This tale is one of a group which may or may not have had a single archetype. Of the varieties, that which comes nearest is the first story in Straparola’s Eighth Day. Husband and wife are sitting near the entrance of their house one night; the husband says, It is time to go to bed, shut the door; she says, Shut it yourself. They make a compact that the one who speaks first shall shut the door. The wife, tired of silence and growing sleepy, goes to bed; the husband stretches himself on a bench. A gentleman’s servant, whose lantern has been put out by the wind, seeing the door open, asks for a light. There is no reply. Advancing a little way into the house, he finds the man lying on the bench with his eyes open, but can get no word from him though he shakes him. Looking round, he sees the woman in bed and addresses her, but she is as dumb as her husband; he gets into the bed. The woman says nothing till the intruder goes away; then calls out, A pretty man you, to leave the door open all night and let people get into your bed. Fool, he says, now go shut the door. The same, with insignificant divergences, in L’Élite des Contes du Sieur d’Ouville, Rouen, 1699, I, 159. A wedding-feast over, neither bridegroom nor bride will consent to shut the street-door; the lady proposes that the one who speaks first shall do this, to which the bridegroom agrees. They sit looking at each other in silence for two hours. Thieves, seeing the door open, come in, pillage the house, and even strip the young pair of everything valuable that they have on them, but neither says a word. In the morning a patrol of police find the house door open, enter, and make an inspection. The chief demands an explanation of the state of things; neither man nor woman vouchsafes a response, and he orders their heads off. The executioner is beginning with the husband; the wife cries out, Spare him! the husband exclaims, You have lost, go shut the door. (The Arabian tale of Sulayman Bey and the Three Story-Tellers, cited by Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 29.) Hemp-eaters, who have found a sequin and bought a mass of food, quarrel about fastening the gate of a tomb to which they have retired, to gorge unmolested. They come to an agreement that the man who first speaks shall close the gate. They let the victuals stand and sit mute. A troop of dogs rush in and eat all up clean. One of the party had secured some of the provender in advance of the rest, and bits are sticking to his mouth. A dog licks them away, and in so doing bites the lip of the fellow, who, in his pain, raps out a curse on the dog. The rest shout, Get up and shut the gate! (Turkish, Behrnauer, Die vierzig Veziere, p. 175 f.; Gibb, The History of the Forty Vezirs, p. 171 f.) In the second Pickelheringsspiel, in the first part of Engelische Comedien und Tragedien, 1620, a married pair contend again about the shutting of a door. (R. Köhler; not seen by me.)