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The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
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I Man a Laughing Animal—Antiquity
of Popular Jests—’Night and
Day’—The
Plain-featured Bride—The House of Condolence—The
Blind Man’s
Wife—Two Witty Persian Ladies—Woman’s
Counsel—The
Turkish
Jester: in the Pulpit; the Cauldron; the Beggar;
the
Drunken
Governor; the Robber; the Hot Broth—Muslim
Preachers and
Misers
II The Two Deaf Men and the Traveller—The
Deaf Persian and the
Horseman—Lazy
Servants—Chinese Humour: The Rich Man
and the
Smiths;
How to keep Plants alive; Criticising a Portrait—The
Persian
Courtier and his old Friend—The Scribe—The
Schoolmaster
and the
Wit—The Persian and his Cat—A
List of Blockheads—The
Arab and
his Camel—A Witty Baghdadi—The
Unlucky Slippers
III The Young Merchant of Baghdad; or, the Wiles of Woman
IV Ashaab the Covetous—The
Stingy Merchant and the Hungry
Bedouin—The
Sect of Samradians—The Story-teller and
the
King—Royal
Gifts to Poets—The Persian Poet and the
Impostor—’Stealing
Poetry’—The Rich Man and the Poor
Poet
V Unlucky Omens—The
Old Man’s Prayer—The Old Woman in
the
Mosque—The
Weeping Turkmans—The Ten Foolish Peasants—The
Wakeful
Servant—The Three Dervishes—The
Oilman’s Parrot—The
Moghul and
his Parrot—The Persian Shopkeeper and the
Prime
Minister—Hebrew
Facetiae
TALES OF A PARROT.
I General Plan of Eastern
Story-books—The Tuti Nama, or
Parrot-Book—The
Frame-story—The Stolen Images—The
Woman carved
out of Wood—The
Man whose Mare was kicked by a Merchant’s Horse
II The Emperor’s Dream—The
Golden Apparition—The Four
Treasure-seekers
III The Singing Ass: the Foolish
Thieves: the Faggot-maker and the
Magic Bowl
IV The Goldsmith who lost his Life
through Covetousness—The King
who died
of Love for a Merchant’s Daughter—The
Discovery of
Music—The
Seven Requisites of a Perfect Woman
V The Princess of Rome and her Son—The Seven Vazirs
VI The Tree of Life—Legend of Raja Rasalu—Conclusion
ADDITIONAL NOTE:
The Magic
Bowl, etc.
I introductory: Authors, Traducers, and Moral Teachings of Talmud
II legends of some biblical characters:
Adam and Eve—Cain and
Abel—The
Planting of the Vine—Luminous Jewels—Abraham’s
Arrival
in Egypt—The Infamous Citizens of Sodom—Abraham
and
Ishmael’s
Wives—Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife—Joseph
and his
Brethren—Jacob’s
Sorrow—Moses and Pharaoh
III legends of David and Solomon, etc.
IV moral and entertaining tales:
Rabbi Jochonan and the Poor
Woman—A
Safe Investment—The Jewels—The
Capon-carver
V moral tales, Tables, and
parables: The Dutiful Son—An Ingenious
Will—Origin
of Beast-Fables—The Fox and the Bear—The
Fox in
the Garden—The
Desolate Island—The Man and his Three
Friends—The
Garments—Solomon’s Choice—Bride
and
Bridegroom—Abraham
and the Idols—The Vanity of Ambition—The
Seven Stages
of Human Life
VI wise sayings of the Rabbis
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Adam and
the Oil of Mercy
Muslim Legend
of Adam’s Punishment, Pardon, Death, and Burial
Moses and
the Poor Woodcutter
Precocious
Sagacity of Solomon
Solomon
and the Serpent’s Prey
The Capon-carver
The Fox
and the Bear
The Desolate
Island
Other Rabbinical
Legends and Tales
AN ARABIAN TALE OF LOVE.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
‘Wamik
and Asra’
Another
Famous Arabian Lover
ADDITIONAL NOTE:
Drinking
the Sea Dry
IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
INDEX.
Sketch of the life of the Persian poet Saadi—character of his writings—the “Gulistan”—Prefaces to books—preface to the “Gulistan”—Eastern poets in praise of springtide.
It is remarkable how very little the average general reader knows regarding the great Persian poet Saadi and his writings. His name is perhaps more or less familiar to casual readers from its being appended to one or two of his aphorisms which are sometimes reproduced in odd corners of popular periodicals; but who he was, when he lived, and what he wrote, are questions which would probably puzzle not a few, even of those who consider themselves as “well read,” to answer without first recurring to some encyclopaedia. Yet Saadi was assuredly one of the most gifted men of genius the world has ever known: a man of large and comprehensive intellect; an original and profound thinker; an acute observer of men and manners; and his works remain the imperishable monument of his genius, learning, and industry.
Maslahu ’d-Din Shaykh Saadi was born, towards the close of the twelfth century, at Shiraz, the famous capital of Fars, concerning which city the Persians have the saying that “if Muhammed had tasted the pleasures of Shiraz, he would have begged Allah to make him immortal there.” In accordance with the usual practice in Persia, he assumed as his takhallus, or poetical name,[1] Saadi, from his patron Atabag Saad bin Zingi, sovereign of Fars, who encouraged men of learning in his principality. Saadi is said to have lived upwards of a hundred years, thirty of which were passed in the acquisition of knowledge, thirty more in travelling through different countries, and the rest of his life he spent in retirement and acts of devotion. He died, in his native city, about the year 1291.
[1] One reason, doubtless,
for Persian and Turkish poets
adopting
a takhallus is the custom of the poet
introducing
his name into every ghazal he composes,
generally
towards the end; and as his proper name would
seldom
or never accommodate itself to purposes of verse
he
selects a more suitable one.
At one period of his life Saadi took part in the wars of the Saracens against the Crusaders in Palestine, and also in the wars for the faith in India. In the course of his wanderings he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by the Franks, in Syria, and was ransomed by a friend, but only to fall into worse thraldom by marrying a shrewish wife. He has thus related the circumstances:
“Weary of the society of my friends at Damascus, I fled to the barren wastes of Jerusalem, and associated with brutes, until I was made captive by the Franks, and forced to dig clay along with Jews in the fortress of Tripoli. One of the nobles of Aleppo, mine ancient friend, happened to pass that way and recollected me. He said: ’What a state is this to be in! How farest thou?’ I answered: ’Seeing that I could place confidence in God alone, I retired to the mountains and wilds, to avoid the society of man; but judge what must be my situation, to be confined in a stall, in company with wretches who deserve not the name of men. “To be confined by the feet with friends is better than to walk in a garden with strangers."’ He took compassion on my forlorn condition, ransomed me from the Franks for ten dinars,[2] and took me with him to Aleppo.
[2] A dinar is a gold coin,
worth about ten shillings of our
money.
“My friend had a daughter, to whom he married me, and he presented me with a hundred dinars as her dower. After some time my wife unveiled her disposition, which was ill-tempered, quarrelsome, obstinate, and abusive; so that the happiness of my life vanished. It has been well said: ’A bad woman in the house of a virtuous man is hell even in this world.’ Take care how you connect yourself with a bad woman. Save us, O Lord, from the fiery trial! Once she reproached me, saying: ’Art thou not the creature whom my father ransomed from captivity amongst the Franks for ten dinars?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered; ’he redeemed me for ten dinars, and enslaved me to thee for a hundred.’
“I heard that a man once rescued a sheep from the mouth of a wolf, but at night drew his knife across its throat. The expiring sheep thus complained: ’You delivered me from the jaws of a wolf, but in the end I perceive you have yourself become a wolf to me.’”
Sir Gore Ouseley, in his Biographical Notices of Persian Poets, states that Saadi in the latter part of his life retired to a cell near Shiraz, where he remained buried in contemplation of the Deity, except when visited, as was often the case, by princes, nobles, and learned men. It was the custom of his illustrious visitors to take with them all kinds of meats, of which, when Saadi and his company had partaken, the shaykh always put what remained in a basket suspended from his window, that the poor wood-cutters of Shiraz, who daily passed by his cell, might occasionally satisfy their hunger.
* * * * *
The writings of Saadi, in prose as well as verse, are numerous; his best known works being the Gulistan, or Rose-Garden, and the Bustan, or Garden of Odours. Among his other compositions are: an essay on Reason and Love; Advice to Kings; Arabian and Persian idylls, and a book of elegies, besides a large collection of odes and sonnets. Saadi was an accomplished linguist, and composed several poems in the languages of many of the countries through which he travelled. “I have wandered to various regions of the world,” he tells us, “and everywhere have I mixed freely with the inhabitants. I have gathered something in each corner; I have gleaned an ear from every harvest.” A deep insight into the secret springs of human actions; an extensive knowledge of mankind; fervent piety, without a taint of bigotry; a poet’s keen appreciation of the beauties of nature; together with a ready wit and a lively sense of humour, are among the characteristics of Saadi’s masterly compositions. No writer, ancient or modern, European or Asiatic, has excelled, and few have equalled, Saadi in that rare faculty for condensing profound moral truths into short, pithy sentences. For example:
“The remedy against want is to moderate your desires.”
“There is a difference between him who claspeth his mistress in his arms, and him whose eyes are fixed on the door expecting her.”
“Whoever recounts to you the faults of your neighbour will doubtless expose your defects to others.”
His humorous comparisons flash upon the reader’s mind with curious effect, occurring, as they often do, in the midst of a grave discourse. Thus he says of a poor minstrel: “You would say that the sound of his bow would burst the arteries, and that his voice was more discordant than the lamentations of a man for the death of his father;” and of another bad singer: “No one with a mattock can so effectually scrape clay from the face of a hard stone as his discordant voice harrows up the soul.”
Talking of music reminds me of a remark of the learned Gentius, in one of his notes on the Gulistan of Saadi, that music was formerly in such consideration in Persia that it was a maxim of their sages that when a king was about to die, if he left for his successor a very young son, his aptitude for reigning should be proved by some agreeable songs; and if the child was pleasurably affected, then it was a sign of his capacity and genius, but if the contrary, he should be declared unfit.—It would appear that the old Persian musicians, like Timotheus, knew the secret art of swaying the passions. The celebrated philosopher Al-Farabi (who died about the middle of the tenth century), among his accomplishments, excelled in music, in proof of which a curious anecdote is told. Returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca, he introduced himself, though a stranger, at the court of Sayfu ’d-Dawla, sultan of Syria, when a party of musicians chanced to be performing, and he joined them. The prince admired his skill, and, desiring to hear something of his own, Al-Farabi unfolded a composition, and distributed the parts amongst the band. The first movement threw the prince and his courtiers into violent laughter, the next melted all into tears, and the last lulled even the performers to sleep. At the retaking of Baghdad by the Turks in 1638, when the springing of a mine, whereby eight hundred jannisaries perished, was the signal for a general massacre, and thirty thousand Persians were put to the sword, a Persian musician named Shah-Kuli, who was brought before the sultan Murad, played and sang so sweetly, first a song of triumph, and then a dirge, that the sultan, moved to pity by the music, gave order to stop the slaughter.
To resume, after this anecdotical digression. Saadi gives this whimsical piece of advice to a pugnacious fellow: “Be sure, either that thou art stronger than thine enemy, or that thou hast a swifter pair of heels.” And he relates a droll story in illustration of the use and abuse of the phrase, “For the sake of God,” which is so frequently in the mouths of Muslims: A harsh-voiced man was reading the Kuran in a loud tone. A pious man passed by him and said: “What is thy monthly salary?” The other replied: “Nothing.” “Why, then, dost thou give thyself this trouble?” “I read for the sake of God,” he rejoined. “Then,” said the pious man, “for God’s sake don’t read.”
The most esteemed of Saadi’s numerous and diversified works is the Gulistan, or Rose-Garden. The first English translation of this work was made by Francis Gladwin, and published in 1808, and it is a very scarce book. Other translations have since been issued, but they are rather costly and the editions limited. It is strange that in these days of cheap reprints of rare and excellent works of genius no enterprising publisher should have thought it worth reproduction in a popular form. It is not one of those ponderous tomes of useless learning which
Unlike most of our learned old English authors, Saadi did not cast upon the world all that came from the rich mine of his genius, dross as well as fine gold, clay as well as gems. It is because they have done so that many ponderous tomes of learning and industry stand neglected on the shelves of great libraries. Time is too precious now-a-days, whatever may have been the case of our forefathers, for it to be dissipated by diving into the muddy waters of voluminous authors in hopes of finding an occasional pearl of wisdom. And unless some intelligent and painstaking compiler set himself to the task of separating the gold from the rubbish in which it is imbedded in those graves of learning, and present the results of his labour in an attractive form, such works are virtually lost to the world. For in these high-pressure days, most of us, “like the dogs in Egypt for fear of the crocodiles, must drink of the waters of knowledge as we run, in dread of the old enemy Time.”
Saadi, however, in his Gulistan sets forth only his well-pondered thoughts in the most felicitous and expressive language. There is no need to form an abstract or epitome of a work in which nothing is superfluous, nothing valueless. But, as in a cabinet of gems some are more beautiful than others, or as in a garden some flowers are more attractive from their brilliant hues and fragrant odours, so a selection may be made of the more striking tales and aphorisms of the illustrious Persian philosopher.
The preface to the Gulistan is one of the most pleasing portions of the whole book. Now prefaces are among those parts of books which are too frequently “skipped” by readers—they are “taken as read.” Why this should be so, I confess I cannot understand. For my part, I make a point of reading a preface at least twice: first, because I would know what reasons my author had for writing his book, and again, having read his book, because the preface, if well written, may serve also as a sort of appendix. Authors are said to bestow particular pains on their prefaces.
“It was the season of spring; the air was temperate and the rose in full bloom. The vestments of the trees resembled the festive garments of the fortunate. It was mid-spring, when the nightingales were chanting from their pulpits in the branches. The rose, decked with pearly dew, like blushes on the cheek of a chiding mistress. It happened once that I was benighted in a garden, in company with a friend. The spot was delightful: the trees intertwined; you would have said that the earth was bedecked with glass spangles, and that the knot of the Pleiades was suspended from the branch of the vine. A garden with a running stream, and trees whence birds were warbling melodious strains: that filled with tulips of various hues; these loaded with fruits of several kinds. Under the shade of its trees the zephyr had spread the variegated carpet.
“In the morning, when the desire to return home overcame our inclination to remain, I saw in my friend’s lap a collection of roses, odoriferous herbs, and hyacinths, which he intended to carry to town. I said: ’You are not ignorant that the flower of the garden soon fadeth, and that the enjoyment of the rose-bush is of short continuance; and the sages have declared that the heart ought not to be set upon anything that is transitory.’ He asked: ‘What course is then to be pursued?’ I replied: ’I am able to form a book of roses, which will delight the beholders and gratify those who are present; whose leaves the tyrannic arm of autumnal blasts can never affect, or injure the blossoms of its spring. What benefit will you derive from a basket of flowers? Carry a leaf from my garden: a rose may continue in bloom five or six days, but this Rose-Garden will flourish for ever.’ As soon as I had uttered these words, he flung the flowers from his lap, and, laying hold of the skirt of my garment, exclaimed: ’When the beneficent promise, they faithfully discharge their engagements.’ In the course of a few days two chapters were written in my note-book, in a style that may be useful to orators and improve the skill of letter-writers. In short, while the rose was still in bloom, the book called the Rose-Garden was finished.”
Dr. Johnson has remarked that “there is scarcely any poet of eminence who has not left some testimony of his fondness for the flowers, the zephyrs, and the warblers of the spring.” This is pre-eminently the case of Oriental poets, from Solomon downwards: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away,” exclaims the Hebrew poet in his Book of Canticles: “for lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green fruits, and the vines with the tender grapes give forth a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
In a Persian poem written in the 14th century the delights of the vernal season are thus described: “On every bush roses were blowing; on every branch the nightingale was plaintively warbling. The tall cypress was dancing in the garden; and the poplar never ceased clapping its hands with joy. With a loud voice from the top of every bough the turtle-dove was proclaiming the glad advent of spring. The diadem of the narcissus shone with such splendour that you would have said it was the crown of the Emperor of China. On this side the north wind, on that, the west wind, were, in token of affection, scattering dirhams at the feet of the rose.[3] The earth was musk-scented, the air musk-laden.”
[3] Referring to the custom
of throwing small coins among
crowds
in the street on the occasion of a wedding. A
dirham
is a coin nearly equal in value to sixpence of
our
money.
But it would be difficult to adduce from the writings of any poet, European or Asiatic, anything to excel the charming ode on spring, by the Turkish poet Mesihi, who flourished in the 15th century, which has been rendered into graceful English verse, and in the measure of the original, by my friend Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, in his dainty volume of Ottoman Poems, published in London a few years ago. These are some of the verses from that fine ode:
Hark! the bulbul’s[4] lay so joyous: “Now have come the days of spring!” Merry shows and crowds on every mead they spread, a maze of spring; There the almond-tree its silvery blossoms scatters, sprays of spring: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring![5]
Once again, with flow’rets decked themselves have mead and plain; Tents for pleasure have the blossoms raised in every rosy lane; Who can tell, when spring hath ended, who and what may whole remain? Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!
* * * * *
Sparkling dew-drops stud the lily’s leaf like sabre broad and keen; Bent on merry gipsy party, crowd they all the flow’ry green! List to me, if thou desirest, these beholding, joy to glean: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!
Rose and tulip, like to maidens’ cheeks, all beauteous show, Whilst the dew-drops, like the jewels in their ears, resplendent glow; Do not think, thyself beguiling, things will aye continue so: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!
* * * * *
Whilst each dawn the clouds are shedding jewels o’er the rosy land, And the breath of morning zephyr, fraught with Tatar musk, is bland; Whilst the world’s fair time is present, do not thou unheeding stand: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, biding not, the days of spring!
With the fragrance of the garden, so imbued the musky air, Every dew-drop, ere it reaches earth, is turned to attar rare; O’er the parterre spread the incense-clouds a canopy right fair: Gaily live! for soon will vanish, Biding not, the days of spring!
[4] The nightingale.
