" And so they returned again, and said, "We were all
blessed this day that we went no farther." "Ah, cowards," said he that
had his scythe in the mead, "help me to fetch my scythe." "No," said
they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin: better it is to lose thy
scythe than to mar us all."
There is some spice of humour in the concluding tale of the printed
collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednesday the
priest said to the men of Gotham, "If I should enjoin you to prayer,
there is none of you that can say your paternoster; and you be now too
old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not
eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour
all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will
come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he
did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after
another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might
have part of his meat. "And as for alms," said the priest, "ye be
beggars all, except one or two; therefore bestow alms on yourselves."
Among the numerous stories of the Gothamites preserved orally, but not
found in the collection of "A.B., of Phisicke Doctour," is the
following, which seems to be of Indian extraction:
One day some men of Gotham were walking by the riverside, and came to a
place where the contrary currents caused the water to boil as in a
whirlpool.
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