When the noodle is persuaded, as in the following case of a Sinhalese wittol, by a gang of thieves to join them in a plundering expedition, they have little reason to be pleased with him, for he does not make a good "cat's-paw." The Sinhalese noodle joined some thieves, took readily to their ways, and was always eager to accompany them on their marauding excursions. One night they took him with them, and boring a large hole in the wall of a house,⁶ they sent him in, telling him to hand out the heaviest article he could lay hands upon. He readily went in, and seeing a large kurakkan-grinder,⁷ thought that was the heaviest thing in the room, and attempted to remove it. But it proved too much for him alone, so he gently awoke a man who was sleeping in the room, and said to him, "My friend, pray help me to remove this kurakkan-grinder." The man immediately guessed that thieves had entered the house, and gave the alarm. The thieves, who were waiting outside quite expectant, rushed away, and the noodle somehow or other managed to escape with them.

Next night they again took him along with them, and after boring a hole in the wall of another house, sent him in with strict injunctions not to make a noise or wake anybody. He crept in noiselessly and entered a large room, in which was an old woman, fast asleep by the fire, with wide-open mouth. An earthen chattie, a wooden spoon, and a small bag of pease were also placed by the fire. The noodle first proceeded to roast some pease in the chattie. When they were roasted to a nice brownish colour, and emitted a very tempting smell, he thought that the old woman might also enjoy a mouthful. He considered for a while how he might best offer some to her. He did not wish to wake her, as he was ordered not to wake anybody. Suddenly a bright idea struck him. Why should he not feed her? There she was sleeping with her mouth wide open. Surely it would be no difficult task to put some pease into her mouth. Taking some of the hot, smoking pease into the wooden spoon, he put the contents into her mouth. The woman awoke, screaming with all her might. The noise roused the other inmates of the house, who came rushing to the spot to see what was the matter. This time also the noodle managed to escape with the thieves; but in a subsequent adventure he, as well as the thieves, came to grief.⁸

In former times there lived not far from Baghdad a half-witted fellow, who was much addicted to the use of bang. Being reduced to poverty, he was obliged to sell his cow, which he took to the market one day, but the animal being in such a poor condition, no one would buy it, and after waiting till he was weary he returned homeward. On the way he stopped to repose himself under a tree, and tied the cow to one of the branches, while he ate some bread, and drank an infusion of his bang, which he always carried with him. In a short time it began to operate, so as to bereave him of the little sense he had, and his head was filled with ridiculous reveries. While he was musing, a bird beginning to chatter from her nest in the tree, he fancied it was a human voice, and that some woman had offered to purchase his cow, upon which he said, "Reverend mother of Solomon,⁹ dost thou wish to buy my cow?" The bird again chattered. "Well," replied he, "what wilt thou give? I will sell her a bargain." The bird repeated her noise. "Never mind," said the fool, "for though thou hast forgotten to bring thy purse, yet, as I daresay thou art an honest woman, and hast bidden me ten dinars, I will trust thee with the cow, and call on Friday for the money." The bird renewed her chattering; so, leaving the cow tied to a branch of the tree, he returned home, exulting in the good bargain he had made for the animal. When he entered the house, his wife inquired what he had got for the cow, and he replied that he had sold her to an honest woman, who had promised to pay him ten pieces of gold next Friday. The wife was contented; and when Friday arrived, her noodle of a husband having, as usual, taken a dose of bang, repaired to the tree, and hearing the bird chattering as before, said, "Well, good mother, hast thou brought the gold?" The bird croaked. The blockhead, supposing the imaginary woman refused to pay him, became angry, and threw up a stone, which frightening the bird, it flew from its nest in the tree and alighted on a heap of ruins at some little distance. He now concluded that the woman had desired him to take his money from the heap, into which he accordingly dug, and found a copper vessel full of coin. This discovery convinced him he was right, and being withal an honest fellow, he only took ten pieces; then replacing the soil, "May Allah requite thee for thy punctuality, good mother!" he exclaimed, and returned to his wife, to whom he gave the money, informing her at the same time of the great treasure his friend the imaginary old woman possessed, and where it was concealed.

