And
as they were in contention, another wise man that belonged to Gotham
came from the market, with a sack of meal upon his horse; and seeing and
hearing his neighbours at strife about sheep, and none betwixt them,
said he, "Ah, fools, will you never learn wit? Then help me," said he
that had the meal, "and lay this sack upon my shoulder." They did so,
and he went to the one side of the bridge and unloosed the mouth of the
sack, and did shake out all the meal into the river. Then said he, "How
much meal is there in the sack, neighbours?" "Marry," answered they,
"none." "Now, by my faith," answered this wise man, "even so much wit is
there in your two heads to strive for the thing which you have not." Now
which was the wisest of these three persons, I leave you to judge.
Allusions to these tales are of frequent occurrence in our literature of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dekker, in his _Gul's Horn
Book_ (1609), says, "It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy
head, which I will not cut off with sharp documents, but rather set it
on faster, bestowing upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise
men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should
not be able to compare with thine;" and Wither, in his _Abuses_,
says,
"And he that tryes to doe it might have bin
One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,"
alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols:
On a time the men of Gotham would have pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she
should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge
round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it,
and said, "Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor
drink.
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