Ages ago there was a great king, and he was wise. And he desired to lay laws unto his subjects.
He called upon one thousand wise men of one thousand different tribes to his capital and lay down the laws.
And all this came to pass.
But when the thousand laws written upon parchment were put before the king and he read them, he wept bitterly in his soul, for he had not known that there were one thousand forms of crime in his kingdom.
Then he called his scribe, and with a smile upon his mouth he himself dictated laws. And his laws were but seven.
And the one thousand wise men left him in anger and returned to their tribes with the laws they had laid down. And every tribe followed the laws of its wise men.
Therefore they have a thousand laws even to our own day.
It is a great country, but it has one thousand prisons, and the prisons are full of women and men, breakers of a thousand laws.
It is indeed a great country, but the people thereof are decendants of one thousand law-givers and of only one wise king.