The wife waited till night, when she brought away the pot of gold, which her foolish husband observing, he said, "It is dishonest to rob one who has paid us so punctually; and if thou dost not return it to its place, I will inform the walí" (governor of the city). She laughed at his simplicity, but fearing that he would execute his threat, she planned a stratagem to render it of no avail. Going to market, she purchased some meat and fish ready cooked, which she brought privately home, and concealed in the house. At night, while her husband was sleeping off the effects of his favourite narcotic, she strewed the provisions she had brought outside the door, and then awakening him, cried out, "Dear husband, a most wonderful thing has occurred: there has been a violent storm while you slept, and, strange to tell, it has rained pieces of broiled meat and fish, which now lie at the door!" The blockhead got up, and seeing the food, was persuaded of the truth of his wife's story. The flesh and fish were gathered up, and he partook with much glee of the miraculous treat, but still said he would tell the walí of her having stolen the treasure of the honest old woman.

In the morning he actually repaired to the walí, and informed him that his wife had stolen a pot of gold, which she had still in her possession. Upon this the walí had the woman apprehended. She denied the accusation, and was then threatened with death. "My lord," said she, "the power is in your hands; but I am an injured woman, as you will find by questioning my husband, who is deranged in his intellect. Ask him when I committed the theft." The walí did so, and the simpleton answered, "It was the evening of that night when it rained broiled fish and ready-cooked flesh." On hearing this, "Wretch!" exclaimed the walí in a fury, "dost thou dare to utter falsehoods before me? Who ever saw it rain anything but water?" "As I hope for life," replied the fool, "I speak the truth; for my wife and myself ate of the fish and flesh which fell from the clouds." The woman, being appealed to, denied the assertion of her husband.The walí, now convinced that the man was crazy, released the woman, and sent her husband to the madhouse, where he remained for some days, till his wife, pitying his condition, contrived to get him set at liberty. She visited her husband, and counselled him, should any one ask him if he had seen it rain fish and flesh, to answer, "No; who ever saw it rain anything but water?" Then she informed the keeper that he was come to his senses, and suggested he should question him; and on the poor fellow answering properly he was released.

The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-Dín, and there exist German, Saxon, and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon, and the following is a version from a Hindú work entitled Bharataka Dwátrinsati, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:

In Elákapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, "O monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will fall down and die." After saying this the travellers went their way. The monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, "Those travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead." So he remained on the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, "Your associate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died." Then came the monks in large numbers, and when they saw that he was "dead," they lifted him up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided itself before them. Then said some, "We must go to the left," but others said, "It is to the right that we must go." Thus a dispute arose among them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The "dead" monk, who was borne on a bier, said, "Friends, quarrel not among yourselves; when I was alive, I always went by the left road." Then said some, "He always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple fact. Let us therefore take the left road." This was agreed upon, and as they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to be present said, "O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive." They answered, "Nay, but he is dead." Then the bystanders said, "He cannot be dead, seeing that he yet speaks." They then set down the bier on the ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.¹¹

A diverting story in the Facetiæ of Poggius, entitled "Mortuus Loqueus," from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini and in our old collection Tales and Quicke Answeres, has a near affinity with jests of this class, and also with the wide cycle of stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of his property. In the early English jest-book,¹² it is, in effect, as follows:

There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was not ill. "No," says the wittol. "I am well enough." "By my faith," quoth the joker, "but you have a pale, sickly colour," and went his way. Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was convinced of this when a third man in passing told him that he should be in his bed—he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca stood stock-still, saying to himself, "Verily, I have some sharp ague," when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.¹³ Then, standing all about his bed, they said to each other, "Now he is sinking fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast, and carry him forth to be buried." The simpleton lay as still as though he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a taverner's boy, who cried out, "What a rascal and thief is dead! By the mass, he should have been hanged long ago." When the wittol heard himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, "I wish, you scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a false liar to thy face;" upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set down the "body" and ran away—leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole affair to the marvelling multitude.¹⁴

We read of another silly son, in the Kathá Manjari, whose father said to him one day, "My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem to have much sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go, therefore, to the tank, and catch fish and bring them home." The lad accordingly went to the tank, and having caused all the water—which was required for the irrigation of his father's fields—to run to waste, he picked up from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to his father, not a little proud of his exploit.—In the Kathá Sarit Ságara it is related that a Bráhman told his foolish son one evening that he must send him to the village early on the morrow, and thither the lad went, without asking what he was to do. Returning home at night very tired, he said to his father, "I have been to the village." "Yes," said the Bráhman, "you went thither without an object, and have done no good by it."—And in the Buddhist Játakas we find what is probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely. Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear—drive it off." "Wait a bit, father," said the boy, "and I will kill him with one blow." Then he took up an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking to kill the mosquito with the axe, he only killed his father.

