μῦθοι Mythoi
Motif

The ass is not at home. A man wants to borrow an ass. The owner says that the ass is not at home. The ass brays and the borrower protests. "Will you believe an ass and not a graybeard like me?"

The wise and the foolish. · Cleverness. · Clever practical retorts. · Practical retorts: borrowers and lenders. · view the constellation · filed as J1552.1.1

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Scholars’ trail — 3references

The index’s own references — the collections where scholars sighted this story-shape, tradition by tradition. Titles on our shelf are live links; the rest is the frontier, not yet shelved.

  • Italian NovellaRotunda.
  • general *Wesselski Hodscha Nasreddin I 224 No. 65
  • general L. Schmidt Oesterr. Zs. f. Vksk. 1954, 128
Within the index

Filed under The ass consulted about the loan. A man wants to borrow an ass. The owner goes to see what the ass says. The ass is unwilling.

1 finer motif beneath it
The bigger fool. When told by servants their master is not at home, man says it is a fool that goes out in such midday heat. Whereupon master sticks his head out of the window, saying "Thou who art moving about at this time art the big fool: I have been seated all day in my house."
Carried in tale types

wander