The Master Thief and The Treasure House of Rhampsinitus, two of the longer tales of robbery (Types 1525, 950), we have already noticed. There remain in addition a number of anecdotes about robbers sometimes connected with longer tales but frequently appearing as stories for their own sake. One of these has to do with the millstone or the door dropped from a tree on robbers who are counting their money below (K335.1.1; Type 1653).

This anecdote is frequently joined to the story of the literal-minded woman who is told to guard the door and who takes it off and carries it with her (K1413; Type 1009). Variations (K335.1.2.1; Type 1653B and K335.1.2.2; Type 1654**) tell how the robbers are frightened away by a corpse or a sham dead man. This whole group of incidents seems to come from Buddhistic literature in India and appears frequently in fabliaux and jestbooks. But they have become well established in oral folklore in many parts of the world. [p. 200]

Jestbooks have a long list of tales in which a thief presents a false order to the guardian of money or valuables. Some of these incidents appear in The Master Thief. Another of this class, well known as an independent oral tale, is the story about Long Winter (K362.1; Type 1541). A numskull has been told to keep his sausage "for the long winter." He talks about his instructions everywhere. A rascal hears this and comes to the door, introducing himself as Long Winter, and so receives the sausage. The details of the play upon words in this anecdote undergo the greatest variation, but the general idea is always the same, the trickster's taking advantage of the fool's babbling about his secret instructions. [308]

Anecdotes of the way in which a thief escapes detection assume a considerable variety of forms. In some of them, usually concerned with animal tales, the blame for the theft is fastened on a dupe. Many such incidents form a part of larger cycles, and many are purely literary and do not really belong to popular tradition at all. But some of these literary tales have their place in folklore. Such is the anecdote of the thief who steals a horse from the wagon while its owner sleeps. The thief hitches himself to the wagon and persuades the owner the next morning that he is really the horse, who has been transformed into a man overnight (K403; Type 1529). This literary tale comes from the Orient but is told in all parts of Europe and in North Africa, and has been reported from the Philippines. We shall meet other stories of cheating and swindling when we look into the tales told about animals.