The Turkish romance of the Forty Vazírs—the plan of which is similar to that of the Book of Sindibád and its derivatives—furnishes us with two stories of the same class, one of which is as follows, according to my friend Mr. Gibb's complete translation (the first that has been made in English), recently published:¹⁵

They have told that in bygone times there was a king, and he had a skilful minstrel. One day a certain person gave to the latter a little boy, that he might teach him the science of music. The boy abode a long time by him, and though the master instructed him, he succeeded not in learning, and the master could make nothing of him. He arranged a scale, and said, "Whatsoever thou sayest to me, say in this scale." So whatsoever the boy said he used to say in that scale. Now one day a spark of fire fell on the master's turban. The boy saw it and chanted, "O master, I see something; shall I say it or no?" and he went over the whole scale. Then the master chanted, "O boy, what dost thou see? Speak!" and he too went over all that the boy had gone over. Then the turn came to the boy, and he chanted, "O master, a spark has fallen on thy turban, and it is burning." The master straightway tore off his turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said to the boy, "What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its own place," and he admonished him.¹⁶

Lastly, we have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had been called, "I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to deny it;—you have been eating beans." On their way home, the apprentice, admiring his master's sagacity, begged to be informed how he knew that the patient had been eating beans. "Boy," said the doctor, loftily, "I drew an inference." "An inference!" echoed this youth of inquiring mind; "and what is an inference?" Quoth the doctor, "Listen: when we came to the door, I observed the shells of beans lying about, and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner." Another day it chanced that the doctor did not take his apprentice with him when he went his rounds, and in his absence a message came for him to visit a person who had been taken suddenly ill. "Here," thought the apprentice, "is a chance for my putting master's last lesson into practice;" so off he went to the sick man, and assuming as "knowing" an air as he could, he felt his pulse, and then said to him severely, "Don't deny it; I see by your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I shall send you some medicine." When the doctor returned home he inquired of his hopeful pupil, whether any person had called for him, upon which the wittol proudly told him of his own exploit. "Eaten a horse!" exclaimed the man of physic. "In the name of all that's wonderful, what induced you to say such a thing?" Quoth the youth, simpering, "Why, sir, I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer—I drew an inference." "You drew an inference, did you? And how did you draw the inference that the man had eaten a horse?" "Why, very readily, sir; for as I entered the house I saw a saddle hanging on the wall."¹⁷

FOOTNOTES:

¹ Abridged from the story of "Silly Matt" in Sir George W. Dasent's Tales from the Fjeld.

² Professor Crane's Italian Popular Tales, p. 302. This actual throwing of eyes occurs in the folk-tales of Europe generally.

³ In Le Cabinet des Fées, 1788 (tome xxxviii., p. 337 ff.).— There can be no such name as Xailoun in Arabic; that of the noodle's wife, Oitba, may be intended for "Utba." Cazotte has so Frenchified the names of the characters in his tales as to render their identification with the Arabic originals (where he had any such) often impossible. Although this story is not found in any known Arabian text of the Book of the Thousand and One Nights, yet the incidents for the most part occur in several Eastern story-books.

⁴ On a similar occasion Giufà, the Sicilian brother to the Arabian fool, did somewhat more mischief. Once his mother went to church and told him to make some porridge for his baby-sister. Giufà made a great pot of porridge and fed the baby with it, and burned her mouth so that she died. Another time his mother on leaving home told him to feed the hen that was sitting and put her back in the nest, so that the eggs should not get cold. Giufà stuffed the hen with food so that he killed her, and then sat on the eggs himself until his mother returned.—See Crane's Italian Popular Tales, pp. 296-7.

⁵ Abridged and modified from a version in the Folk-Lore Record, vol. iii., pp. 153-5.

⁶ The usual mode by which in the East thieves break into houses, which are for the most part constructed of clay. See Job xxiv. 16.

⁷ Kurakkan is a species of grain.

