+boy, that he might teach him the science of music. The boy abode a long
+time by him, and though the master instructed him, he succeeded not in
+learning, and the master could make nothing of him. He arranged a scale,
+and said, "Whatsoever thou sayest to me, say in this scale." So
+whatsoever the boy said he used to say in that scale. Now one day a
+spark of fire fell on the master's turban. The boy saw it and chanted,
+"O master, I see something; shall I say it or no?" and he went over the
+whole scale. Then the master chanted, "O boy, what dost thou see?
+Speak!" and he too went over all that the boy had gone over. Then the
+turn came to the boy, and he chanted, "O master, a spark has fallen on
+thy turban, and it is burning." The master straightway tore off his
+turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew
+out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said
+to the boy, "What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its
+own place," and he admonished him.[16]
+
+The other story tells how a king had a stupid son, and placed him in
+charge of a cunning master, learned in the sciences, who declared it
+would be easy for him to teach the boy discretion, and, before
+dismissing him, the king gave the sage many rich gifts. After the boy
+has been long under the tuition of his learned master, the latter,
+conceiving him to be well versed in all the sciences, takes him to the
+king, his father, who says to him, "O my son, were I to hold a certain
+thing hidden in my hand, couldst thou tell me what it is?" "Yes,"
+answers the youth. Upon this the king secretly slips the ring off his
+finger, and hides it in his hand, and then asks the boy, "What have I in
+my hand?" Quoth the clever youth, "O father, it first came from the
+hills." (The king thinks to himself, "He knows that mines are in the
+hills.") "And it is a round thing," continues he--"it must be a
+millstone." "Blockhead!" exclaims the irate king, "could a millstone be
+hidden in a man's hand?" Then addressing the learned man, "Take him
+away," he says, "and _teach_ him."
+
+Lastly, we have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the
+doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so
+ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits
+to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had
+been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to
+deny it;--you have been eating beans." On their way home, the
+apprentice, admiring his master's sagacity, begged to be informed how he
+knew that the patient had been eating beans. "Boy," said the doctor,
+loftily, "I drew an inference." "An inference!" echoed this youth of
+inquiring mind; "and what is an inference?" Quoth the doctor, "Listen:
+when we came to the door, I observed the shells of beans lying about,
+and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner."
+Another day it chanced that the doctor did not take his apprentice with
+him when he went his rounds, and in his absence a message came for him
+to visit a person who had been taken suddenly ill. "Here," thought the
+apprentice, "is a chance for my putting master's last lesson into
+practice;" so off he went to the sick man, and assuming as "knowing" an
+air as he could, he felt his pulse, and then said to him severely,
+"Don't deny it; I see by your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I
+shall send you some medicine." When the doctor returned home he inquired
+of his hopeful pupil, whether any person had called for him, upon which
+the wittol proudly told him of his own exploit. "Eaten a horse!"
+exclaimed the man of physic. "In the name of all that's wonderful, what
+induced you to say such a thing?" Quoth the youth, simpering, "Why, sir,
+I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer--I drew
+an inference." "You drew an inference, did you? And how did you draw the
+inference that the man had eaten a horse?" "Why, very readily, sir; for
+as I entered the house I saw a saddle hanging on the wall."[17]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Abridged from the story of "Silly Matt" in Sir George W. Dasent's
+_Tales from the Fjeld_.
+
+[2] Professor Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, p. 302. This actual
+throwing of eyes occurs in the folk-tales of Europe generally.
+
+[3] In _Le Cabinet des Fees, 1788_ (tome xxxviii., p. 337 ff.).--
+There can be no such name as Xailoun in Arabic; that of the noodle's
+wife, Oitba, may be intended for "Utba." Cazotte has so Frenchified the
+names of the characters in his tales as to render their identification
+with the Arabic originals (where he had any such) often impossible.
+Although this story is not found in any known Arabian text of the
+_Book of the Thousand and One Nights_, yet the incidents for the
+most part occur in several Eastern story-books.
+
+ [4] On a similar occasion Giufa, the Sicilian brother to the Arabian
+fool, did somewhat more mischief. Once his mother went to church and
+told him to make some porridge for his baby-sister. Giufa made a great
+pot of porridge and fed the baby with it, and burned her mouth so that
+she died. Another time his mother on leaving home told him to feed the
+hen that was sitting and put her back in the nest, so that the eggs
+should not get cold. Giufa stuffed the hen with food so that he killed
+her, and then sat on the eggs himself until his mother returned.--See
+Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 296-7.
+
+[5] Abridged and modified from a version in the _Folk-Lore Record_,
+vol. iii., pp. 153-5.
+
+[6] The usual mode by which in the East thieves break into houses, which
+are for the most part constructed of clay. See Job xxiv. 16.
+
+[7] Kurakkan is a species of grain.
+
+[8] _The Orientalist_, June, 1884, pp. 137-8.
+
+[9] Ummu Sulayman. In Arabia the mother is generally addressed in this
+way as a mark of respect for having borne children, and the eldest gives
+the title. Our bang-eater supposed he was addressing an old woman who
+had (or might have had) a son named Solomon.
+
+[10] See Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales._ [Transcriber's note:
+Footnote reference missing from original, p. 153]
+
+[11] From a paper on "Comparative Folk-lore," by W. Goonetilleke, in
+_The Orientalist_, i., p. 122.
+
+[12] _Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant
+to be Readde._ Imprinted at London by H. Wykes, 1567.
+
+[13] Thus, too, Scogin and his "chamber-fellow" successively declared to
+a rustic that the sheep he was driving were pigs. In Fortini's novels,
+in like manner, a simpleton is persuaded that the kid he offered for
+sale was a capon; and in the Spanish _El Conde Lucanor_, and the
+German _Tyl Eulenspiegel_, a countryman is cheated out of a piece
+of cloth. The original form of the incident is found in the
+_Hitopadesa_, where three sharpers persuade a Brahman that the goat
+he is carrying for a sacrifice is a dog. This story of the Florentine
+noodle--or rather Poggio's version--may have been suggested by a tale in
+the _Gesta Romanorum_, in which the emperor's physician is made to
+believe that he had leprosy. See my _Popular Tales and Fictions_,
+where these and similar stories are compared in a paper entitled "The
+Sharpers and the Simpleton."
+
+[14] In Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_ (Second Series,
+p. 627), a woman makes her husband believe that he is dressed in fine
+clothes when he is naked; another persuades her husband that he is dead,
+and as he is being carried to the burying-ground, he perceives the naked
+man, who asserts that he is dressed, upon which he exclaims, "How I
+should laugh if I were not dead!" And in a _fabliau_ by Jean de
+Boves, "Le Villain de Bailleul; _alias_, Le Femme qui fit croire a
+son Mari qu'il etait mort," the husband exclaims, "Rascal of a priest,
+you may well thank Heaven that I am dead, else I would belabour you
+soundly with my stick."--See M. Le Grand's _Fabliaux_, ed. 1781,
+tome v., pp. 192, 193.
+
+[5] _History of the Forty Viziers; or, The Forty Morns and Forty
+Eves._ Translated from the Turkish, by E.J.W. Gibb, M.R.A.S. London:
+G. Redway, 1886.
+
+[16] A variant of this is found in John Bromyard's _Summa
+Praedicantium_, A 26, 34, as follows:
+
+Quidam sedebat juxta igneum, cujus vestem ignis intrabat. Dixit socius
+suus, "Vis audire rumores?" "Ita," inquit, "bonos et non alios." Cui
+alius, "Nescio nisi malos." "Ergo," inquit, "nolo audire." Et quum bis
+aut ter ei hoc diceret, semper idem respondit. In fine, quum sentiret
+vestem combustam, iratus ait socio, "Quare non dixisti mihi?" "Quia
+(inquit) dixista quod noluisti audire rumores nisi placentes et illi non
+erant tales."
+
+[17] Under the title of "The Phisitian that bare his Paciente in honde
+that he had eaten an Asse" this jest occurs in _Merry Tales and Quicke
+Answeres_, and Professor Crane gives a Sicilian version in his
+_Italian Popular Tales_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE FOUR SIMPLE BRAHMANS.
+
+
+[As a sort of supplement to the sayings and doings of the silly son, the
+following highly diverting Indian tale is here inserted, from the Abbe
+Dubois' French rendering of the Tamil original, appended, with others,
+to his selections from the _Panchatantra_. The story is known in
+the north as well as in the south of India: in the Panjabi version there
+are, however, but three noodle-heroes. It will be seen that the third
+Brahman's tale is another of the numerous silent couple class, and it
+may possibly be the original form.]
+
+
+_Introduction._
+
+In a certain district, proclamation had been made of a Samaradanam being
+about to be held.[1] Four Brahmans, from different villages, going
+thither, fell in upon the road, and, finding that they were all upon the
+same errand, they agreed to proceed in company.  A soldier, happening to
+meet them, saluted them in the usual way, by touching hands and
+pronouncing the words always applied on such occasions to Brahmans,
+"_Dandamarya_!" or "Health to my lord!" The four travellers made
+the customary return, "_Asirvadam!_" and going on, they came to a
+well, where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the
+shade of some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of
+conversation, one of them asked the others, whether they did not remark
+how particularly the soldier had distinguished him by his polite
+salutation. "You!" said another; "it was not you that he saluted, but
+me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for you may remember that
+when the soldier said, '_Dandamarya!_' he cast his eyes upon me."
+"Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was I only he saluted; otherwise,
+should I have answered him as I did, by saying, '_Asirvadam_'?"
