the other side, they count their number, like the men of Gotham, and discover that one is not present.  A traveller, coming up, finds the missing man by whacking each of them over the shoulder.  The Gooroo, while gratified that the lost one was found, was grumbling at his sore bones—­for the traveller had struck pretty hard—­when an old woman, on learning of their adventure, told them that, in her young days, she and her female companions were once returning home from a grand festival, and adopted another plan for ascertaining if they were all together.  Gathering some of the cattle-droppings, they kneaded them into a cake, in which they each made a mark with the tip of the nose, and then counted the marks—­a plan which the Gooroo and his disciples should make use of on future occasions.

The Abbe Dubois has given a French translation of the Adventures of the Gooroo Paramartan among the Contes Divers appended to his not very valuable selection of tales and apologues from Tamil, Telegu, and Cannada versions of the Panchatantra (Five Chapters, not “Cinq Ruses,” as he renders it), a Sanskrit form of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai, or Pilpay.  An English rendering of Beschi’s work, by Babington, forms one of the publications of the Oriental Translation Fund.  Dubois states that he found the tales of the Gooroo current in Indian countries where Beschi’s name was unknown, and he had no doubt of their Indian origin.  However this may be, the work was probably designed, as Babington thinks, to satirise the Brahmans, as well as to furnish a pleasing vehicle of instruction to those Jesuits in India whose duties required a knowledge of the Tamil language.

A story akin to that of the Gothamite fishers, if not, indeed, an older form of it, is told in Iceland of the Three Brothers of Bakki, who came upon one of the hot springs which abound in that volcanic island, and taking off their boots and stockings, put their feet into the water and began to bathe them.  When they would rise up, they were perplexed to know each his own feet, and so they sat disconsolate, until a wayfarer chanced to pass by, to whom they told their case, when he soon relieved their minds by striking the feet of each, for which important service they gave him many thanks.[7] This story reappears, slightly modified, in Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands:  A party of masons, engaged in building a dyke, take shelter during a heavy shower, and when it has passed, they continue sitting, because their legs had got mixed together, and none knew his own, until they were put right by a traveller with a big stick.  We have here an evident relic of the Norsemen’s occupation of the Hebrides.

Several of the tales of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in Gaelic.  That of the twelve fishers has been already mentioned, and here is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in similar terms in his Tales of the West Highlands: