stories: There was a man of Gotham who bought at Nottingham a trivet, or
brandiron, and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the
carriage thereof, and he set it down; and seeing that it had three feet,
he said, "Ha! hast thou three feet, and I but two? Thou shalt bear me
home, if thou wilt," and set himself down thereupon, and said to the
trivet, "Bear me as long as I have borne thee; but if thou do not, thou
shalt stand still for me." The man of Gotham did see that his trivet
would not go farther. "Stand still, in the mayor's name," said he, "and
follow me if thou wilt. I will tell thee right the way to my home." When
he did come to his house, his wife said, "Where is my trivet?" The man
said, "He hath three legs, and I have but two; and I did teach him the
way to my house. Let him come home if he will." "Where left ye the
trivet?" said the woman. "At Gotham hill," said the man. His wife did
run and fetch home the trivet her own self, or else she had lost it
through her husband's wit.

In Campbell's version a man having been sent by his wife with her
spinning-wheel to get mended, as he was returning home with it the wind
set the wheel in motion, so he put it down, and bidding it go straight
to his house, set off himself. When he reached home, he asked his wife
if the spinning-wheel had arrived yet, and on her replying that it had
not, "I thought as much," quoth he, "for I took the shorter way."

A somewhat similar story is found in Rivière's French collection of
tales of the Kabaïl, Algeria, to this effect: The mother of a youth of
the Beni-Jennad clan gave him a hundred reals to buy a mule; so he went
to market, and on his way met a man carrying a water-melon for sale.
"How much for the melon?" he asks. "What will you give?" says the man.
"I have only got a hundred reals," answered the booby; "had I more, you
should have it." "Well," rejoined the man, "I'll take them." Then the