+
+Each maintained his argument obstinately; and as none of them would
+yield, the dispute had nearly come to blows, when the least stupid of
+the four, seeing what was likely to happen, put an end to the brawl by
+the following advice: "How foolish it is in us," said he, "thus to put
+ourselves in a passion! After we have said all the ill of one another
+that we can invent--nay, after going stoutly to fisticuffs, like Sudra
+rabble, should we be at all nearer to the decision of our difference?
+The fittest person to determine the controversy, I think, would be the
+man who occasioned it. The soldier, who chose to salute one of us,
+cannot yet be far off: let us therefore run after him as quickly as we
+can, and we shall soon know for which of us he intended his salutation."
+
+This advice appeared wise to them all, and was immediately adopted. The
+whole of them set off in pursuit of the soldier, and at last overtook
+him, after running a league, and all out of breath. As soon as they came
+in sight of him, they cried out to him to stop; and before they had well
+approached him, they had put him in full possession of the nature of
+their dispute, and prayed him to terminate it, by saying to which of
+them he had directed his salutation. The soldier instantly perceiving
+the character of the people he had to do with, and being willing to
+amuse himself a little at their expense, coolly replied, that he
+intended his salutation for the greatest fool of all four, and then,
+turning on his heel, he continued his journey.
+
+The Brahmans, confounded at this answer, turned back in silence. But all
+of them had deeply at heart the distinction of the salutation of the
+soldier, and the dispute was gradually renewed. Even the awkward
+decision of the warrior could not prevent each of them from arrogating
+to himself the pre-eminence of being noticed by him, to the exclusion of
+the others. The contention, therefore, now became, which of the four was
+the stupidest; and strange to say, it grew as warm as ever, and must
+have come to blows, had not the person who gave the former advice, to
+follow the soldier, interposed again with his wisdom, and spoken as
+follows: "I think myself the greatest fool of us all. Each of you thinks
+the same thing of himself. And after a fight, shall we be a bit nearer
+the decision of the question? Let us, therefore, have a little patience.
+We are within a short distance of Dharmapuri, where there is a choultry,
+at which all little causes are tried by the heads of the village; and
+let ours be judged among the rest."
+
+The others agreed in the soundness of this advice; and having arrived at
+the village, they eagerly entered the choultry, to have their business
+settled by the arbitrator. They could not have come at a better season.
+The chiefs of the district, Brahmans and others, had already met in the
+choultry; and no other cause being brought forward, they proceeded
+immediately to that of the four Brahmans, who advanced into the middle
+of the court, and stated that a sharp contest having arisen among them,
+they were come to have it decided with fairness and impartiality. The
+court desired them to proceed and explain the ground of their
+controversy. Upon this, one of them stood forward and related to the
+assembly all that had happened, from their meeting with the soldier to
+the present state of the quarrel, which rested on the superior degree of
+stupidity of one of their number. The detail created a general shout of
+laughter. The president, who was of a gay disposition, was delighted
+beyond measure to have fallen in with so diverting an incident. But he
+put on a grave face, and laid it down, as the peculiarity of the cause,
+that it could not be determined on the testimony of witnesses, and that,
+in fact, there was no other way of satisfying the minds of the judges
+than by each, in his turn, relating some particular occurrence of his
+life, on which he could best establish his claim to superior folly. He
+clearly showed that there could be no other means of determining to
+which of them the salutation of the soldier could with justice be
+awarded. The Brahmans assented, and upon a sign being made to one of
+them to begin, and the rest to keep silence, the first thus spoke:
+
+_Story of the First Brahman_.
+
+I am poorly provided with clothing, as you see; and it is not to-day
+only that I have been covered with rags. A rich and very charitable
+Brahman merchant once made a present of two pieces of cloth to attire
+me--the finest that had ever been seen in our village. I showed them to
+the other Brahmans of the village, who all congratulated me on so
+fortunate an acquisition. They told me it must be the fruit of some good
+deeds that I had done in a preceding generation. Before I should put
+them on, I washed them, according to the custom, in order to purify them
+from the soil of the weaver's touch, and hung them up to dry, with the
+ends fastened to two branches of a tree. A dog, then happening to come
+that way, ran under them, and I could not discover whether he was high
+enough to touch the clothes or not. I asked my children, who were
+present, but they said they were not quite certain. How, then, was I to
+discover the fact? I put myself upon all-fours, so as to be of the
+height of the dog, and in that posture I crawled under the clothing.
+"Did I touch it?" said I to the children, who were observing me. They
+answered, "No," and I was filled with joy at the news. But after
+reflecting a while, I recollected that the dog had a turned-up tail, and
+that by elevating it above the rest of his body, it might well have
+reached my cloth. To ascertain that, I fixed a leaf in my loin-cloth,
+turning upwards, and then, creeping again on all-fours, I passed a
+second time under the clothing. The children immediately cried out that
+the point of the leaf on my back had touched the cloth. This proved to
+me that the point of the dog's tail must have done so too, and that my
+garments were therefore polluted. In my rage I pulled down the beautiful
+raiment, and tore it in a thousand pieces, loading with curses both the
+dog and his master.
+
+When this foolish act was known, I became the laughing-stock of all the
+world, and I was universally treated as a madman. "Even if the dog had
+touched the cloth," said they, "and so brought defilement upon it, might
+not you have washed it a second time, and so have removed the stain? Or
+might you not have given it to some poor Sudra, rather than tear it in
+pieces? After such egregious folly, who will give you clothes another
+time?" This was all true; for ever since, when I have begged clothing of
+any one, the constant answer has been, that, no doubt, I wanted a piece
+of cloth to pull to pieces.
+
+He was going on, when a bystander interrupted him by remarking that he
+seemed to understand going on all-fours. "Exceedingly well," said he,
+"as you shall see;" and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the
+unbounded laughter of the spectators. "Enough! enough!" said the
+president. "What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his
+favour. But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in
+proof of his stupidity." The second accordingly began by expressing his
+confidence that if what they had just heard appeared to them to be
+deserving of the salutation of the soldier, what he had to say would
+change their opinion.
+
+ _Story of the Second Brahman_.
+
+Having got my hair and beard shaven one day, in order to appear decent
+at a public festival of the Brahmans, which had been proclaimed
+throughout the district, I desired my wife to give the barber a penny
+for his trouble. She heedlessly gave him a couple. I asked him to give
+me one of them back, but he refused. Upon that we quarrelled, and began
+to abuse each other; but the barber at length pacified me, by offering,
+in consideration of the double fee, to shave my wife also. I thought
+this a fair way of settling the difference between us. But my wife,
+hearing the proposal, and seeing the barber in earnest, tried to make
+her escape by flight. I took hold of her, and forced her to sit down,
+while he shaved her poll in the same manner as they serve widows.[2]
+During the operation she cried out bitterly; but I was inexorable,
+thinking it less hard that my wife should be close-shaven than that my
+penny should be given away for nothing. When the barber had finished, I
+let her go, and she retired immediately to a place of concealment,
+pouring down curses on me and the barber. He took his departure, and
+meeting my mother in his way, told her what he had done, which made her
+hasten to the house, to inquire into the outrage; and when she saw that
+it was all true she also loaded me with incivilities.
+
+The barber published everywhere what had happened at our house; and the
+villain added to the story that I had caught her with another man, which
+was the cause of my having her shaved; and people were no doubt
+expecting, according to our custom in such a case, to see her mounted on
+an ass, with her face turned towards the tail. They came running to my
+dwelling from all quarters, and actually brought an ass to make the
+usual exhibition in the streets. The report soon reached my
+father-in-law, who lived at a distance of ten or twelve leagues, and
+he, with his wife, came also to inquire into the affair. Seeing their
+poor daughter in that degraded state, and being apprised of the only
+reason, they reproached me most bitterly; which I patiently endured,
+being conscious that I was in the wrong. They persisted, however, in
+taking her with them, and keeping her carefully concealed from every eye
+for four whole years; when at length they restored her to me.
+
+This little accident made me lose the Samaradanam, for which I had been
+preparing by a fast of three days; and it was a great mortification to
+me to be excluded from it, as I understood it was a most splendid
+entertainment. Another Samaradanam was announced to be held ten days
+afterwards, at which I expected to make up for my loss. But I was
+received with the hisses of six hundred Brahmans, who seized my person,
+and insisted on my giving up the accomplice of my wife, that he might be
+prosecuted and punished, according to the severe rules of the caste.
+
+I solemnly attested her innocence, and told the real cause of the
+shaving of her hair; when a universal burst of surprise took place,
+every one exclaiming, how monstrous it was that a married woman should
+be so degraded, without having committed the crime of infidelity.
+"Either this man," said they, "must be a liar, or he is the greatest
+fool on the face of the earth!" Such, I daresay, gentlemen, you will
+think me, and I am sure you will consider my folly [looking with great
+disdain on the first speaker] as being far superior to that of the
+render of body-clothing.
+
+The court agreed that the speaker had put in a very strong case; but
+justice required that the other two should also be heard. The third
+claimant was indeed burning with impatience for his turn, and as soon as
+he had permission, he thus spoke:
+
+ _Story of the Third Brahman_.
+
+My name was originally Anantya; now all the world call me Betel Anantya,
+and I will tell you how this nickname arose. My wife, having been long
+detained at her father's house, on account of her youth, had cohabited
+with me but about a month when, going to bed one evening, I happened to
+say (carelessly, I believe), that all women were babblers. She retorted,
+that she knew men who were not less babblers than women. I perceived at
+once that she alluded to myself; and being somewhat piqued at the
+sharpness of her retort, I said, "Now let us see which of us shall speak
+first." "Agreed," quoth she; "but what shall be the forfeit?" "A leaf of
+betel," said I. Our wager being thus made, we both addressed ourselves
+to sleep, without speaking another word.