⁸ The Orientalist, June, 1884, pp. 137-8.

⁹ Ummu Sulayman. In Arabia the mother is generally addressed in this way as a mark of respect for having borne children, and the eldest gives the title. Our bang-eater supposed he was addressing an old woman who had (or might have had) a son named Solomon.

¹⁰ See Ralston's Russian Folk-Tales. [Transcriber's note: Footnote reference missing from original, p. 153]

¹¹ From a paper on "Comparative Folk-lore," by W. Goonetilleke, in The Orientalist, i., p. 122.

¹² Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant to be Readde. Imprinted at London by H. Wykes, 1567.

¹³ Thus, too, Scogin and his "chamber-fellow" successively declared to a rustic that the sheep he was driving were pigs. In Fortini's novels, in like manner, a simpleton is persuaded that the kid he offered for sale was a capon; and in the Spanish El Conde Lucanor, and the German Tyl Eulenspiegel, a countryman is cheated out of a piece of cloth. The original form of the incident is found in the Hitopadesa, where three sharpers persuade a Bráhman that the goat he is carrying for a sacrifice is a dog. This story of the Florentine noodle—or rather Poggio's version—may have been suggested by a tale in the Gesta Romanorum, in which the emperor's physician is made to believe that he had leprosy. See my Popular Tales and Fictions, where these and similar stories are compared in a paper entitled "The Sharpers and the Simpleton."

¹⁴ In Powell and Magnusson's Legends of Iceland (Second Series, p. 627), a woman makes her husband believe that he is dressed in fine clothes when he is naked; another persuades her husband that he is dead, and as he is being carried to the burying-ground, he perceives the naked man, who asserts that he is dressed, upon which he exclaims, "How I should laugh if I were not dead!" And in a fabliau by Jean de Boves, "Le Villain de Bailleul; aliàs, Le Femme qui fit croire à son Mari qu'il était mort," the husband exclaims, "Rascal of a priest, you may well thank Heaven that I am dead, else I would belabour you soundly with my stick."—See M. Le Grand's Fabliaux, ed. 1781, tome v., pp. 192, 193.

¹⁵ History of the Forty Viziers; or, The Forty Morns and Forty Eves. Translated from the Turkish, by E.J.W. Gibb, M.R.A.S. London: G. Redway, 1886.

¹⁶ A variant of this is found in John Bromyard's Summa Prædicantium, A 26, 34, as follows:

Quidam sedebat juxta igneum, cujus vestem ignis intrabat. Dixit socius suus, "Vis audire rumores?" "Ita," inquit, "bonos et non alios." Cui alius, "Nescio nisi malos." "Ergo," inquit, "nolo audire." Et quum bis aut ter ei hoc diceret, semper idem respondit. In fine, quum sentiret vestem combustam, iratus ait socio, "Quare non dixisti mihi?" "Quia (inquit) dixista quod noluisti audire rumores nisi placentes et illi non erant tales."

¹⁷ Under the title of "The Phisitian that bare his Paciente in honde that he had eaten an Asse" this jest occurs in Merry Tales and Quicke Answeres, and Professor Crane gives a Sicilian version in his Italian Popular Tales.

IN a certain district, proclamation had been made of a Samaradanam being about to be held.¹ Four Bráhmans, from different villages, going thither, fell in upon the road, and, finding that they were all upon the same errand, they agreed to proceed in company. A soldier, happening to meet them, saluted them in the usual way, by touching hands and pronouncing the words always applied on such occasions to Bráhmans, "Dandamarya!" or "Health to my lord!" The four travellers made the customary return, "Asirvadam!" and going on, they came to a well, where they quenched their thirst and reposed themselves in the shade of some trees. Sitting there, and finding no better subject of conversation, one of them asked the others, whether they did not remark how particularly the soldier had distinguished him by his polite salutation. "You!" said another; "it was not you that he saluted, but me." "You are both mistaken," says a third; "for you may remember that when the soldier said, 'Dandamarya!' he cast his eyes upon me." "Not at all," replied the fourth; "it was I only he saluted; otherwise, should I have answered him as I did, by saying, 'Asirvadam'?"

