Jean the Fool went weeping to his mother, saying:
"Mother, I begged her for it, and she would not give it me."
"He lieth!" cried the wife. "I have told him to take it if he wished it."
And she went to complain to her mother that she had married and idiot, who passed the whole night saying "Give it me" without doing aught else. The good woman saw clearly that her son-in-law was foolish, and she bade him on the following night mount upon his wife and thrust at a spot where he felt some hair.
Jean did as he was counselled, but instead of stretching himself at full lenght upon her, laid himself across his wife and began to thrust with all his force, but without success, as one can well imagine, a woman's slit not being at the same angle as her mouth.
Nor was it until the third night that Jean the Fool learned how he must comport himself to have a chicken, and then he found it very much to his taste and his wife also.[1]
- ↑ We make no apology for the frequent extracts from Kruptadia to be found in this volume and those to follow of Anthologica Rarissima. Kruptadia, perhaps the most remarkable recueil of folk lore stories, songs, sayings and proverbs in the world, is a work far too little known to the student and bibliophile. Its rarity may be explained by the fact that comparatively few copies of each volume were struck off. Of Vol. 2, from which "The Wedding Night of Jean the Fool" is taken, only 135 numbered copies were done. A complete 12 volume set, in the original format (the work was begun in Heilbronn by Henninger Frères and completed in Paris by Welter) is not often seen, and we count ourselves fortunate in having one before us as we write. Havelock Ellis frequently refers to the collection in his Studies in the Psychology of Sex, while Pisanus Fraxi, the great bibliographer of erotic, prohibited and uncommon books, was just able to notice the first two volumes in his Catena Librorum Tacendorum, (London: Privately Printed: 1885). He pays genorous tribute to the production. "Students of folk lore," he writes, "will hail with delight the appearance of this well-printed and carefully got up little volume, to
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