[7] Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_, Second Series.
[8] An imitation of Boccaccio, _Decameron_, Day vii., nov. 8, who
perhaps borrowed the story from Guerin's _fabliau_ "De la Dame qui
fit accroire a son Mari qu'il avait reve; _alias_, Les Cheveux
Coupes" (Le Grand's _Fabliaux_, ed. 1781, tome ii., 280).
[9] A slightly different version occurs in the _Tale of Beryn_,
which is found in a unique MS. of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and
which forms the first part of the old French romance of the _Chevalier
Berinus_. In the English poem Beryn, lamenting his misfortunes, and
that he had disinherited himself, says:
"But I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies]
He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies,
And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase,
Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase
Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was,
And kissid so the evese, that brent was al the plase."
It is certain that the author of the French original of the _Tale of
Beryn_ did not get this story out of our jests of the men of Gotham.
[10] There is an analogous Indian story of a youth who went to a tank to
drink, and observing the reflection of a golden-crested bird that was
sitting on a tree, he thought it was gold in the water, and entered the
tank to take it up, but he could not lay hold of it as it appeared and
disappeared in the water.
Pages:
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65