[5] In the original Turkish:
Dinleh bulbul kissa sen kim gildi eiyami behar! Kurdi her bir baghda hengamei hengami behar; Oldi sim afshan ana ezhari badami behar: Ysh u nush it kim gicher kalmaz bu eiyami behar.
Here we have an example of the redif, which is common in Turkish and Persian poetry, and “consists of one or more words, always the same, added to the end of every rhyming line in a poem, which word or words, though counting in the scansion, are not regarded as the true rhyme, which must in every case be sought for immediately before them. The lines—
There
shone such truth about thee,
I
did not dare to doubt thee—
furnish an example of this in English poetry.” In the opening verse of Mesihi’s ode, as above transliterated in European characters, the redif is “behar,” or spring, and the word which precedes it is the true rhyme-ending. Sir William Jones has made an elegant paraphrase of this charming ode, in which, however, he diverges considerably from the original, as will be seen from his rendering of the first stanza:
Hear
how the nightingale, on every spray,
Hails
in wild notes the sweet return of May!
The
gale, that o’er yon waving almond blows,
The
verdant bank with silver blossoms strows;
The
smiling season decks each flowery glade—
Be
gay; too soon the flowers of spring will fade.
This Turkish poet’s maxim, it will be observed, was “enjoy the present day”—the carpe diem of Horace, the genial old pagan. On the same suggestive theme of Springtide a celebrated Turkish poetess, Fitnet Khanim (for the Ottoman Turks have poetesses of considerable genius as well as poets), has composed a pleasing ode, addressed to her lord, of which the following stanzas are also from Mr. Gibb’s collection:
The fresh spring-clouds across all earth
their glistening pearls
profuse now sow;
The flowers, too, all appearing, forth
the radiance of their beauty
show;
Of mirth and joy ’tis now the time,
the hour, to wander to and fro;
The palm-tree o’er the fair ones’
pic-nic gay its grateful shade
doth throw.
O Liege, come forth! From end
to end with verdure doth the whole
earth glow;
’Tis springtide once again, once
more the tulips and the roses blow!
Behold the roses, how they shine, e’en
like the cheeks of maids
most fair;
The fresh-sprung hyacinth shows like to
beauties’ dark, sweet, musky
hair;
The loved one’s form behold, like
cypress which the streamlet’s bank
doth bear;
In sooth, each side for soul and heart
doth some delightful joy
prepare.
O Liege, come forth! From end
to end with verdure doth the whole
earth glow;
’Tis springtide once again, once
more the tulips and the roses blow!
The parterre’s flowers have all
bloomed forth, the roses, sweetly
smiling, shine;
On every side lorn nightingales, in plaintive
notes discerning, pine.
How fair carnation and wallflower the
borders of the garden line!
The long-haired hyacinth and jasmine both
around the cypress twine.
O Liege, come forth! From end
to end with verdure doth the whole
earth glow;
’Tis springtide once again, once
more the tulips and the roses blow!
I cannot resist the temptation to cite, in concluding this introductory paper, another fine eulogy of the delights of spring, by Amir Khusru, of Delhi (14th century), from his Mihra-i-Iskandar, which has been thus rendered into rhythmical prose:
“A day in spring, when all the world a pleasing picture seemed; the sun at early dawn with happy auspices arose. The earth was bathed in balmy dew; the beauties of the garden their charms displayed, the face of each with brilliancy adorned. The flowers in freshness bloomed; the lamp of the rose acquired lustre from the breeze; the tulip brought a cup from paradise; the rose-bower shed the sweets of Eden; beneath its folds the musky buds remained, like a musky amulet on the neck of Beauty. The violet bent its head; the fold of the bud was closer pressed; the opened rose in splendour glowed, and attracted every eye; the lovely flowers oppressed with dew in tremulous motion waved. The air o’er all the garden a silvery radiance threw, and o’er the flowers the breezes played; on every branch the birds attuned their notes, and every bower with warblings sweet was filled, so sweet, they stole the senses. The early nightingale poured forth its song, that gives a zest to those who quaff the morning goblet. From the turtle’s soft cooings love seized each bird that skimmed the air.”
STORIES FROM THE “GULISTAN.”
The Gulistan consists of short tales and anecdotes, to which are appended comments in prose and verse, and is divided into eight chapters, or sections: (1) the Morals of Kings; (2) the Morals of Dervishes; (3) the Excellence of Contentment; (4) the Advantages of Taciturnity; (5) Love and Youth; (6) Imbecility and Old Age; (7) the Effects of Education; (8) Rules for the Conduct of Life. In culling some of the choicest flowers of this perennial Garden, the particular order observed by Saadi need not be regarded here; it is preferable to pick here a flower and there a flower, as fancy may direct.
* * * * *
It may happen, says our author, that the prudent counsel of an enlightened sage does not succeed; and it may chance that an unskilful boy inadvertently hits the mark with his arrow: A Persian king, while on a pleasure excursion with a number of his courtiers at Nassala Shiraz, appointed an archery competition for the amusement of himself and his friends. He caused a gold ring, set with a valuable gem, to be fixed on the dome of Asad, and it was announced that whosoever should send an arrow through the ring should obtain it as a reward of his skill. The four hundred skilled archers forming the royal body-guard each shot at the ring without success. It chanced that a boy on a neighbouring house-top was at the same time diverting himself with a little bow, when one of his arrows, shot at random, went through the ring. The boy, having obtained the prize, immediately burned his bow, shrewdly observing that he did so in order that the reputation of this feat should never be impaired.
The advantage of abstinence, or rather, great moderation in eating and drinking, is thus curiously illustrated: Two dervishes travelled together; one was a robust man, who regularly ate three meals every day, the other was infirm of body, and accustomed to fast frequently for two days in succession. On their reaching the gate of a certain town, they were arrested on suspicion of being spies, and both lodged, without food, in the same prison, the door of which was then securely locked. Several days after, the unlucky dervishes were found to be quite innocent of the crime imputed to them, and on opening the door of the prison the strong man was discovered to be dead, and the infirm man still alive. At this circumstance the officers of justice marvelled; but a philosopher observed, that had the contrary happened it would have been more wonderful, since the one who died had been a great eater, and consequently was unable to endure the want of food, while the other, being accustomed to abstinence, had survived.
Of Nushirvan the Just (whom the Greeks called Chosroe), of the Sassanian dynasty of Persian kings—sixth century—Saadi relates that on one occasion, while at his hunting-seat, he was having some game dressed, and ordered a servant to procure some salt from a neighbouring village, at the same time charging him strictly to pay the full price for it, otherwise the exaction might become a custom. His courtiers were surprised at this order, and asked the king what possible harm could ensue from such a trifle. The good king replied: “Oppression was brought into the world from small beginnings, which every new comer increased, until it has reached the present degree of enormity.” Upon this Saadi remarks: “If the monarch were to eat a single apple from the garden of a peasant, the servant would pull up the tree by the roots; and if the king order five eggs to be taken by force, his soldiers will spit a thousand fowls. The iniquitous tyrant remaineth not, but the curses of mankind rest on him for ever.”
Only those who have experienced danger can rightly appreciate the advantages of safety, and according as a man has become acquainted with adversity does he recognise the value of prosperity—a sentiment which Saadi illustrates by the story of a boy who was in a vessel at sea for the first time, in which were also the king and his officers of state. The lad was in great fear of being drowned, and made a loud outcry, in spite of every effort of those around him to soothe him into tranquility. As his lamentations annoyed the king, a sage who was of the company offered to quiet the terrified youth, with his majesty’s permission, which being granted, he caused the boy to be plunged several times in the sea and then drawn up into the ship, after which the youth retired to a corner and remained perfectly quiet. The king inquired why the lad had been subjected to such roughness, to which the sage replied: “At first he had never experienced the danger of being drowned, neither had he known the safety of a ship.”
One of our English moralists has remarked that the man who chiefly prides himself on his ancestry is like a potato-plant, whose best qualities are under ground. Saadi tells us of an old Arab who said to his son: “O my child, in the day of resurrection they will ask you what you have done in the world, and not from whom you are descended.”—In the Akhlak-i-Jalaly, a work comprising the practical philosophy of the Muhammedans, written, in the 15th century, in the Persian language, by Fakir Jani Muhammed Asaad, and translated into English by W. F. Thompson, Ali, the Prophet’s cousin, is reported to have said:
My soul is my father, my title my worth;
A Persian or Arab, there’s little
between:
Give me him for a comrade, whatever his
birth,
Who shows what he is—not
what others have been.
An Arabian poet says:
Be the son of whom thou wilt, try to acquire
literature,
The acquisition of which may make pedigree
unnecessary to thee;
Since a man of worth is he who can say,
“I am so and so,”
Not he who can only say, “My father
was so and so.”
And again:
Ask not a man who his father was, but
make trial
Of his qualities, and then conciliate
or reject him accordingly
For it is no disgrace to new wine, if
it only be sweet,
As to its taste, that it was the juice
[or daughter] of sour grapes.
The often-quoted maxim of La Rochefoucauld, that there is something in the misfortunes of our friends which affords us a degree of secret pleasure, is well known to the Persians. Saadi tells us of a merchant who, having lost a thousand dinars, cautioned his son not to mention the matter to anyone, “in order,” said he, “that we may not suffer two misfortunes—the loss of our money and the secret satisfaction of our neighbours.”
A generous disposition is thus eloquently recommended: They asked a wise man, which was preferable, fortitude or liberality, to which he replied: “He who possesses liberality has no need of fortitude. It is inscribed on the tomb of Bahram-i-Gur that a liberal hand is preferable to a strong arm.” “Hatim Tai,” remarks Saadi, “no longer exists, but his exalted name will remain famous for virtue to eternity.[6] Distribute the tithe of your wealth in alms, for when the husbandman lops off the exuberant branches from the vine, it produces an increase of grapes.”
[6] Hatim was chief of the
Arabian tribe of Tai, shortly
before
Muhammed began to promulgate Islam, renowned for
his
extraordinary liberality.
Prodigality, however, is as much to be condemned as judicious liberality is to be lauded. Saadi gives the following account of a Persian prodigal son, who was not so fortunate in the end as his biblical prototype: The son of a religious man, who succeeded to an immense fortune by the will of his uncle, became a dissipated and debauched profligate, in so much that he left no heinous crime unpractised, nor was there any intoxicating drug which he had not tasted. Once I admonished him, saying: “O my son, wealth is a running stream, and pleasure revolves like a millstone; or, in other words, profuse expense suits him only who has a certain income. When you have no certain income, be frugal in your expenses, because the sailors have a song, that if the rain does not fall in the mountains, the Tigris will become a dry bed of sand in the course of a year. Practise wisdom and virtue, and relinquish sensuality, for when your money is spent you will suffer distress and expose yourself to shame."[7] The young man, seduced by music and wine, would not take my advice, but, in opposition to my arguments, said: “It is contrary to the wisdom of the sages to disturb our present enjoyments by the dread of futurity. Why should they who possess fortune suffer distress by anticipating sorrow? Go and be merry, O my enchanting friend! We ought not to be uneasy to-day for what may happen to-morrow. How would it become me, who am placed in the uppermost seat of liberality, so that the fame of my bounty
[7] Auvaiyar, the celebrated
poetess of the Tamils (in
Southern
India), who is said to have flourished in the
ninth
century, says, in her poem entitled Nalvali:
Mark
this: who lives beyond his means
Forfeits
respect, loses his sense;
Where’er
he goes through the seven births,
All
count him knave; him women scorn.
The incapacity of some youths to receive instruction is always a source of vexation to the pedagogue. Saadi tells us of a vazir who sent his stupid son to a learned man, requesting him to impart some of his knowledge to the lad, hoping that his mind would be improved. After attempting to instruct him for some time without effect, he sent this message to his father: “Your son has no capacity, and has almost distracted me. When nature has given capacity instruction will make impressions; but if iron is not of the proper temper, no polishing will make it good. Wash not a dog in the seven seas, for when he is wetted he will only be the dirtier. If the ass that carried Jesus Christ were to be taken to Mecca, at his return he would still be an ass.”
One of the greatest sages of antiquity is reported to have said that all the knowledge he had acquired merely taught him how little he did know; and indeed it is only smatterers who are vain of their supposed knowledge. A sensible young man, says Saadi, who had made considerable progress in learning and virtue, was at the same time so discreet that he would sit in the company of learned men without uttering a word. Once his father said to him: “My son, why do you not also say something you know?” He replied: “I fear lest they should question me about something of which I am ignorant, whereby I should suffer shame.”
The advantages of education are thus set forth by a philosopher who was exhorting his children: “Acquire knowledge, for in worldly riches and possessions no reliance can be placed.[8] Rank will be of no use out of your own country; and on a journey money is in danger of being lost, for either the thief may carry it off all at once, or the possessor may consume it by degrees. But knowledge is a perennial spring of wealth, and if a man of education cease to be opulent, yet he need not be sorrowful, for knowledge of itself is riches.[9] A man of learning, wheresoever he goes, is treated with respect, and sits in the uppermost seat, whilst the ignorant man gets only scanty fare and encounters distress.” There once happened (adds Saadi) an insurrection in Damascus, where every one deserted his habitation. The wise sons of a peasant became the king’s ministers, and the stupid sons of the vazir were reduced to ask charity in the villages. If you want a paternal inheritance, acquire from your father knowledge, for wealth may be spent in ten days.
[8] “All perishes except learning.”—Auvaiyar.
[9] “Learning is really
the most valuable treasure.—A wise
man
will never cease to learn.—He who has attained
learning
by free self-application excels other
philosophers.—Let
thy learning be thy best
friend.—What
we have learned in youth is like writing
cut
in stone.—If all else should be lost, what
we have
learned
will never be lost.—Learn one thing after
another,
but not hastily.—Though one is of low birth,
learning
will make him respected.”—Auvaiyar.
In the following charming little tale Saadi recounts an interesting incident in his own life: I remember that in my youth, as I was passing through a street, I cast my eyes on a beautiful girl. It was in the autumn, when the heat dried up all moisture from the mouth, and the sultry wind made the marrow boil in the bones, so that, being unable to support the sun’s powerful rays, I was obliged to take shelter under the shade of a wall, in hopes that some one would relieve me from the distressing heat, and quench my thirst with a draught of water. Suddenly from the portico of a house I beheld a female form whose beauty it is impossible for the tongue of eloquence to describe, insomuch that it seemed as if the dawn was rising in the obscurity of night, or as if the Water of Immortality was issuing from the Land of Darkness. She held in her hand a cup of snow-water, into which she had sprinkled sugar and mixed with it the juice of the grape. I know not whether what I perceived was the fragrance of rose-water, or that she had infused into it a few drops from the blossom of her cheek. In short, I received the cup from her beauteous hand, and, drinking the contents, found myself restored to new life. The thirst of my soul is not such that it can be allayed with a drop of pure water—the streams of whole rivers would not satisfy it. How happy is that fortunate one whose eyes every morning may behold such a countenance! He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the night; but he who is intoxicated by the cup-bearer will never recover his senses till the day of judgment.
Alas, poor Saadi! The lovely cup-bearer, who made such a lasting impression on the heart of the young poet, was not destined for his bride. His was indeed a sad matrimonial fate; and who can doubt but that the beauteous form of the stranger maiden would often rise before his mental view after he was married to the Xantippe who rendered some portion of his life unhappy!
Among the tales under the heading of “Imbecility and Old Age” we have one of “olde January that wedded was to freshe May,” which points its moral now as it did six hundred years ago: When I married a young virgin, said an old man, I bedecked a chamber with flowers, sat with her alone, and had fixed my eyes and heart solely upon her. Many long nights I passed without sleep, repeating jests and pleasantries, to remove shyness, and make her familiar. On one of these nights I said: “Fortune has been propitious to you, in that you have fallen into the society of an old man, of mature judgment, who has seen the world, and experienced various situations of good and bad fortune, who knows the rights of society, and has performed the duties of friendship;—one who is affectionate, affable, cheerful, and conversable. I will exert my utmost endeavours to gain your affection, and if you should treat me unkindly I will not be offended; or if, like the parrot, your food should be sugar, I will devote my sweet life to your support. You have not met with a youth of a rude disposition, with a weak understanding, headstrong, a gadder, who would be constantly changing his situations and inclinations, sleeping every night in a new place, and every day forming some new intimacy. Young men may be lively and handsome, but they are inconstant in their attachments. Look not thou for fidelity from those who, with the eyes of the nightingale, are every instant singing upon a different rose-bush. But old men pass their time in wisdom and good manners, not in the ignorance and frivolity of youth. Seek one better than yourself, and having found him, consider yourself fortunate. With one like yourself you would pass your life without improvement.” I spoke a great deal after this manner (continued the old man), and thought that I had made a conquest of her heart, when suddenly she heaved a cold sigh from the bottom of her heart, and replied: “All the fine speeches that you have been uttering have not so much weight in the scale of my reason as one single sentence I have heard from my nurse, that if you plant an arrow in the side of a young woman it is not so painful as the society of an old man.” In short (continued he), it was impossible to agree, and our differences ended in a separation. After the time prescribed by law, she married a young man of an impetuous temper, ill-natured, and in indigent circumstances, so that she suffered the injuries of violence, with the evils of penury. Nevertheless she returned thanks for her lot, and said: “God be praised that I escaped from infernal torment, and have obtained this permanent blessing. Amidst all your violence and impetuosity of temper, I will put up with your airs, because you are handsome. It is better to burn with you in hell than to be in paradise with the other. The scent of onions from a beautiful mouth is more fragrant than the odour of the rose from the hand of one who is ugly.”
It must be allowed that this old man put his own case to his young wife with very considerable address: yet, such is woman-nature, she chose to be “a young man’s slave rather than an old man’s darling.” And, apropos, Saadi has another story which may be added to the foregoing: An old man was asked why he did not marry. He answered: “I should not like an old woman.” “Then marry a young one, since you have property.” Quoth he: “Since I, who am an old man, should not be pleased with an old woman, how can I expect that a young one would be attached to me?”
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” says our great dramatist, in proof of which take this story: A certain king, when arrived at the end of his days, having no heir, directed in his will that the morning after his death the first person who entered the gate of the city they should place on his head the crown of royalty, and commit to his charge the government of the kingdom. It happened that the first to enter the city was a dervish, who all his life had collected victuals from the charitable and sewed patch on patch. The ministers of state and the nobles of the court carried out the king’s will, bestowing on him the kingdom and the treasure. For some time the dervish governed the kingdom, until part of the nobility swerved their necks from obedience to him, and all the neighbouring monarchs, engaging in hostile confederacies, attacked him with their armies. In short, the troops and peasantry were thrown into confusion, and he lost the possession of some territories. The dervish was distressed at these events, when an old friend, who had been his companion in the days of poverty, returned from a journey, and, finding him in such an exalted state, said: “Praised be the God of excellence and glory, that your high fortune has aided you and prosperity been your guide, so that a rose has issued from the brier, and the thorn has been extracted from your foot, and you have arrived at this dignity. Of a truth, joy succeeds sorrow; the bud does sometimes blossom and sometimes wither; the tree is sometimes naked and sometimes clothed.” He replied: “O brother, condole with me, for this is not a time for congratulation. When you saw me last, I was only anxious how to obtain bread; but now I have all the cares of the world to encounter. If the times are adverse, I am in pain; and if they are prosperous, I am captivated with worldly enjoyments. There is no calamity greater than worldly affairs, because they distress the heart in prosperity as well as in adversity. If you want riches, seek only for contentment, which is inestimable wealth. If the rich man would throw money into your lap, consider not yourself obliged to him, for I have often heard that the patience of the poor is preferable to the liberality of the rich.”
Muezzins, who call the faithful to prayer at the prescribed hours from the minarets of the mosques, are generally blind men, as a man with his eyesight might spy into the domestic privacy of the citizens, who sleep on the flat roofs of their houses in the hot season, and are selected for their sweetness of voice. Saadi, however, tells us of a man who performed gratuitously the office of muezzin, and had such a voice as disgusted all who heard it. The intendant of the mosque, a good, humane man, being unwilling to offend him, said one day: “My friend, this mosque has muezzins of long standing, each of whom has a monthly stipend of ten dinars. Now I will give you ten dinars to go to another place.” The man agreed to this and went away. Some time after he came to the intendant and said: “O, my lord, you injured me in sending me away from this station for ten dinars; for where I went they will give me twenty dinars to remove to another place, to which I have not consented.” The intendant laughed, and said: “Take care—don’t accept of the offer, for they may be willing to give you fifty.”
To those who have “music in their souls,” and are “moved by concord of sweet sounds,” the tones of a harsh voice are excruciating; and if among our statesmen and other public speakers “silver tongues” are rare, they are much more so among our preachers. The Church of Rome does not admit into the priesthood men who have any bodily shortcoming or defect; it would also be well if all candidates for holy orders in the English and Scottish Churches whose voices are not at least tolerable were rejected, as unfit to preach! Saadi seems to have had a great horror of braying orators, and relates a number of anecdotes about them, such as this: A preacher who had a detestable voice, but thought he had a very sweet one, bawled out to no purpose. You would say the croaking of the crow in the desert was the burden of his song, and that this verse of the Kuran was intended for him, “Verily the most detestable of sounds is the braying of an ass.” When this ass of a preacher brayed, it made Persepolis tremble. The people of the town, on account of the respectability of his office, submitted to the calamity, and did not think it advisable to molest him, until one of the neighbouring preachers, who was secretly ill-disposed towards him, came once to see him, and said: “I have had a dream—may it prove good!” “What did you dream?” “I thought you had a sweet voice, and that the people were enjoying tranquility from your discourse.” The preacher, after reflecting a little, replied: “What a happy dream is this that you have had, which has discovered to me my defect, in that I have an unpleasant voice, and that the people are distressed at my preaching. I am resolved that in future I will read only in a low tone. The company of friends was disadvantageous to me, because they look on my bad manners as excellent: my defects appear to them skill and perfection, and my thorn as the rose and the jasmin.”
Our author, as we have seen, enlivens his moral discourses occasionally with humorous stories, and one or two more of these may fittingly close the present section: One of the slaves of Amrulais having run away, a person was sent in pursuit of him and brought him back. The vazir, being inimical to him, commanded him to be put to death in order to deter other slaves from committing the like offence. The slave prostrated himself before Amrulais and said: “Whatever may happen to me with your approbation is lawful—what plea can the slave offer against the sentence of his lord? But, seeing that I have been brought up under the bounties of your house, I do not wish that at the resurrection you shall be charged with my blood. If you are resolved to kill your slave, do so comformably to the interpretation of the law, in order that at the resurrection you may not suffer reproach.” The king asked: “After what manner shall I expound it?” The slave replied: “Give me leave to kill the vazir, and then, in retaliation for him, order me to be put to death, that you may kill me justly.” The king laughed, and asked the vazir what was his advice in this matter. Quoth the vazir: “O my lord, as an offering to the tomb of your father, liberate this rogue, in order that I may not also fall into this calamity. The crime is on my side, for not having observed the words of the sages, who say, ’When you combat with one who flings clods of earth, you break your own head by your folly: when you shoot at the face of your enemy, be careful that you sit out of his aim.’”—And not a little wit, too, did the kazi exhibit when detected by the king in an intrigue with a farrier’s daughter, and his Majesty gave order that he should be flung from the top of the castle, “as an example for others”; to which the kazi replied: “O monarch of the universe, I have been fostered in your family, and am not singular in the commission of such crimes; therefore, I ask you to precipitate some one else, in order that I may benefit by the example.” The king laughed at his wit, and spared his life.—Nor is this tale without a spice of humour: An astrologer entered his house and finding a stranger in company with his wife abused him, and called him such opprobrious names that a quarrel and strife ensued. A shrewd man, being informed of this, said to the astrologer: “What do you know of the heavenly bodies, when you cannot tell what goes on in your own house?"[10]—Last, and perhaps best of all, is this one: I was hesitating about concluding a bargain for a house, when a Jew said: “I am an old householder in that quarter; inquire of me the description of the house, and buy it, for it has no fault.” I replied: “Excepting that you are one of the neighbours!”
[10] There is a similar story to
this in one of our old
English
jest-books, Tales and Quicke Answeres, 1535,
as
follows (I have modernised the spelling): As an
astronomer
[i.e. an astrologer] sat upon a time in the
market
place, and took upon him to divine and to show
what
their fortunes and chances should be that came to
him,
there came a fellow and told him (as it was indeed)
that
thieves had broken into his house, and had borne
away
all that he had. These tidings grieved him so
sore
that,
all heavy and sorrowfully, he rose up and went his
way.
When the fellow saw him do so, he said: “O
thou
foolish
and mad man! goest thou about to divine other
men’s
matters, and art ignorant of thine own?”
ANECDOTES AND APHORISMS FROM THE “GULISTAN,” WITH ANALOGUES—CONCLUSION.
Besides the maxims comprised in the concluding chapter of the Gulistan, under the heading of “Rules for the Conduct of Life,” many others, of great pith and moment, are interspersed with the tales and anecdotes which Saadi recounts in the preceding chapters, a selection of which can hardly fail to prove both instructive and interesting.
It is related that at the court of Nushirvan, king of Persia, a number of wise men were discussing a difficult question; and Buzurjmihr (his famous prime minister), being silent, was asked why he did not take part in the debate. He answered: “Ministers are like physicians, and the physician gives medicine to the sick only. Therefore, when I see your opinions are judicious, it would not be consistent with wisdom for me to obtrude my sentiments. When a matter can be managed without my interference it is not proper for me to speak on the subject. But if I see a blind man in the way of a well, should I keep silence it were a crime.” On another occasion, when some Indian sages were discoursing on his virtue, they could discover in him only this fault, that he hesitated in his speech, so that his hearers were kept a long time in suspense before he delivered his sentiments. Buzurjmihr overheard their conversation and observed: “It is better to deliberate before I speak than to repent of what I have said."[11]
[11] The sayings of Buzurjmihr,
the sagacious prime minister
of
King Nushirvan, are often cited by Persian writers,
and
a curious story of his precocity when a mere youth
is
told in the Lata’yif at-Taw’ayif,
a Persian
collection,
made by Al-Kashifi, of which a translation
will
be found in my “Analogues and Variants”
of the
Tales
in vol. iii of Sir R. F. Burton’s Supplemental
Arabian
Nights, pp. 567-9—too long for reproduction
here.
A parallel to this last saying of the Persian vazir is found in a “notable sentence” of a wise Greek, in this passage from the Dictes, or Sayings of Philosophers, printed by Caxton (I have modernised the spelling):
“There came before a certain king three wise men, a Greek, a Jew, and a Saracen, of whom the said king desired that each of them would utter some good and notable sentence. Then the Greek said: ’I may well correct and amend my thoughts, but not my words.’ The Jew said: ’I marvel of them that say things prejudicial, when silence were more profitable.’ The Saracen said: ’I am master of my words ere they are pronounced; but when they are spoken I am servant thereto.’ And it was asked one of them: ‘Who might be called a king?’ And he answered: ’He that is not subject to his own will.’”
The Dictes, or Sayings of Philosophers, of which, I believe, but one perfect copy is extant, was translated from the French by Earl Rivers, and printed by Caxton, at Westminister, in the year 1477, as we learn from the colophon. I am not aware that any one has taken the trouble to trace to their sources all the sayings comprised in this collection, but I think the original of the above is to be found in the following, from the preface to the Arabian version (from the Pahlavi, the ancient language of Persia) of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai, entitled Kalila wa Dimna, made in the year 754:
“The four kings of China, India, Persia, and Greece, being together, agreed each of them to deliver a saying which might be recorded to their honour in after ages. The king of China said: ’I have more power over that which I have not spoken than I have to recall what has once passed my lips.’ The king of India: ’I have been often struck with the risk of speaking; for if a man be heard in his own praise it is unprofitable boasting, and what he says to his own discredit is injurious in its consequences.’ The king of Persia: ’I am the slave of what I have spoken, but the master of what I conceal.’ The king of Greece: ’I have never regretted the silence which I had imposed upon myself; though I have often repented of the words I have uttered;[12] for silence is attended with advantage, whereas loquacity is often followed by incurable evils.’”
[12] Simonides used to say that
he never regretted having
held
his tongue, but very often had he felt sorry for
having
spoken.—Stobaeus: Flor. xxxiii,
12.
The Persian poet Jami—the last of the brilliant galaxy of genius who enriched the literature of their country, and who flourished two centuries after Saadi had passed to his rest—reproduces these sayings of the four kings in his work entitled Baharistan, or Abode of Spring, which is similar in design to the Gulistan.
Among the sayings of other wise men (whose names, however, Saadi does not mention) are the following: A devotee, who had quitted his monastery and become a member of a college, being asked what difference there is between a learned man and a religious man to induce him thus to change his associates, answered: “The devotee saves his own blanket out of the waves, and the learned man endeavours to save others from drowning.”—A young man complained to his spiritual guide of his studies being frequently interrupted by idle and impudent visitors, and desired to know by what means he might rid himself of the annoyance. The sage replied: “To such as are poor lend money, and of such as are rich ask money, and, depend upon it, you will never see one of them again.”
Saadi’s own aphorisms are not less striking and instructive. They are indeed calculated to stimulate the faltering to manly exertion, and to counsel the inexperienced. It is to youthful minds, however, that the “words of the wise” are more especially addressed; for it is during the spring-time of life that the seeds of good and evil take root; and so we find the sage Hebrew king frequently addressing his maxims to the young: “My son,” is his formula, “my son, attend to my words, and bow thine ear to my understanding; that thou mayest regard discretion, and that thy lips may keep knowledge.” And the “good and notable sentences” of Saadi are well worthy of being treasured by the young man on the threshold of life. For example:
“Life is snow, and the summer advanceth; only a small portion remaineth: art thou still slothful?”
This warning has been reiterated by moralists in all ages and countries;—the Great Teacher says: “Work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work.” And Saadi, in one of his sermons (which is found in another of his books), recounts this beautiful fable, in illustration of the fortunes of the slothful and the industrious:
It is related that in a certain garden a Nightingale had built his nest on the bough of a rose-bush. It so happened that a poor little Ant had fixed her dwelling at the root of this same bush, and managed as best she could to store her wretched hut of care with winter provision. Day and night was the Nightingale fluttering round the rose-bower, and tuning the barbut[13] of his soul-deluding melody; indeed, whilst the Ant was night and day industriously occupied, the thousand-songed bird seemed fascinated with his own sweet voice, echoing amidst the trees. The Nightingale was whispering his secret to the Rose,[14] and that, full-blown by the zephyr of the dawn, would ogle him in return. The poor Ant could not help admiring the coquettish airs of the Rose, and the gay blandishments of the Nightingale, and incontinently remarking: “Time alone can disclose what may be the end of this frivolity and talk!” After the flowery season of summer was gone, and the black time of winter was come, thorns took the station
“Thou wast day and night occupied in idle talk, and I in attending to the needful: one moment thou wast taken up with the fresh blandishment of the Rose, and the next busy in admiring the blossoming spring. Wast thou not aware that every summer has its fall and every road an end?"[15]
[13] The name of a musical instrument.
[14] The fancied love of the nightingale
for the rose is a
favourite
theme of Persian poets.
[15] Cf. the fable of Anianus:
After laughing all summer at
her
toil, the Grasshopper came in winter to borrow part
of
the Ant’s store of food. “Tell me,”
said the Ant,
“what
you did in the summer?” “I sang,”
replied the
Grasshopper.
“Indeed,” rejoined the Ant. “Then
you may
dance
and keep yourself warm during the winter.”
These are a few more of Saadi’s aphorisms:
Riches are for the comfort of life, and not life for the accumulation of riches.[16]
[16] Auvaiyar, the celebrated Indian
poetess, in her
Nalvali,
says:
Hark!
ye who vainly toil and wealth
Amass—O
sinful men, the soul
Will
leave its nest; where then will be
The
buried treasure that you lose?
The eye of the avaricious man cannot be satisfied with wealth, any more than a well can be filled with dew.
A wicked rich man is a clod of earth gilded.
The liberal man who eats and bestows is better than the religious man who fasts and hoards.
Publish not men’s secret faults, for by disgracing them you make yourself of no repute.
He who gives advice to a self-conceited man stands himself in need of counsel from another.
The vicious cannot endure the sight of the virtuous, in the same manner as the curs of the market howl at a hunting-dog, but dare not approach him.
When a mean wretch cannot vie with any man in virtue, out of his wickedness he begins to slander him. The abject, envious wretch will slander the virtuous man when absent, but when brought face to face his loquacious tongue becomes dumb.
O thou, who hast satisfied thy hunger, to thee a barley loaf is beneath notice;—that seems loveliness to me which in thy sight appears deformity.
The ringlets of fair maids are chains for the feet of reason, and snares for the bird of wisdom.
When you have anything to communicate that will distress the heart of the person whom it concerns, be silent, in order that he may hear it from some one else. O nightingale, bring thou the glad tidings of the spring, and leave bad news to the owl!
It often happens that the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin.
Covetousness sews up the eyes of cunning, and brings both bird and fish into the net.
Although, in the estimation of the wise, silence is commendable, yet at a proper season speech is preferable.[17]
[17] “Comprehensive talkers
are apt to be tiresome when we
are
not athirst for information; but, to be quite fair,
we
must admit that superior reticence is a good deal due
to
the lack of matter. Speech is often barren, but
silence
does not necessarily brood over a full nest.
Your
still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all
the
while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it
takes
to cackling will have nothing to announce but that
addled
delusion.”—George Eliot’s Felix
Holt.
Two things indicate an obscure understanding: to be silent when we should converse, and to speak when we should be silent.
Put not yourself so much in the power of your friend that, if he should become your enemy, he may be able to injure you.
* * * * *
Our English poet Young has this observation in his Night Thoughts:
Thought, in the mine, may come forth gold
or dross;
When coined in word, we know its real
worth.
He had been thus anticipated by Saadi: “To what shall be likened the tongue in a man’s mouth? It is the key of the treasury of wisdom. When the door is shut, who can discover whether he deals in jewels or small-wares?”
The poet Thomson, in his Seasons, has these lines, which have long been hackneyed:
Loveliness
Needs not the aid of foreign ornament,
But is when unadorned adorned the most.
Saadi had anticipated him also: “The face of the beloved,” he says, “requireth not the art of the tire-woman. The finger of a beautiful woman and the tip of her ear are handsome without an ear-jewel or a turquoise ring.” But Saadi, in his turn, was forestalled by the Arabian poet-hero Antar, in his famous Mu’allaka, or prize-poem, which is at least thirteen hundred years old, where he says: “Many a consort of a fair one, whose beauty required no ornaments, have I laid prostrate on the field.”
Yet one Persian poet, at least, namely, Nakhshabi, held a different opinion: “Beauty,” he says, “adorned with ornaments, portends disastrous events to our hearts. An amiable form, ornamented with diamonds and gold, is like a melodious voice accompanied by the rabab.” Again, he says: “Ornaments are the universal ravishers of hearts, and an upper garment for the shoulder is like a cluster of gems. If dress, however,” he concedes, “may have been at any time the assistant of beauty, beauty is always the animator of dress.” It is remarkable that homely-featured women dress more gaudily than their handsome sisters generally, thus unconsciously bringing their lack of beauty (not to put too fine a point on it) into greater prominence.
In common with other moralists, Saadi reiterates the maxim that learning and virtue, precept and practice, should ever go hand in hand. “Two persons,” says he, “took trouble in vain: he who acquired wealth without using it, and he who taught wisdom without practising it.” Again: “He who has acquired knowledge and does not practise it, is like unto him that ploughed but did not sow.” And again: “How much soever you may study science, when you do not act wisely, you are ignorant. The beast that they load with books is not profoundly wise and learned: what knoweth his empty skull whether he carrieth fire-wood or books?” And yet again: “A learned man without temperance is like a blind man carrying a lamp: he showeth the way to others, but does not guide himself.”
Ingratitude is denounced by all moralists as the lowest of vices. Thus Saadi says: “Man is beyond dispute the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is the dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man. A dog never forgets a morsel, though you pelt him a hundred times with stones. But if you cherish a mean wretch for an age, he will fight with you for a mere trifle.” In language still more forcible does a Hindu poet denounce this basest of vices: “To cut off the teats of a cow;[18] to occasion a pregnant woman to miscarry; to injure a Brahman—are sins of the most aggravated nature; but more atrocious than these is ingratitude.”
[18] The cow is sacred among the Hindus.
The sentiment so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb, “He who never reveals a secret keeps it best,” is thus finely amplified by Saadi: “The matter which you wish to preserve as a secret impart not to every one, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so true to your secret as yourself. It is safer to be silent than to reveal a secret to any one, and tell him not to mention it. O wise man! stop the water at the spring-head, for when it is in full stream you cannot arrest it."[19]
[19] Thus also Jami, in his Baharistan
(Second “Garden"):
“With
regard to a secret divulged and one kept
concealed,
there is in use an excellent proverb, that
the
one is an arrow still in our possession, and the
other
is an arrow sent from the bow.” And another
Persian
poet, whose name I have not ascertained,
eloquently
exclaims: “O my heart! if thou desirest
ease
in
this life, keep thy secrets undisclosed, like the
modest
rose-bud. Take warning from that lovely flower,
which,
by expanding its hitherto hidden beauties when in
full
bloom, gives its leaves and its happiness to the
winds.”
The imperative duty of active benevolence is thus inculcated: “Bestow thy gold and thy wealth while they are thine; for when thou art gone they will be no longer in thy power. Distribute thy treasure readily to-day, for to-morrow the key may be no longer in thy hand. Exert thyself to cast a covering over the poor, that God’s own veil may be a covering to thee.”
In the following passage the man of learning and virtue is contrasted with the stupid and ignorant blockhead:
“If a wise man, falling into company with mean people, does not get credit for his discourse, be not surprised, for the sound of the harp cannot overpower the noise of the drum, and the fragrance of ambergris is overcome by fetid garlic. The ignorant fellow was proud of his loud voice, because he had impudently confounded the man of understanding. If a jewel falls in the mud it is still the same precious stone,[20] and if dust flies up to the sky it retains its original baseness. A capacity without education is deplorable, and education without capacity is thrown away. Sugar obtains not its value from the cane, but from its innate quality. Musk has fragrance of itself, and not from being called a perfume by the druggist. The wise man is like the druggist’s chest, silent, but full of virtues; while the blockhead resembles the warrior’s drum, noisy, but an empty prattler. A wise man in the company of those who are ignorant has been compared by the sages to a beautiful girl in the company of blind men, and to the Kuran in the house of an infidel.”—The old proverb that “an evil bird has an evil egg” finds expression by Saadi thus: “No one whose origin is bad ever catches the reflection of the good.” Again, he says: “How can we make a good sword out of bad iron? A worthless person cannot by education become a person of any worth.” And yet again: “Evil habits which have taken root in one’s nature will only be got rid of at the hour of death.”
[20] Is such a thing as an emerald
made worse than it was if
it
is not praised?—Marcus Aurelius.
If
glass be used to decorate a crown,
While
gems are taken to bedeck a foot,
’Tis
not that any fault lies in the gem,
But
in the want of knowledge of the setter.
—Panchatantra, a famous Indian book of Fables.
Firdausi, the Homer of Persia (eleventh century), has the following remarks in his scathing satire on the sultan Mahmud, of Ghazni (Atkinson’s rendering):
Alas! from vice can goodness ever spring?
Is mercy hoped for in a tyrant king?
Can water wash the Ethiopian white?
Can we remove the darkness from the night?
The tree to which a bitter fruit is given
Would still be bitter in the bowers of
heaven;
And a bad heart keeps on its vicious course,
Or, if it changes, changes for the worse;
Whilst streams of milk where Eden’s
flow’rets blow
Acquire more honied sweetness as they
flow.
The striking words of the Great Teacher, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” find an interesting analogue in this passage by Saadi: “There is a saying of the Prophet, ’To the poor death is a state of rest.’ The ass that carries the lightest burden travels easiest. In like manner, the good man who bears the burden of poverty will enter the gate of death lightly loaded, while he who lives in affluence, with ease and comfort, will, doubtless, on that very account find death very terrible. And in any view, the captive who is released from confinement is happier than the noble who is taken prisoner.”
A singular anecdote is told of another celebrated Persian poet, which may serve as a kind of commentary on this last-cited passage: Faridu ’d-Din ’Attar, who died in the year 1229, when over a hundred years old, was considered the most perfect Sufi[21] philosopher of the time in which he lived. His father was an eminent druggist in Nishapur, and for a time Faridu ’d-Din followed the same profession, and his shop was the delight of all who passed by it, from the neatness of its arrangements and the fragrant odours of drugs and essences. ’Attar, which means druggist, or perfumer, Faridu ’d-Din adopted for his poetical title. One day, while sitting at his door with a friend, an aged dervish drew near, and, after looking anxiously and closely into the well-furnished shop, he sighed heavily and shed tears, as he reflected on the transitory nature of all earthly things. ’Attar, mistaking the sentiment uppermost in the mind of the venerable devotee, ordered him to be gone, to which he meekly rejoined: “Yes, I have nothing to prevent me from leaving thy door, or, indeed, from quitting this world at once, as my sole possession is this threadbare garment. But O ’Attar, I grieve for thee: for how canst thou ever bring thyself
[21] The Sufis are the mystics of
Islam, and their poetry,
while
often externally anacreontic—bacchanalian
and
erotic—possesses
an esoteric, spiritual signification:
the
sensual world is employed to symbolise that which is
to
be apprehended only by the inward sense.
Most of
the
great poets of Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey are
generally
understood to have been Sufis.
[22] Sir Gore Ouseley’s Biographical Notices of Persian Poets.
The death of Cardinal Mazarin furnishes another remarkable illustration of Saadi’s sentiment. A day or two before he died, the cardinal caused his servant to carry him into his magnificent art gallery, where, gazing upon his collection of pictures and sculpture, he cried in anguish, “And must I leave all these?” Dr. Johnson may have had Mazarin’s words in mind when he said to Garrick, while being shown over the famous actor’s splendid mansion: “Ah, Davie, Davie, these are the things that make a death-bed terrible!”
Few passages of Shakspeare are more admired than these lines:
And this our life, exempt from public
haunts,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running
brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.[23]
[23] Cf. these lines, from Herrick’s “Hesperides”:
But you are lovely leaves,
where we
May read, how soon things have
Their end, tho’ ne’er so brave;
And after they have shown their pride,
Like you, a while, they glide
Into the grave.
Saadi had thus expressed the same sentiment before him: “The foliage of a newly-clothed tree, to the eye of a discerning man, displays a whole volume of the wondrous works of the Creator.” Another Persian poet, Jami, in his beautiful mystical poem of Yusuf wa Zulaykha, says: “Every leaf is a tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying, ‘In the name of God.’"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu ’r-Rahman says: “Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb and blade of grass is a tongue to mutter his praises.” And Horace Smith, that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose, has thus finely amplified the idea of “tongues in trees”:
Your voiceless lips, O Flowers, are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers,
From loneliest nook.
’Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth
A call to prayer;—
Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,
But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,
Which God hath planned:
To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;
Its choir, the winds and waves, its organ, thunder,
Its dome, the sky.
There, amid solitude and shade, I wander
Through the green aisles, and, stretched upon the sod,
Awed by the silence, reverently ponder
The ways of God.
[24] “In the name of God”
is part of the formula employed by
pious Muslims in their acts of worship, and
on entering
upon any enterprise of danger or
uncertainty—bi’smi’llahi
ar-rahman ar-rahimi, “In the
name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!”
These
words are usually placed at the beginning
of Muhammedan
books, secular as well as religions; and they
form part
of the Muslim Confession of Faith, used in
the last
extremity: “In the name of God,
the Merciful, the
Compassionate! There is no strength nor
any power save
in God, the High, the Mighty. To God
we belong, and
verily to him we return!”
* * * * *
When Saadi composed his Gulistan, in 1278, he was between eighty and ninety years of age, with his great mind still vigorous as ever; and he lived many years after, beloved and revered by the poor, whose necessities he relieved, and honoured and esteemed by the noble and the learned, who frequently visited the venerable solitary, to gather and treasure up the pearls of wisdom which dropped from his eloquent tongue. Like other poets of lofty genius, he possessed a firm assurance of the immortality of his fame. “A rose,” says he, “may continue to bloom for five or six days, but this Rose-Garden will flourish for ever”; and again: “These verses and recitals of mine will endure after every particle of my dust has been dispersed.” Six centuries have passed away since the gifted sage penned his Gulistan, and his fame has not only continued in his own land and throughout the East generally, but has spread into all European countries, and across the Atlantic, where long after the days of Saadi “still stood the forests primeval.”
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter shaking both his sides.—L’
Allegro.
MAN A LAUGHING ANIMAL—ANTIQUITY OF POPULAR
JESTS—“NIGHT AND DAY”—THE
PLAIN-FEATURED BRIDE—THE HOUSE OF CONDOLENCE—THE
BLIND MAN’S WIFE—TWO
WITTY PERSIAN LADIES—WOMAN’S COUNSEL—THE
TURKISH JESTER: IN THE
PULPIT; THE CAULDRON; THE BEGGAR; THE DRUNKEN GOVERNOR;
THE ROBBER; THE
HOT BROTH—MUSLIM PREACHERS AND MUSLIM MISERS.
Certain philosophers have described man as a cooking animal, others as a tool-making animal, others, again, as a laughing animal. No creature save man, say the advocates of the last definition, seems to have any “sense of humour.” However this may be, there can be little doubt that man in all ages of which we have any knowledge has possessed that faculty which perceives ridiculous incongruities in the relative positions of certain objects, and in the actions and sayings of individuals, which we term the “sense of the ludicrous.” It is not to be supposed that a dog or a cat—albeit intelligent creatures, in their own ways—would see anything funny or laughable in a man whose sole attire consisted in a general’s hat and sash and a pair of spurs! Yet that should be enough to “make even a cat laugh”! Certainly laughter is peculiar to our species; and gravity is as certainly not always a token of profound wisdom; for
The gravest beast’s an ass;
The gravest bird’s an
owl;
The gravest fish’s an oyster;
And the gravest man’s
a fool.
Many of the great sages of antiquity were also great humorists, and laughed long and heartily at a good jest. And, indeed, as the Sage of Chelsea affirms, “no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether, irreclaimably bad. How much lies in laughter!—the cipher key wherewith we decipher the whole man!... The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.” Let us, then, laugh at what is laughable while we are yet clothed in “this muddy vesture of decay,” for, as delightful Elia asks, “Can a ghost laugh? Can he shake his gaunt sides if we be merry with him?”
It is a remarkable fact that a considerable proportion of the familiar jests of almost any country, which are by its natives fondly believed to be “racy of the soil,” are in reality common to other peoples widely differing in language and customs. Not a few of these jests had their origin ages upon ages since—in Greece, in Persia, in India. Yet they must have set out upon their travels westward at a comparatively early period, for they have been long domiciled in almost every country of Europe. Nevertheless, as we ourselves possess a goodly number of droll witticisms, repartees, and jests, which are most undoubtedly and beyond cavil our own—such as many of those which are ascribed to Sam Foote, Harry Erskine, Douglas Jerrold, and Sydney Smith; though they have been credited with some that are as old as the jests of Hierokles—so there exist
* * * * *
To begin, then—place aux dames! In most Asiatic countries the ladies are at a sad discount in the estimation of their lords and masters, however much the latter may expatiate on their personal charms, and in Eastern jests this is abundantly shown. For instance, a Persian poet, through the importunity of his friends, had married an old and very ugly woman, who turned out also of a very bad temper, and they had constant quarrels. Once, in a dispute, the poet made some comparisons between his aged wife and himself and between Night and Day. “Cease your nonsense,” said she; “night and day were created long before us.” “Hold a little,” said the husband. “I know they were created long before me, but whether before you, admits of great doubt!” Again, a Persian married, and, as is customary with Muslims, on the marriage night saw his bride’s face for the first time, when she proved to be very ugly—perhaps “plain-looking” were the more respectful expression. A few days after the nuptials, she said to him: “My life! as you have many relatives, I wish you would inform me before which of them I may unveil.” (Women of rank in Muslim countries appear unveiled only before very near relations.) “My soul!” responded the husband, “if thou wilt but conceal thy face from me, I care not to whom thou showest it.” And there is a grim sort of humour in the story of the poor Arab whose wife was going on a visit of condolence, when he said to her: “My dear, if you go, who is to take care of the children, and what have you left for them to eat?” She replied: “As I have neither flour, nor milk, nor butter, nor oil, nor anything else, what can I leave?” “You had better stay at home, then,” said the poor man; “for assuredly this is the true house of condolence.” And also in the following: A citizen of Tawris, in comfortable circumstances, had a daughter so very ugly that nothing could induce any one to marry her. At length he resolved to bestow her on a blind man, hoping that, not seeing her personal defects, he would be kind to her. His plan succeeded, and the blind man lived very happily with his wife. By-and-by, there arrived in the city a doctor who was celebrated for restoring sight to many people, and the girl’s father was urged by his friends to engage this skilled man to operate upon his son-in-law, but he replied: “I will take care to do nothing of the kind; for if this doctor should restore my son-in-law’s eyesight, he would very soon restore my daughter to me!”
But occasionally ladies are represented as giving witty retorts, as in the story of the Persian lady who, walking in the street, observed a man following her, and turning round enquired of him: “Why do you follow me, sir?” He answered: “Because I am in love with you.” “Why are you in love with me?” said the lady. “My sister is much handsomer than I; she is coming after me—go and make love to her.” The fellow went back and saw a woman with an exceedingly ugly face, upon which he at once went after the lady, and said to her: “Why did you tell me what was not true?” “Neither did you speak the truth,” answered she; “for if you were really in love with me, you would not have turned to see another woman.” And the Persian poet Jami, in his Baharistan, relates that a man with a very long nose asked a woman in marriage, saying: “I am no way given to sloth, or long sleeping, and I am very patient in bearing vexations.” To which she replied: “Yes, truly: hadst thou not been patient in bearing vexations thou hadst not carried that nose of thine these forty years.”
The low estimation in which women are so unjustly held among Muhammedans is perhaps to be ascribed partly to the teachings of the Kuran in one or two passages, and to the traditional sayings of the Apostle Muhammad, who has been credited (or rather discredited) with many things which he probably never said. But this is not peculiar to the followers of the Prophet of Mecca: a very considerable proportion of the Indian fictions represent women in an unfavourable light—fictions, too, which were composed long before the Hindus came in contact with the Muhammedans. Even in Europe, during mediaeval times, maugre the “lady fair” of chivalric romance, it was quite as much the custom to decry women, and to relate stories of their profligacy, levity, and perversity, as ever it has been in the East. But we have changed all that in modern times: it is only to be hoped that we have not gone to the other extreme!—According to an Arabian writer, cited by Lane, “it is desirable, before a man enters upon any important undertaking, to consult ten intelligent persons among his particular friends; or if he have not more than five such friends let him consult each twice; or if he have not more than one friend he should consult him ten times, at ten different visits [he would be ‘a friend indeed,’ to submit to so many consultations on the same subject]; if he have not one to consult let him return to his wife and consult her, and whatever she advises him to do let him do the contrary, so shall he proceed rightly in his affair and attain his object."[25] We may suppose this Turkish story, from the History of the Forty Vezirs, to be illustrative of the wisdom of such teaching: A man went on the roof of his house to repair it, and when he was about to come down he called to his wife, “How should I come down?” The woman answered, “The roof is free; what would happen? You are a young
[25] “Bear in mind,”
says Thorkel to Bork, in the Icelandic
saga
of Gisli the Outlaw, “bear in mind that a woman’s
counsel
is always unlucky.”—On the other hand,
quoth
Panurge,
“Truly I have found a great deal of good in the
counsel
of women, chiefly in that of the old wives among
them.”
* * * * *
In the Turkish collection of jests ascribed to Khoja Nasru ’d-Din Efendi[26] is the following, which has been reproduced amongst ourselves within comparatively recent years, and credited to an Irish priest:
One day the Khoja went into the pulpit of a mosque to preach to the people. “O men!” said he, “do you know what I should say unto you?” They answered: “We know not, Efendi.” “When you do know,” said the Khoja, “I shall take the trouble of addressing you.” The next day he again ascended into the pulpit, and said, as before: “O men! do you know what I should say unto you?” “We do know,” exclaimed they all with one voice. “Then,” said he, “what is the use of my addressing you, since you already know?” The third day he once more went into the pulpit, and asked the same question. The people, having consulted together as to the answer they should make, said: “O Khoja, some of us know, and some of us do not know.” “If that be the case, let those who know tell those who do not know,” said the Khoja, coming down. A poor Arab preacher was once, however, not quite so successful. Having “given out,” as we say, for his text, these words, from the Kuran, “I have called Noah,” and being unable to collect his thoughts, he repeated, over and over again, “I have called Noah,” and finally came to a dead stop; when one of those present shouted, “If Noah will not come, call some one else.” Akin to this is our English jest of the deacon of a dissenting chapel in Yorkshire, who undertook, in the vanity of his heart, to preach on the Sunday, in place of the pastor, who was ill, or from home. He conducted the devotional exercises fairly well, but when he came to deliver his sermon, on the text, “I am the Light of the world,” he had forgot what he intended to say, and continued to repeat these words, until an old man called out, “If thou be the light o’ the world, I think thou needs snuffin’ badly.”
[26] The Khoja was contemporary
with the renowned conqueror
of
nations, Timur, or Timurleng, or, as the name is
usually
written in this country, Tamarlane, though there
does
not appear to be any authority that he was the
official
jester at the court of that monarch, as some
writers
have asserted. The pleasantries ascribed to the
Khoja—the
title now generally signifies Teacher, or
School-master,
but formerly it was somewhat equivalent
to
our “Mr,” or, more familiarly, “Goodman”—have
been
completely
translated into French. Of course, a large
proportion
of the jests have been taken from Arabian and
Persian
collections, though some are doubtless genuine;
and
they represent the Khoja as a curious compound of
shrewdness
and simplicity. A number of the foolish
sayings
and doings fathered on him are given in my Book
of
Noodles, 1888.
