In Fortini's novels,
in like manner, a simpleton is persuaded that the kid he offered for
sale was a capon; and in the Spanish _El Conde Lucanor_, and the
German _Tyl Eulenspiegel_, a countryman is cheated out of a piece
of cloth. The original form of the incident is found in the
_Hitopadesa_, where three sharpers persuade a Brahman that the goat
he is carrying for a sacrifice is a dog. This story of the Florentine
noodle--or rather Poggio's version--may have been suggested by a tale in
the _Gesta Romanorum_, in which the emperor's physician is made to
believe that he had leprosy. See my _Popular Tales and Fictions_,
where these and similar stories are compared in a paper entitled "The
Sharpers and the Simpleton."
[14] In Powell and Magnusson's _Legends of Iceland_ (Second Series,
p. 627), a woman makes her husband believe that he is dressed in fine
clothes when he is naked; another persuades her husband that he is dead,
and as he is being carried to the burying-ground, he perceives the naked
man, who asserts that he is dressed, upon which he exclaims, "How I
should laugh if I were not dead!" And in a _fabliau_ by Jean de
Boves, "Le Villain de Bailleul; _alias_, Le Femme qui fit croire a
son Mari qu'il etait mort," the husband exclaims, "Rascal of a priest,
you may well thank Heaven that I am dead, else I would belabour you
soundly with my stick.
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