+
+Next morning, as we did not appear at our usual hour, after some
+interval, they called us, but got no answer. They again called, and then
+roared stoutly at the door, but with no success. The alarm began to
+spread in the house. They began to fear that we had died suddenly. The
+carpenter was called with his tools. The door of our room was forced
+open, and when they got in they were not a little surprised to find both
+of us wide awake, in good health, and at our ease, though without the
+faculty of speech. My mother was greatly alarmed, and gave loud vent to
+her grief. All the Brahmans in the village, of both sexes, assembled, to
+the number of one hundred; and after close examination, every one drew
+his own conclusion on the accident which was supposed to have befallen
+us. The greater number were of opinion that it could have arisen only
+from the malevolence of some enemy who had availed himself of magical
+incantations to injure us. For this reason, a famous magician was
+called, to counteract the effects of the witchcraft, and to remove it.
+As soon as he came, after steadfastly contemplating us for some time, he
+began to try our pulses, by putting his finger on our wrists, on our
+temples, on the heart, and on various other parts of the body; and after
+a great variety of grimaces, the remembrance of which excites my
+laughter, as often as I think of him, he decided that our malady arose
+wholly from the effect of malevolence. He even gave the name of the
+particular devil that possessed my wife and me and rendered us dumb. He
+added that the devil was very stubborn and difficult to allay, and that
+it would cost three or four pagodas for the offerings necessary for
+compelling him to fly.
+
+My relations, who were not very opulent, were astonished at the grievous
+imposition which the magician had laid on them. Yet, rather than we
+should continue dumb, they consented to give him whatsoever should be
+necessary for the expense of his sacrifice; and they farther promised
+that they would reward him for his trouble as soon as the demon by whom
+we were possessed should be expelled. He was on the point of commencing
+his magical operations, when a Brahman, one of our friends, who was
+present, maintained, in opposition to the opinion of the magician and
+his assistants, that our malady was not at all the effect of witchcraft,
+but arose from some simple and ordinary cause, of which he had seen
+several instances, and he undertook to cure us without any expense.
+
+He took a chafing-dish filled with burning charcoal, and heated a small
+bar of gold very hot. This he took up with pincers, and applied to the
+soles of my feet, then to my elbows, and the crown of my head. I endured
+these cruel operations without showing the least symptom of pain, or
+making any complaint; being determined to bear anything, and to die, if
+necessary, rather than lose the wager I had laid.
+
+"Let us try the effect on the woman," said the doctor, astonished at my
+resolution and apparent insensibility. And immediately taking the bit of
+gold, well heated, he applied it to the sole of her foot. She was not
+able to endure the pain for a moment, but instantly screamed out,
+"Enough!" and turning to me, "I have lost my wager," she said; "there is
+your leaf of betel."  "Did I not tell you," said I, taking the leaf,
+"that you would be the first to speak out, and that you would prove by
+your own conduct that I was right in saying yesterday, when we went to
+bed, that women are babblers?"
+
+Every one was surprised at the proceeding; nor could any of them
+comprehend the meaning of what was passing between my wife and me; until
+I explained the kind of wager we had made overnight, before going to
+sleep. "What!" they exclaimed, "was it for a leaf of betel that you have
+spread this alarm through your own house and the whole village?--for a
+leaf of betel that you showed such constancy, and suffered burning from
+the feet to the head upwards? Never in the world was there seen such
+folly!" And so, from that time, I have been constantly known by the name
+of Betel Anantya.
+
+The narrative being finished, the court were of opinion that so
+transcendent a piece of folly gave him high pretensions in the depending
+suit; but it was necessary also to hear the fourth and last of the
+suitors, who thus addressed them:
+
+ _Story of the Fourth Brahman_.
+
+The maiden to whom I was betrothed, having remained six or seven years
+at her father's house, on account of her youth, we were at last apprised
+that she was become marriageable; and her parents informed mine that she
+was in a situation to fulfil all the duties of a wife, and might
+therefore join her husband. My mother being at that time sick, and the
+house of my father-in-law being at the distance of five or six leagues
+from ours, she was not able to undertake the journey. She therefore
+committed to myself the duty of bringing home my wife, and counselled me
+so to conduct myself, in words and actions, that they might not see that
+I was only a brute. "Knowing thee as I do," said my mother, as I took
+leave of her, "I am very distrustful of thee." But I promised to be on
+my good behaviour; and so I departed.
+
+I was well received by my father-in-law, who gave a great feast to all
+the Brahmans of the village on the occasion. He made me stay three days,
+during which there was nothing but festivity. At length the time of our
+departure having arrived, he suffered my wife and myself to leave him,
+after pouring out blessings on us both, and wishing us a long and happy
+life, enriched with a numerous progeny. When we took leave of him, he
+shed abundance of tears, as if he had foreseen the misery that awaited
+us.
+
+It was then the summer solstice, and the day was exceedingly hot. We had
+to cross a sandy plain of more than two leagues; and the sand, being
+heated by the burning sun, scorched the feet of my young wife, who,
+being brought up too tenderly in her father's house, was not accustomed
+to such severe trials. She began to cry, and being unable to go on, she
+lay down on the ground, saying she wished to die there. I was in
+dreadful trouble, and knew not what step to take; when a merchant came
+up, travelling the contrary way. He had a train of fifty bullocks,
+loaded with various kinds of merchandise. I ran to meet him, and told
+him the cause of my anxiety with tears in my eyes; and entreated him to
+aid me with his good advice in the distressing circumstances in which I
+was placed. He immediately answered, that a young and delicate woman,
+such as my wife was, could neither remain where she lay nor proceed on
+her journey, under a hot sun, without being exposed to certain death.
+Rather than that I should see her perish, and run the hazard of being
+suspected of having killed her myself, and being guilty of one of the
+five crimes which the Brahmans consider as the most heinous, he advised
+me to give her to him, and then he would mount her on one of his cattle
+and take her along with him.  That I should be a loser, he admitted;
+but, all things considered, it was better to lose her, with the merit of
+having saved her life, than equally to lose her, under the suspicion of
+being her murderer. "Her trinkets," he said, "may be worth fifteen
+pagodas; take these twenty and give me your wife."
+
+The merchant's arguments appeared unanswerable; so I yielded to them,
+and delivered to him my wife, whom he placed on one of his best oxen,
+and continued his journey without delay. I continued mine also, and got
+home in the evening, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and with my feet
+almost roasted with the burning sand, over which I had walked the
+greater part of the day. Frightened to see me alone, "Where is your
+wife?" cried my mother. I gave her a full account of everything that had
+happened from the time I left her. I spoke of the agreeable and
+courteous manner in which my father-in-law had received me, and how, by
+some delay, we had been overtaken by the scorching heat of the sun at
+noon, so that my wife must have perished and myself suspected of having
+caused her death, had we proceeded; and that I had preferred to sell her
+to a merchant who met us for twenty pagodas. And I showed my mother the
+money.
+
+When I had done, my mother fell into an ecstasy of fury. She lifted up
+her voice against me with cries of rage, and overwhelmed me with
+imprecations and awful curses. Having given way to these first emotions
+of despair, she sank into a more moderate tone: "What hast thou done!
+Sold thy wife, hast thou! Delivered her to another man! A Brahmanari is
+become the concubine of a vile merchant! Ah, what will her kindred and
+ours say when they hear the tale of this brutish stupidity--of folly so
+unexampled and degrading?"
+
+The relations of my wife were soon informed of the sad adventure that
+had befallen their unhappy girl. They came over to attack me, and would
+certainly have murdered me and my innocent mother, if we had not both
+made a sudden escape. Having no direct object to wreak their vengeance
+upon, they brought the matter before the chiefs of the caste, who
+unanimously fined me in two hundred pagodas, as a reparation to my
+father-in-law, and issued a proclamation against so great a fool being
+ever allowed to take another wife; denouncing the penalty of expulsion
+from the caste against any one who should assist me in such an attempt.
+I was therefore condemned to remain a widower all my life, and to pay
+dear for my folly. Indeed, I should have been excluded for ever from my
+caste, but for the high consideration in which the memory of my late
+father is still held, he having lived respected by all the world.
+
+Now that you have heard one specimen of the many follies of my life, I
+hope you will not consider me as beneath those who have spoken before
+me, nor my pretensions altogether undeserving of the salutation of the
+soldier.
+
+ _Conclusion_.
+
+The heads of the assembly, several of whom were convulsed with laughter
+while the Brahmans were telling their stories, decided, after hearing
+them all, that each had given such absolute proofs of folly as to be
+entitled, in justice, to a superiority in his own way: that each of
+them, therefore, should be at liberty to call himself the greatest fool
+of all, and to attribute to himself the salutation of the soldier. Each
+of them having thus gained his suit, it was recommended to them all to
+continue their journey, if it were possible, in amity. The delighted
+Brahmans then rushed out of court, each exclaiming that he had gained
+his cause.
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] A Samaradanam is one of the public festivals given by pious people,
+and sometimes by those in power, to the Brahmans, who on such occasions
+assemble in great numbers from all quarters.
+
+[2] In a Sinhalese story, referred to on ["p. 68" in original. This
+approximates to the reference to Chapter III, Footnote 5 in this
+e-text], it is, curiously enough, the woman herself "who has her head
+shaved, so as not to lose the services of the barber for the day when he
+came, and her husband was away from home." The story probably was
+introduced into Ceylon by the Tamils; both versions are equally good as
+noodle-stories.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE THREE GREAT NOODLES.
