Allusions to these tales are of frequent occurrence in our literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Dekker, in his Gul’s Horn Book (1609), says, “It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, but rather set it on faster, bestowing upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should not be able to compare with thine;” and Wither, in his Abuses, says,

  “And he that tryes to doe it might have bin
  One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,”

alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols: 

On a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it, and said, “Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor drink.”  The cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself encompassed within the hedge, flew away.  “A vengeance on her!” said they.  “We made not our hedge high enough.”

The tales had, however, attained popular favour much earlier.  Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has pointed out that in Philotimus (1583) the men of Gotham are remembered as having “tied their rentes in a purse about an hare’s necke, and bade her to carrie it to their landlord,” an excellent plan, which is thus described: 

On a time the men of Gotham had forgotten to pay their rent to their landlord.  The one said to the other, “To-morrow is our payday, and what remedy shall we find to send our money to our lord?” The one said, “This day I have taken a quick [i.e., live] hare, and she shall carry it, for she is light of foot.”  “Be it so,” said all.  “She shall have a letter and a purse to put in our money, and we shall direct her the ready way.”  And when the letters were written, and the money put in a purse, they did tie them about the hare’s neck, saying, “First thou must go to Loughborough, and then to Leicester; and at Newark there is our lord, and commend us to him, and there is his duty [i.e., due].”  The hare, as soon as she was out of their hands, she did run a clean contrary way.  Some cried to her, saying, “Thou must go to Loughborough first.”  Some said, “Let the hare alone; she can tell a nearer way than the best of us all do:  let her go.”  Another said, “It is a noble hare; let her alone; she will not keep the highway for fear of the dogs.”

The well-worn “Joe Miller” of the Irishman who tried to count the party to which he belonged, and always forgot to count himself, which is also known in Russia and in the West Highlands of Scotland, is simply a variant of this drollery: