The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable
antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is
referred to by Rabelais, and was doubtless the subject of a popular
French tale in his time. In the twenty-second story of the _Disciplina
Clericalis_ of Peter Alfonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was baptised in
1106, a fox leaves a wolf in a well, looking after a supposed cheese,
made by the image of the moon in the water; and the same fable had been
told by the Talmudists in the fifth century.[11] The well-known "Joe
Miller" of the party of Irishmen who endeavoured to reach a "green
cheese" in the river by hanging one by another's legs finds its parallel
in a Mecklenburg story, in which some men by the same contrivance tried
to get a stone from the bottom of a well, and the incident is thus
related in the old English jest-book entitled _The Sacke Full of
Newes_:
There were three young men going to Lambeth along by the waterside, and
one played with the other, and they cast each other's caps into the
water in such sort as they could not get their caps again. But over the
place where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did
cover a great deal of the water. One of them said to the rest, "Sirs, I
have found a notable way to come by them. First I will make myself fast
by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is
with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take
hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands
he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand.
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