In the _Scholehouse of Women_, 1542, the same story is differently
related:--
"A husband man, having good trust
His wife to him bad be agreeable,
Thought to attempt if she had be reformable,
Bad her take the pot, that sod over the fire,
And set it aboove upon the astire.
She answered him: 'I hold thee mad,
And I more fool, by Saint Martine;
Thy dinner is redy, as thou me bad,
And time it were that thou shouldst dine,
And thou wilt not, I will go to mine.'
'I bid thee (said he) vere up the pot.'
'A ha! (she said) I trow thou dote,'
Up she goeth for fear, at last,
No question mooved where it should stand
Upon his hed the pottage she cast,
And heeld the pot stil in her hand.
Said and swore, he might her trust,
She would with the pottage do what her lust."
As this story in the _C. Mery Talys_ is defective in consequence of the
mutilation of the only known copy, the foregoing extract becomes
valuable, as it exhibits what was probably the sequel in the prose
version, from which the author of the _Scholehouse of Women_ was no
doubt a borrower.
P. 101. _If a thousande soules may dance on a mannes nayle._--This is a
different form of the common saying that a thousand angels can stand on
the point of the needle. "One querying another, whether a thousand
angels might stand on the point of a needle, another replied, 'That was
a _needles_ point.'"--Ward's _Diary_, ed. 1839, p. 94.
P. 106. Scot, in his _Discovery of Witchcraft_, 1584, ed. 1651, p. 191,
has a story, which bears the mark of being the same as the one here
entitled "Of the parson that stale the mylner's elys." The passage in
Scot, which may help to supply the unfortunate _lacuna_ in the _C. Mery
Talys_, is as follows:--
"So it was, that a certain Sir John, with some of his company, once went
abroad jetting, and in a moon-light evening, robbed a miller's weire and
stole all his eeles. The poor miller made his mone to Sir John himself,
who willed him to be quiet; for he would so curse the theef, and
all his confederates, with bell, book, and candel, that they should have
small joy of their fish. And therefore the next Sunday, Sir John got him
to the pulpit, with his surplisse on his back, and his stole about his
neck, and pronounced these words following in the audience of the
people:--
'All you that have stolne the millers eeles,
_Laudate Dominum de coelis_,
And all they that have consented thereto,
_Benedicamus Domino_.'