Page:More English Fairy Tales.djvu/240

 Which was the wisest of these three persons, judge yourself.

Of Hedging a Cuckoo.

Once upon a time the men of Gotham would have kept the Cuckoo so that she might sing all the year, and in the midst of their town they made a hedge round in compass and they got a Cuckoo, and put her



into it, and said, "Sing there all through the year, or thou shalt have neither meat nor water." The Cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself within the hedge, flew away. "A vengeance on her!" said they. "We did not make our hedge high enough."

Of Sending Cheeses.

There was a man of Gotham who went to the market at Nottingham to sell cheese, and as he was going down