After tales of simple wives come similar tales of simple boys. Compare ‘Russian Folktales,’ pp. 10 and 49. An analogous incident to the selling of the linen to a statue in the following is told of a grown-up peasant in Grimm’s ‘Der gute Handel,’ p. 30, which story is not unlike one called ‘How the poorest became the richest’ I have given from the German-Tirolese province of Vorarlberg at the end of ‘Household Stories from the Land of Höfer,’ a close counterpart of which I have met in a Roman periodical, told as collected at Modena. The Italian-Tirolese counterpart bears the name of ‘Turlulù,’ and resembles the Roman very closely. There is a place in German Tirol where they not only tell the story, but point out the Bildstocklein (the wayside image), to which the simple boy sold his linen; I cannot recall the place now, though I remember having occasion to mention it in ‘Traditions of Tirol’ in the ‘Monthly Packet.’ In the German there is also ‘Der gescheidte Hans,’ which is somewhat different in structure; but Scheible, ‘Schaltjahr,’ i. 493, gives a story which contains both ways of telling.]
[1] ‘La Donna Mattarella.’ ‘Matto’ is simply ‘mad,’ with the diminutive ‘ella’ it comes to mean ‘slightly mad,’ ‘simple.’ [↑]
THE BOOBY.[1]
They say there was once a widow woman who had a very simple son. Whatever she set him to do he muddled in some way or other.
‘What am I to do?’ said the poor mother to a neighbour one day. ‘The boy eats and drinks, and has to be clothed; what am I to do if I am to make no profit of him?’
‘You have kept him at home long enough;’ answered the neighbour. ‘Try sending him out, now; maybe that will answer better.’
The mother took the advice, and the next time she had got a piece of linen spun she called her boy, and said to him:
‘If I send you out to sell this piece of linen, do you think you can manage to do it without committing any folly?’