Town of fools

• Wise Men of Gotham hail from the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire
• German Schildbürger are residents of the fictional town of Schilda (as opposed to the actual Schilda municipality). Stories about them originated from a 1597 book Das Lalebuch about the residents of a fictional town of LaleburgWerner Wunderlich, "Schildbürgerstreiche. Bericht zur Lalebuch- und Schildbürgerforschung", In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, vol. 56, 1982, pp. 641–685.
• Greek residents of Abdera. The Philogelos, a Greek-language joke book compiled in the 4th century AD, has a chapter dedicated to jokes about dumb Abderans.{{Cite book |last= |first= |url=http://archive.org/details/jestshieroclesa00ohiogoog |title=The Jests of Hierocles and Philagrius |publisher=The Rowfant Club |year=1920 |location=Cleveland |pages=[https://archive.org/details/jestshieroclesa00ohiogoog/page/n56/mode/2up 50–55] |language=English |translator-last=Bubb |translator-first=Charles Clinch}}
• Example: An Abderan sees a eunuch talking to a woman and asks whether she is his wife. The eunuch replies that he is not able to have a wife. The man persists: "Perhaps she is your daughter?"
• Finnish residents of the fictional town of Hymylä
• Polish Jewish Wise Men of ChelmEdward Portnoy, [https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Wise_Men_of_Chelm Wise Men of Chelm], The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
• Danish Molbos (residents of Mols) famed for Molbo stories
• Kocourkov, a fictional Czech village of fools
• Fünsinger from the Fünsing village of fools, known, e.g., from Schwanks by the 16-th century German poet and playwright Hans Sachs
• Moidekars, the residents of the village of Moira in Goa, India.{{Citation|last=Rodrigues|first=Lucio|title=The Wise Fools of Moira and Other Goan Folk Tales|date=2020-08-20|url=https://archive.org/details/goan-folk-tales|access-date=2020-10-02}}
• The wisdom of the residents of the Dutch city of Kampen, Overijssel gave rise to the term {{ill|Kamper onion|lt="Kamper onion"|nl|Kamper ui}} (Kamper ui, plural: Kamper uien) for town-of-fools type stories.Rudolf M. Dekker, Humour in Dutch Culture of the Golden Age, [https://books.google.com/books?id=R2aADAAAQBAJ&pg=PA129 p.129]

• In Isaac Mayer Dick 1872 novel Di orkhim in Duratshesok/Duratshtshok (Visitors in Durachok) the "fool's town" is a fictional Russian town of Durachok, where the Russian word дурачок means "little fool". For some reason Dick decided to place Jewish simpletons in a Russian location.Ruth von Bernuth, How the Wise Men Got to Chelm: The Life and Times of a Yiddish Folk Tradition In the book Dick draws a comparison of Duratshesok with Chelm saying that Helm has a reputation of vilde harishkeyn (wild foolishness) and gives the examples thereof, which turn out to be retellings of Schildbürger stories and their imitations.

• Mendele Mocher Sforim set some of his stories in a fictional town of Glupsk ("Foolstown", from Russian, 'глупец' for "fool"). Dan Miron suggestsMikhail Krutikov [http://www.berdichev.org/krutikov1.html BERDICHEV IN RUSSIAN-JEWISH LITERACY IMAGINATION:From Israel Aksenfeld to Friedrich Gorenshteyn] that its prototype may be found in a fictional town Ksalon{{efn|not to be confused with real Ksalon}}, a Biblical name כְּסָלוֹן, Kesalon/Ksalon may allude to the Hebrew word kesil/ksil (כסיל), "fool",David G. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse. Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture, 1999, [https://books.google.com/books?id=P3J0DGYS-WcC&q=ksil p. 66] from his story Beseter ra'am ({{langx|he|בסתר רעם}}),{{efn|"Beseter ra'am" is a allusion to an expression in Psalms 81:7 [https://www.studylight.org/bible/eng/kjv/psalms/81-7.html Psalms 81:7] variously translated as "in the secret place of thunder", "hidden in thunder", etc.}} a satirical description of life in a shtetl in Russian Empire. Hillel Halkin gave his reasons why during his translation of Beseter ra'am he used the untranslated Hebrew name Ksalon instead of the "low hanging fruit" choice of "Foolsville".Hillel Halkin, "Adventures in Translating Mendele" , {{JSTOR|20689263}}

• Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin set a series of is satirical feuilletons in a fictional town of {{ill|Glupov|ru|Глупов}} ("Foolstown", from Russian, 'глупец' for "fool"), culminated in his novel The History of a Town.

• Blason populaire, an umbrella genre of jokes which make use stereotypes of a particular group
• "An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman"
• Ethnic jokes
• Land of Fools

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Category:Joke cycles

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