" Upon this all the women and children of the
encampment went forth to meet them, weeping together. The Turkmans who
were coming from the city thought that one of theirs had died in the
encampment; and thus they were without knowledge one of the other, and
they raised a weeping and wailing together such that it cannot be
described. At length the elders of the camp stood up in their midst and
said: "May ye all remain whole; there is none other help than patience";
and they questioned them. The Turkmans coming from the city asked: "Who
is dead in the camp?" The others replied: "No one is dead in the camp;
who has died in the city?" Those who were coming from the city, said:
"No one has died in the city." The others said: "For whom then are ye
wailing and lamenting?" At length they perceived that all this tumult
arose from their trusting the words of children.
This last belongs rather to the class of simpleton-stories; and in the
following, from the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles' _Folk Tales of Kashmir_
(Truebner: 1888), we have a variant of the well-known tale of the twelve
men of Gotham who went one day to fish, and, before returning home,
miscounted their number, of which several analogues are given in my
_Book of Noodles_, pp. 28 ff. (Elliot Stock: 1888): Ten peasants were
standing on the side of the road weeping.
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