Note 28 — ORIENTAL WIT AND HUMOUR.

What may be an older form of this jest is found in the Kathá Manjarí, a Canarese collection, where a wretched singer dwelling next door to a poor woman causes her to weep and wail bitterly whenever he begins to sing, and on his asking her why she wept, she explains that his “golden voice” recalled to her mind her donkey that died a month ago.—The story had found its way to our own country more than three centuries since. In Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres (1535), under the title “Of the Friar that brayde in his Sermon,” the preacher reminds a “poure wydowe” of her ass—all that her husband had left her—which had been devoured by wolves, for so the ass was wont to bray day and night. Return