ase; but the swineherd warned them that a surer way to
silence him was by giving him some food; and while he stood by eating,
the swineherd confided the story of the fool, or as much of it as he
knew, to Jesus. The fool, he said, came from Jerusalem some two years
ago. He had been driven out of the Temple, which he frequented daily,
crying about the courts the song with which he wearied you just now,
till the most patient were unable to bear it any longer; and every time
he met a priest he looked into his face and sang: woe! woe! woe! unto
Jerusalem, and whenever he met a scribe he would cry: woe! woe! woe!
unto Jerusalem, hindering them in their work about the Temple. Some
stones were thrown, but enough life was left in him to crawl away, and
as soon as he recovered from his wounds he was about again, singing his
melancholy ditty (he knows but one). He was told if he did not cease he
would be beaten with rods, but he could not cease it, and started his
ditty again as soon as he could bear a shirt on his back; and then he
must have travelled up here afoot, picking up a bit here and a bit
there, getting a lift in an ox-cart. He is without memory of anything,
who he is, where he came from, or who taught him his song. He does not
know why he chose that broken tower for a dwelling, nor do we, but
fortunately it stands in a waste. We hear him singing as we go by to our
work and pitch him scraps of food from time to time. We hear him as we
return in the evening to our homes making his melancholy dwelling sadder
with his song. But he is a harmless, poor fool, save for the annoyance
of his song, which he cannot stanch any more than the wind in the broken
turrets. A harmless fool who will follow whosoever asked him to follow,
unafraid, and taking a blow or a hunch of bread in the same humour, and
distinguishing no man from the next one.

As the swineherd said these words the fool said: Jesus, thou hast come
to my help, but woe to thee, Son of God, thou wilt suffer thy death in
Jerusalem; and looking up into Jesus' face more intensely: oh, Son of
Man, what aileth thee or me? And knowest thou anything of the cloud of
woe that hangs over Jerusalem? To which Jesus made no answer, but called
upon the devils to say how many there were, and they answered: three.
Then depart ye three, Jesus replied, and was about to impose his hands
when the three devils asked whither they should go, to which Jesus
answered: ye must seek another refuge,