By the teller of stories, physical afflictions are nearly always treated humorously. It is the shuffling gait of the crippled man or the mistaken direction taken by the blind that appeals to his sense of the ludicrous. So it is concerning those who are hard of hearing. Antti Aarne has made an interesting study of the whole group of more than a dozen anecdotes concerned with mistakes made by the deaf and near-deaf. [323] All of these he has traced back to literary sources, and many of them have never become known to the folk tale teller. But several of them have attained a very considerable popularity. Among those especially beloved of the folk are the following four. In the first of these, two deaf persons meet. A inquires for his lost animals.—B talks about his work and makes a gesture.—A follows the direction of the gesture and happens to find the animals. He returns and offers an injured animal to B in thanks.—B thinks he is blamed for injuring the animal and a dispute arises which is taken to a deaf judge. The second may really be considered as a group of anecdotes, since it appears with some variation. The deaf workman keeps answering the traveler's courtesies with unsolicited remarks about his work. A third one rings various changes on the situation afforded by a buyer and a deaf seller. Usually, of course, the seller utterly disregards objections raised by the buyer, who gives in out of mere fatigue. Or the buyer promises the deaf man the payment of a beating. "Yes, it is certainly worth that," he replies. Last in this group is an anecdote in which the persons are not really deaf at all. A trickster tells each of two persons before they meet that the other is hard of hearing and must be shouted at. Such a great shouting takes place that each thinks the other out of his wits (X111; Type 1698). That such stories still have their vitality is witnessed by their frequent occurrence in drama and the cinema. [p. 212]