This last incident, as we have seen, occurs in the Tales of the Men of Gotham ("ante, p. 41” in original.  This section is to be found immediately after the reference to Chapter II, Footnote 9 in this e-text), and it is also found in a Venetian story (Bernoni, Fiabe, No. 11) entitled “The Fool,” of which the following is the first part: 

Once upon a time there was a mother who had a son with little brains.  One morning she said, “We must get up early, for we have to make bread.”  So they both rose early, and began to make bread.  The mother made the loaves, but took no pains to make them the same size.  Her son said to her finally, “How small you have made this loaf, mother.”  “Oh,” said she, “it does not matter whether they are big or little, for the proverb says, ‘Large and small, all must go to mass.’” “Good! good!” said her son.  When the bread was made, instead of taking it to the baker’s, the son took it to the church, for it was the hour for mass, saying, “My mother said that, ‘large and small, all must go to mass.’” So he threw the loaves down in the middle of the church.  Then he went home to his mother, and said, “I have done what you told me to do,” “Good!  Did you take the bread to the baker’s?” “O mother, if you had seen how they all looked at me!” “You might also have cast an eye on them in return,” said his mother.  “Wait; wait.  I will cast an eye at them too,” he exclaimed, and went to the stable and cut out the eyes of all the animals, and putting them in a handkerchief, went to the church, and when any man or woman looked at him, he threw an eye at them.[2]

Silly Matt has a brother in Russia, according to M. Leger’s Contes Populaires Slaves, published at Paris in 1882:  An old man and his wife had a son, who was about as great a noodle as could be.  One day his mother said to him, “My son, thou shouldst go about among people, to get thyself sharpened and rubbed down a little.”  “Yes, mother,” says he; “I’m off this moment.”  So he went to the village, and saw two men threshing pease.  He ran up to them, and rubbed himself now on one and then on the other.  “No nonsense!” cried the men.  “Get away.”  But he continued to rub himself on them, till at last they would stand it no longer, and beat him with their flails so lustily that he could hardly crawl home.  “What art thou crying about, child?” asked his mother.  He related his misfortune.  “Ah, my child,” said she, “how silly thou art!  Thou shouldst have said to them, ’God aid you, good men!  Do you wish me to help you to thresh?’ and then they would have given thee some pease for thy trouble, and we should have had them to cook and eat.”  On another occasion the noodle again went through the village, and met some people carrying a dead man.  “May God aid you, good men!” he exclaimed.  “Do you wish me to help you to thresh?” But he got himself well thrashed once more for this ill-timed speech.  When he reached home, he howled, “They’ve felled me to