Each maintained his argument obstinately; and as none of them would yield, the dispute had nearly come to blows, when the least stupid of the four, seeing what was likely to happen, put an end to the brawl by the following advice: "How foolish it is in us," said he, "thus to put ourselves in a passion! After we have said all the ill of one another that we can invent—nay, after going stoutly to fisticuffs, like Sudra rabble, should we be at all nearer to the decision of our difference? The fittest person to determine the controversy, I think, would be the man who occasioned it. The soldier, who chose to salute one of us, cannot yet be far off: let us therefore run after him as quickly as we can, and we shall soon know for which of us he intended his salutation."

This advice appeared wise to them all, and was immediately adopted. The whole of them set off in pursuit of the soldier, and at last overtook him, after running a league, and all out of breath. As soon as they came in sight of him, they cried out to him to stop; and before they had well approached him, they had put him in full possession of the nature of their dispute, and prayed him to terminate it, by saying to which of them he had directed his salutation. The soldier instantly perceiving the character of the people he had to do with, and being willing to amuse himself a little at their expense, coolly replied, that he intended his salutation for the greatest fool of all four, and then, turning on his heel, he continued his journey.

The Bráhmans, confounded at this answer, turned back in silence. But all of them had deeply at heart the distinction of the salutation of the soldier, and the dispute was gradually renewed. Even the awkward decision of the warrior could not prevent each of them from arrogating to himself the pre-eminence of being noticed by him, to the exclusion of the others. The contention, therefore, now became, which of the four was the stupidest; and strange to say, it grew as warm as ever, and must have come to blows, had not the person who gave the former advice, to follow the soldier, interposed again with his wisdom, and spoken as follows: "I think myself the greatest fool of us all. Each of you thinks the same thing of himself. And after a fight, shall we be a bit nearer the decision of the question? Let us, therefore, have a little patience. We are within a short distance of Dharmapuri, where there is a choultry, at which all little causes are tried by the heads of the village; and let ours be judged among the rest."

The others agreed in the soundness of this advice; and having arrived at the village, they eagerly entered the choultry, to have their business settled by the arbitrator. They could not have come at a better season. The chiefs of the district, Bráhmans and others, had already met in the choultry; and no other cause being brought forward, they proceeded immediately to that of the four Bráhmans, who advanced into the middle of the court, and stated that a sharp contest having arisen among them, they were come to have it decided with fairness and impartiality. The court desired them to proceed and explain the ground of their controversy. Upon this, one of them stood forward and related to the assembly all that had happened, from their meeting with the soldier to the present state of the quarrel, which rested on the superior degree of stupidity of one of their number. The detail created a general shout of laughter. The president, who was of a gay disposition, was delighted beyond measure to have fallen in with so diverting an incident. But he put on a grave face, and laid it down, as the peculiarity of the cause, that it could not be determined on the testimony of witnesses, and that, in fact, there was no other way of satisfying the minds of the judges than by each, in his turn, relating some particular occurrence of his life, on which he could best establish his claim to superior folly. He clearly showed that there could be no other means of determining to which of them the salutation of the soldier could with justice be awarded. The Bráhmans assented, and upon a sign being made to one of them to begin, and the rest to keep silence, the first thus spoke:

Story of the First Bráhman.

I am poorly provided with clothing, as you see; and it is not to-day only that I have been covered with rags. A rich and very charitable Bráhman merchant once made a present of two pieces of cloth to attire me—the finest that had ever been seen in our village. I showed them to the other Bráhmans of the village, who all congratulated me on so fortunate an acquisition. They told me it must be the fruit of some good deeds that I had done in a preceding generation. Before I should put them on, I washed them, according to the custom, in order to purify them from the soil of the weaver's touch, and hung them up to dry, with the ends fastened to two branches of a tree. A dog, then happening to come that way, ran under them, and I could not discover whether he was high enough to touch the clothes or not. I asked my children, who were present, but they said they were not quite certain. How, then, was I to discover the fact? I put myself upon all-fours, so as to be of the height of the dog, and in that posture I crawled under the clothing. "Did I touch it?" said I to the children, who were observing me. They answered, "No," and I was filled with joy at the news. But after reflecting a while, I recollected that the dog had a turned-up tail, and that by elevating it above the rest of his body, it might well have reached my cloth. To ascertain that, I fixed a leaf in my loin-cloth, turning upwards, and then, creeping again on all-fours, I passed a second time under the clothing. The children immediately cried out that the point of the leaf on my back had touched the cloth. This proved to me that the point of the dog's tail must have done so too, and that my garments were therefore polluted. In my rage I pulled down the beautiful raiment, and tore it in a thousand pieces, loading with curses both the dog and his master.