To return to the Turkish jest-book. One day the Khoja borrowed a cauldron from a brazier, and returned it with a little saucepan inside. The owner, seeing the saucepan, asked: “What is this?” Quoth the Khoja: “Why, the cauldron has had a young one”; whereupon the brazier, well pleased, took possession of the saucepan. Some time after this the Khoja again borrowed the cauldron and took it home. At the end of a week the brazier called at the Khoja’s house and asked for his cauldron. “O set your mind at rest,” said the Khoja; “the cauldron is dead.” “O Khoja,” quoth the brazier, “can a cauldron die?” Responded the Khoja: “Since you believed it could have a young one, why should you not also believe that it could die?”
The Khoja had a pleasant way of treating beggars. One day a man knocked at his door. “What do you want?” cried the Khoja from above. “Come down,” said the man. The Khoja accordingly came down, and again said: “What do you want?” “I want charity,” said the man. “Come up stairs,” said the Khoja. When the beggar had come up, the Khoja said: “God help you”—the customary reply to a beggar when one will not or cannot give him anything. “O master,” cried the man, “why did you not say so below?” Quoth the Khoja: “When I was above stairs, why did you bring me down?”
Drunkenness is punished (or punishable) by the infliction of eighty strokes of the bastinado in Muslim countries, but it is only flagrant cases that are thus treated, and there is said to be not a little private drinking of spirits as well as of wine among the higher classes, especially Turks and Persians. It happened that the governor of Suricastle lay in a state of profound intoxication in a garden one day, and was thus discovered by the Khoja, who was taking a walk in the same garden with his friend Ahmed. The Khoja instantly stripped him of his ferage, or upper garment, and, putting it on his own back, walked away. When the governor
Even being robbed could not disturb the Khoja’s good humour. When he was lying in bed one night a loud noise was heard in the street before his house. Said he to his wife: “Get up and light a candle, and I will go and see what is the matter.” “You had much better stay where you are,” advised his wife. But the Khoja, without heeding her words, put the counterpane on his shoulders and went out. A fellow, on perceiving him, immediately snatched the counterpane from off the Khoja’s shoulders and ran away. Shivering with cold, the Khoja returned into the house, and when his wife asked him the cause of the noise, he said: “It was on account of our counterpane; when they got that, the noise ceased at once.”
But in the following story we have a very old acquaintance in a new dress: One day the Khoja’s wife, in order to plague him, served up some exceedingly hot broth, and, forgetting what she had done, put a spoonful of it in her mouth, which so scalded her that the tears came into her eyes. “O wife,” said the Khoja, “what is the matter with you—is the broth hot?” “Dear Efendi,” said she, “my mother, who is now dead, loved broth very much; I thought of that, and wept on her account.” The Khoja, thinking that what she said was truth, took a spoonful of the broth, and, it burning his mouth, he began to bellow. “What is the matter with you?” said his wife. “Why do you cry?” Quoth the Khoja: “You cry because your mother is gone, but I cry because her daughter is here."[27]
[27] This is how the same story
is told in our oldest English
jest-book,
entitled A Hundred Mery Talys (1525): A
certain
merchant and a courtier being upon a time at
dinner,
having a hot custard, the courtier, being
somewhat
homely of manner, took part of it and put it in
his
mouth, which was so hot that it made him shed tears.
The
merchant, looking on him, thought that he had been
weeping,
and asked him why he wept. This courtier, not
willing
it to be known that he had brent his mouth with
the
hot custard, answered and said, “Sir,”
quod he, “I
had
a brother which did a certain offence, wherefore he
was
hanged.” The merchant thought the courtier
had said
true,
and anon, after the merchant was disposed to eat
of
the custard, and put a spoonful of it into his mouth,
* * * * *
Many of the Muslim jests, like some our of own, are at the expense of poor preachers. Thus: there was in Baghdad a preacher whom no one attended after hearing him but once. One Friday when he came down from the pulpit he discovered that the only one who remained in the mosque was the muezzin—all his hearers had left him to finish his discourse as, and when, he pleased—and, still worse, his slippers had also disappeared. Accusing the muezzin of having stolen them, “I am rightly served by your suspicion,” retorted he, “for being the only one that remained to hear you.”—In Gladwin’s Persian Moonshee we read that whenever a certain learned man preached in the mosque, one of the congregation wept constantly, and the preacher, observing this, concluded that his words made a great impression on the man’s heart. One day some of the people said to the man: “That learned man makes no impression on our minds;—what kind of a heart have you, to be thus always in tears?” He answered: “I do not weep at his discourse, O Muslims. But I had a goat of which I was very fond, and when he grew old he died. Now, whenever the learned man speaks and wags his beard I am reminded of my goat, for he had just such a voice and beard."[28] But they are not always represented as mere dullards; for example: A miserly old fellow once sent a Muslim preacher a gold ring without a stone, requesting him to put up a prayer for him from the pulpit. The holy man prayed that he should have in Paradise a golden palace without a roof. When he descended from the pulpit, the man went to him, and, taking him by the hand, said: “O preacher, what manner of prayer is that thou hast made for me?” “If thy ring had had a stone,” replied the preacher, “thy palace should also have had a roof.”
[28] What may be an older form of
this jest is found in the
Katha
Manjari, a Canarese collection, where a wretched
singer
dwelling next door to a poor woman causes her to
weep
and wail bitterly whenever he begins to sing, and
on
his asking her why she wept, she explains that his
“golden
voice” recalled to her mind her donkey that died
a
month ago.—The story had found its way to
our own
country
more than three centuries since. In Mery Tales
and
Quicke Answeres (1535), under the title “Of
the
Friar
that brayde in his Sermon,” the preacher reminds
a
“poure
wydowe” of her ass—all that her husband
had left
her—which
had been devoured by wolves, for so the ass
was
wont to bray day and night.
Apropos of misers, our English facetiae books furnish many examples of their ingenuity in excusing themselves from granting favours asked of them by their acquaintances; and, human nature being much the same everywhere, the misers in the East are represented as being equally adroit, as well as witty, in parrying such objectionable requests. A Persian who had a very miserly friend went to him one day, and said: “I am going on a journey; give me your ring, which I will constantly wear, and whenever I look on it, I shall remember you.” The other answered: “If you wish to remember me, whenever you see your finger without my ring upon it, always think of me, that I did not give you my ring.” And quite as good is the story of the dervish who said to the miser that he wanted something of him; to which he replied: “If you will consent to a request of mine, I will consent to whatever else you may require”; and when the dervish desired to know what it was, he said: “Never ask me for anything and whatever else you say I will perform.”
THE TWO DEAF MEN AND THE TRAVELLER—THE
DEAF PERSIAN AND THE
HORSEMAN—LAZY SERVANTS—CHINESE
HUMOUR: THE RICH MAN AND THE SMITHS;
HOW TO KEEP PLANTS ALIVE; CRITICISING A PORTRAIT—THE
PERSIAN COURTIER
AND HIS OLD FRIEND—THE SCRIBE—THE
SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIT—THE
PERSIAN AND HIS CAT—A LIST OF BLOCKHEADS—THE
ARAB AND HIS CAMEL—A
WITTY BAGHDADI—THE UNLUCKY SLIPPERS.
It is well known that deaf men generally dislike having their infirmity alluded to, and even endeavour to conceal it as much as possible. Charles Lamb, or some other noted wit, seeing a deaf acquaintance on the other side of the street one day while walking with a friend, stopped and motioned to him; then opened his mouth as if speaking in a loud tone, but saying not a word. “What are you bawling for?” demanded the deaf one. “D’ye think I can’t hear?”—Two Eastern stories I have met with are most diverting examples of this peculiarity of deaf folks. One is related by my friend Pandit Natesa Sastri in his Folk-Lore of Southern India, of which a few copies were recently issued at Bombay.[29] A deaf man was sitting one day where three roads crossed, when a neatherd happened to pass that way. He had lately lost a good cow and a calf, and had been seeking them some days. When he saw the deaf man sitting by the way he took him for a soothsayer, and asked him to find out by his knowledge of magic where the cow would likely be found. The herdsman was also very deaf, and the other, without hearing what he had said, abused him, and said he wished to be left undisturbed, at the same time stretching out his hand and pointing at his face. This pointing the herd supposed to indicate the direction where the lost cow and calf should be sought; thus thinking (for he, too, had not heard a word of what the other man had said to him),
[29] Messrs. W. H. Allen & Co.,
London, have in the press a
new
edition of this work, to be entitled “Tales
of the
Sun;
or, Popular Tales of Southern India.”
I am
confident
that the collection will be highly appreciated
by
many English readers, while its value to
story-comparers
can hardly be over-rated.
The other story is of a deaf Persian who was taking home a quantity of wheat, and, coming to a river which he must cross, he saw a horseman approach; so he said to himself: “When that horseman comes up, he will first salute me, ‘Peace be with thee’; next he will ask, ’What is the depth of this river?’ and after that he will ask, how many mans of wheat I have with me.” (A man is a Persian weight, which seems to vary in different places.) But the deaf man’s surmises were all in vain; for when the horseman came up to him, he cried: “Ho! my man, what is the depth of this river?” The deaf one replied: “Peace be with thee, and the mercy of Allah and his blessing.” At this the horseman laughed, and said: “May they cut off thy beard!” The deaf one rejoined: “To my neck and bosom.” The horseman said: “Dust be on thy mouth!” The deaf man answered: “Eighty mans of it.”
* * * * *
The laziness of domestics is a common complaint in this country at the present day, but surely never was there a more lazy servant than the fellow whose exploits are thus recorded: A Persian husbandman one night desired his servant to shut the door, and the man said it was already shut. In the morning his master bade him open the door, and he coolly replied that, foreseeing this request, he had left it open the preceding night. Another night his master bade him rise and see whether it rained. But he called for the dog that lay at the door, and finding his paws dry, answered that the night was fair; then being desired to see whether the fire was extinguished, he called the cat, and finding her paws cold, replied in the affirmative.—This story had gained currency in Europe in the 13th century, and it forms one of the mediaeval Latin Stories edited, for the Percy Society, by Thos. Wright, where it is entitled, “De Maimundo Armigero.” There is another Persian story of a lazy fellow whose master, being sick, said to him: “Go and get me some medicine.” “But,” rejoined he, “it may happen that the doctor is not at home.” “You will find him at home.” “But if I do find him at home he may not give me the medicine,” quoth the servant. “Then take this note to him and he will give it to you.” “Well,” persisted the fellow, “he may give me the medicine, but suppose it does you no good?” “Villain!” exclaimed his master, out of all patience, “will you do as I bid you, instead of sitting there so coolly, raising difficulties?” “Good sir,” reasoned this lazy philosopher, “admitting that the medicine should produce some effect, what will be the ultimate result? We must all die some time, and what does it matter whether it be to-day or to-morrow?”
* * * * *
The Chinese seem not a whit behind other peoples in appreciating a good jest, as has been shown by the tales and bon mots rendered into French by Stanislas Julien and other eminent savans. Here are three specimens of Chinese humour:
A wealthy man lived between the houses of two blacksmiths, and was constantly annoyed by the noise of their hammers, so that he could not get rest, night or day. First he asked them to strike more gently; then he made them great promises if they would remove at once. The two blacksmiths consented, and he, overjoyed to get rid of them, prepared a grand banquet for their entertainment. When the banquet was over, he asked them where they were going to take up their new abodes, and they replied—to the intense dismay of their worthy host, no doubt: “He who lives on the left of your house is going to that on the right; and he who lives on your right is going to the house on your left.”
There is a keen satirical hit at the venality of Chinese judges in our next story. A husbandman, who wished to rear a particular kind of vegetable, found that the plants always died. He consulted an experienced gardener as to the best means of preventing the death of plants. The old man replied: “The affair is very simple; with every plant put down a piece of money.” His friend asked what effect money could possibly have in a matter of this kind. “It is the case now-a-days,” said the old man, “that where there is money life is safe, but where there is none death is the consequence.”
The tale of Apelles and the shoemaker is familiar to every schoolboy, but the following story of the Chinese painter and his critics will be new to most readers: A gentleman having got his portrait painted, the artist suggested that he should consult the passers-by as to whether it was a good likeness. Accordingly he asked the first that was going past: “Is this portrait like me?” The man said: “The cap is very like.” When the next was asked, he said: “The dress is very like.” He was about to ask a third, when the painter stopped him, saying: “The cap and the dress do not matter much; ask the person what he thinks of the face.” The third man hesitated a long time, and then said: “The beard is very like.”
* * * * *
And now we shall revert once more to Persian jests, many of which are, however, also current in India, through the medium of the Persian language. When a man becomes suddenly rich it not unfrequently follows that he becomes as suddenly oblivious of his old friends. Thus, a Persian having obtained a lucrative appointment at court, a friend of his came shortly afterwards to congratulate him thereon. The new courtier asked him: “Who are you? And why do you come here?” The other coolly replied: “Do you not know me, then? I am your old friend, and am come to condole with you, having heard that you had lately lost your sight.”—This recalls the clever epigram:
When Jack was poor, the lad was frank
and free;
Of late he’s grown brimful
of pride and pelf;
You wonder that he don’t remember
me?
Why, don’t you see,
Jack has forgot himself!
The humour of the following is—to me, at least—simply exquisite: A man went to a professional scribe and asked him to write a letter for him. The scribe said that he had a pain in his foot. “A pain in your foot!” echoed the man. “I don’t want to send you to any place that you should make such an excuse.” “Very true,” said the scribe; “but, whenever I write a letter for any one, I am always sent for to read it, because no one else can make it out.”—And this is a very fair specimen of ready wit: During a season of great drought in Persia, a schoolmaster at the head of his pupils marched out of Shiraz to pray (at the tomb of some saint in the suburbs) for rain, when they were met by a waggish fellow, who inquired where they were going. The preceptor informed him, and added that, no doubt, Allah would listen to the prayers of innocent children. “Friend,” quoth the wit, “if that were the case, I fear there would not be a schoolmaster left alive.”
The “harmless, necessary cat” has often to bear the blame of depredations in which she had no share—especially the “lodging-house cat”; and, that such is the fact in Persia as well as nearer our own doors, let a story related by the celebrated poet Jami serve as evidence: A husband gave a man of meat to his wife, bidding her cook it for his dinner. The woman roasted it and ate it all herself, and when her husband asked for the meat she said the cat had stolen it. The husband weighed the cat forthwith, and found that she had not increased in weight by eating so much meat; so, with a hundred perplexing thoughts, he struck his hand on his knee, and, upbraiding his wife, said: “O lady, doubtless the cat, like the meat, weighed one man; the meat would add another man thereto. This point is not clear to me—that two mans should become one man. If this is the cat, where is the meat? And if this is the meat, why has it the form of the cat?”
Readers of our early English jest-books will perhaps remember the story of a court-jester being facetiously ordered by the king to make out a list of all the fools in his dominions, who replied that it would be a much easier task to write down a list of all the wise men. I fancy there is some trace of this incident in the following Persian story, though the details are wholly different: Once upon a time a party of merchants exhibited to a king some fine horses, which pleased him so well that he bought them, and gave the merchants besides a large sum of money to pay for more horses which they were to bring from their own country. Some time after this the king, being merry with wine, said to his chief vazir: “Make me out a list of all the blockheads in my kingdom.” The vazir replied that he had already made out such a list, and had put his Majesty’s name at the top. “Why so?” demanded the king. “Because,” said the vazir, “you gave a great sum of money for horses to be brought by merchants for whom no person is surety, nor does any one know to what country they belong; and this is surely a sign of stupidity.” “But what if they should bring the horses?” The vazir readily replied: “If they should bring the horses, I should then erase your Majesty’s name and put the names of the merchants in its place."[30]
[30] A similar incident is found
in the 8th chapter of the
Spanish
work, El Conde Lucanor, written, in the 14th
century,
by Prince Don Juan Manuel, where a pretended
alchemist
obtains from a king a large sum of money in
order
that he should procure in his own distant country
a
certain thing necessary for the transmutation of the
baser
metals into gold. The impostor, of course, did
not
return,
and so on, much the same as in the above.—Many
others
of Don Manuel’s tales are traceable to Eastern
sources;
he was evidently familiar with the Arabic
Everybody knows the story of the silly old woman who went to market with a cow and a hen for sale, and asked only five shillings for the cow, but ten pounds for the hen. But no such fool was the Arab who lost his camel, and, after a long and fruitless search, anathematised the errant quadruped and her father and her mother, and swore by the Prophet that, should he find her, he would sell her for a dirham (sixpence). At length his search was successful, and he at once regretted his oath; but such an oath must not be violated, so he tied a cat round the camel’s neck, and went about proclaiming: “I will sell this camel for a dirham, and this cat for a hundred dinars (fifty pounds); but I will not sell one without the other.” A man who passed by and heard this exclaimed: “What a very desirable bargain that camel would be if she had not such a collar round her neck!"[31]
[31] A variant of this occurs in
the Heptameron, an
uncompleted
work in imitation of the Decameron,
ascribed
to Marguerite, queen of Navarre (16th century),
but
her valet de chambre Bonaventure des Periers
is
supposed
to have had a hand in its composition. In Novel
55
it is related that a merchant in Saragossa on his
death-bed
desired his wife to sell a fine Spanish horse
for
as much as it would fetch and give the money to the
mendicant
friars. After his death his widow did not
approve
of such a legacy, but, in order to obey her late
husband’s
will, she instructed a servant to go to the
market
and offer the horse for a ducat and her cat for
ninety-nine
ducats, both, however, to be sold together.
A
gentleman purchased the horse and the cat, well
knowing
that the former was fully worth a hundred
ducats,
and the widow handed over one ducat—for
which
the
horse was nominally sold—to the mendicant
friars.
For readiness of wit the Arabs would seem to compare very favourably with any race, European or Asiatic, and many examples of their felicitous repartees are furnished by native historians and grammarians. One of the best is: When a khalif was addressing the people in a mosque on his accession to the khalifate, and told them, among other things in his own praise, that the plague which had so long raged in Baghdad had ceased immediately he became khalif; an old fellow present shouted: “Of a truth, Allah was too merciful to give us both thee and the plague at the same time.”
