aid he, "only to avoid idleness; for I must always be doing
something."

The Abbe of Poupet complained to him that the moles had spoiled a fine
meadow, and he could find no remedy for them. "Why, cousin," said M.
Gaulard, "it is but paving your meadow, and the moles will no more
trouble you."

M. Gaulard had a lackey belonging to Auvergne, who robbed him of twelve
crowns and ran away, at which he was very angry, and said he would have
nothing that came from that country. So he ordered all that was from
Auvergne to be cast out of the house, even his mule; and to make the
animal more ashamed, he caused his servants to take off its shoes and
its saddle and bridle.

* * * * *

Although Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ is the most "original" of our old
English jest-books--that is to say, it contains very few stories in
common with preceding collections--yet some of the diverting tales he
relates are traceable to very distant sources, more especially the
following:

A country fellow (that had not walked much in streets that were paved)
came to London, where a dog came suddenly out of a house, and furiously
ran at him. The fellow stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the dog,
and finding them all fast rammed or paved in the ground, quoth he, "What
a strange country am I in, where the people tie up the stones and let
the dogs loose!"

Three centuries and a half before the Water Poet heard this exquisitely
humorous story, the great Persian poet Sa'di related it in his
_Gulistan_ (or Rose-garden), which was written A.D. 1278:

A poor poet presented himself before the chief of a gang of robbers, and
recited some verses in his praise. The robber-chief, however, instead of
rewarding him, as he fondly expected, ordered him to be stripped of his
clothes and expelled from the village. The dogs attacking him in the
rear, the unlucky bard stooped to pick up a stone to throw at them, and
finding the stones frozen in the ground, he exclaimed, "What a vile set
of men are these, who set loose the dogs and fasten the stones!"

Now here we have a very curious instance of the migration of a popular
tale from Persia--perchance it first set out on its travels from India
--in the thirteenth century, when grave and reverend seigniors wagged
their beards and shook their portly sides at its recital, to London in
the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed "the wisest fool
in Christendom"!), when Taylor, the