When this foolish act was known, I became the laughing-stock of all the world, and I was universally treated as a madman. "Even if the dog had touched the cloth," said they, "and so brought defilement upon it, might not you have washed it a second time, and so have removed the stain? Or might you not have given it to some poor Sudra, rather than tear it in pieces? After such egregious folly, who will give you clothes another time?" This was all true; for ever since, when I have begged clothing of any one, the constant answer has been, that, no doubt, I wanted a piece of cloth to pull to pieces.

He was going on, when a bystander interrupted him by remarking that he seemed to understand going on all-fours. "Exceedingly well," said he, "as you shall see;" and off he shuffled, in that posture, amidst the unbounded laughter of the spectators. "Enough! enough!" said the president. "What we have both heard and seen goes a great way in his favour. But let us now hear what the next has to say for himself in proof of his stupidity." The second accordingly began by expressing his confidence that if what they had just heard appeared to them to be deserving of the salutation of the soldier, what he had to say would change their opinion.

Story of the Second Bráhman.

Having got my hair and beard shaven one day, in order to appear decent at a public festival of the Bráhmans, which had been proclaimed throughout the district, I desired my wife to give the barber a penny for his trouble. She heedlessly gave him a couple. I asked him to give me one of them back, but he refused. Upon that we quarrelled, and began to abuse each other; but the barber at length pacified me, by offering, in consideration of the double fee, to shave my wife also. I thought this a fair way of settling the difference between us. But my wife, hearing the proposal, and seeing the barber in earnest, tried to make her escape by flight. I took hold of her, and forced her to sit down, while he shaved her poll in the same manner as they serve widows.² During the operation she cried out bitterly; but I was inexorable, thinking it less hard that my wife should be close-shaven than that my penny should be given away for nothing. When the barber had finished, I let her go, and she retired immediately to a place of concealment, pouring down curses on me and the barber. He took his departure, and meeting my mother in his way, told her what he had done, which made her hasten to the house, to inquire into the outrage; and when she saw that it was all true she also loaded me with incivilities.

The barber published everywhere what had happened at our house; and the villain added to the story that I had caught her with another man, which was the cause of my having her shaved; and people were no doubt expecting, according to our custom in such a case, to see her mounted on an ass, with her face turned towards the tail. They came running to my dwelling from all quarters, and actually brought an ass to make the usual exhibition in the streets. The report soon reached my father-in-law, who lived at a distance of ten or twelve leagues, and he, with his wife, came also to inquire into the affair. Seeing their poor daughter in that degraded state, and being apprised of the only reason, they reproached me most bitterly; which I patiently endured, being conscious that I was in the wrong. They persisted, however, in taking her with them, and keeping her carefully concealed from every eye for four whole years; when at length they restored her to me.

This little accident made me lose the Samaradanam, for which I had been preparing by a fast of three days; and it was a great mortification to me to be excluded from it, as I understood it was a most splendid entertainment. Another Samaradanam was announced to be held ten days afterwards, at which I expected to make up for my loss. But I was received with the hisses of six hundred Bráhmans, who seized my person, and insisted on my giving up the accomplice of my wife, that he might be prosecuted and punished, according to the severe rules of the caste.

I solemnly attested her innocence, and told the real cause of the shaving of her hair; when a universal burst of surprise took place, every one exclaiming, how monstrous it was that a married woman should be so degraded, without having committed the crime of infidelity. "Either this man," said they, "must be a liar, or he is the greatest fool on the face of the earth!" Such, I daresay, gentlemen, you will think me, and I am sure you will consider my folly [looking with great disdain on the first speaker] as being far superior to that of the render of body-clothing.

The court agreed that the speaker had put in a very strong case; but justice required that the other two should also be heard. The third claimant was indeed burning with impatience for his turn, and as soon as he had permission, he thus spoke:

Story of the Third Brahman.

