FOOTNOTES: 

[1] A Samaradanam is one of the public festivals given by pious people, and sometimes by those in power, to the Brahmans, who on such occasions assemble in great numbers from all quarters.

[2] In a Sinhalese story, referred to on ["p. 68” in original.  This approximates to the reference to Chapter III, Footnote 5 in this e-text], it is, curiously enough, the woman herself “who has her head shaved, so as not to lose the services of the barber for the day when he came, and her husband was away from home.”  The story probably was introduced into Ceylon by the Tamils; both versions are equally good as noodle-stories.

CHAPTER VII.

THE THREE GREAT NOODLES.

Few folk-tales are more widely diffused than that of the man who set out in quest of as great noodles as those of his own household.  The details may be varied more or less, but the fundamental outline is identical, wherever the story is found; and, whether it be an instance of the transmission of popular tales from one country to another, or one of those “primitive fictions” which are said to be the common heritage of the Aryans, its independent development by different nations and in different ages cannot be reasonably maintained.

Thus, in one Gaelic version of this diverting story—­in which our old friends the Gothamites reappear on the scene to enact their unconscious drolleries—­a lad marries a farmer’s daughter, and one day while they are all busily engaged in peat-cutting, she is sent to the house to fetch the dinner.  On entering the house, she perceives the speckled pony’s packsaddle hanging from the roof, and says to herself, “Oh, if that packsaddle were to fall and kill me, what should I do?” and here she began to cry, until her mother, wondering what could be detaining her, comes, when she tells the old woman the cause of her grief, whereupon the mother, in her turn, begins to cry, and when the old man next comes to see what is the matter with his wife and daughter, and is informed about the speckled pony’s packsaddle, he, too, “mingles his tears” with theirs.  At last the young husband arrives, and finding the trio of noodles thus grieving at an imaginary misfortune, he there and then leaves them, declaring his purpose not to return until he has found three as great fools as themselves.  In the course of his travels he meets with some strange folks:  men whose wives make them believe whatever they please—­one, that he is dead; another, that he is clothed, when he is stark naked; a third, that he is not himself.  He meets with the twelve fishers who always miscounted their number; the noodles who went to drown an eel in the sea; and a man trying to get his cow on the roof of his house, in order that she might eat the grass growing there.  But the most wonderful incident was a man coming with a cow in a cart:  and the people had found out that the man had stolen the cow, and that a court should be held upon him, and so they did; and the justice they did was to put the horse to death for carrying the cow.[1]