+
+
+Few folk-tales are more widely diffused than that of the man who set out
+in quest of as great noodles as those of his own household. The details
+may be varied more or less, but the fundamental outline is identical,
+wherever the story is found; and, whether it be an instance of the
+transmission of popular tales from one country to another, or one of
+those "primitive fictions" which are said to be the common heritage of
+the Aryans, its independent development by different nations and in
+different ages cannot be reasonably maintained.
+
+Thus, in one Gaelic version of this diverting story--in which our old
+friends the Gothamites reappear on the scene to enact their unconscious
+drolleries--a lad marries a farmer's daughter, and one day while they
+are all busily engaged in peat-cutting, she is sent to the house to
+fetch the dinner. On entering the house, she perceives the speckled
+pony's packsaddle hanging from the roof, and says to herself, "Oh, if
+that packsaddle were to fall and kill me, what should I do?" and here
+she began to cry, until her mother, wondering what could be detaining
+her, comes, when she tells the old woman the cause of her grief,
+whereupon the mother, in her turn, begins to cry, and when the old man
+next comes to see what is the matter with his wife and daughter, and is
+informed about the speckled pony's packsaddle, he, too, "mingles his
+tears" with theirs. At last the young husband arrives, and finding the
+trio of noodles thus grieving at an imaginary misfortune, he there and
+then leaves them, declaring his purpose not to return until he has found
+three as great fools as themselves. In the course of his travels he
+meets with some strange folks: men whose wives make them believe
+whatever they please--one, that he is dead; another, that he is clothed,
+when he is stark naked; a third, that he is not himself. He meets with
+the twelve fishers who always miscounted their number; the noodles who
+went to drown an eel in the sea; and a man trying to get his cow on the
+roof of his house, in order that she might eat the grass growing there.
+But the most wonderful incident was a man coming with a cow in a cart:
+and the people had found out that the man had stolen the cow, and that a
+court should be held upon him, and so they did; and the justice they did
+was to put the horse to death for carrying the cow.[1]
+
+In another Gaelic version a young husband had provided his house with a
+cradle, in natural anticipation that such an interesting piece of
+furniture would be required in due time. In this he was disappointed,
+but the cradle stood in the kitchen all the same. One day he chanced to
+throw something into the empty cradle, upon which his wife, his mother,
+and his wife's mother set up loud lamentations, exclaiming, "Oh, if
+_he_ had been there, he had been killed!" alluding to a potential
+son. The man was so much shocked at such an exhibition of folly that he
+left the country in search of three greater noodles. Among other
+adventures, he goes into a house and plays tricks on some people there,
+telling them his name is "_Saw ye ever my like_?" When the old man
+of the house comes home he finds his people tied upon tables, and asks,
+"What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye ever my like?" says the first. Then
+going to a second man, he asks, "What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye
+ever my like?" says the second. "I saw thy like in the kitchen," replies
+the old man, and then he goes to the third: "What's the reason of this?"
+"Saw ye ever my like?" says the third. "I have seen plenty of thy like,"
+quoth the old man; "but never before this day," and then he understood
+that some one had been playing tricks on his people.[2]
+
+In Russian variants the old parents of a youth named Lutonya weep over
+the supposititious death of a potential grandchild, thinking how sad it
+would have been if a log which the old woman had dropped had killed that
+hypothetical infant. The parents' grief appears to Lutonya so uncalled
+for that he leaves the house, declaring he will not return until he has
+met with people more foolish than they. He travels long and far, and
+sees several foolish doings. In one place a horse is being inserted into
+its collar by sheer force; in another, a woman is fetching milk from the
+cellar a spoonful at a time; and in a third place some carpenters are
+attempting to stretch a beam which is not long enough, and Lutonya earns
+their gratitude by showing them how to join a piece to it.[3]
+
+A well-known English version is to this effect: There was a young man
+who courted a farmer's daughter, and one evening when he came to the
+house she was sent to the cellar for beer. Seeing an axe stuck in a beam
+above her head, she thought to herself, "Suppose I were married and had
+a son, and he were to grow up, and be sent to this cellar for beer, and
+this axe were to fall and kill him--oh dear! oh dear!" and there she sat
+crying and crying, while the beer flowed all over the cellar-floor,
+until her old father and mother come in succession and blubber along
+with her about the hypothetical death of her imaginary grown-up son. The
+young man goes off in quest of three bigger fools, and sees a woman
+hoisting a cow on to the roof of her cottage to eat the grass that grew
+among the thatch, and to keep the animal from falling off, she ties a
+rope round its neck, then goes into the kitchen, secures at her waist
+the rope, which she had dropped down the chimney, and presently the cow
+stumbles over the roof, and the woman is pulled up the flue till she
+sticks half-way. In an inn he sees a man attempting to jump into his
+trousers--a favourite incident in this class of stories; and farther
+along he meets with a party raking the moon out of a pond.
+
+Another English variant relates that a young girl having been left alone
+in the house, her mother finds her in tears when she comes home, and
+asks the cause of her distress. "Oh," says the girl, "while you were
+away, a brick fell down the chimney, and I thought, if it had fallen on
+me I might have been killed!" The only novel adventure which the girl's
+betrothed meets with, in his quest of three bigger fools, is an old
+woman trying to drag an oven with a rope to the table where the dough
+lay.
+
+Several versions are current in Italy and Sicily, which present a close
+analogy to those of other European countries. The following is a
+translation of one in Bernoni's Venetian collection:
+
+Once upon a time there were a husband and a wife who had a son. This son
+grew up, and said one day to his mother, "Do you know, mother, I would
+like to marry?" "Very well, marry! Whom do you want to take?" He
+answered, "I want the gardener's daughter." "She is a good girl--take
+her; I am willing." So he went, and asked for the girl, and her parents
+gave her to him. They were married, and when they were in the midst of
+their dinner, the wine gave out. The husband said, "There is no more
+wine!" The bride, to show that she was a good housekeeper, said, "I will
+go and get some." She took the bottles and went to the cellar, turned
+the cock, and began to think, "Suppose I should have a son, and we
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die! Oh, how grieved I should
+be! oh, how grieved I should be!" And thereupon she began to weep and
+weep; and meanwhile the wine was running all over the cellar.
+
+When they saw that the bride did not return, the mother said, "I will go
+and see what the matter is." So she went into the cellar, and saw the
+bride, with the bottle in her hand, and weeping. "What is the matter
+with you that you are weeping?" "Ah, my mother, I was thinking that if I
+had a son, and should name him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" The mother, too, began to weep,
+and weep, and weep; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.
+
+When the people at the table saw that no one brought the wine, the
+groom's father said, "I will go and see what is the matter. Certainly
+something wrong has happened to the bride." He went and saw the whole
+cellar full of wine, and the mother and bride weeping. "What is the
+matter?" he said; "has anything wrong happened to you?"
+
+"No," said the bride; "but I was thinking that if I had a son, and
+should call him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I should grieve!
+oh, how I should grieve!" Then he, too, began to weep, and all three
+wept; and meanwhile the wine was running over the cellar.
+
+When the groom saw that neither the bride, nor the mother, nor the
+father came back, he said, "Now I will go and see what the matter is
+that no one returns." He went into the cellar and saw all the wine
+running over the cellar. He hastened and stopped the cask, and then
+asked, "What is the matter that you are all weeping, and have let the
+wine run all over the cellar?" Then the bride said, "I was thinking that
+if I had a son and called him Bastianelo, and he should die, oh, how I
+should grieve! oh, how I should grieve!" Then the groom said, "You
+stupid fools! Are you weeping at this and letting all the wine run into
+the cellar? Have you nothing else to think of? It shall never be said
+that I remained with you. I will roam about the world, and until I find
+three fools greater than you, I will not return home."
+
+He had a bread-cake made, took a bottle of wine, a sausage, and some
+linen, and made a bundle, which he put on a stick and carried over his
+shoulder. He journeyed and journeyed, but found no fool. At last he
+said, worn out, "I must turn back, for I see I cannot find a greater
+fool than my wife." He did not know what to do, whether to go on or turn
+back. "Oh," said he, "it is better to try and go a little farther." So
+he went on, and shortly saw a man in his shirt-sleeves at a well, all
+wet with perspiration, and water. "What are you doing, sir, that you are
+so covered with water and in such a sweat?" "Oh, let me alone," the man
+answered; "for I have been here a long time drawing water to fill this
+pail, and I cannot fill it." "What are you drawing the water in?" he
+asked him. "In this sieve," he said. "What are you thinking about, to
+draw water in that sieve? Just wait!" He went to a house near by and
+borrowed a bucket, with which he returned to the well and filled the
+pail. "Thank you, good man. God knows how long I should have had to
+remain here!"--"Here," thought he, "is one who is a greater fool than my
+wife."
+
+He continued his journey, and after a time he saw at a distance a man in
+his shirt, who was jumping down from a tree. He drew near, and saw a
+woman under the same tree, holding a pair of breeches. He asked them
+what they were doing, and they said that they had been there a long
+time, and that the man was trying on those breeches and did not know how
+to get into them. "I have jumped and jumped," said the man, "until I am
+tired out, and I cannot imagine how to get into those breeches." "Oh,"
+said the traveller, "you might stay here as long as you wished, for you
+would never get into them this way. Come down and lean against the
+tree." Then he took his legs and put them in the breeches, and after he
+had put them on, he said, "Is that right?" "Very good; bless you; for if
+it had not been for you, God knows how long I should have had to jump."
+Then the traveller said to himself, "I have seen two greater fools than
+my wife."
+
+Then he went his way, and as he approached a city, he heard a great
+noise. When he drew near he asked what it was, and was told it was a
+marriage, and that it was the custom in that city for the brides to
+enter the city gate on horseback, and that there was a great discussion
+on this occasion between the groom and the owner of the horse, for the
+bride was tall and the horse high, and they could not get through the
+gate; so that they must either cut off the bride's head or the horse's
+legs. The groom did not wish his bride's head cut off, and the owner of
+the horse did not wish his horse's legs cut off, and hence this
+disturbance. Then the traveller said, "Just wait," and came up to the
+bride and gave her a slap that made her lower her head, and then he gave
+the horse a kick, and so they passed through the gate and entered the
+city. The groom and the owner of the horse asked the traveller what he
+wanted, for he had saved the groom his bride and the owner of the horse
+his horse. He answered that he did not wish anything, and said to
+himself, "Two and one make three! that is enough. Now I will go home."
+He did so, and said to his wife, "Here I am, my wife; I have seen three
+greater fools than you;--now let us remain in peace, and think of
+nothing else." They renewed the wedding, and always remained in peace.
+After a time the wife had a son, whom they named Bastianelo, and
+Bastianelo did not die, but still lives with his father and mother.[4]
+
+There is (Professor Crane remarks) a Sicilian version in Pitre's
+collection, called "The Peasant of Larcara," in which the bride's mother
+imagines that her daughter has a son who falls into the cistern. The
+groom--they are not yet married--is disgusted, and sets out on his
+travels with no fixed purpose of returning if he finds some fools
+greater than his mother-in-law, as in the Venetian tale. The first fool
+he meets is a mother, whose child, in playing the game called
+_nocciole_.[5] tries to get his hand out of the hole whilst his
+fist is full of stones. He cannot, of course, and the mother thinks they
+will have to cut off his hand. The traveller tells the child to drop the
+stones, and then he draws out his hand easily enough. Next he finds a
+bride who cannot enter the church because she is very tall and wears a
+high comb. The difficulty is settled as in the former story. After a
+while he comes to a woman who is spinning and drops her spindle. She
+calls out to the pig, whose name is Tony, to pick it up for her. The pig
+does nothing but grunt, and the woman in anger cries, "Well, you won't
+pick it up? May your mother die!" The traveller, who had overheard all
+this, takes a piece of paper, which he folds up like a letter, and then
+knocks at the door. "Who is there?" "Open the door, for I have a letter
+for you from Tony's mother, who is ill and wishes to see her son before
+she dies." The woman wonders that her imprecation has taken effect so
+soon, and readily consents to Tony's visit. Not only this, but she loads
+a mule with everything necessary for the comfort of the body and soul of
+the dying pig. The traveller leads away the mule with Tony, and returns
+home so pleased with having found that the outside world contains so
+many fools that he marries as he had first intended.[6]
+
+In other Italian versions, a man is trying to jump into his stockings;
+another endeavours to put walnuts into a sack with a fork; and a woman
+dips a knotted rope into a deep well, and then having drawn it up,
+squeezes the water out of the knots into a pail. The final adventure of
+the traveller in quest of the greatest noodles is thus related in Miss
+Busk's _Folk-lore of Rome_:
+
+Towards nightfall he arrived at a lone cottage, where he knocked, and
+asked for a night's lodging. "I can't give you that," said a voice from
+the inside; "for I am a lone widow. I can't take a man in to sleep
+here." "But I am a pilgrim," replied he; "let me in at least to cook a
+bit of supper."
+
+"That I don't mind doing," said the good wife, and she opened the door.
+"Thanks, good friend," said the pilgrim, as he sat down by the stove.
+"Now add to your charity a couple of eggs in a pan." So she gave him a
+pan and two eggs, and a bit of butter to cook them in; but he took the
+six eggs out of his staff and broke them into the pan too. Presently,
+when the good wife turned her head his way again, and saw eight eggs
+swimming in the pan instead of two, she said, "Lack-a-day! you must
+surely be some strange being from the other world. Do you know
+So-and-so?" naming her husband. "Oh yes," said he, enjoying the joke; "I
+know him very well: he lives just next to me." "Only to think of that!"
+replied the poor woman. "And, do tell me, how do you get on in the other
+world? What sort of a life is it?" "Oh, not so very bad; it depends what
+sort of a place you get. The part where we are is pretty good, except
+that we get very little to eat. Your husband, for instance, is nearly
+starved." "No, really?" cried the good wife, clasping her hands. "Only
+fancy, my good husband starving out there, so fond as he was of a good
+dinner, too!" Then she added, coaxingly, "As you know him so well,
+perhaps you wouldn't mind doing him the charity of taking him a little
+somewhat, to give him a treat. There are such lots of things I could
+easily send him." "Oh dear, no, not at all. I'll do so with pleasure,"
+answered he. "But I'm not going back till to-morrow, and if I don't
+sleep here I must go on farther, and then I shan't come by this way."
+"That's true," replied the widow. "Ah, well, I mustn't mind what the
+folks say; for such an opportunity as this may never occur again. You
+must sleep in my bed, and I must sleep on the hearth; and in the morning
+I'll load a donkey with provisions for my poor husband." "Oh, no,"
+replied the pilgrim, "you shan't be disturbed in your bed. Only let me
+sleep on the hearth--that will do for me; and as I am an early riser, I
+can be gone before any one's astir, so folks won't have anything to
+say."
+
+So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up, loading the
+donkey with the best of her stores--ham, macaroni, flour, cheese, and
+wine. All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying, "You'll send the
+donkey back, won't you?" "Of course I would send him back," he replied;
+"he'd be of no use to me out there. But I shan't get out again myself
+for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won't find his way back
+alone, for it's no easy way to find." "To be sure not; I ought to have
+thought of that," replied the widow. "Ah, well, so as my poor husband
+gets a good meal, never mind the donkey." So the pretended pilgrim from
+the other world went his way. He hadn't gone a hundred yards before the
+widow called him back. "Ah, she's beginning to think better of it," said
+he to himself, and he continued his way, pretending not to hear. "Good
+pilgrim," shouted the widow, "I forgot one thing: would money be of any
+use to my poor husband?" "Oh dear, yes," said he, "all the use in the
+world. You can always get anything for money anywhere." "Oh, do come
+back, then, and I'll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him." He went
+back, willingly, for the hundred scudi, which the widow counted out to
+him. "There's no help for it," said he to himself as he went his way: "I
+must go back to those at home."
+
+From sunny Italy to bleak Norway is certainly a "far cry," yet the
+adventure of the "Pilgrim from Paradise" is also known to the Norse
+peasants, in connection with the quest of the greatest noodles: A goody
+goes to market, with a cow and a hen for sale. She wants five shillings
+for the cow and ten pounds for the hen. A butcher buys the cow, but
+doesn't want the hen. As she cannot find a buyer for the hen, she goes
+back to the butcher, who treats her to so much brandy that she gets
+dead-drunk, and in this condition the butcher tars and feathers her.
+When she awakes, she fancies that she must be some strange bird, and
+cries out, "Is this me, or is it not me? I'll go home, and if our dog
+barks, then it is not me." Thus far we have a variant of our favourite
+nursery rhyme:
+
+  There was an old woman, as I've heard tell,
+  She went to market her eggs for to sell;
+  She went to market, all on a market-day,
+  And she fell asleep on the king's highway.
+
+  There came a pedlar, whose name was Stout,
+  He cut her petticoats all round about;
+  He cut her petticoats up to the knees,
+  Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze.
+
+  When the little woman first did wake,
+  She began to shiver and she began to shake;
+  She began to wonder, and she began to cry,
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this is none of I!"
+
+  "But if this be I, as I do hope it be,
+  I've a little dog at home, and he'll know me;
+  If it be I, he'll wag his little tail,
+  And if it be not I, he loudly bark and wail."
+
+  Home went the little woman all in the dark,
+  Up got the little dog, and began to bark;
+  He began to bark, and she began to cry,
+  "Lauk-a-mercy on me, this can't be I!"
+
+To return to the Norse tale. As in our nursery rhyme, when the goody
+reaches home, the dog barks at her; then she goes to the calves' house,
+but the calves, having sniffed the tar with which she was smeared, turn
+away from her in disgust. She is now fully convinced that she has been
+transformed into some outlandish bird, so she climbs on to the roof of a
+shed, and begins to flap her arms as if she were about to fly, when out
+comes her goodman, and seeing a suspicious-looking creature on the roof
+of the shed, he fetches his gun and is going to shoot at his goody, when
+he recognises her voice. Amazed at such a piece of folly, he resolves to
+leave her and not come back till he has found three goodies as silly. He
+meets with a female descendant of the Schildburgers, evidently, carrying
+into her cottage sunshine in a sieve, there being no window in the
+house: he cuts out a window for her and is well paid for his trouble. He
+next comes to a house where an old woman is thumping her goodman on the
+head with a beetle, in order to force over him a shirt without a slit
+for the neck, which she had drawn over his head: he cuts a slit in the
+shirt with a pair of scissors, and is amply rewarded for his ingenuity.
