"Numskulls Cannot Find Their Own Legs" is a category of stories about fools known in several cultures. The name is from the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, ATU 1288. It is also classified as AT 1288 "Fools Cannot Find Their Own Legs" and in Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: J2021. "Numskulls cannot find their own legs". A typical plot goes as follows. A bunch of people after sitting together cannot stand up and go because they no longer know which leg belongs to whom. A passer-by sorts this out by beating them with a stick.
The Molbo story version may be found here.here It, together with several other Molbo stories, is also part of the 1898 the operetta "Molboerne" (The People of Mols) by composer and lyricist Herman Petersen.Bag om Molboerne
The version for children by Isaac Bashevis Singer, "The Mixed-Up Feet and the Silly Bridegroom", is about four daughters of a family in the town of fools, Chelm, who slept in a common bed and could not get out because of their feet mixed. The town elder recalled that such thing had happened before and the long stick helped that time. To prevent this from repeating, he also advised to marry the girls off, so that each will have her own bed.here and here
The Book of Noodles by W. A. Clouston mentions two such stories and compares it with that of "self-counting":The Book of Noodles
It is also the subject of the tale "How the Twelve Clever Brothers Got Their Feet Mixed Up," in The Twelve Clever Brothers and Other Fools: Folktales from Russia by Mirra Ginsburg (1979).
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