C. In C man and wife are in bed, and the travellers haul the woman out and lay her on the floor: this makes the husband give tongue.
Stenhouse notes that this ballad furnished Prince Hoare with the principal scene in his musical entertainment of “No Song, no Supper,” produced in 1790, and long a favorite on the stage. (Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 292.)
This tale is one of a group which may or may not have had a single archetype. Of the varieties, that which comes nearest is the first story in Straparola’s Eighth Day. Husband and wife are sitting near the entrance of their house one night; the husband says, It is time to go to bed, shut the door; she says, Shut it yourself. They make a compact that the one who speaks first shall shut the door. The wife, tired of silence and growing sleepy, goes to bed; the husband stretches himself on a bench. A gentleman’s servant, whose lantern has been put out by the wind, seeing the door open, asks for a light. There is no reply. Advancing a little way into the house, he finds the man lying on the bench with his eyes open, but can get no word from him though he shakes him. Looking round, he sees the woman in bed and addresses her, but she is as dumb as her husband; he gets into the bed. The woman says nothing till the intruder goes away; then calls out, A pretty man you, to leave the door open all night and let people get into your bed. Fool, he says, now go shut the door. The same, with insignificant divergences, in L’Élite des Contes du Sieur d’Ouville, Rouen, 1699, I, 159.
A wedding-feast over, neither bridegroom nor bride will consent to shut the street-door; the lady proposes that the one who speaks first shall do this, to which the bridegroom agrees. They sit looking at each other in silence for two hours. Thieves, seeing the door open, come in, pillage the house, and even strip the young pair of everything valuable that they have on them, but neither says a word. In the morning a patrol of police find the house door open, enter, and make an inspection. The chief demands an explanation of the state of things; neither man nor woman vouchsafes a response, and he orders their heads off. The executioner is beginning with the husband; the wife cries out, Spare him! the husband exclaims, You have lost, go shut the door. (The Arabian tale of Sulayman Bey and the Three Story-Tellers, cited by Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 29.)
Hemp-eaters, who have found a sequin and bought a mass of food, quarrel about fastening the gate of a tomb to which they have retired, to gorge unmolested. They come to an agreement that the man who first speaks shall close the gate. They let the victuals stand and sit mute. A troop of dogs rush in and eat all up clean. One of the party had secured some of the provender in advance of the rest, and bits are sticking to his mouth. A dog licks them away, and in so doing bites the lip of the fellow, who, in his pain, raps out a curse on the dog. The rest shout, Get up and shut the gate! (Turkish, Behrnauer, Die vierzig Veziere, p. 175 f.; Gibb, The History of the Forty Vezirs, p. 171 f.)
In the second Pickelheringsspiel, in the first part of Engelische Comedien und Tragedien, 1620, a married pair contend again about the shutting of a door. (R. Köhler; not seen by me.)
In other cases, speaking first entails a penalty different from shutting a door.
A young pair, lying in bed the first night after marriage, engage that whichever of the two gets up first or speaks first shall wash the dishes for a week. The husband, pretending to make his will by the process of expressing by signs his acceptance or rejection of the suggestions of a friend, bequeaths away from his wife a handsome article of dress belonging to her. The wife utters a protest, and has to wash the dishes. (Novelle di Sercambi, ed. d’Ancona, p. 16, No 3, ‘De simplicitate viri et uxoris.’)
A man complains of dry bread which his wife has given him for his supper. She tells him to get up and moisten it; he bids her do this, but she refuses. It is finally settled that the one that speaks first shall moisten the bread. A visitor comes in and can make neither of them say a word. He kisses the wife, gives the husband a blow on the cheek; no word from either. He makes complaint to the kází; the husband will say nothing when brought before the kází, and is condemned to be hanged. At the moment of execution the wife ejaculates, Alas, my unfortunate husband! You devil, says he, go home and moisten the bread! (An Arabian story in Beloe’s Oriental Apologues, cited by Clouston, II, 21.)
A shoemaker and his wife agree that the one who speaks first shall carry back a frying-pan that they have borrowed. A soldier who requires a girth for his horse asks the shoemaker to cut him one, but gets no answer, though he threatens to take off the man’s head. Enraged at last, he seizes the shoemaker by the head to do what he had menaced, when the wife cries out, For mercy’s sake, don’t! Well done! says the husband, now carry back the pan. (Bernoni, Fiabe pop. veneziane, p. 67, No 13, ‘La Scomessa;’ Crane, Italian Popular Tales, p. 284.)