[11] Crane's Italian Popular Tales, pp. 284-5.
[12] A separate work from the Apologie pour Herodote Such was the exasperation of the French clerics at the bitter truths set forth in it, that the author had to flee the country. An English translation, entitled "A World of Wonders; or, an introduction to a Treatise tovching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,'" etc., was published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio. The Apologie pour Herodote was printed at the Hague.
CHAPTER V.
THE SILLY SON.
MONG the favourite jests of all peoples, from Iceland to Japan, from India to England, are the droll adventures and mishaps of the silly son, who contrives to muddle everything he is set to do. In vain does his poor mother try to direct him in "the way he should go": she gets him a wife, as a last resource; but a fool he is still, and a fool he will always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny chap-books and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how
Simple Simon went a-fishing
For to catch a whale,
But all the water he had got
Was in his mother's pail?
an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still more celebrated prototypes:
Three men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger,
My tale had been longer.