The Book of Noodles. W. A. Clouston
An epigram in the Anthologia may find a place among noodle stories:
"A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light,
And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"
This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"
Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cumæ having died at Alexandria, the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol replied, "He had a cough."
FOOTNOTES:
1 Etienne Tabourot, the author of this amusing little book, who was born at Dijon in 1549 and died in 1590, is said to have written the tales in ridicule of the inhabitants of Franche Comte, who were then the subjects of Spain, and reputed to be stupid and illiterate. From a manuscript translation, entitled Bizarrures; or, The Pleasant and Witlesse and Simple Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy, purporting to be made by "J.B., of Charterhouse," probably about the year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London, fifty copies, edited, with a preface, by "A.S." (Alexander Smith), were printed at Glasgow in 1884. I am indebted to the courtesy of my friend Mr. F.T. Barrett, Librarian of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for directing my attention to this curious work, a copy of which is among the treasures of that already important institution.
2 "Wit and Mirth. Chargeably collected out of Taverns, Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Allyes, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops, Highwayes, and Water-passages. Made up and fashioned into Clinches, Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips, and Jerkes. Apothegmatically bundled vp and garbled at the request of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635)—such is the elaborate title of the collection of jests made by John Taylor, the Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The above story had, however, been told previously in the Bizarrures of the Sieur Gaulard: "His cousine Dantressesa reproued him one day that she had found him sleeping in an ill posture with his mouth open, to order which for the tyme to come he commanded his seruant to hang a looking glasse upon the curtaine at his Bed's feet, that he might henceforth see if he had a good posture in his sleep."
3 Only a Liliputian steamer could go up the "river" Cart!
4 "Seestu" is a nickname for Paisley, the good folks of that busy town being in the habit of frequently interjecting, "Seestu?"—i.e., "Seest thou?"—in their familiar colloquies.
5 "Tory" is said to be the Erse term for a robber.
6 Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England, vol. iv. of Percy Society's publications.
CHAPTER II.
GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES, WITH VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES.
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,