' The Wise Men of Gotham, and Others'
S. R. LITTLEWOOD
The fool has been a popular character in all countries and all ages. We may not care to go as far as the Russians, who usually made a fool the hero of their folk-tales on the principle that' the fool is wiser than the wise '. (Yet Wagner did, making his swan-song, Parsifal, a glorification of ' the pure fool '.) But everyone loves a good fool and we feel it is an unhappy village that has no idiot.
Literature abounds in delightful half-fools-roguish fools like Falstaff, angelic fools like Mr. Pickwick-but for pure, rich, undiluted folly you must turn to folk-lore, to such heroes as the Wise Men of Gotham, about whom S. R. Littlewood is going to talk this evening, to the Suabians (who have the same reputation in Germany), and to the immortal farmer, claimed by at least three English counties, who cut off the head of his calf, stuck between the bars of a gate, ' to save its life '.