_Source_.--Lluyd, _Archaeologia Britannia_, 1707, the first comparative
Celtic grammar and the finest piece of work in comparative philology
hitherto done in England, contains this tale as a specimen of Cornish
then still spoken in Cornwall. I have used the English version
contained in _Blackwood's Magazine_ as long ago as May 1818. I have
taken the third counsel from the Irish version, as the original is not
suited _virginibus puerisque_, though harmless enough in itself.
_Parallels_.--Lover has a tale, _The Three Advices_. It occurs also in
modern Cornwall _ap._ Hunt, _Drolls of West of England_, 344, "The
Tinner of Chyamor." Borrow, _Wild Wales_, 41, has a reference which
seems to imply that the story had crystallised into a Welsh proverb.
Curiously enough, it forms the chief episode of the so-called "Irish
Odyssey" ("_Merugud Uilix maiec Leirtis_"--"Wandering of Ulysses
M'Laertes"). It was derived, in all probability, from the _Gesta
Romanorum_, c. 103, where two of the three pieces of advice are "Avoid
a byeway," "Beware of a house where the housewife is younger than her
husband." It is likely enough that this chapter, like others of the
_Gesta_, came from the East, for it is found in some versions of "The
Forty Viziers," and in the _Turkish Tales_ (see Oesterley's parallels
and _Gesta_, ed. Swan and Hooper, note 9).