My name was originally Anantya; now all the world call me Betel Anantya, and I will tell you how this nickname arose. My wife, having been long detained at her father's house, on account of her youth, had cohabited with me but about a month when, going to bed one evening, I happened to say (carelessly, I believe), that all women were babblers. She retorted, that she knew men who were not less babblers than women. I perceived at once that she alluded to myself; and being somewhat piqued at the sharpness of her retort, I said, "Now let us see which of us shall speak first." "Agreed," quoth she; "but what shall be the forfeit?" "A leaf of betel," said I. Our wager being thus made, we both addressed ourselves to sleep, without speaking another word.

Next morning, as we did not appear at our usual hour, after some interval, they called us, but got no answer. They again called, and then roared stoutly at the door, but with no success. The alarm began to spread in the house. They began to fear that we had died suddenly. The carpenter was called with his tools. The door of our room was forced open, and when they got in they were not a little surprised to find both of us wide awake, in good health, and at our ease, though without the faculty of speech. My mother was greatly alarmed, and gave loud vent to her grief. All the Bráhmans in the village, of both sexes, assembled, to the number of one hundred; and after close examination, every one drew his own conclusion on the accident which was supposed to have befallen us. The greater number were of opinion that it could have arisen only from the malevolence of some enemy who had availed himself of magical incantations to injure us. For this reason, a famous magician was called, to counteract the effects of the witchcraft, and to remove it. As soon as he came, after steadfastly contemplating us for some time, he began to try our pulses, by putting his finger on our wrists, on our temples, on the heart, and on various other parts of the body; and after a great variety of grimaces, the remembrance of which excites my laughter, as often as I think of him, he decided that our malady arose wholly from the effect of malevolence. He even gave the name of the particular devil that possessed my wife and me and rendered us dumb. He added that the devil was very stubborn and difficult to allay, and that it would cost three or four pagodas for the offerings necessary for compelling him to fly.

My relations, who were not very opulent, were astonished at the grievous imposition which the magician had laid on them. Yet, rather than we should continue dumb, they consented to give him whatsoever should be necessary for the expense of his sacrifice; and they farther promised that they would reward him for his trouble as soon as the demon by whom we were possessed should be expelled. He was on the point of commencing his magical operations, when a Bráhman, one of our friends, who was present, maintained, in opposition to the opinion of the magician and his assistants, that our malady was not at all the effect of witchcraft, but arose from some simple and ordinary cause, of which he had seen several instances, and he undertook to cure us without any expense.

He took a chafing-dish filled with burning charcoal, and heated a small bar of gold very hot. This he took up with pincers, and applied to the soles of my feet, then to my elbows, and the crown of my head. I endured these cruel operations without showing the least symptom of pain, or making any complaint; being determined to bear anything, and to die, if necessary, rather than lose the wager I had laid.

"Let us try the effect on the woman," said the doctor, astonished at my resolution and apparent insensibility. And immediately taking the bit of gold, well heated, he applied it to the sole of her foot. She was not able to endure the pain for a moment, but instantly screamed out, "Enough!" and turning to me, "I have lost my wager," she said; "there is your leaf of betel." "Did I not tell you," said I, taking the leaf, "that you would be the first to speak out, and that you would prove by your own conduct that I was right in saying yesterday, when we went to bed, that women are babblers?"

Every one was surprised at the proceeding; nor could any of them comprehend the meaning of what was passing between my wife and me; until I explained the kind of wager we had made overnight, before going to sleep. "What!" they exclaimed, "was it for a leaf of betel that you have spread this alarm through your own house and the whole village?—for a leaf of betel that you showed such constancy, and suffered burning from the feet to the head upwards? Never in the world was there seen such folly!" And so, from that time, I have been constantly known by the name of Betel Anantya.

The narrative being finished, the court were of opinion that so transcendent a piece of folly gave him high pretensions in the depending suit; but it was necessary also to hear the fourth and last of the suitors, who thus addressed them:

Story of the Fourth Bráhman.

The maiden to whom I was betrothed, having remained six or seven years at her father's house, on account of her youth, we were at last apprised that she was become marriageable; and her parents informed mine that she was in a situation to fulfil all the duties of a wife, and might therefore join her husband. My mother being at that time sick, and the house of my father-in-law being at the distance of five or six leagues from ours, she was not able to undertake the journey. She therefore committed to myself the duty of bringing home my wife, and counselled me so to conduct myself, in words and actions, that they might not see that I was only a brute. "Knowing thee as I do," said my mother, as I took leave of her, "I am very distrustful of thee." But I promised to be on my good behaviour; and so I departed.

