The following properly belongs to stories of the “silly son” class:  There was a young man of Gotham the which should go wooing to a fair maid.  His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, “When thou dost look upon her, cast a sheep’s-eye, and say, ‘How do ye, sweet pigsnie?’” The fellow went to the butcher’s and bought seven or eight sheep’s eyes; and when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a sheep’s eye, saying, “How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?” “How do I?” said the wench.  “Swine’s-face, why dost thou cast the sheep’s eye upon me?” “O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!” “I defy thee, Swine’s-face,” said the wench.  The fellow, being abashed, said, “What, sweet pigsnie!  Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou wilt be a foul sow.”  “Walk, knave, walk!” said she; “for if thou live till the next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool.”

It is very evident that the men of Gotham were of “honest” Jack Falstaff’s opinion that the better part of valour is discretion:  On a time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great grasshopper.  He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in the grass.  Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper.  When they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one to the other, “Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will not meddle with him.”  And so they returned again, and said, “We were all blessed this day that we went no farther.”  “Ah, cowards,” said he that had his scythe in the mead, “help me to fetch my scythe.”  “No,” said they; “it is good to sleep in a whole skin:  better it is to lose thy scythe than to mar us all.”

There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed collection, although it has no business there:  On Ash Wednesday the priest said to the men of Gotham, “If I should enjoin you to prayer, there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too old to learn.  And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not eat a good meal’s meat in a year.  Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner.”  Another man he did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might have part of his meat.  “And as for alms,” said the priest, “ye be beggars all, except one or two; therefore bestow alms on yourselves.”

Among the numerous stories of the Gothamites preserved orally, but not found in the collection of “A.B., of Phisicke Doctour,” is the following, which seems to be of Indian extraction: