“The girl took what he brought and said to him:  ’You shall say to your master:  “Many, many compliments.  I thank him for all that he has sent me; but the month has only 18 days, the moon is only half full, the chorister of dawn was not there, and the he-goat’s skin is lank and loose.  But, to please the partridge, let him not beat the sow."’ (That is to say, there were only 18 loaves, half a cheese, no roasted cock, and the wine-skin was scarcely half full; but that, to please the young girl, he was not to beat the servant, who had not brought the gift entire.)

“The servant left and returned to the palace.  He repeated to the prince what the young girl had said to him, except the last clause, which he forgot.  Then the prince understood all, and caused another servant to give the rogue a good beating.  When the culprit had received such a caning that his skin and bones were sore, he cried out:  ’Enough, prince, my master!  Wait until I tell you another thing that the young girl said to me, and I have forgotten to tell you.’  ’Come, what have you to say?—­be quick.’  ’Master, the young girl added, “But, to please the partridge, let him not beat the sow."’ ‘Ah, blockhead!’ said the prince to him.  ’Why did you not tell me this before?  Then you would not have tasted the cane.  But so be it.’  A few days later the prince married the young girl, and fetes and great rejoicings were held.”

THE FOX AND THE BEAR, p. 240.

In no other version of this fable does the Fox take a stone with him when he enters one of the buckets and then throw it away—­nor indeed does he go into the bucket at all; he simply induces the other animal to descend into the well, in order to procure the “fine cheese.”  La Fontaine gives a variant of the fable, in which a fox goes down into a well with the same purpose, and gets out by asking a wolf to come down and feast on the “cheese”:  as the wolf descends in one bucket he draws up the fox in the other one, and so the wolf, like Lord Ullin, is “left lamenting."[114] M. Berenger-Feraud thinks this version somewhat analogous to a fable in his French collection of popular Senegambian Tales,[115] of the Clever Monkey and the Silly Wolf, of which, as it is short, I may offer a free translation, as follows: 

A proud lion was pacing about a few steps forward, then a side movement, then a grand stride backward.  A monkey on a tree above imitates the movements, and his antics enrage the lion, who warns him to desist.  The monkey however goes on with the caricature, and at last falls off the tree, and is caught by the lion, who puts him into a hole in the ground, and having covered it with a large stone goes off to seek his mate, that they should eat the monkey together.  While he is absent a wolf comes to the spot, and is pleased to hear the monkey cry, for he had a grudge against him.  The wolf asks why the monkey cries.  “I am singing,” says the monkey, “to aid my digestion.  This is a hare’s retreat,