of the village were filled with
its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied
there, but with no good effect. After this they removed the roof, by the
advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion. This
plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter
fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, they found the house
just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in
their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting
the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell
through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had
never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get
daylight in by making a window.
Another tale relates how the boors of Schilda contrived to get their
millstone twice down from a high mountain:
The boors of Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour
they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the
summit of a high mountain; and when the stone was finished, they carried
it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the
bottom, it occurred to one of them that they might have spared
themselves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down.
"Verily," said he, "we are the stupidest of fools to take these
extraordinary pains to do that which we might have done with so little
trouble.
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