There were three young men going to Lambeth along by the waterside, and one played with the other, and they cast each other’s caps into the water in such sort as they could not get their caps again.  But over the place where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did cover a great deal of the water.  One of them said to the rest, “Sirs, I have found a notable way to come by them.  First I will make myself fast by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand.”  And so they did; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, “Soft, sirs!  My girdle slacketh.”  “Make it fast quickly,” said they.  But as he was untying it to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well washed for their pains.

Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who planted a cabbage-head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage, and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky.  He climbs up the cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky.  There he sees a mill, which gives a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the top.  The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill; then he lies down to sleep.  By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.

He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him to take her with him.  She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in his teeth and begins to climb up.  The old woman, becoming tired, asked him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, “Not much farther,” the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.

There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr. Ralston’s most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian folk-tales), but observe the very close resemblance which it bears to the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the Katha Sarit Sagara (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh century, from a similar work entitled Vrihat Katha (Great Story), written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century:[12]

In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was the greatest fool of the lot.  He once heard in a treatise on law, which was being read aloud, that a man who has a tank made gains a great reward in the next world.  Then, as he had a large fortune, he had made a large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent.  One day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and perceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature.  The next