to the Apology for Herodotus,” etc.  For this book (the
        “Introduction”) Etienne had to quit France, fearing the
        wrath of the clerics.  His Apologie pour Herodote has
        not been rendered into English—­and why not, it would be
        hard to say.

Etienne gives another example, which, however, belongs rather to the class of simpleton stories:  A young man going to the bishop for admission into holy orders, to test his learning, was asked by the prelate, “Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?"[149] and not knowing what answer to make, this promising candidate was refused as inefficient.  Returning home, and explaining why he had not been ordained, his father told him that he must be an ass if he could not tell who was the father of the four sons of Aymon.  “See, I pray thee,” quoth he, “yonder is Great John, the smith, who has four sons; if a man should ask thee who was their father, wouldst thou not say it was Great John, the smith?” “Yes,” said the brilliant youth; “now I understand it.”  Thereupon he went again before the bishop, and being asked a second time, “Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?” he promptly replied:  “Great John, the smith."[150]

  [149] One of the Charlemagne Romances, translated by Caxton
        from the French, and printed by him about the year 1489,
        under the title of The Right Pleasaunt and Goodly
        Historie of the Four Sonnes of Aymon.  It has been
        reprinted for the Early English Text Society, ably
        edited by Miss Octavia Richardson.

  [150] A slightly different version is found in A Hundred Mery
        Talys, No. lxix, “Of the franklyns sonne that cam to
        take orders.”  The bishop says that Noah had three sons,
        Shem, Ham, and Japheth;—­who was the father of Japheth? 
        When the “scholar” returns home and tells his father how
        he had been puzzled by the bishop, he endeavours to
        enlighten his son thus:  “Here is Colle, my dog, that
        hath three whelps; must not these three whelps have
        Colle for their sire?” Going back to the bishop, he
        informs his lordship that the father of Japheth was
        “Colle, my father’s dogge.”

The same author asks who but the churchmen of those days of ignorance corrupted and perverted the text of the New Testament?  Thus, in the parable of the lost piece of money, evertit domum, “she overturned the house,” was substituted for everrit domum, “she swept the house.”  And in the Acts of the Apostles, where Saul (or Paul) is described as being let down from the house on the wall of Damascus in a basket, for demissus per sportam was substituted demissus per portam, a correction which called forth a rather witty Latin epigram to this effect: 

  This way the other day did pass
  As jolly a carpenter as ever was;
  So strangely skilful in his trade,
  That of a basket a door he made.