I was well received by my father-in-law, who gave a great feast to all the Bráhmans of the village on the occasion. He made me stay three days, during which there was nothing but festivity. At length the time of our departure having arrived, he suffered my wife and myself to leave him, after pouring out blessings on us both, and wishing us a long and happy life, enriched with a numerous progeny. When we took leave of him, he shed abundance of tears, as if he had foreseen the misery that awaited us.

It was then the summer solstice, and the day was exceedingly hot. We had to cross a sandy plain of more than two leagues; and the sand, being heated by the burning sun, scorched the feet of my young wife, who, being brought up too tenderly in her father's house, was not accustomed to such severe trials. She began to cry, and being unable to go on, she lay down on the ground, saying she wished to die there. I was in dreadful trouble, and knew not what step to take; when a merchant came up, travelling the contrary way. He had a train of fifty bullocks, loaded with various kinds of merchandise. I ran to meet him, and told him the cause of my anxiety with tears in my eyes; and entreated him to aid me with his good advice in the distressing circumstances in which I was placed. He immediately answered, that a young and delicate woman, such as my wife was, could neither remain where she lay nor proceed on her journey, under a hot sun, without being exposed to certain death. Rather than that I should see her perish, and run the hazard of being suspected of having killed her myself, and being guilty of one of the five crimes which the Bráhmans consider as the most heinous, he advised me to give her to him, and then he would mount her on one of his cattle and take her along with him. That I should be a loser, he admitted; but, all things considered, it was better to lose her, with the merit of having saved her life, than equally to lose her, under the suspicion of being her murderer. "Her trinkets," he said, "may be worth fifteen pagodas; take these twenty and give me your wife."

The merchant's arguments appeared unanswerable; so I yielded to them, and delivered to him my wife, whom he placed on one of his best oxen, and continued his journey without delay. I continued mine also, and got home in the evening, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and with my feet almost roasted with the burning sand, over which I had walked the greater part of the day. Frightened to see me alone, "Where is your wife?" cried my mother. I gave her a full account of everything that had happened from the time I left her. I spoke of the agreeable and courteous manner in which my father-in-law had received me, and how, by some delay, we had been overtaken by the scorching heat of the sun at noon, so that my wife must have perished and myself suspected of having caused her death, had we proceeded; and that I had preferred to sell her to a merchant who met us for twenty pagodas. And I showed my mother the money.

When I had done, my mother fell into an ecstasy of fury. She lifted up her voice against me with cries of rage, and overwhelmed me with imprecations and awful curses. Having given way to these first emotions of despair, she sank into a more moderate tone: "What hast thou done! Sold thy wife, hast thou! Delivered her to another man! A Bráhmanari is become the concubine of a vile merchant! Ah, what will her kindred and ours say when they hear the tale of this brutish stupidity—of folly so unexampled and degrading?"

The relations of my wife were soon informed of the sad adventure that had befallen their unhappy girl. They came over to attack me, and would certainly have murdered me and my innocent mother, if we had not both made a sudden escape. Having no direct object to wreak their vengeance upon, they brought the matter before the chiefs of the caste, who unanimously fined me in two hundred pagodas, as a reparation to my father-in-law, and issued a proclamation against so great a fool being ever allowed to take another wife; denouncing the penalty of expulsion from the caste against any one who should assist me in such an attempt. I was therefore condemned to remain a widower all my life, and to pay dear for my folly. Indeed, I should have been excluded for ever from my caste, but for the high consideration in which the memory of my late father is still held, he having lived respected by all the world.

Now that you have heard one specimen of the many follies of my life, I hope you will not consider me as beneath those who have spoken before me, nor my pretensions altogether undeserving of the salutation of the soldier.

Conclusion.

The heads of the assembly, several of whom were convulsed with laughter while the Bráhmans were telling their stories, decided, after hearing them all, that each had given such absolute proofs of folly as to be entitled, in justice, to a superiority in his own way: that each of them, therefore, should be at liberty to call himself the greatest fool of all, and to attribute to himself the salutation of the soldier. Each of them having thus gained his suit, it was recommended to them all to continue their journey, if it were possible, in amity. The delighted Brahmans then rushed out of court, each exclaiming that he had gained his cause.