* * * * *
The story of the Unlucky Slippers in Cardonne’s Melanges de Litterature Orientale is a very good specimen of Arabian humour:[32]
[32] Cardonne took this story from
a Turkish work entitled
“Aja’ib
el-ma’asir wa ghara’ib en-nawadir (the
Wonders
of
Remarkable Incidents and Rarities of Anecdotes),”
by
Ahmed
ibn Hemdem Khetkhody, which was composed for
Sultan
Murad IV, who reigned from A.D. 1623 to 1640.
In former times there lived in the famous city of Baghdad a miserly old merchant named Abu Kasim. Although very rich, his clothes were mere rags; his turban was of coarse cloth, and exceedingly dirty; but his slippers were perfect curiosities—the soles were studded with great nails, while the upper leathers consisted of as many different pieces as the celebrated ship Argos. He had worn them during ten years, and the art of the ablest cobblers in Baghdad had been exhausted in preventing a total separation of the parts; in short, by frequent accessions of nails and patches they had become so heavy that they passed into a proverb, and anything ponderous was compared to Abu Kasim’s slippers. Walking one day in the great bazaar, the purchase of a large quantity of crystal was offered to this merchant, and, thinking it a bargain, he bought it. Not long after this, hearing that a bankrupt perfumer had nothing left to sell but some rose-water, he took advantage of the poor man’s misfortune, and purchased it for half the value. These lucky speculations had put him into good humour, but instead of giving an entertainment, according to the custom of merchants when they have made a profitable bargain, Abu Kasim deemed it more expedient to go to the bath, which he had not frequented for some time. As he was undressing, one of his acquaintances told him that his slippers made him the laughing-stock of the whole city, and that he ought to provide himself with a new pair. “I have been thinking about it,” he answered; “however, they are not so very much worn but they will serve some time longer.” While he was washing himself, the kazi of Baghdad came also to bathe. Abu Kasim, coming out before the judge, took up his clothes but could not find his slippers—a new pair being placed in their room. Our miser, persuaded, because he wished it, that the friend who had spoken to him about his old slippers had made him a present, without hesitation put on these fine ones, and left the bath highly delighted. But when the kazi had finished bathing, his servants searched in vain for his slippers; none could be found but a wretched pair, which were at once identified as those of Abu Kasim. The officers hastened after the supposed thief, and, bringing him back with the theft on his feet, the kazi, after exchanging slippers, committed him to prison. There was no escaping from the claws of justice without money, and, as Abu Kasim was known to be very rich, he was fined in a considerable sum.
On returning home, our merchant, in a fit of indignation, flung his slippers into the Tigris, that ran beneath his window. Some days after they were dragged out in a fisherman’s net that came up more heavy than usual. The nails with which the soles were thickly studded had torn the meshes of the net, and the fisherman, exasperated against the miserly Abu Kasim and his slippers—for they were known to everyone—determined to throw them into his house through the window he had left open. The slippers, thrown with great force, reached the jars of rose-water, and smashed them in pieces, to the intense consternation of the owner. “Cursed slippers!” cried he, tearing his beard, “you shall cause me no farther mischief!” So saying, he took a spade and began to dig a hole in his garden to bury them. One of his neighbours, who had long borne him ill-will, perceiving him busied in digging the ground, ran at once to inform the governor that Abu Kasim had discovered some hidden treasure in his garden. Nothing more was needful to rouse the cupidity of the commandant. In vain did our miser protest that he had found no treasure; and that he only meant to bury his old slippers. The governor had counted on the money, so the afflicted man could only preserve his liberty at the expense of a large sum of money. Again heartily cursing the slippers, in order to effectually rid himself of them, he threw them into an aqueduct at some distance from the city, persuaded that he should now hear no more of them. But his evil genius had not yet sufficiently plagued him: the slippers got into the mouth of the pipe and stopped the flow of the water. The keepers of the aqueduct made haste to repair the damage, and, finding the obstruction was caused by Abu Kasim’s slippers, complained of this to the governor, and once more was Abu Kasim heavily fined, but the governor considerately returned him the slippers. He now resolved to burn them, but, finding them thoroughly soaked with water, he exposed them to the sun upon the terrace of his house. A neighbour’s dog, perceiving the slippers, leaped from the terrace of his master’s house upon that of Abu Kasim, and, seizing one of them in his mouth, he let it drop into the street: the fatal slipper fell directly on the head of a woman who was passing at the time, and the fright as well as the violence of the blow caused her to miscarry. Her husband brought his complaint before the kazi, and Abu Kasim was again sentenced to pay a fine proportioned to the calamity he was supposed to have occasioned. He then took the slippers in his hand, and, with a vehemence that made the judge laugh, said: “Behold, my lord, the fatal instruments of my misfortune! These cursed slippers have at length reduced me to poverty. Vouchsafe, therefore, to publish an order that no one may any more impute to me the disasters they may yet occasion.” The kazi could not refuse his request, and thus Abu Kasim learned, to his bitter cost, the danger of wearing his slippers too long.
THE YOUNG MERCHANT OF BAGHDAD; OR, THE WILES OF WOMAN.
Too many Eastern stories turn upon the artful devices of women to screen their own profligacy, but there is one, told by Arab Shah, the celebrated historian, who died A.D. 1450, in a collection entitled Fakihat al-Khalifa, or Pastimes of the Khalifs, in which a lady exhibits great ingenuity, without any very objectionable motive. It is to the following effect:
A young merchant in Baghdad had placed over the front of his shop, instead of a sentence from the Kuran, as is customary, these arrogant words: “VERILY THERE IS NO CUNNING LIKE UNTO THAT OF MAN, SEEING IT SURPASSES THE CUNNING OF WOMEN.” It happened one day that a very beautiful young lady, who had been sent by her aunt to purchase some rich stuffs for dresses, noticed this inscription, and at once resolved to compel the despiser of her sex to alter it. Entering the shop, she said to him, after the usual salutations: “You see my person; can anyone presume to say that I am humpbacked?” He had hardly recovered from the astonishment caused by such a question, when the lady drew her veil a little to one side and continued: “Surely my neck is not as that of a raven, or as the ebony idols of Ethiopia?” The young merchant, between surprise and delight, signified his assent. “Nor is my chin double,” said she, still farther unveiling her face; “nor my lips thick, like those of a Tartar?” Here the young merchant smiled. “Nor are they to be believed who say that my nose is flat and my cheeks are sunken?” The merchant was about to express his horror at the bare idea of such blasphemy, when the lady wholly removed her veil and allowed her beauty to flash upon the bewildered youth, who instantly became madly in love with her. “Fairest of creatures!” he cried, “to what accident do I owe the view of those charms, which are hidden from the eyes of the less fortunate of my sex?” She replied: “You see in me an unfortunate damsel, and I shall explain the cause of my present conduct. My mother, who was sister to a rich amir of Mecca, died some years ago, leaving my father in possession of an immense fortune and myself as sole heiress. I am now seventeen, my personal endowments are such as you behold, and a very small portion of my mother’s fortune would quite suffice to obtain for me a good establishment in marriage. Yet such is the unfeeling avarice of my father, that he absolutely refuses me the least trifle to settle me in life. The only counsellor to whom I could apply for help in this extremity was my kind nurse, and it is by her advice, as well as from the high opinion I have ever heard expressed of your merits, that I have been induced to throw myself upon your goodness in this extraordinary manner.” The emotions of the young merchant on hearing this story, may be readily imagined. “Cruel parent!” he exclaimed. “He must be a rock of the desert, not a man, who can condemn so charming a person to perpetual solitude, when the slightest possible sacrifice on his part might prevent it. May I inquire his name?” “He is the chief kazi,” replied the lady, and disappeared like a vision.
The young merchant lost no time in waiting on the kazi at his court of justice, whom he thus addressed: “My lord, I am come to ask your daughter in marriage, of whom I am deeply enamoured.” Quoth the judge: “Sir, my daughter is unworthy of the honour you design for her. But be pleased to accompany me to my dwelling, where we can talk over this matter more at leisure.” They proceeded thither accordingly, and after partaking of refreshments, the young man repeated his request, giving a true account of his position and prospects, and offering to settle fifteen purses on the young lady. The kazi expressed his gratification, but doubted whether the offer was made in all seriousness, but when assured that such was the case, he said: “I no longer doubt your earnestness and sincerity in this affair; it is, however, just possible that your feelings may change after the marriage, and it is but natural that I should now take proper precautions for my daughter’s welfare. You will not blame me, therefore, if, in addition to the fifteen purses you have offered, I require that five more be paid down previous to the marriage, to be forfeited in case of a divorce.” “Say ten,” cried the merchant, and the kazi looked more and more astonished, and even ventured to remonstrate with him on his precipitancy, but without effect. To be brief, the kazi consented, the ten purses were paid down, the legal witnesses summoned, and the nuptial contract signed that very evening; the consummation of the marriage being, much against the will of our lover, deferred till the following day.
When the wedding guests had dispersed, the young merchant was admitted to the chamber of his bride, whom he discovered to be humpbacked and hideous beyond conception! As soon as it was day, he arose from his sleepless couch and repaired to the public baths, where, after his ablutions, he gave himself up to melancholy reflections. Mingled with grief for his disappointment was mortification at having been the dupe of what now appeared to him a very shallow artifice, which nothing but his own passionate and unthinking precipitation could have rendered plausible. Nor was he without some twinges of conscience for the sarcasms which he had often uttered against women, and for which his present sufferings were no more than a just retribution. Then came meditations of revenge upon the beautiful author of all this mischief; and then his thoughts reverted to the possible means of escape from his difficulties: the forfeiture of the ten purses, to say nothing of the implacable resentment of the kazi and his relatives; and he bethought himself how he should become the talk of his neighbourhood—how Malik bin Omar, the jeweller, would sneer at him, and Salih, the barber, talk sententiously of his folly. At length, finding reflection of no avail, he arose and with slow and pensive steps proceeded to his shop.
His marriage with the kazi’s deformed daughter had already become known to his neighbours, who presently came to rally him upon his choice of such a bride, and scarcely had they left when the young lady who had so artfully tricked him entered with a playful smile on her lips, and a glancing in her dark eye, which speedily put to flight the young merchant’s thoughts of revenge. He arose and greeted her courteously. “May this day be propitious to thee!” said she. “May Allah protect and bless thee!” Replied he: “Fairest of earthly creatures, how have I offended thee that thou shouldst make me the subject of thy sport?” “From thee,” she said, “I have received no personal injury.” “What, then, can have been thy motive for practising so cruel a deception on one who has never harmed thee?” The young lady simply pointed to the inscription over the shop front. The merchant was abashed, but felt somewhat relieved on seeing good humour beaming from her beautiful eyes, and he immediately took down the inscription, and substituted another, which declared that “TRULY THERE IS NO CUNNING LIKE UNTO THE CUNNING OF WOMEN, SEEING IT SURPASSES AND CONFOUNDS EVEN THE CUNNING OF MEN.” Then the young lady communicated to him a plan by which he might get rid of his objectionable bride without incurring her father’s resentment, which he forthwith put into practice.
Next morning, as the kazi and his son-in-law were taking their coffee together, in the house of the former, they heard a strange noise in the street, and, descending to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, found that it proceeded from a crowd of low fellows—mountebanks, and such like gentry, who had assembled with all sorts of musical instruments, with which they kept up a deafening din, at the same time dancing and capering about, and loudly felicitating themselves on the marriage of their pretended kinsman with the kazi’s daughter. The young merchant acknowledged their compliments by throwing handfuls of money among the crowd, which caused a renewal of the dreadful clamour. When the noise had somewhat subsided, the kazi, hitherto dumb from astonishment, turned to his son-in-law, and demanded to know the meaning of such a scene before his mansion. The merchant replied that the leaders of the crowd were his kinsfolk, although his father had abandoned the fraternity and adopted commercial pursuits. He could not, however, disown his kindred, even for the sake of the kazi’s daughter. On hearing this the judge was beside himself with rage and mortification, exclaiming: “Dog, and son of a dog! what dirt is this you have made me eat?” The merchant reminded him that he was now his son-in-law; that his daughter was his lawful wife; declaring that he would not part with her for untold wealth. But the kazi insisted upon a divorce and returned the merchant his ten purses. In the sequel, the young merchant, having ascertained the parentage of the clever damsel, obtained her in marriage, and lived with her for many years in happiness and prosperity.[33]
[33] This story has been taken from
Arab Shah into the
Breslau
printed Arabic text of the Thousand and One
Nights,
where it is related at great length. The
original
was rendered into French under the title of
“Ruses
des Femmes” (in the Arabic Ked-an-Nisa,
Stratagems
of Women) by Lescallier, and appended to his
version
of the Voyages of Sindbad, published at Paris in
1814,
long before the Breslau text of The Nights was
known
to exist. It also forms part of one of the Persian
Tales
(Hazar u Yek Ruz, 1001 Days) translated by Petis
de
la Croix, where, however, the trick is played on the
kazi,
not on a young merchant.
ASHAAB THE COVETOUS—THE STINGY MERCHANT
AND THE HUNGRY BEDOUIN—THE
SECT OF SAMRADIANS—THE STORY-TELLER AND
THE KING—ROYAL GIFTS TO
POETS—THE PERSIAN POET AND THE IMPOSTOR—“STEALING
POETRY”—THE RICH
MAN AND THE POOR POET.
Avaricious and covetous men are always the just objects of derision as well as contempt, and surely covetousness was quite concentrated in the person of Ashaab, a servant of Othman (seventh century), and a native of Medina, whose character has been very amusingly drawn by the scholiast: He never saw a man put his hand into his pocket without hoping and expecting that he would give him something. He never saw a funeral go by, but he was pleased, hoping that the deceased had left him something. He never saw a bride about to be conducted through the streets to the house of the bridegroom but he prepared his own house for her reception, hoping that her friends would bring her to his house by mistake. If he saw a workman making a box, he took care to tell him that he was putting in one or two boards too many, hoping that he would give him what was over, or, at least, something for the suggestion. He is said to have followed a man who was chewing mastic (a sort of gum, chewed, like betel, by Orientals as a pastime) for a whole mile, thinking he was perhaps eating food, intending, if so, to ask him for some. When the youths of the town jeered and taunted him, he told them there was a wedding at such a house, in order to get rid of them (because they would go to get a share of the bonbons distributed there); but, as soon as they were gone, it struck him that possibly what he had told them was true, and that they would not have quitted him had they not been aware of its truth; and he actually followed them himself to see what he could do, though exposing himself thereby to fresh taunts from them. When asked whether he knew anyone more covetous than himself, he said: “Yes; a sheep I once had, that climbed to an upper stage of my house, and, seeing a rainbow, mistook it for a rope of hay, and jumping at it, broke her neck”—whence “Ashaab’s sheep” became proverbial among the Arabs for covetousness as well as Ashaab himself.
* * * * *
Hospitality has ever been the characteristic virtue of the Arabs, and a mean, stingy disposition is rarely to be found among them. A droll story of an Arab of the latter description has been rendered into verse by the Persian poet Liwa’i, the substance of which is as follows: An Arab merchant who had been trading between Mecca and Damascus, at length turned his face homeward, and had reached within one stage of his house when he sat down to rest and to refresh himself with the contents of his wallet. While he was eating, a Bedouin, weary and hungry, came up, and, hoping to be invited to share his repast, saluted him, “Peace be with thee!” which the merchant returned, and asked the nomad who he was and whence he came. “I have come from thy house,” was the answer. “Then,” said the merchant, “how fares my son Ahmed, absence from whom has grieved me sore?” “Thy son grows apace in health and innocence.” “Good! and how is his mother?” “She, too, is free from the shadow of sorrow.” “And how is my beauteous camel, so strong to bear his load?” “Thy camel is sleek and fat.” “My house-dog, too, that guards my gate, pray how is he?” “He is on the mat before thy door, by day, by night, on constant guard.” The merchant, having thus his doubts and fears removed, resumed his meal with freshened appetite, but gave nought to the poor nomad, and, having finished, closed his wallet. The Bedouin, seeing his stinginess, writhed with the pangs of hunger. Presently a gazelle passed rapidly by them, at which he sighed heavily, and the merchant inquiring the cause of his sorrow, he said: “The cause is this—had not thy dog died he would not have allowed that gazelle to escape!” “My dog!” exclaimed the merchant. “Is my doggie, then, dead?” “He died from gorging himself with thy camel’s blood.” “Who hath cast this dust on me?” cried the merchant. “What of my camel?” “Thy camel was slaughtered to furnish the funeral feast of thy wife.” “Is my wife, too, dead?” “Her grief for Ahmed’s death was such that she dashed her head against a rock.” “But, Ahmed,” asked the father—“how came he to die?” “The house fell in and crushed him.” The merchant heard this tale with full belief, rent his robe, cast sand upon his head, then started swiftly homeward to bewail his wife and son, leaving behind his well-filled wallet, a prey to the starving desert-wanderer.[34]
[34] A variant of this story is
found in Le Grand’s Fabliaux
et
Contes, ed. 1781, tome iv, p. 119, and it was
probably
brought from the East during the Crusades:
Maimon
was a valet to a count. His master, returning
home
from a tourney, met him on the way, and asked him
where
he was going. He replied, with great coolness,
that
he was going to seek a lodging somewhere. “A
lodging!”
said the count. “What then has happened
at
home?”
“Nothing, my lord. Only your dog, whom you
The Samradian sect of fire-worshippers, who believe only in the “ideal,” anticipated Bishop Berkeley’s theory, thus referred to by Lord Byron (Don Juan, xi, 1):
When Bishop Berkeley said, “there
was no matter,”
And proved it—’twas
no matter what he said;
They say, his system ’tis in vain
to batter,
Too subtle for the airiest
human head.
