No. 56.--The Five Trades

No. 56.--The Five Trades

Once there were a sailor and other four men. One was a smith, and the other was a soldier and a tailor, and the last was an innkeeper. The sailor asked the smith to come upon the sea. The smith said, 'No, I must go and do some work.' 'What is your work?' 'To heat iron,' says the smith, and make it into shoes for horses.' The sailor asked the other three to come on board his ship. The soldier said he must go to make facings and marchings; and the tailor said, 'I must go and make clothes to keep you warm.' And the innkeeper said, 'I am going to make beer to make you drunk, that you may all of you go to the devil.' That's all of that.

This little temperance apologue by a non-teetotaler is one of the very few Gypsy stories with a moral.