Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/342



puts into the mouth of that most delightful old blackguard Trimalchio a phrase of which no commentator gives any sufficient explanation. After listening to a story of werewolves and complimenting the teller on his perfect veracity, he adds: nam et ipse nobis rem horribilem narrabo; asinus in tegulis, "For I'm a-goin' to tell you a 'orrible tale myself; reg'lar donkey on the tiles." One naturally asks why, in the opinion of uneducated Southern Italians of that day, a donkey on the tiles should be proverbially horrible. Part of the absurdity of Trimalchio consists in a fervent faith in old wives' tales; and we may be sure that they are genuine ones, for what novelist, especially one so witty as Petronius, would be so silly as to make his characters believe things that men in their position in real life would not believe?

When we come, however, to look for classical parallels, or for some other reference to this apparently well-known idea, we have very little to show for our investigations. Otto suggests that it is a tag of some lost fable, and quotes Babrius, 125; but Babrius has only a brief account of an ass who protested with manly indignation against being driven off a roof which he was smashing by jumping about on it, calling attention to the fact that people were quite pleased when the monkey played up there. This is funny,