seen again.

When an Austwick "carle" comes into any of the larger towns of
Yorkshire, it is said he is greeted with the question, "Who tried to
lift the bull over the gate?" in allusion to the following story: An
Austwick farmer, wishing to get a bull out of a field--how the animal
got into it, the story does not inform us--procured the assistance of
nine of his neighbours to lift the animal over the gate. After trying in
vain for some hours, they sent one of their number to the village for
more help. In going out he opened the gate, and after he had gone away,
it occurred to one of those who remained that the bull might be allowed
to go out in the same manner.

Another Austwick farmer had to take a wheelbarrow to a certain town,
and, to save a hundred yards by going the ordinary road, he went through
the fields, and had to lift the barrow over twenty-two stiles.

It was a Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined
to cure the filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the
branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted
up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck
broken, until at last there were none left.--And quite as witless,
surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired to move
their church three yards farther westward, so they carefully marked the
exact distance by leaving their coats on the ground. Then they set to
work to push with all their might against the eastern wall. In the
meantime a thief had gone round to the west side and stolen their coats.
"Diable!" exclaimed they on finding that their coats were gone, "we have
pushed too far!"

[Illustration]
[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Coffee House Jests_. Fifth edition. London. 1688. P. 36.

[2] "See _ante_, p. 8, note." [Transcriber's note: This is Chapter I,
Footnote 1 in this etext.]

[3] Fuller, while admitting that "an hundred fopperies are forged and
fathered on the townsfolk of Gotham," maintains that "Gotham doth breed
as wise people as any which laugh at their simplicity."

[4] Collier's _Bibliographical Account_, etc., vol. i., p. 327.

[5] Forewords to Borde's _Introduction of Knowledge_, etc., edited,
for the Early English Text Society, by F.J. Furnivall.

[6] It is equally certain that Borde had no hand either in the _Jests
of Scogin_ or _The Mylner of Abyngton_, the latter an imitation
of Chaucer's _Reve's Tale_.

[7] Powell and Mag