[5] “Tory” is said to be the Erse term for a robber.

[6] Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes of England, vol. iv. of Percy Society’s publications.

CHAPTER II.

GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES, WITH VARIANTS AND ANALOGUES.

It seems to have been common to most countries, from very ancient times, for the inhabitants of a particular district, town, or village to be popularly regarded as pre-eminently foolish, arrant noodles or simpletons.  The Greeks had their stories of the silly sayings and doings of the people of Baeotia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc.  Among the Perso-Arabs the folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid.  The Kabail, or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad as little better than idiots.  The Schildburgers are the noodles of German popular tales.  In Switzerland the townsmen of Belmont, near Lausanne, are typical blockheads.  And England has her “men of Gotham”—­a village in Nottinghamshire—­who are credited with most of the noodle stories which have been current among the people for centuries past, though other places share to some extent in their not very enviable reputation:  in Yorkshire the “carles” of Austwick, in Craven; some villages near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire; and in the counties of Sutherland and Ross, the people of Assynt.

But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we learn from a curious Latin poem, Descriptio Norfolciensium, written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of Peterborough, which is printed in Wright’s Early Mysteries and Other Latin Poems.  This poem sets out with stating that Caesar having despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other peoples.  Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of Norfolk is the following:  Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of green wax.  To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk.  When it became dark, they had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should use the wax seal of the bond for a candle—­they should still have the words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate; so they made the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their merry-making.  This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice, at the same time producing the bond.  The lord calls a clerk to examine the document, who pronounces it to be null and void in the absence of the lord’s seal, and so their oppression continues.