Human Affairs
The Insanity Defense
“All he did savoured of utter lethargy. In a word, you would not have thought him a man at all, but some absurd abortion due to a mad fit of destiny.” […]
Trickery
Humor
When Wooing Goes Wrong
“When the last of the men had left, the queen got up. She shaved off all his hair and smeared him with tar. Next, she took a leather sack made for sleeping and placed some clothes in it. After that she grabbed hold of the king and stuffed him into the sack. ” […]
Britons and Celts
A Cat Tricks and is Tricked
“For the old Priest which was so tumbled among them that his face lay upon a boys bare ass, which belike was fallen headlong under him was so astonished; then when the boy (which for fear beshit himself) had raised his face, he neither felt nor smelt it nor removed from him.” […]
Greek and Roman
The Gullible Emperor
“But as he bowed his head and brought his mouth near to the mouth of one of the brothers, this one seized him firmly by the hair and the other brother cut off his head.” […]
Human Affairs
The Sex-Trap
” His wiliness (said these) would be most readily detected, if a fair woman were put in his way in some secluded place, who should provoke his mind to the temptations of love; all men’s natural temper being too blindly amorous to be artfully dissembled, and this passion being also too impetuous to be checked by cunning. ” […]
Britons and Celts
The Cat Who Caught a Cock
“But I minding another thing, and seeing that scratching could not move him, suddenly I leapt up and caught him by the genitals with my teeth, and bit so hard, that at last he cried out.” […]
Greek and Roman
Get Rich Quick or Go Blind Trying
“They all agreed that the counsel was excellent; and casting lots, the chance fell upon the contriver of the expedient; whose eyes they immediately put out.” […]
Greek and Roman
The Origin of Suffering
“Zeus bade famous Hephaestus make haste and mix earth with water and to put in it the voice and strength of human kind, and fashion a sweet, lovely maiden-shape, like to the immortal goddesses in face; and Athene to teach her needlework and the weaving of the varied web; and golden Aphrodite to shed grace upon her head and cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs.” […]
Medieval Mentality
Wisdom Wins the Day
“The twelve tall trees, each of which had thirty branches, are the twelve months of the year; twelve times the moon is renewed in her place, like a new king seated on his thrones, and each month has thirty days; this is how time passes.” […]
Britons and Celts
Demonic Efficiency
“When he left they questioned him closely and asked him who he really was. He said that he had been born to some rustic bedlam in the same parish, fathered on her by an incubus who had appeared in the shape of her husband.” […]