A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way.  And when he asked the way, the people said to him, “Take the path that goes up by the tree on the bank of the river.”  Then the fool went and got on the trunk of that tree, and said to himself, “The men told me that my way lay up the trunk of this tree.”  And as he went on climbing up it, the bough at the end bent with his weight, and it was all he could do to avoid falling by clinging to it.  While he was clinging to it, there came that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on his back.  And the fool called to him, saying, “Great sir, take me down.”  The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to take him down from the tree.  Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fool, who was clinging to the end of the tree.  Then said the fool to the driver, “Sing something, in order that the people may hear, and come at once and take us down.”  So the elephant-driver, thus appealed to, began to sing, and he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased; and in his desire to applaud him, he forgot what he was about, let go his hold of the tree, and prepared to clap him with both his hands; and immediately he and the elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned.

The germ of all stories of this class is perhaps found in the Jatakas, or Buddhist Birth Stories:  A pair of geese resolve to migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise, their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills, and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth.  As they are flying over Banares, the people exclaim in wonder to one another at such a strange sight, and the tortoise, unable to maintain silence, opens his mouth to rebuke them, and by so doing falls to the ground, and is dashed into pieces.  This fable is also found in Babrius. (115); in the Katha Sarit Sagara; in the several versions of the Fables of Bidpai; and in the Avadanas, translated into French from the Chinese by Stanislas Julien.

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To return to Gothamite stories.  According to one of those which are current orally, the men of Gotham had but one knife among them, which was stuck in a tree in the middle of the village for their common use, and many amusing incidents, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, arose out of their disputes for the use of this knife.  The “carles” of Austwick, in Yorkshire, are said also to have had but one knife, or “whittle,” which was deposited under a tree, and if it was not found there when wanted, the “carle” requiring it called out, “Whittle to the tree!” This plan did very well for some years, until it was taken one day by a party of labourers to a neighbouring moor, to be used for cutting their bread and cheese.  When the day’s labour was done, they resolved to leave the knife at the place, to save themselves the trouble of carrying it back, as they should want it again next day; so they looked about for some object to mark the spot, and stuck it into the ground under a black cloud that happened to be the most remarkable object in sight.  But next day, when they returned to the place, the cloud was gone, and the “whittle” was never seen again.