THE SEVENTEENTH TALE OF THE MERRY MEN OF GOTHAM
In days gone by, when people cooked over open fires, they used a trivet to stand their pots over the flames. Now a trivet was like a cast iron 3-legged stool with a metal grill on top. There was a man of Gotham whose wife asked him to bring a new trivet back from the market. On the long walk home his shoulders grew weary with carrying the heavy trivet and as he crossed the river he sat on a wall to take a rest and placed the trivet on the ground before him, glowering at it resentfully. Why should he have to carry this maddening thing? After all, it had three legs and he only had two!
So he sat upon the trivet and told it, ‘You’ve got more legs than me, so you’re better able to carry me than I am to carry you. On you go now – take me home!’ So there he sat, very pleased with his ingenuity and patiently waiting for the trivet to carry him home. After a few moments, when it hadn’t moved, he got to his feet in a fury and gave the trivet a good kick, shouting, ‘You stupid useless trivet! I’ve dragged you all the way here and you won’t even bear me the short way home! Well you can carry yourself for the rest of the way. We’re going straight down this road here - follow me and I will show you the way.’
His wife studied him for a moment and shook her head in disbelief. ‘Where did you have this conversation with the trivet?’ said the woman. ‘At Gotham bridge’, said the man. So the woman clouted her husband across the head several times with her dishcloth and quickly set off for Gotham bridge to fetch the trivet. So the trivet reached the house and the man didn’t have to carry it – exactly as he intended!