+His third adventure is similar to that of the "pilgrim" in the Italian
+version:
+
+At another house he informs the goody that he came from Paradise Place--
+which was the name of his own farm--and she asks him if he knew her
+second husband in paradise. (She had been married twice before she took
+her present husband, who was an old curmudgeon, and she liked her second
+husband best--she was sure he had gone to heaven.) He replies that he
+knew him very intimately, but, poor man, he was far from well off,
+having to go about begging from house to house. The goody gives him a
+cart-load of clothes and a box of shining dollars, for her dear second
+husband; for why should he go about begging in paradise when there was
+so much of everything in their house? So the stranger, jumps into the
+cart and drives off, as fast as possible. But Peter, the goody's third
+husband, sees him on the road, and recognising his own horse and cart,
+hastens home to his wife, and asks why a stranger has gone off with his
+property. She explains the whole affair, upon which he mounts a horse
+and gallops away after the rogue who had thus taken advantage of his
+wife's simplicity. The stranger, perceiving him approach, hides the
+horse and cart behind a high hedge, takes part of the horse's tail and
+hangs it on the branches of a birch-tree, and then lays himself down on
+his back and gazes up into the sky. When Peter comes up to him, he
+exclaims, still looking at the sky, "What a wonder! there is a man going
+straight to heaven on a black horse!" Peter can see no such thing. "Can
+you not?" says the stranger. "See, there is his tail, still on the
+birch-tree. You must lie down in this very spot, and look straight up,
+and don't for a moment take your eyes off the sky, and then you'll see--
+what you'll see." So Peter lies down and gazes up at the sky very
+intently, looking for the man going straight to heaven on a black horse.
+Meanwhile the traveller escapes, with the cart-load of clothes and the
+box of shining dollars, and the second horse besides. Peter, when he
+reaches home, tells his wife that he had given the man from paradise the
+other horse for her second husband to ride about on, for he was ashamed
+to confess that he had been cheated as well as herself.[7] As to our
+traveller, having found three goodies as great fools as his own, he
+returned home, and saw that all his fields had been ploughed and sown;
+so he asked his wife where she had got the seed from. "Oh," says she, "I
+have always heard that what a man sows he shall also reap, so I sowed
+the salt that our friends the north-countrymen laid up with us, and if
+we only have rain, I fancy it will come up nicely."[8] "Silly you are,"
+said her husband, "and silly you will be as long as you live. But that
+is all one now, for the rest are not a bit wiser than you;--_there is
+not a pin to choose between you_!"[9]
+
+Now, if it be "a far cry" from Italy to Norway, it is still farther from
+Norway to India; and yet it is in the southern provinces of our great
+Asiatic empire that a story is current among the people, which, strange
+as it may seem, is almost the exact counterpart of the Norse version of
+the pretended pilgrim from paradise, of which the above is an abstract.
+It is found in Pandit S.M. Natesa Sastri's _Folk-lore in Southern
+India_, now in course of publication at Bombay; a work which, when
+completed, will be of very great value, to students of comparative
+folk-tales, as well as prove an entertaining story-book for general
+readers. After condensation in some parts, this story--which the Pandit
+entitles "The Good Wife and the Bad Husband"--runs thus:
+
+In a secluded village there lived a rich man, who was very miserly, and
+his wife, who was very kind-hearted and charitable, but a stupid little
+woman that believed everything she heard. And there lived in the same
+village a clever rogue, who had for some time watched for an opportunity
+for getting something from this simple woman during her husband's
+absence. So one day, when he had seen the old miser ride out to inspect
+his lands, this rogue of the first water came to the house, and fell
+down at the threshold as if overcome by fatigue. The woman ran up to him
+at once and inquired whence he came. "I am come from Kailasa,"[10] said
+he; "having been sent down by an old couple living there, for news of
+their son and his wife." "Who are those fortunate dwellers in Siva's
+mountain?" she asked. And the rogue gave the names of her husband's
+deceased parents, which he had taken good care, of course, to learn from
+the neighbours. "Do you really come from them?" said the simple woman.
+"Are they doing well there? Dear old people! How glad my husband would
+be to see you, were he here! Sit down, please, and rest until he
+returns. How do they live there? Have they enough to eat and dress
+themselves withal?" These and a hundred other questions she put to the
+rogue, who, for his part, wished to get away as soon as possible,
+knowing full well how he would be treated if the miser should return
+while he was there. So he replied, "Mother, language has no words to
+describe the miseries they are undergoing in the other world. They have
+not a rag of clothing, and for the last six days they have eaten
+nothing, and have lived on water only. It would break your heart to see
+them." The rogue's pathetic words deceived the good woman, who firmly
+believed that he had come down from Kailasa, a messenger from the old
+couple to herself. "Why should they so suffer," said she, "when their
+son has plenty to eat and clothe himself withal, and when their
+daughter-in-law wears all sorts of costly garments?" So saying, she went
+into the house, and soon came out again with two boxes containing all
+her own and her husband's clothes, which she handed to the rogue,
+desiring him to deliver them to the poor old couple in Kailasa. She also
+gave him her jewel-box, to be presented to her mother-in-law. "But dress
+and jewels will not fill their hungry stomachs," said the rogue. "Very
+true; I had forgot: wait a moment," said the simple woman, going into
+the house once more. Presently returning with her husband's cash chest,
+she emptied its glittering contents into the rogue's skirt, who now took
+his leave in haste, promising to give everything to the good old couple
+in Kailasa; and having secured all the booty in his upper garment, he
+made off at the top of his speed as soon as the silly woman had gone
+indoors.
+
+Shortly after this the husband returned home, and his wife's pleasure at
+what she had done was so great that she ran to meet him at the door, and
+told him all about the arrival of the messenger from Kailasa, how his
+parents were without clothes and food, and how she had sent them clothes
+and jewels and store of money. On hearing this, the anger of the husband
+was great; but he checked himself, and inquired which road the messenger
+from Kailasa had taken, saying that he wished to follow him with a
+further message for his parents. So she very readily pointed out the
+direction in which the rogue had gone. With rage in his heart at the
+trick played upon his stupid wife, he rode off in hot haste, and after
+having proceeded a considerable distance, he caught sight of the flying
+rogue, who, finding escape hopeless, climbed up into a _pipal_
+tree.
+
+The husband soon reached the foot of the tree, when he shouted to the
+rogue to come down. "No, I cannot," said he; "this is the way to
+Kailasa," and then climbed to the very top of the tree. Seeing there was
+no chance of the rogue coming down, and there being no one near to whom
+he could call for help, the old miser tied his horse to a neighbouring
+tree, and began to climb up the _pipal_ himself. When the rogue
+observed this, he thanked all his gods most fervently, and having waited
+until his enemy had climbed nearly up to him, he threw down his bundle
+of booty, and then leapt nimbly from branch to branch till he reached
+the ground in safety, when he mounted the miser's horse and with his
+bundle rode into a thick forest, where he was not likely to be
+discovered. Being thus balked the miser came down the _pipal_ tree
+slowly cursing his own stupidity in having risked his horse to recover
+the things which his wife had given the rogue, and returned home at
+leisure. His wife, who was waiting his return, welcomed him with a
+joyous countenance, and cried, "I thought as much: you have sent away
+your horse to Kailasa, to be used by your old father." Vexed at his
+wife's words, as he was, he replied in the affirmative, to conceal his
+own folly.
+
+Through the Tamils it is probable this story reached Ceylon, where it
+exists in a slightly different form: A young girl, named Kaluhami, had
+lately died, when a beggar came to the parents' house, and on being
+asked by the mother where he had come from, he said that he had just
+come from the other world to this world, meaning that he had only just
+recovered from severe illness. "Then," said the woman, "since you have
+come from the other world, you must have seen my daughter Kaluhami
+there, who died but a few days ago. Pray tell me how she is." The
+beggar, seeing how simple she was, replied, "She is my wife, and lives
+with me at present, and she has sent me to you for her dowry." The woman
+at once gave him all the money and jewels that were in the house, and
+sent him away delighted with his unexpected good luck. Soon after, the
+woman's husband returned, and learning how silly she had been, mounted
+his horse and rode after the beggar. The rest of the story corresponds
+to the Tamil version, as above, with the exception that when the husband
+saw the beggar slide down the tree, get on his horse, and ride off, he
+cried out to him, "Hey, son-in-law, you may tell Kaluhami that the money
+and jewels are from her mother, and that the horse is from me;" which is
+altogether inconsistent, since he is represented as the reverse of a
+simpleton in pursuing the beggar, on hearing what his wife had done. It
+is curious, also, to observe that in the Tamil version the man goes to
+the house with the deliberate purpose of deceiving the simple woman,
+while in the Sinhalese the beggar is evidently tempted by her mistaking
+the meaning of his words. But both present very close points of
+resemblance to the Norwegian story of the pretended pilgrim from
+paradise. There are indeed few instances of a story having travelled so
+far and lost so little of its original details, allowing for the
+inevitable local colouring.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. ii., pp.
+373-381. In a note to these adventures Campbell gives a story of some
+women who, as judges, doomed a horse to be hanged: the thief who stole
+the horse got off, because it was his first offence; the horse went back
+to the house of the thief, because he was the better master, and was
+condemned for stealing himself!
+
+[2]: Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. ii.,
+pp. 385--387.
+
+In a Northumberland popular tale a child in bed sees a little fairy come
+down the chimney, and the child tells the creature that his name is
+My-ainsel. They play together, and the little fairy is burnt with a
+cinder, and on its mother appearing when it cries, and asking it who had
+hurt it, the imp answers, "It was My-ainsel."--There is a somewhat
+similar story current in Finland: A man is moulding lead buttons, when
+the Devil appears, and asks him what he is doing. "Making eyes." "Could
+you make me new ones?" "Yes." So he ties the Devil to a bench, and, in
+reply to the fiend, tells him that his name is Myself _(Issi)_, and
+then pours lead into his eyes. The Devil starts up with the bench on his
+back, and runs off howling. Some people working in a field ask him who
+did it. Quoth the fiend, "Myself did it" (_Issi teggi_).
