Simple Simon went a-fishing
    For to catch a whale,
  But all the water he had got
    Was in his mother’s pail?

an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon’s still more celebrated prototypes: 

  Three men of Gotham
  Went to sea in a bowl;
  If the bowl had been stronger,
  My tale had been longer.

Then there is the prose history of Simple Simon’s Misfortunes; or, his Wife Marjory’s Outrageous Cruelty, which tells (1) of Simon’s wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his roast-meat clothes (i.e., Sunday clothes) the very next morning after he was married; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him look like a red herring; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was going to the mill to have it ground; (4) how Simon went to market with a basket of eggs, but broke them by the way:  also how he was put into the stocks; (5) how Simon’s wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money for the eggs; (6) how Simon lost his wife’s pail and burnt the bottom of her kettle; (7) how Simon’s wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river:  also how a ragman ran away with his clothes.  No wonder if, after this crowning misfortune, poor Simon “drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as being weary of his life”!

Again, we have The Unfortunate Son; or, a Kind Wife is worth Gold, being full of Mirth and Pastime, which commences thus: 

  There was a man but one son had,
    And he was all his joy;
  But still his fortune was but bad,
    Though he was a pretty boy.

  His father sent him forth one day
    To feed a flock of sheep,
  And half of them were stole away
    While he lay down asleep!

  Next day he went with one Tom Goff
    To reap as he was seen,
  When he did cut his fingers off,
    The sickle was so keen!

Another of the chap-book histories of noodles is that of Simple John and his Twelve Misfortunes, an imitation of Simple Simon; it was still popular amongst the rustics of Scotland fifty years ago.

* * * * *

The adventures of Silly Matt, the Norwegian counterpart of our typical English booby, as related in Asbjornson’s collection of Norse folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular fictions: 

The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge across the river and take toll of every one who wished to go over it; so he sets to work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at one end—­“at the receipt of custom.”  Three men come up with loads of hay, and Matt demands toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay.  Next comes a pedlar, with all sorts of small wares in his pack, and Matt