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.