A man brought his wife a fish one Friday and, bidding her cook it by the end of the congregational prayers, went out to his craft and business. Meanwhile her friend came and bade her to a wedding at his house. So she agreed and, laying the fish in a jar of water, went off with him and was absent a whole week until the Friday following, while her husband sought her from house to house and enquired after her, but none could give him any tidings of her. On the next Friday she came home and he fell foul of her. But she brought out to him the fish alive from the jar and assembled the folk against him and told them her tale. —

When it was the Three Hundred and Ninety fourth night

So they proved him mad, imprisoned him, and mocked him, whereupon he shed tears in floods and recited these two couplets:

"Old hag, of high degree in filthy life, Whose face her monstrous lewdness witnesses. When menstruous she bawds; when clean she whores; And all her bawd or adulteress is."

And a tale is related of the Devout Woman and the Two Wicked Elders. 97