So he went home to live, and complained no more of the simplicity of his wife.
[We have the German of this story in ‘Die Klugen Leute,’ Grimm, p. 407, and again the beginning of it in ‘Die Kluge Else’ (Clever Lizzie), Grimm, p. 137 (which ends with the desperation of the wife as the second Roman version ends with the death of the husband); in some variants given in the ‘Russian Folk Tales,’ pp. 53–4; in an Italian-Tirolese tale, ‘Le donne matte’ (the title resembling that of the next Roman version); and the ending, in the Norse ‘Not a pin to choose between them.’ Senhor de Saraiva told me the following Portuguese story entitled ‘Pedro da Malas Artes’ (Tricky Peter), which embodies these incidents, but opens with a different purport.
Tricky Peter was a knowing blade; so he went out on his travels to set all the world straight; and he found plenty to do.
In the very first town he came to there was a great commotion. A bride had come to church to be married, and there she stuck at the church door, mounted on her mule, while the people deliberated whether they should facilitate her ingress by cutting off some of her head or some of the mule’s legs.
‘Let her alight and walk in,’ said Tricky Peter; ‘and the door will be high enough.’ And all the people applauded his wisdom.
At the next town he found the people all full of discontent, because one of them had to sit up by turns to tell the others when the sun rose.
‘I’ll give you a bird to perform that office,’ said Tricky Peter; and he went home and fetched a cock, and then they could all rest comfortably.
After this the story has no more silly people to deal with; but Peter fools a giant, and overcomes his strength with craft. He does not seem, either, to get paid for his services, as do the heroes of ‘La Sposa Cese,’ and all the others.
I have also another Roman story (too long to print here) of a man who sets out with a different purpose again, who meets with three sets of people afflicted with similar follies, and who also makes a good deal of money by his counsel; together with various stories in which men go to fetch their wives back from the devil’s kingdom, get three commissions of a similar nature by the way, for executing which they get richly paid on their return.
There is a story in the 5th Tantra given as ‘Le Brahme aux vains projets’ in Abbé Dubois’ translation of the ‘Pantcha-Tantra,’ which has an analogous opening to that of ‘La Sposa Cece.’ There is another among the ‘Contes Indiens’ published at the end of it, in which four Brahmans have a great dispute as to which of them can claim to be the greatest idiot—a strife only second in folly to that of the ‘Three Indolent Boys’ in Grimm, p. 551—and they each narrate such proof of having acted with consummate folly that the decision given is that there is not a pin to choose between them.