Note 255 — CRAFT AND MALICE OF WOMEN,[153] OR THE TALE OF THE KING, HIS SON, HIS CONCUBINE AND THE SEVEN WAZIRS. (continued 3)

The usual formula when telling an improbable tale. But here it is hardly called for: the same story is told (on weak authority) of the Alewife, the Three Graziers and Attorney-General Nay (temp. James II. 1577–1634) when five years old (Journ. Asiat. Soc. N.S. xxx. 280). The same feat had been credited to Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor in A.D. 1540–1617 (Chalmers, Biographical Dictionary xxiii. 267–68). But the story had already found its way into the popular jest-books such as “Tales and Quick Answers, very Mery and Pleasant to Rede” (1530); “Jacke of Dover’s Quest of Inquirie for the Foole of all Fooles” (1604) under the title “The Foole of Westchester”, and in “Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King’s Fool.” The banker-bard Rogers (in Italy) was told a similar story concerning a widow of the Lambertini house (xivth century). Thomas Wright (Introduction to the Seven Sages) says he had met the tale in Latin (xiiith-xivth centuries) and a variant in the “Nouveaux Contes à rire” (Amsterdam 1737), under the title “Jugement Subtil du Duc d’Ossone contre Deux Marchands.” Its origin is evidently the old Sindibád-namah translated from Syriac into Greek (“Syntipas,” xith century); into Hebrew (Mishlé Sandabar, xiith century), and from the Arabian version into old Castilian, “Libro de los Engannos et los Asayamientos de las Mugeres” (A.D. 1255), whereof a translation is appended to Professor Comparetti’s “Ricerche intorne al Libro di Sindibad,” translated by Mr. H. C. Coote for the Folk-Lore Society. The Persian metrical form (an elaboration of one much older) dates from 1375; and gave rise to a host of imitations such as the Turkish Tales of the Forty Wazirs and the Canarese “Kathá Manjari,” where four persons contend about a purse. See also Gladwin’s “Persian Moonshee,” No. vi. of “Pleasing Stories;” and Mr. Clouston’s paper, “The Lost Purse,” in the Glasgow Evening Times. All are the Eastern form of Gavarni’s “Enfants Terribles,” showing the portentous precocity for which some children (infant phenomena, calculating boys, etc. etc.) have been famous.