" And so they
did; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he
that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, "Soft, sirs! My girdle
slacketh." "Make it fast quickly," said they. But as he was untying it
to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well
washed for their pains.
Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who
planted a cabbage-head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage,
and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky. He climbs up the
cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky. There he sees a mill, which gives
a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the
top. The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill; then he lies down to
sleep. By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.
He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him
to take her with him. She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in
his teeth and begins to climb up. The old woman, becoming tired, asked
him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, "Not much
farther," the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman
fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.
There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr.
Ralston's most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian
folk-tales), but observe the very close resemblance which it bears to
the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the
_Katha Sarit Sagara_ (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand
collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh
century, from a similar work entitled _Vrihat Katha_ (Great Story),
written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century:[12]
In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was
the greatest fool of the lot.
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