"The People of Gotham Move West" is an English tale.

One day in Gotham, a few miles southwest of Nottingham in England, the villagers gathered in the square. The new king planned to visit the village that day, and they were there to greet his majesty.

It was a beautiful day. The sun shone in a bright blue sky, and a slight, chilly breeze blew. Then the barber looked west and saw the distant hills draped in snow.

"Look at that!" the barber cried. "The hills are glistening!"

"How beautiful!" sighed the barber's wife.

Soon everyone was oohing and ahhing. But they looked down at the ground, and saw only tufts of spindly grass and patches of dirt. And near the stream that ran through the village, they saw that the banks were nothing but mud.

"How I wish snow would cover this mess," said the village farrier. "My horses' hooves are so muddy."

"And my carriage is forever getting stuck in the mud," the grocer agreed. "How lovely it would be to have some snow here."

Everyone nodded. At that moment nothing seemed more pleasing than those faraway hills cloaked in snow.

"I have it," the mayor said, stroking his beard. "We'll move the village to the snow."

"Yes!" the barber agreed.

As the villagers discussed this plan, the king's servants were mingling among them, checking whether this place was safe for their new king's visit.

They overheard the baker say, "We must move west, of course."

The servants listened more closely, for this conversation was puzzling.

"West indeed!" said the mayor. "After all, the sun lives in the east. It's very hot there. Snow never falls in the east."

The servants stared at each other. "So these are the fools of Gotham," said the first servant.

"Indeed," the second servant whispered. "All those rumors must be true."

There had long been rumors about the people of Gotham. The tale tellers said the village was composed of lunatics and fools. There was the time when the men of Gotham heard a cuckoo calling from a field, signaling the start of spring. The people of Gotham decided they must capture spring and keep it, for it was such a lovely time of year. So they built a wall of hay bales around the cuckoo, who sat very still as they worked. At long last, the wall was finished. As they were cheering, the bird flew away.

The villagers of Gotham sighed and said, "If only we had built the wall higher."

And then there was the tale of the men of Gotham who were angry at an eel for eating the fish in their river.

How to punish that nasty eel? They argued and argued: Should they keep it in a windowless room? Should they hack it to pieces? At last they decided they would drown the wily eel, so they tossed it into the river to teach it a lesson.

The king's servants, standing among the people of Gotham, began to think the rumors must be true. They saw the barber looking east and heard him say, "The moon lives that way, too, of course. Imagine living in the east. Nothing but light all day and night."

"No one can live in such a place," the schoolteacher said. "It would never do for my pupils, who would never sleep, and those who do not sleep cannot learn."

"Indeed," everyone said.

"They are fools!" whispered the first servant.

"So it does seem," the second agreed.

But not everyone thought the people of Gotham were fools. They told the tale of another day when a king had planned to visit.

Whenever a king traveled across a piece of land, that land became his property, and that day, long ago, when the king's carriage arrived at the Gotham gate, the king and his men were greeted by a man who was tying a purse brimming with coins around a hare's neck.

"What are you doing?" the king's men asked. The man smiled. "Sending rent to the landlord in Newarke," he said, letting go of the hare, which dashed away as fast as it could.

"But that hare is heading the wrong way," one of the king's men pointed out.

"He must know a shortcut," said the man of Gotham. "He's likely staying off the roads for fear of the dogs."

The king was so upset by the man's stupidity that he had his men turn his carriage around to leave the place as fast as possible. "I do not wish to own a village of fools," he said, and thus the people of Gotham saved their village from becoming this king's property.

Rumors began to spread that the people of Gotham were in fact rather wise.

So now the new king's servants conferred. "What do you think?" the first man asked. "Wise men or fools?"

They looked up and saw that all the villagers were gathering at the eastern end of town, and pushing with all their strength against the tallest building.

The servants approached the mayor. "What are you people doing?" the servants asked.

"We're moving west," the mayor said. "We're moving to a place where snow falls."

The servants looked at each other. "Let us go tell the king our news," the first servant said.

"Indeed we shall," the second said.

"And tell the king to visit us after we've moved," said the mayor. "That way his wheels won't sink in the mud!"

The servants quickly rode their horses back to the palace to tell the king what they had witnessed.

"I do not wish to visit a village of fools," said the new king.

"We will stay here today."

So you decide, are the people of Gotham fools? Or are they, in fact, truly wise?