TOM TRAM'S
MERRY TALES.
Tale I.
Of a Scholar and a Tapster on a Winter Night.
The tapster said, "Sir, will you go to bed." "No," quoth the scholar, "There are thieves abroad, and would not willingly be caught napping." So the tapster left him, and being gone, in came a spirit into the chamber, with his head under his arm so that he durst not stir, but cried out, "Help! help! fire! thieves! thieves!" "Oh," quoth he, "the devil was here and spoke to me with his head under his arm; but now I will go to bed, and if he comes again I will send him to the tapster, to help him to make false reckonings. It being a cold night," quoth he, "I will first put fire to toe, that is, I will warm my toes by the fire, then I'll go to bed." And so he did, and a great reckoning put the scholar out of his jest saying, "That was in earnest made too large a reckoning," he being but poor Sir John, of Oxford.
Tale II.
Down in the west country a certain conceited fellow had a great nose; so a country man by him with a sack of corn, jostled him, saying, "Your nose stands in my way," whereupon the other fellow with the great nose, took his nose in his hand, and held it to the other side, saying, "A pox on thee, go and be hanged."
Tale III.
Once there was a company of gypsies that came to a country fellow on the highway, and would needs tell Tom his fortune. Amongst other things, they bade him assure himself that his worst misfortunes were past, and that he would not be troubled with crosses as he had been. So coming home, and having sold the cow at the market, he looked into his purse for the money, thinking to have told it to his wife; but he found not so much as one cross in his purse; whereupon he remembered the words of the gypsies, and said that the gypsies had said true that he should not be troubled with crosses, and that they had picked his pocket, and left not a penny in his purse. Whereupon his wife basted and cudgelled him so soundly, that he began to perceive that a man that had a cursed wife should never be without a cross, though he had never a penny in his purse; and because it was winter-time, he sat a while by the fireside, and after went to bed supperless and penniless.