_Source._--The chap-book contained in Mr. Hazlitt's _Shaksperian Jest
Book_, vol. iii. I have selected the incidents and modernised the
spelling; otherwise the droll remains as it was told in Elizabethan
times.
_Parallels._--Mr. Clouston's _Book of Noodles_ is little else than a
series of parallels to our droll. See my List of Incidents under the
titles, "One cheese after another," "Hare postman," "Not counting self,"
"Drowning eels." In most cases Mr. Clouston quotes Eastern analogies.
_Remarks._--All countries have their special crop of fools, Boeotians
among the Greeks, the people of Hums among the Persians (how
appropriate!), the Schildburgers in Germany, and so on. Gotham is the
English representative, and as witticisms call to mind well-known wits,
so Gotham has had heaped on its head all the stupidities of the
Indo-European world. For there can be little doubt that these drolls
have spread from East to West. This "Not counting self" is in the
_Gooroo Paramastan_, the cheeses "one after another" in M. Rivière's
collection of Kabyle tales, and so on. It is indeed curious how little
originality there is among mankind in the matter of stupidity. Even such
an inventive genius as the late Mr. Sothern had considerable difficulty
in inventing a new "sell."