+
+Cf. the _Odyssey_, Book ix., where Ulysses informs the Cyclops that
+his name is No-man, and when the monster, after having had his eye put
+out in his sleep, awakes in agony, he roars to his comrades for help:
+
+  "Friends, No-man kills me, No-man, in the hour
+  Of sleep, oppresses me with fraudful power!"
+  "If no man hurt thee, but the hand divine
+  Inflict disease, it fits thee to resign;--
+  To Jove, or to thy father, Neptune, pray,"
+  The brethren cried, and instant strode away.
+
+[3] Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales_.
+
+[4] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 279--282.
+
+[5] A game played with peach-pits, which are thrown into holes made in
+the ground, and to which certain numbers are attached.
+
+[6] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 282-3.
+
+[7] The same story is told in Brittany, with no important variations.
+
+[8] Quite as literally did the rustic understand the priest's assurance,
+that whatsoever one gave in charity, for the love of God, should be
+repaid him twofold: next day he takes his cow to the priest, who accepts
+it as sent by Heaven--and the poor man did _not_ get two cows in
+return. The story is known in various forms all over Europe; it was a
+special favourite in mediaeval times. See Le Grand's _Fabliaux_,
+tome iii., 376: "La Vache du Cure," by the trouvere Jean de Boves;
+Wright's _Latin Stories; Icelandic Legends_, etc.
+
+[9] Dasent's _Popular Tales from the Norse_.
+
+[10] "See note, p. 49" in original. This is Chapter II, Footnote 13 in
+this e-text.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+The idea of the old English jest-book, _Jacke of Dover His Quest of
+Inquirie, or His Privy Search for the Veriest Foole in England_
+(London: 1604), may perhaps have been suggested by such popular tales as
+those of the man going about in quest of three greater fools than his
+wife, father-in-law, and mother-in-law. It is, however, simply a
+collection of humorous anecdotes, not specially examples of folly or
+stupidity, most of which are found in earlier jest-books. The
+introduction is rather curious:
+
+"When merry Jacke of Dover had made his privy search for the Foole of
+all Fooles, and making his inquirie in most of the principal places in
+England, at his return home he was adjudged to be the fool himself; but
+now wearied with the motley coxcombe, he hath undertaken in some place
+or other to find a verier foole than himself. But first of all, coming
+to London, he went into Paul's Church, where walking very melancholy in
+the middle aisle with Captain Thingut and his fellowes, he was invited
+to dine at Duke Humphry's ordinary,[1] where, amongst other good
+stomachs that repaired to his bountiful feast, there came a whole jury
+of penniless poets, who being fellows of a merry disposition (but as
+necessary in a commonwealth as a candle in a straw bed), he accepted of
+their company, and as from poets cometh all kind of folly, so he hoped
+by their good directions to find out his Foole of Fooles, so long looked
+for. So, thinking to pass away the dinner-hour with some pleasant chat
+(lest, being overcloyed with too many dishes, they should surfeit), he
+discovered to them his merry meaning, who, being glad of so good an
+occasion of mirth, instead of a cup of sack and sugar for digestion,
+these men of little wit began to make inquiry and to search for the
+aforesaid fool, thinking it a deed of charity to ease him of so great a
+burden as his motley coxcomb was, and because such weak brains as are
+now resident almost in every place, might take benefit hereat. In this
+manner began the inquiry:
+
+_The Foole of Hereford._
+
+"'Upon a time (quoth one of the jury) it was my chance to be in the city
+of Hereford, when, lodging at an inn, I was told of a certain
+silly-witted gentleman there dwelling, that would assuredly believe all
+things that he heard for a truth; to whose house I went upon a
+sleeveless errand, and finding occasion to be acquainted with him, I was
+well entertained, and for three days' space had my bed and board in his
+house; where, amongst many other fooleries, I, being a traveller, made
+him believe that the steeple of Brentwood, in Essex, sailed in one night
+as far as Calais, in France, and afterwards returned again to its proper
+place. Another time I made him believe that in the forest of Sherwood,
+in Nottinghamshire, were seen five hundred of the King of Spain's
+galleys, which went to besiege Robin Hood's Well, and that forty
+thousand scholars with elder squirts performed such a piece of service
+as they were all in a manner taken and overthrown in the forest. Another
+time I made him believe that Westminster Hall, for suspicion of treason,
+was banished for ten years into Staffordshire. And last of all, I made
+him believe that a tinker should be baited to death at Canterbury for
+getting two and twenty children in a year; whereupon, to prove me a
+liar, he took his horse and rode thither, and I, to verify him a fool,
+took my horse and rode hither.'
+
+"'Well,' quoth Jacke of Dover, 'this in my mind was pretty foolery, but
+yet the Foole of all Fooles is not here found that I looked for.'
+
+_The Fool of Huntington._
+
+"'And it was my chance (quoth another of the jury) upon a time to be at
+Huntington, where I heard tell of a simple shoemaker there dwelling, who
+having two little boys whom he made a vaunt to bring up to learning, the
+better to maintain themselves when they were men; and having kept them a
+year or two at school, he examined them saying, "My good boy," quoth he
+to one of them, "what dost thou learn and where is thy lesson?" "O
+father," said the boy, "I am past grace." "And where art thou?" quoth he
+to the other boy, who likewise answered that he was at the devil and all
+his works. "Now Lord bless us," quoth the shoemaker, "whither are my
+children learning? The one is already past grace and the other at the
+devil and all his works!" Whereupon he took them both from school and
+set them to his own occupation.[2]'"
+
+A number of others of the jury of penniless poets having related their
+stories, at last it is agreed that if the Foole of all Fooles cannot be
+found among those before named, one of themselves must be the fool, for
+there cannot be a verier fool than a poet, "for poets have good wits,
+but cannot use them, great store of money, but cannot keep it," etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is doubtful what the name "Jack of Dover" imports, as that of the
+imaginary inquirer after fools. The author of the Cook's Tale of
+Gamelyn--which is generally considered as a spurious "Canterbury" tale--
+represents, in the prologue, mine host of the Tabard as saying to Roger
+the Cook:
+
+  "Full many a pastie hast thou lettin blode;
+  And many a jack of Dovyr hast thou sold,
+  That hath ben twice hot and twice cold."
+
+Dr. Brewer says--apparently on the strength of these lines--that a "Jack
+of Dover" is a fish that has been cooked a second time. But it may have
+been a name of a particular kind of fish caught in the waters off Dover.
+If, however, a "Jack of Dover" is a twice-cooked fish, the title of the
+jest-book is not inappropriate, since all the stories it comprises are
+at least "twice-told."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] To "dine with Duke Humphry" meant not to dine at all. See Brewer's
+_Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ for the origin of the expression.
+
+[2] The jest is thus told in some parts of Scotland: An old gentleman,
+walking in the country, met three small boys on their way home from
+school, and asked them how they progressed in their learning. The
+youngest--referring, of course, to the _Shorter Catechism_--replied
+that he was "in a state of sin and misery;" the second, that he was past
+"redemption;" and the eldest, that he was "in the pains of hell for
+ever."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Abdera, Man of, 6.
+
+Alewife and her Hens, 73.
+
+Alfonsus, Peter, 45.
+
+Arab and his Cow, 70.
+
+Arab Schoolmaster, 83.
+
+Arabian Idiot, 133.
+
+_Arabian Nights_, 81, 83, 133, 146.
+
+Arabian Noodles, 70,75,107, 147.
+
+Armstrong's, Archie, _Banquet of Jests_, 74.
+
+Ashton, John, xiv.
+
+Ass and the Two Sharpers, 81.
+
+Austwick, Carles of, 17,53,54.
+
+_Avadanas_, 53.
+
+
+Babrius, 53.
+
+Bakki, Brothers of, 32, 64.
+
+Bang-eater and his Wife, 147.
+
+Bang-eaters and the Dogs, 109.
+
+Barrett, F.T., 9.
+
+_Barrin' o' the Door_, 107.
+
+Belmont, Fools of, 55.
+
+_Beryn, Tale of_, 40.
+
+Beschi, Father, 29.
+
+_Bharataka Dwatrinsati_, 158.
+
+_Bizarrures of the Sieur Gaulard_, 8, 12, 20, 76.
+
+Bidpai's Fables, 53.
+
+Birth-Stories--_see_ Jatakas.
+
+Boccaccio's _Decameron_, 39.
+
+"Boiling" River, 30, 43.
+
+Bond, The Lord's, 17.
+
+Borde, Andrew, 23.
+
+Brahmans, Four Simple, 171.
+
+Bromyard, John, 167.
+
+Buddha's Five Precepts, 69.
+
+Bull and the Gate, 54.
+
+Bull of Siva, 48.
+
+Burton's _Arabian Nights_, 83.
+
+Busk's _Folk-Lore of Rome_, 204.
+
+Butter eaten by a Dog, 18.
+
+Buzzard, The Gothamite's, 38.
+
+
+Cabbage-Tree, 47.
+
+Caftan on Tree, 90.
+
+Calf's Head in a Pot, 89.
+
+Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, 32, 33, 34, 35,
+36, 154, 193.
+
+Cat and old Woman, 65.
+
+Cat, Men of Schilda's, 61.
+
+Cazotte's _New Arabian Nights_, 133.
+
+Ceylon--_see_ Sinhalese Noodles.
+
+Chamberlain, B.H., 130.
+
+Cheese, The Gothamite's, 34.
+
+Cheese on the Highway, 40.
+
+Cheese, The Stolen, 91.