Some amusing anecdotes regarding this singular sect are given in the Dabistan, a work written in Persian, which furnishes a very impartial account of the principal religions of the world: A Samradian said to his servant: “The world and its inhabitants have no actual existence—they have merely an ideal being.” The servant, on hearing this, took the first opportunity to steal his master’s horse, and when he was about to ride, brought him an ass with the horse’s saddle. When the Samradian asked: “Where is the horse?” he replied: “Thou hast been thinking of an idea; there was no horse in being.” The master said: “It is true,” and then mounted the ass. Having proceeded some distance, followed by his servant on foot, he suddenly dismounted, and taking the saddle off the back of the ass placed it on the servant’s back, drawing the girths tightly, and, having forced the bridle into his mouth, he mounted him, and flogged him along vigorously. The servant having exclaimed in piteous accents: “What is the meaning of this, O master?” the Samradian replied: “There is no such thing as a whip; it is merely ideal. Thou art thinking only of a delusion.” It is needless to add that the servant immediately repented and restored the horse.—Another of this sect having obtained in marriage the daughter of a wealthy lawyer, she, on finding out her husband’s peculiar creed, purposed to have some amusement at his expense. One day the Samradian brought home a bottle of excellent wine, which during his absence she emptied of its contents and filled again with water. When the time came for taking wine, she poured out the water into a gold
[35] The Dabistan, or School
of Manners. Translated from
the
original Persian, by David Shea and Anthony Troyer.
3
vols. Published by the Oriental Translation Fund,
1843.
Vol. i, 198-200. The author of this work is said
to
be Moshan Fani, who flourished at Hyderabad about the
end
of the 18th century.
I do not know whether there are any English parallels to these stories, but I have read of a Greek sage who instructed his slave that all that occurred in this world was the decree of Fate. The slave shortly after deliberately committed some offence, upon which his master commenced to soften his ribs with a stout cudgel, and when the slave pleaded that it was no fault of his, it was the decree of Fate, his master grimly replied that it was also decreed that he should have a sound beating.
* * * * *
In Don Quixote, it will be remembered by all readers of that delightful work, Sancho begins to tell the knight a long story about a man who had to ferry across a river a large flock of sheep, but he could only take one at a time, as the boat could hold no more. This story Cervantes, in all likelihood, borrowed from the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsus, a converted Spanish Jew, who flourished in the 12th century, and who avowedly derived the materials of his work from the Arabian fabulists—probably part of them also from the Talmud.[36] His eleventh tale is of a king who desired his minstrel to tell him a long story that should lull him to sleep. The story-teller accordingly begins to relate how a man had to cross a ferry with 600 sheep, two at a time, and falls asleep in the midst of his narration. The king awakes him, but the story-teller begs that the man be allowed to ferry over the sheep before he resumes the story.[37]—Possibly the original form of the story is that found in the Katha Manjari, an ancient Indian story-book: There was a king who used to inquire of all the learned men who came to his court whether they knew any stories, and when they had related all they knew, in order to avoid rewarding them, he abused them for knowing so few, and sent them away. A shrewd and clever man, hearing of this, presented himself before the king, who asked
[36] Pedro Alfonso (the Spanish
form of his adopted name) was
originally
a Jewish Rabbi, and was born in 1062, at
Huesca,
in the kingdom of Arragon. He was reputed a man
of
very great learning, and on his being baptised (at
the
age of 44) was appointed by Alfonso XV, king of
Castile
and Leon, physician to the royal household. His
work,
above referred to, is written in Latin, and has
been
translated into French, but not as yet into
English.
An outline of the tales, by Douce, will be
found
prefixed to Ellis’ Early English Metrical
Romances.
[37] This is also the subject of
one of the Fabliaux.—In
a
form similar to the story in Alfonsus it is current
among
the Milanese, and a Sicilian version is as
follows:
Once upon a time there was a prince who studied
and
racked his brains so much that he learned magic and
the
art of finding hidden treasures. One day he
discovered
a treasure in Daisisa. “O,” he says,
“now I
am
going to get it out.” But to get it out
it was
necessary
that ten million million of ants should cross
the
river one by one in a bark made of the half-shell of
a
nut. The prince puts the bark in the river, and
makes
the
ants pass over—one, two, three; and they
are still
doing
it. Here the story-teller pauses and says:
“We
will
finish the story when the ants have finished
crossing
the river.”—Crane’s Italian
Popular Tales,
p.
156.
A story bearing some resemblance to this is related of a khalif who was wont to cheat poets of their expected reward when they recited their compositions to him, until he was at length outwitted by the famous Arabian poet Al-Asma’i: It is said that a khalif, who was very penurious, contrived by a trick to send from his presence without any reward those poets who came and recited their compositions to him. He had himself the faculty of retaining in his memory a poem after hearing it only once; he had a mamluk (white slave) who could repeat one that he had heard twice; and a slave-girl who could repeat one that she had heard thrice. Whenever a poet came to compliment him with a panegyrical poem, the king used to promise him that if he found his verses to be of his own composition he would give him a sum of money equal in weight to what they were written on. The poet, consenting, would recite his ode, and the king would say: “It is not new, for I have known it some years”; and he would repeat it as he had heard it; after which he would add: “And this mamluk also retains it in his memory,” and order the mamluk to repeat it, which, having heard it twice, from the poet and the king, he would do. Then the king would say to the poet: “I have also a slave-girl who can repeat it,” and, ordering her to do so, stationed behind the curtains, she would repeat what she had thus thrice heard; so the poet would go away empty-handed. The celebrated poet Al-Asma’i, having heard of this device, determined upon outwitting the king, and accordingly composed an ode made up of very difficult words. But this was not the poet’s only preparative measure—another will be presently explained; and a third was to assume the dress of a Bedouin, that he might not be known, covering his face, the eyes only excepted, with a litham (piece of drapery), as is usual with the Arabs of the desert. Thus disguised, he went to the palace, and having obtained permission, entered and saluted the king, who said to him: “Who art thou, O brother of the Arabs? and what dost thou desire?” The poet answered: “May Allah increase the power of the king! I am a poet of such a tribe, and have composed an ode in praise of our lord the khalif.” “O brother of the Arabs,” said the king, “hast thou heard of our condition?” “No,” answered the poet; “and what is it, O khalif of the age?” “It is,” replied the king, “that if the ode be not thine, we give thee no reward; and if it be thine, we give thee the weight in money equal to what it is written upon.” “How,” said the poet, “should I assume to myself that which belongeth to another, and knowing, too, that lying before kings is one of the basest of actions? But I agree to the condition, O our lord the khalif.” So he repeated his ode. The king, perplexed, and unable to remember any of it, made a sign to the mamluk, but he had retained nothing; then called to the female slave, but she was unable to repeat a word. “O brother of the Arabs,” said the king, “thou
* * * * *
Apropos of royal gifts to poets, it is related that, when the Afghans had possession of Persia, a rude chief of that nation was governor of Shiraz. A poet composed a panegyric on his wisdom, his valour, and his virtues. As he was taking it to the palace he was met by a friend at the outer gate, who inquired where he was going, and he informed him of his purpose. His friend asked him if he was insane, to offer an ode to a barbarian who hardly understood a word of the Persian language. “All that you say may be very true,” said the poor poet, “but I am starving, and have no means of livelihood but by making verses. I must, therefore, proceed.” He went and stood before the governor with his ode in his hand. “Who is that fellow?” said the Afghan lord. “And what is that paper which he holds?” “I am a poet,” answered the man, “and this paper contains some poetry.” “What is the use of poetry?” demanded the governor. “To render great men like you immortal,” he replied, making at the same time a profound bow. “Let us hear some of it.” The poet, on this mandate, began reading his composition aloud, but he had not finished the second stanza when he was interrupted. “Enough!” exclaimed the governor; “I understand it all. Give the poor man some money—that is what he wants.” As the poet retired he met his friend, who again commented on the folly of carrying odes to a man who did not understand one of them. “Not understand!” he replied. “You are quite mistaken. He has beyond all men the quickest apprehension of a poet’s meaning!”
The khalifs were frequently lavish of their gifts to poets, but they were fond of having their little jokes with them when in merry mood. One day the Arabian poet Thalebi read before the khalif Al-Mansur a poem which he had just composed, and it found acceptance. The khalif said: “O Thalebi, which wouldst thou rather have—that I give thee 300 gold dinars [about L150], or three wise sayings, each worth 100 dinars?” The poet replied: “Learning, O Commander of the Faithful, is better than transitory treasure.” “Well, then,” said
A droll story is told of the Persian poet Anwari: Passing the market-place of Balkh one day, he saw a crowd of people standing in a ring, and going up, he put his head within the circle and found a fellow reciting the poems of Anwari himself as his own. Anwari went up to the man, and said: “Sir, whose poems are these you are reciting?” He replied: “They are Anwari’s.” “Do you know him, then?” said Anwari. The man, with cool effrontery, answered: “What do you say? I am Anwari.” On hearing this Anwari laughed, and remarked: “I have heard of one who stole poetry, but never of one who stole the poet himself!”—Talking of “stealing poetry,” Jami tells us that a man once brought a composition to a critic, every line of which he had plagiarised from different collections of poems, and each rhetorical figure from various authors. Quoth the critic: “For a wonder, thou hast brought a line of camels; but if the string were untied, every one of the herd would run away in different directions.”
There is no little humour in the story of the Persian poet who wrote a eulogium on a rich man, but got nothing for his trouble; he then abused the rich man, but he said nothing; he next seated himself at the rich man’s gate, who said to him: “You praised me, and I said nothing; you abused me, and I said nothing; and now, why are you sitting here?” The poet answered: “I only wish that when you die I may perform the funeral service.”
UNLUCKY OMENS—THE OLD MAN’S PRAYER—THE
OLD WOMAN IN THE MOSQUE—THE
WEEPING TURKMANS—THE TEN FOOLISH PEASANTS—THE
WAKEFUL SERVANT—THE
THREE DERVISHES—THE OIL-MAN’S PARROT—THE
MOGHUL AND HIS PARROT—THE
PERSIAN SHOPKEEPER AND THE PRIME MINISTER—HEBREW
FACETIAE.
Muslims and other Asiatic peoples, like Europeans not so many centuries since, are always on the watch for lucky or unlucky omens. On first going out of a morning, the looks and countenances of those who cross their path are scrutinised, and a smile or a frown is deemed favourable or the reverse. To encounter a person blind of the left eye, or even with one eye, forebodes sorrow and calamity. While Sir John Malcolm was in Persia, as British Ambassador, he was told the following story: When Abbas the Great was hunting, he met one morning as day dawned an uncommonly ugly man, at the sight of whom his horse started. Being nearly dismounted, and deeming it a bad omen, the king called out in a rage to have his head cut off. The poor peasant, whom the attendants had seized and were on the point of executing, prayed that he might be informed of his crime. “Your crime,” said the king, “is your unlucky countenance, which is the first object I saw this morning, and which has nearly caused me to fall from my horse.” “Alas!” said the man, “by this reckoning what term must I apply to your Majesty’s countenance, which was the first object my eyes met this morning, and which is to cause my death?” The king smiled at the wit of the reply, ordered the man to be released, and gave him a present instead of cutting off his head.—Another Persian story is to the same purpose: A man said to his servant: “If you see two crows together early in the morning, apprise me of it, that I may also behold them, as it will be a good omen, whereby I shall pass the day pleasantly.” The servant did happen to see two crows sitting in one place, and informed his master, who, however, when he came saw but one, the other having in the meantime flown away. He was very angry, and began to beat the servant, when a friend sent him a present of game. Upon this the servant exclaimed: “O my lord! you saw only one crow, and have received a fine present; had you seen two, you would have met with my fare."[38]
[38] This last jest reappears in
the apocryphal Life of Esop,
by
Planudes, the only difference being that Esop’s
master
is invited to a feast, instead of receiving a
present
of game, upon which Esop exclaims: “Alas!
I see
two
crows, and I am beaten; you see one, and are asked
to
a feast. What a delusion is augury!”
It would seem, from the following story, that an old man’s prayers are sometimes reversed in response, as dreams are said to “go by contraries”: An old Arab left his house one morning, intending to go to a village at some distance, and coming to the foot of a hill which he had to cross he exclaimed: “O Allah! send some one to help me over this hill.” Scarcely had he uttered these words when up came a fierce soldier, leading a mare with a very young colt by her side, who compelled the old man, with oaths and threats, to carry the colt. As they trudged along, they met a poor woman with
* * * * *
Jami tells this humorous story in the Sixth “Garden” of his Baharistan, or Abode of Spring: A man said the prescribed prayers in a mosque and then began his personal supplications. An old woman, who happened to be near him, exclaimed: “O Allah! cause me to share in whatsoever he supplicates for.” The man, overhearing her, then prayed: “O Allah! hang me on a gibbet, and cause me to die of scourging.” The old trot continued: “O Allah! pardon me, and preserve me from what he has asked for.” Upon this the man turned to her and said: “What a very unreasonable partner this is! She desires to share in all that gives rest and pleasure, but she refuses to be my partner in distress and misery.”
* * * * *
We have already seen that even the grave and otiose Turk is not devoid of a sense of the ludicrous, and here is another example, from Mr. E. J. W. Gibb’s translation of the History of the Forty Vezirs: A party of Turkmans left their encampment one day and went into a neighbouring city. Returning home, as they drew near their tents, they felt hungry, and sat down and ate some bread and onions at a spring-head. The juice of the onions went into their eyes and caused them to water. Now the children of those Turkmans had gone out to meet them, and, seeing the tears flow from their eyes, they concluded that one of their number had died in the city, so, without making any inquiry, they ran back, and said to their mothers: “One of ours is dead in the city, and our fathers are coming weeping.” Upon this all the women and children of the encampment went forth to meet them, weeping together. The Turkmans who were coming from the city thought that one of theirs had died in the encampment; and thus they were without knowledge one of the other, and they raised a weeping and wailing together such that it cannot be described. At length the elders of the camp stood up in their midst and said: “May ye all remain whole; there is none other help than patience”; and they questioned them. The Turkmans coming from the city asked: “Who is dead in the camp?” The others replied: “No one is dead in the camp; who has died in the city?” Those who were coming from the city, said: “No one has died in the city.” The others said: “For whom then are ye wailing and lamenting?” At length they perceived that all this tumult arose from their trusting the words of children.
This last belongs rather to the class of simpleton-stories; and in the following, from the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles’ Folk Tales of Kashmir (Truebner: 1888), we have a variant of the well-known tale of the twelve men of Gotham who went one day to fish, and, before returning home, miscounted their number, of which several analogues are given in my Book of Noodles, pp. 28 ff. (Elliot Stock: 1888): Ten peasants were standing on the side of the road weeping. They thought that one of their number had been lost on the way, as each man had counted the company, and found them nine only. “Ho! you—what’s the matter?” shouted a townsman passing by. “O sir,” said the peasants, “we were ten men when we left the village, but now we are only nine.” The townsman saw at a glance what fools they were: each of them had omitted to count himself in the number. He therefore told them to take off their topis (skull-caps) and place them on the ground. This they did, and counted ten of them, whereupon they concluded they were all there, and were comforted. But they could not tell how it was.
* * * * *
That wakefulness is not necessarily watchfulness may seem paradoxical, yet here is a Persian story which goes far to show that they are not always synonymous terms: Once upon a time (to commence in the good old way) there came into a city a merchant on horseback, attended by his servant on foot. Hearing that the city was infested by many bold and expert thieves, in consequence of which property was very insecure, he said to his servant at night: “I will keep watch, and do you sleep; for I cannot trust you to keep awake, and I much fear that my horse may be stolen.” But to this arrangement his faithful servant would not consent, and he insisted upon watching all night. So the master went to sleep, and three hours after awoke, when he called to his servant: “What are you doing?” He answered: “I am meditating how Allah has spread the earth upon the water.” The master said: “I am afraid lest thieves come, and you know nothing of it.” “O my lord, be satisfied; I am on the watch.” The merchant again went to sleep, and awaking about midnight cried: “Ho! what are you doing?” The servant replied: “I am considering how Allah has supported the sky without pillars.” Quoth the master: “But I am afraid that while you are busy meditating thieves will carry off my horse.” “Be not afraid, master, I am fully awake; how, then, can thieves come?” The master replied: “If you wish to sleep, I will keep watch.” But the servant would not hear of this; he was not at all sleepy; so his master addressed himself once more to slumber; and when one hour of the night yet remained he awoke, and as usual asked him what he was doing, to which he coolly answered: “I am considering, since the thieves have stolen the horse, whether I shall carry the saddle on my head, or you, sir.”
* * * * *
Somewhat akin to the familiar “story” of the man whose eyesight was so extraordinary that he could, standing in the street, perceive a fly on the dome of St. Paul’s is the tale of the Three Dervishes who, travelling in company, came to the sea-shore of Syria, and desired the captain of a vessel about to sail for Cyprus to give them a passage. The captain was willing to take them “for a consideration”; but they told him they were dervishes, and therefore without money, but they possessed certain wonderful gifts, which might be of use to him on the voyage. The first dervish said that he could descry any object at the distance of a year’s journey; the second could hear at as great a distance as his brother could see. “Well!” exclaimed the captain, “these are truly miraculous gifts; and pray, sir,” said he, turning to the third dervish, “what may your particular gift be?” “I, sir,” replied he, “am an unbeliever.” When the captain heard this, he said he could not take such a person on board of his ship; but on the others declaring they must all three go together or remain behind, he at length consented to allow the third dervish a passage with the two highly-gifted ones. In the course of the voyage, it happened one fine day that the captain and the three dervishes were on deck conversing, when suddenly the first dervish exclaimed: “Look, look!—see, there—the daughter of the sultan of India sitting at the window of her palace, working embroidery.” “A mischief on your eyes!” cried the second dervish, “for her needle has this moment dropped from her hand, and I hear it sound upon the pavement below her window.” “Sir,” said the third dervish, addressing the captain, “shall I, or shall I not, be an unbeliever?” Quoth the captain: “Come, friend, come with me into my cabin, and let us cultivate unbelief together!”
