down on the eggs, and took the baby in his arms.  His wife returning, knocks at the door.  “Let me in, you fool,” she cries.  “I can’t, for I am nursing the baby and hatching the eggs.”  At length she contrived to force open the door, and running up to her idiot of a husband, fetched him a blow that caused him to crush all the half-hatched eggs.  Luckily she had met the ass and her foal on the road, so the amount of mischief done by her stupid spouse in her absence was not so great, all things considered.[4]

The misadventures of the Arabian idiot in his expedition to purchase pease present a close analogy to those of the typical English booby, only the latter end tragically: 

A woman sent her son one day to buy a sheep’s head and pluck, and, lest he should forget his message, he kept bawling loudly as he went along, “Sheep’s head and pluck! sheep’s head and pluck!” In getting over a stile he fell and hurt himself, and forgot what he was sent for, so he stood a little to consider; and at last he thought he recollected it, and began to shout, “Liver and lights and gall and all!” which he was repeating when he came up to a man who was very sick.  The man, thinking the booby was mocking him, laid hold of him, and after cuffing him, bade the booby cry, “Pray God, send no more up!” So he ran along uttering these words till he came to a field where a man was sowing wheat, who, on hearing what he took for a curse upon his labour, seized and thrashed him, and told him to repeat, “Pray God, send plenty more!” So the young jolterhead at once “changed his tune,” and was loudly singing out these words when he met a funeral.  The chief mourner punished him for what he thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, “Pray God, send the soul to heaven!” which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be hanged.  The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, “A he and a she-dog going to be hanged!” On he went, accordingly, repeating this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married.  When the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave him many a good thump, and bade him say, “I wish you much joy!” This he was crying at the top of his voice when he came to a pit into which two labourers had fallen, and one of them, enraged at what he thought his mockery of their misfortune, exerted all his strength and scrambled out, then beat the poor simpleton, and told him to say, “The one is out; I wish the other was!” Glad to be set free, the booby went on shouting these words till he met with a one-eyed man, who, like the others, taking what he was crying for a personal insult, gave him another drubbing, and then bade him cry, “The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!” So he adopted this new cry, and continued his adventurous journey till he came to a house, one side of which was on fire.  The people, hearing him bawling, “The one side gives good light, and I wish the other did!” at once concluded that he had set the house a-blazing; so they put him in prison, and the end was, the judge put on the black cap and condemned him to be hanged![5]