“No, indeed, I knew it not.”  They now returned home, and the wife set about preparing all the nice eatables for supper.  In a day or two the labourer found from the talk of his acquaintances that his finding the treasure was no secret in the village, and in less than a week he was summoned to the castle.  “Is it true,” said the lord, “that you have found a treasure?” “It is not true,” was his reply.  “But your wife has told me all.”  “My wife does not know what she says—­she is mad, my lord.”  Hereupon the woman cries, “It is the truth, my lord; he has found a treasure and buried it beneath the floor of our cottage.”  “When?” “On the eve before the day we went into the forest to look for fish.”  “What do you say?” “Yes; it was on the day that it rained cakes; we gathered a basketful of them, and coming home, my husband fished a fine hare out of the river.”  My lord declared the woman to be an idiot; nevertheless he caused his servants to search under the labourer’s cottage floor, but nothing was found there, and so the shrewd fellow secured his treasure.

The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a number of fools’ exploits are strung together and ascribed to one individual, as in the tale of “Foolish Sachuli;” but generally they are told as separate stories.  The following adventure of Sachuli is also found, in varied form, in Beschi’s Gooroo Paramartan:  One day Sachuli climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting off the branch between the tree and himself.  A man passing by called to him, saying, “What are you doing up there?  You will be killed if you cut that branch off.”  “What do you say?” asked the booby, coming down.  “When shall I die?” “How can I tell?” said the man.  “Let me go.”  “I will not let you go until you tell me when I shall die.”  At last the man, in order to get rid of him, said, “When you find a scarlet thread on your jacket, then you will die.”  After this Sachuli went to the bazaar, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes.  “Now I shall die!” exclaimed the fool.  “How do you know that?” the tailors inquired, when he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they all laughed.  Nevertheless, Sachuli went and dug a grave in the jungle and lay down in it.

Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of ghi, or clarified butter, which he engages Sachuli to carry for him, and the noodle, of course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.

The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated seems to be almost universal.  It occurs in the jests of the typical Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, and there exist German, Saxon, and Lithuanian variants of the same story.  It is also known in Ceylon, and the following is a version from a Hindu work entitled Bharataka Dwatrinsati, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks: