Part 2 (1/2)

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 Kabal, 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 b.o.o.by; ”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 b.o.o.by 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 subst.i.tute 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 p.r.o.nunciation that he meant _bare_ head.--In the nineteenth tale, a party of gossips are a.s.sembled 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” cla.s.s: 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 l.u.s.ty 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 gra.s.shopper. 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 gra.s.s. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the gra.s.shopper. When they did come to the place where the gra.s.shopper 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 pa.s.sing 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 Wilts.h.i.+re, and the _sobriquet_ of ”moon-rakers,” applied to Wilts.h.i.+re folk in general, is said to have had its origin in the incident; but they a.s.sert 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 ent.i.tled _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 ent.i.tled _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 pet.i.tion 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ill.u.s.tration of the apothegm that ”a.s.sociation 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.”