Fear of mice avoid a mouse, showing there may be some basis for this belief. It is not known why elephants should react in this way, though there are several theories. Regardless, elephantine murophobia remains the basis of various jokes and metaphors. The classical board game Dou Shou Qi has the Rat kill an Elephant: as multiple editions of the rule book mentions that the Rat would crawl into the Elephant's ears to gnaw into its brain: but this is considered to be a folk tale. Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of murophobia, and is also invoked against rats and mice
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was attempts to learn fear, which eventually leads to his awareness of mortality. This tale type did not appear in any early literary collection but is heavily influenced by the medieval adventure of Sir Lancelot du Lac called "", where he spends a night in a haunted castle and undergoes almost the same ordeals as the youth. A father had two sons. The younger, when asked by his father what he would like to learn to support himself, said he would like to learn to shudder. A sexton told the father that he could teach the boy. After teaching him to