+
+Chinese Noodles, 93, 94.
+
+Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, 120.
+
+Colombo, Michele, 81.
+
+Countryman and Dog, 79.
+
+Cozens, F.W., 9.
+
+Council-House, Dark, 57.
+
+Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, 117, 128, 139, 202, 204.
+
+Cuckoo, Hedging in the, 26.
+
+Cumeans and the bath, 4;
+  and the father's corpse,15;
+  and the fig-tree, 10;
+  and the pot of honey, 19;
+  and the stolen clothes, 4.
+
+Dark Council-House, 57.
+
+Dasent's _Norse Tales_, 126, 212.
+
+Dekker's _Gul's Horn Book_, 26.
+
+Devil in the Meadow, 42.
+
+_Disciplina Clericalis_, 45.
+
+Doctor and Patients, 5.
+
+Doctor's Apprentice, 168.
+
+Dog that ate Honey, 18.
+
+Door, Taking Care of the, 97, 98.
+
+Dreams, The Good, 92, 93.
+
+Dubois, Abbe, 171.
+
+
+Ear, Biting one's own, 86.
+
+Eberhard's _Hieraclis_, 3.
+
+Eel, Drowning the, 33.
+
+_El Conde Lucanor_, 162.
+
+English typical booby, 139.
+
+
+_Fabliaux_, Le Grand's, 39,163.
+
+Family, Best of the, 165.
+
+Farmer and his Pigs, 54.
+
+Fisher, Indian Silly Son as, 163.
+
+Fishers, Gothamite, 28.
+
+Fleas, Bit by, 14.
+
+_Folk-Lore in Southern India_, 212.
+
+Fool and the aloes-wood, 98;
+  and the birch-tree, 151;
+  and the cotton, 99;
+  and the cup lost in the sea, 99;
+  and the elephant-driver, 51;
+  and his porridge, 119;
+  and the _Ramayana_, 70;
+  and the sack of meal, 19, 25, 68;
+  and the shopkeeper, 100;
+  at his fireside, 119;
+  kicked by his mule, 119;
+  of Hereford, 221;
+  of Huntingdon, 222.
+
+Fools and the buffalo, 101;
+  and the Bull of Siva, 48;
+  and their inheritance, 118;
+  and the mosquitoes, 95;
+  and the palm-trees, 96;
+  and the trunks, 96.
+
+Fortini's Italian Novels, 162.
+
+Fuller, Thomas, on the Gothamites, 20.
+
+Fumivall, F.J., 23.
+
+
+Gaulard, The Sieur, 8, 12, 20, 76.
+
+Geese and Tortoise, 52.
+
+_Gesta Romanorum_, 117,163.
+
+Gibb's _Forty. Vazirs_, 109, 166, 167.
+
+Giufa, the Sicilian Booby, 97, 130, 165.
+
+Goat and Old Woman, 66.
+
+_Gooroo Paramartan_, 29, 37, 157.
+
+Gossips and their late Husbands, 74.
+
+Gossips at the Alehouse, 43.
+
+_Gotham, Tales of the Mad Men of_, xiii., 20, 24-44.
+
+Grazzini's Florentine Fool, 161.
+
+Grecian Noodles, 1-15.
+
+
+Halliwell-Phillipps, J.O., xiii., 13, 22, 27, 53.
+
+Hama and Hums, Men of, 75.
+
+Hazlitt, W.C., xiii., 12.
+
+Heaven, Sorry he has gone to, 74.
+
+Herdsman, The Foolish, 106.
+
+Herodotus, Stephens' _Apology_ for, 119.
+
+Hierokles, Jests of, 2.
+
+_Hitopadesa_, 162.
+
+Honey, Pot of, 6, 18.
+
+Hunter's Dream of a Boar, 4.
+
+
+Icelandic Noodles, 32, 64, 163.
+
+Indian Noodles, 29, 37, 44, 48, 51, 70, 96, 97-106, 111,
+1l8, 158, l6l, 163, 170, 212.
+
+Italian Noodles, 115, 127, 143, 160, 197, 202, 204.
+
+Irish Labourer and Farmer, 8.
+
+Irishman and his ass, 119.
+
+Irishman and his hens, 120.
+
+Irishman and lost shovel, 99.
+
+Irishmen and mosquitoes, 14.
+
+Irishman's Dream, 92.
+
+
+Jack of Dover's Quest, 219.
+
+Japanese Noodle, 130.
+
+Jatakas (Buddhist Birth-Stories), 52, 65, 95, 164.
+
+_Jests of Scogin_, 162.
+
+Joe Miller's Jest-Book, 1, 2.
+
+Judge and Thieves, 87.
+
+
+Kabail Tales, 37, 154.
+
+Kashmiri Tales, 65, 89, 111.
+
+_Katha Manjari_, 11, 70, 100, 163.
+
+_Katha Sarit Sagara_, 48, 53, 120, 164.
+
+Kerchief, The, 90.
+
+Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, 89.
+
+King's Stupid Son, The, 167.
+
+Knite, 'The Gothamites', 53.
+
+Knowles, J.H., 66, 113.
+
+
+_Laird of Logan_, 13.
+
+Leger's _Contes Populaires Slaves_, 128, 154.
+
+
+Marie de France, 46.
+
+_Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres_, 161.
+
+Miller's Jest-Book, 1, 2.
+
+Millstone of the Schildburgers, 59.
+
+Minstrel and Pupil, 166.
+
+Monk Transformed, 81.
+
+Moon a green cheese, 44.
+
+Moon in the well, 92.
+
+Moon swallowed by an ass, 46.
+
+"Mortuus Loquens," 160.
+
+Mummy, The, 15.
+
+
+Nasr-ed-Din Khoja, 89.
+
+Natesa Sastri Pandit, 212.
+
+Needham's _Hieroclis_, 3.
+
+Noodles, The Three Great, 191.
+
+Norfolk Noodles, 17.
+
+Norse Noodles, 123, 207.
+
+Notts Bridge, 24.
+
+
+_Orientalist, The_, 69, 87, 114, 143, 160.
+
+
+_Pancha Tantra_, 67, 171.
+
+Paradise, Man who came from, 204, 210, 212, 217.
+
+Pedant, bald man, and barber, 6;
+  and the lost book, 13;
+  and his dream, 5,6;
+  and the jar of feathers, 5;
+  and his jar of wine, 9;
+  and the mirror, 9;
+  and the two slave-boys, 4;
+  and his slave who died, 8;
+  and the sparrows, 5;
+  and the twin-brothers, 12;
+  and his tomb, 8.
+
+Persian Noodle, 7.
+
+Persian Tales, 7, 66, 79.
+
+_Philotimus_, 27.
+
+Poet and the Dogs, 79.
+
+Poggius' _Facetiae_ 160, 162.
+
+Priest of Gotham, 42.
+
+Princess caused to grow, 102.
+
+Pupil, The Attentive, 165.
+
+
+Ralston's _Russian Folk-Tales,_ 48, 153.
+
+Relic-hunter, 95.
+
+Rents of Gothamites, 27.
+
+Right Hand or Left, 91.
+
+River, "Boiling," 30, 43.
+
+Riviere's _Contes Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_,
+37, 154.
+
+Russian Noodles, 47, 128, 151, 154, 195
+
+Rustic and the Dog, 79.
+
+
+_Sacke Full of Newes_, 46, 97.
+
+Sa'di's _Gulistan_, xi, 79.
+
+Schilda, The Men of, 56.
+
+Schoolmaster's Lady-love, 83.
+
+Sesame, Roasted, 120.
+
+Sheep's Eyes, Casting, 41, 126, 127.
+
+Sicilian Boobies, 97, 116, 139, 165.
+
+Silent Noodles, 107-117.
+
+Silly Matt, 123.
+
+Silly Son, The, 121.
+
+Simple Simon, 121, 122.
+
+Simpleton and Sharpers, 81.
+
+_Sindibad Nama_, 66.
+
+Sinhalese Noodles, 67-69, 87, 89, 113, 141, 165, 179, 217.
+
+Smith, Alexander, 9.
+
+Spade, The Stolen, 94.
+
+Spinning-Wheel, The, 36.
+
+Stephens, Henry, Tales by, 119.
+
+Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_, 154.
+
+_Summa Praaedicantium_, The, 167.
+
+
+Tabourot, Etienne, 8.
+
+_Tales and Quicke Answeres_, 161.
+
+Tawney, C.H., 48.
+
+Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_, 9, 10, 74, 78.
+
+Thief on a Tree, 11.
+
+Thoms, W.J., xii., 56.
+
+Thoroton's _History of Nottinghamshire_, 21.
+
+Three Greatest Noodles, 191.
+
+Treasure Trove, 144, 151, 154.
+
+Trivet, The Gothamite's, 36.
+
+Turkish Noodles, 11, 86, 90, 93, 109, 166, 167.
+
+Twelve Fishers, The, 28.
+
+Twin Brothers, 12.
+
+
+Vives, Ludovicus, 46.
+
+
+Warton's _History of English Poetry_, 22.
+
+Washerman and his young Ass, 103.
+
+Wasp's Nest, 40.
+
+"Whittle to the Tree," 53.
+
+Widows, The Two, 74.
+
+Wiltshire Noodles, 17, 54.
+
+Wither's _Abuses Whipt and Stript_, 26.
+
+Wolf's Tail, The, 91.
+
+Wood, Anthony, on the Gotham Tales, 23.
+
+Worsted Balls, The, 35.
+
+Wrestler and the Wag, 7.
+
+Wrong Man wakened, 6, 7.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Noodles, by W. A. Clouston
+
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