* * * * *
A very droll parrot story occurs—where, indeed, we should least expect to meet with such a thing—in the Masnavi of Jelalu-’d-Din er-Rumi (13th century), a grand mystical poem, or rather series of poems, in six books, written in Persian rhymed couplets, as the title indicates. In the second poem of the First Book we read that an oilman possessed a fine parrot, who amused him with her prattle and watched his shop during his absence. It chanced one day, when the oilman had gone out, that a cat ran into the shop in chase of a mouse, which so frightened the parrot that she flew about from shelf to shelf, upsetting several jars and spilling their contents. When her master returned and saw the havoc made among his goods he fetched the parrot a blow that knocked out all her head feathers, and from that day she sulked on her perch. The oilman, missing the prattle of his favourite, began to shower his alms on every passing beggar, in hopes that some one would induce the parrot to speak again. At length a bald-headed mendicant came to the shop one day, upon seeing whom, the parrot, breaking her long silence, cried out: “Poor fellow! poor fellow! hast thou, too, upset some oil-jar?"[39]
[39] This tale is found in the early
Italian novelists,
slightly
varied, and it was doubtless introduced by
Venetian
merchants from the Levant: A parrot belonging
to
Count Fiesco was discovered one day stealing some
roast
meat from the kitchen. The enraged cook,
overtaking
him, threw a kettle of boiling water at him,
which
completely scalded all the feathers from his head,
and
left the poor bird with a bare poll. Some time
afterwards,
as Count Fiesco was engaged in conversation
with
an abbot, the parrot, observing the shaven crown of
his
reverence, hopped up to him and said: “What!
do
you
like roast meat too?”
In another form the story is orally current in the North of England. Dr. Fryer tells it to this effect, in his charming English Fairy Tales from the North Country: A grocer kept a parrot that used to cry out to the customers that the sugar was sanded and the butter mixed with lard. For this the bird had her neck wrung and was thrown upon an ash-heap; but reviving and seeing a dead cat beside her she cried: “Poor Puss! have you, too, suffered for telling the truth?”
There is yet another variant of this droll tale, which has been popular for generations throughout England, and was quite recently reproduced in an American journal as a genuine “nigger” story: In olden times there was a roguish baker who made many of his loaves less than the regulation weight, and one day, on observing the government inspector coming along the street, he concealed the light loaves in a closet. The inspector having found the bread on the counter of the proper weight, was about to leave, when a parrot, which the baker kept in his shop, cried out: “Light bread in the closet!” This caused a search to be made, and the baker was heavily fined. Full of fury, the baker seized the parrot, wrung its neck, and threw it in his back yard, near the carcase of a pig that had died of the measles. The parrot, coming to itself again, observed the dead porker and inquired in a tone of sympathy: “O poor piggy, didst thou, too, tell about light bread in the closet?”
Somewhat more credible is the tale of the man who taught a parrot to say, “What doubt is there of this?” (dur in cheh shuk) and took it to market for sale, fixing the price at a hundred rupis. A Moghul asked the bird: “Are you really worth a hundred rupis?” to which the bird answered very readily: “What doubt is there of this?” Delighted with the apt reply, he bought the parrot and took it home; but he soon found that, whatever he might say, the bird always made the same answer, so he repented his purchase and exclaimed: “I was certainly a great fool to buy this bird!” The parrot said: “What doubt is there of this?” The Moghul smiled, and gave the bird her liberty.
* * * * *
Sir John Malcolm cites a good example of the ready wit of the citizens of Isfahan, in his entertaining Sketches of Persia, as follows: When the celebrated Haji Ibrahim was prime minister of Persia [some sixty years since], his brother was governor of Isfahan, while other members of his family held several of the first offices of the kingdom. A shop-keeper one day went to the governor to represent that he was unable to pay certain taxes. “You must pay them,” replied the governor, “or leave the city.” “Where can I go to?” asked the Isfahani. “To Shiraz or Kashan.” “Your nephew rules in one city and your brother in the other.” “Go to the Shah, and complain if you like.” “Your brother the Haji is prime minister.” “Then go to Satan,” said the enraged governor. “Haji Merhum, your father, the pious pilgrim, is dead,” rejoined the undaunted Isfahani. “My friend,” said the governor, bursting into laughter, “I will pay your taxes, even myself, since you declare that my family keep you from all redress, both in this world and the next.”
* * * * *
The Hebrew Rabbis who compiled the Talmud were, some of them, witty as well as wise—indeed I have always held that wisdom and wit are cousins german, if not full brothers—and our specimens of Oriental Wit and Humour may be fittingly concluded with a few Jewish jests from a scarce little book, entitled, Hebrew Tales, by Hyman Hurwitz: An Athenian, walking about in the streets of Jerusalem one day, called to a little Hebrew boy, and, giving him a pruta (a small coin of less value than a farthing), said: “Here is a pruta, my lad, bring me something for it, of which I may eat enough, leave some for my host, and carry some home to my family.” The boy went, and presently returned with a quantity of salt, which he handed to the jester. “Salt!” he exclaimed, “I did not ask thee to buy me salt.” “True,” said the urchin; “but didst thou not tell me to bring thee something of which thou mightest eat, leave, and take home? Of this salt there is surely enough for all three purposes."[40]
[40] In the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles’
Folk-Tales of Kashmir a
merchant
gives his stupid son a small coin with which he
is
to purchase something to eat, something to drink,
something
to gnaw, something to sow in the garden, and
some
food for the cow. A clever young girl advises
him
to
buy a water-melon, which would answer all the
purposes
required.—P. 145.
Another Athenian desired a boy to buy him some cheese and eggs. Having done so, “Now, my lad,” said the stranger, “tell me which of these cheese were made of the milk of white goats and which of black goats?” The little Hebrew answered: “Since thou art older than I, and more experienced, first do thou tell me which of these eggs came from white and which from black hens.”
Once more did a Hebrew urchin prove his superiority in wit over an Athenian: “Here, boy,” said he, “here is some money; bring us some figs and grapes.” The lad went and bought the fruit, kept half of it for himself, and gave the other half to the Athenian. “How!” cried the man, “is it the custom of this city for a messenger to take half of what he is sent to purchase?” “No,” replied the boy; “but it is our custom to speak what we mean, and to do what we are desired.” “Well, then, I did not desire thee to take half of the fruit.” “Why, what else could you mean,” rejoined the little casuist, “by saying, ‘Bring us?’ Does not that word include the hearer as well as the speaker?” The stranger, not knowing how to answer such reasoning, smiled and went his way, leaving the shrewd lad to eat his share of the fruit in peace.
“There is no rule without some exception,” as the following tale demonstrates: Rabbi Eliezar, who was as much distinguished by his greatness of mind as by the extraordinary size of his body, once paid a friendly visit to Rabbi Simon. The learned Simon received him most cordially, and filling a cup with wine handed it to him. Eliezar took it and drank it off at a draught. Another was poured out—it shared the same fate. “Brother Eliezar,” said Simon, jestingly, “rememberest thou not what the wise men have said on this subject?” “I well remember,” replied his corpulent friend, “the saying of our instructors, that people ought not to take a cup at one draught. But the wise men have not so defined their rule as to admit of no exception; and in this instance there are not less than three—the cup is small, the receiver is large, and your WINE, brother Simon, is DELICIOUS!”
GENERAL PLAN OF EASTERN ROMANCES—THE “TUTI NAMA,” OR PARROT-BOOK—THE FRAME-STORY—TALES: THE STOLEN IMAGES—THE WOMAN CARVED OUT OF WOOD—THE MAN WHOSE MARE WAS KICKED BY A MERCHANT’S HORSE.
Oriental romances are usually constructed on the plan of a number of tales connected by a general or leading story running throughout, like the slender thread that holds a necklace of pearls together—a familiar example of which is the Book of the Thousand and One Nights, commonly known amongst us under the title of Arabian Nights Entertainments. In some the subordinate tales are represented as being told by one or more individuals to serve a particular object, by the moral, or warning, which they are supposed to convey; as in the case of the Book of Sindibad, in which a prince is falsely accused by one of his father’s ladies, and defended by the king’s seven vazirs, or counsellors, who each in turn relate to the king two stories, the purport of which being to warn him to put no faith in the accusations of women, to which the lady replies by stories representing
Of this last class is the popular Persian work, Tuti Nama, (Tales of a Parrot, or Parrot-Book), of which I purpose furnishing some account, as it has not yet been completely translated into English. This work was composed, according to Pertsch, in A.D. 1329, by a Persian named Nakhshabi, after an older Persian version, now lost, which was made from a Sanskrit work, also no longer extant, but of which the modern representative is the Suka Saptati, or Seventy Tales of a Parrot.[41] The frame, or leading story, of the Persian Parrot-Book is to the following effect:
[41] Ziyau-’d-Din Nakhshabi,
so called from Nakhshab, or
Nasaf,
the modern Kashi, a town situated between
Samarkand
and the Oxus, led a secluded life in Bada’um,
and
died, as stated by ’Abdal-Hakk, A.H. 751 (A.D.
1350-1).—Dr.
Rieu’s Catalogue of Persian MSS. in the
British
Museum.—In 1792 the Rev. B. Gerrans
published
an
English translation of twelve of the fifty-two tales
comprised
in the Tuti Nama, but the work is now best
known
in Persia and India from an abridgment made by
Kadiri
in the last century, which was printed, with a
translation,
at London in 1801.
A merchant who had a very beautiful wife informs her one day that he has resolved to travel into foreign countries in order to increase his wealth by trade. His wife endeavours to persuade him to remain at home in peace and security instead of imperiling his life among strangers. But he expatiates on the evils of poverty and the advantages of wealth: “A man without riches is fatherless, and a home without money is deserted. He that is in want of cash is a nonentity, and wanders in the land unknown. It is, therefore, everybody’s duty to procure as much money as possible; for gold is the delight of our lives—it is the bright live-coal of our hearts—the yellow links which fasten the coat of mail—the gentle stimulative of the world—the complete coining die of the globe—the traveller who speaks all languages, and is welcome in every city—the splendid bride unveiled—the defender, register, and mirror of jehandars. The man who has dirhams [Scottice,
[42] “He that has money in
the scales,” says Saadi, “has
strength in his arms, and he who has not the
command of
money is destitute of friends in the world.”—Hundreds
of similar sarcastic observations on the power
of wealth
might be cited from the Hindu writers, such
as: “He who
has riches has friends; he who has riches
has relations;
he who has riches is even a sage!”
The following
verses in praise of money are, I think, worth
reproducing, if only for their whimsical arrangement:
Honey,
Our Money
We find in the end
Both relation and friend;
’Tis a helpmate for better, for
worse.
Neither father nor mother,
Nor sister nor brother,
Nor uncles nor aunts,
Nor dozens
Of cousins,
Are like a friend in the purse.
Still regard the main chance;
’Tis the clink
Of the chink
Is the music to make the heart dance.
The merchant having protracted his absence many months (Vatsyayana, in his Kama Sutra, says that the man who is given to much travelling does not deserve to be married), and, his wife chancing to be on the roof of her house one day when a young foreign prince of handsome appearance passed by with his attendants, she immediately fell in love with him—“the battle-axe of prudence dropped from her hand; the vessel of continence became a sport to the waves of confusion; while the avenues leading to the fortress of reason remained unguarded, the sugar-cane of incontinence triumphantly raised its head above the rose-tree of patience.” The prince had also observed the lady, as she stood on the terrace of her house, and was instantly enamoured of her. He sends an old woman (always the obliging—“for a consideration”—go-between of Eastern lovers) to solicit an interview with the lady at his own palace in the evening, and, after much persuasion, she consents. Arraying her beauteous person in the finest apparel, she proceeds to the cage, and first consults the sharak as to the propriety of her purpose. The sharak forbids her to go, and is at once rewarded by having her head wrung off. She then represents her case to the parrot, who, having witnessed the fate of his companion, prudently resolves to temporise with the amorous dame; so he “quenched the fire of her indignation with the water of flattery, and began a tale conformable to her temperament, which he took care to protract till the morning.” In this manner does the prudent parrot prevent the lady’s intended intrigue by relating, night after night, till the merchant returns home from his travels, one or more fascinating tales, which he does not bring to an end till it is too late for the assignation.[43]
[43] In a Telugu MS., entitled Patti
Vrutti Mahima (the
Value
of Chaste Wives), the minister of Chandra Pratapa
assumes
the form of a bird owing to a curse pronounced
against
him by Siva, and is sold to a merchant named
Dhanadatta,
whose son, Kuveradatta, is vicious. The bird
by
moral lessons reformed him for a time. They went
to a
town
called Pushpamayuri, where the king’s son saw
the
wife
of Kuveradatta when he was absent from home. An
illicit
amour was about to begin, when the bird
interposed
by relating tales of chaste wives, and
detained
the wanton lady at home till her husband
returned.
The order of the parrot’s tales is not the same in all texts; in Kadiri’s abridgment there are few of the Nights which correspond with those of the India Office MS. No. 2573, which may, perhaps, be partly accounted for by the circumstance that Kadiri has given only 35 of the 52 tales that are in the original text. For the general reader, however, the sequence of the tales is a minor consideration; and I shall content myself with giving abstracts of some of the best stories, irrespective of their order in any text, and complete translations of two or three others. It so happens that the Third Night is the same in Kadiri and the India Office MS. No. 2573, which comprises the complete text; and the story the eloquent bird relates on that night may be entitled
The Stolen Images.
A goldsmith and a carpenter, travelling in company, steal from a Hindu temple some golden images, which, when they arrive in the neighbourhood of their own city, they bury beneath a tree. The goldsmith goes secretly one night and carries away the images, and next morning, when both go together to share the spoil, the goldsmith accuses the carpenter of having played him false. But the carpenter was a shrewd fellow, and so he makes a figure resembling the goldsmith, dresses it in clothes similar to what he usually wore, and procures a couple of bear’s cubs, which he teaches to take their food from the skirts and sleeves of the effigy. Thus the cubs conceived a great affection for the figure of the goldsmith. He then contrives to steal the goldsmith’s two sons, and, when the father comes to seek them at his house, he pretends they have been changed into young bears. The goldsmith brings his case before the kazi; the cubs are brought into court, and no sooner do they discover the goldsmith than they run up and fondle him. Upon this the judge decides in favour of the carpenter, to whom the goldsmith confesses his guilt, and offers to give up all the gold if he restore his children, which he does accordingly.[44]
[44] Many Asiatic stories relate
to the concealing of
treasure—generally
at the foot of a tree, to mark the
spot—by
two or more companions, and its being secretly
stolen
by one of them. The device of the carpenter in
the
foregoing tale of abducting the rascally goldsmith’s
two
sons, and so on, finds an analogue in the
Panchatantra,
the celebrated Sanskrit collection of
fables
(Book I, Fab. 21, of Benfey’s German
translation),
where we read that a young man, who had
spent
the wealth left to him by his father, had only a
heavy
iron balance remaining of all his possessions, and
depositing
it with a merchant went to another country.
When
he returned, after some time, he went to the
merchant
and demanded back his balance. The merchant
told
him it had been eaten by rats; adding: “The
iron of
which
it was composed was particularly sweet, and so the
rats
ate it.” The young man, knowing that the
merchant
spoke
falsely, formed a plan for the recovery of his
balance.
One day he took the merchant’s young son,
unknown
to his father, to bathe, and left him in the
care
of a friend. When the merchant missed his son
he
accused
the young man of having stolen him, and summoned
him
to appear in the king’s judgment-hall. In
answer to
the
merchant’s accusation, the young man asserted
that a
kite
had carried away the boy; and when the officers of
the
court declared this to be impossible, he said:
“In a
country
where an iron balance was eaten by rats, a kite
might
well carry off an elephant, much more a boy.”
The
merchant,
having lost his cause, returned the balance to
the
young man and received back his boy.
The Sixth Tale of the Parrot, according to the India Office MS., relates to
The Woman Carved out of Wood.
Four men—a goldsmith, a carpenter, a tailor, and a dervish—travelling together, one night halted in a desert place, and it was agreed they should watch turn about until daybreak. The carpenter takes the first watch, and to amuse himself he carves the figure of a woman out of a log of wood. When it came to the goldsmith’s turn to watch, finding the beautiful female figure, he resolved also to exhibit his art, and accordingly made a set of ornaments of gold and silver, which he placed on the neck, arms, and ankles. During the third watch the tailor made a suit of clothes becoming a bride, and put them on the figure. Lastly, the dervish, when it came to his turn to watch, beholding the captivating female form, prayed that it might be endowed with life, and immediately the effigy became animated. In the morning all four fell in love with the charming damsel,
[45] So, too, Boethius, in his De
Consolatione Philosophiae,
says,
according to Chaucer’s translation: “All
thynges
seken
ayen to hir [i.e. their] propre course, and all
thynges
rejoysen on hir retournynge agayne to hir
nature.”—A
tale current in Oude, and given in Indian
Notes
and Queries for Sept. 1887, is an illustration
of
the
maxim that “everything returns to its first
principles”:
A certain prince chose his friends out of
the
lowest class, and naturally imbibed their principles
and
habits. When the death of his father placed him
on
the
throne, he soon made his former associates his
courtiers,
and exacted the most servile homage from the
nobles.
The old vazir, however, despised the young king
and
would render none. This so exasperated him that
he
called
his counsellors together to advise the most
excruciating
of tortures for the old man. Said one: “Let
him
be flayed alive and let shoes be made of his skin.”
The
vazir ejaculated on this but one word, “Origin.”
Said
the next: “Let him be hacked into pieces
and his
limbs
cast to the dogs.” The vazir said, “Origin.”
Another
advised: “Let him be forthwith executed,
and his
house
be levelled to the ground.” Once more the
vazir
simply
said, “Origin.” Then the king turned
to the rest,
who
declared each according to his opinion, the vazir
noticing
each with the same word. At last a young man,
who
had not spoken hitherto, was asked. “May
it please
I am strongly of opinion that the foregoing story is of Buddhistic extraction; but however this may be, it is not a bad specimen of Eastern humour, nor is the following, which the eloquent bird tells the lady another night:
Of the Man whose Mare was kicked by a Merchant’s Horse.
A merchant had a vicious horse that kicked a mare, which he had warned the owner not to tie near his animal. The man carried the merchant before the kazi, and stated his complaint. The kazi inquired of the merchant what he had to say in his own defence; but he pretended to be dumb, answering not a word to the judge’s interrogatives. Upon this the kazi remarked to the plaintiff that since the merchant was dumb he could not be to blame for the accident. “How do you know he is dumb?” said the owner of the mare. “At the time I wished to fasten my mare near his horse he said, ‘Don’t!’ yet now he feigns himself dumb.” The kazi observed that if he was duly warned against the accident he had himself to blame, and so dismissed the case.
THE EMPEROR’S DREAM—THE GOLDEN APPARITION—THE FOUR TREASURE-SEEKERS.
We are not without instances in European popular fictions of two young persons dreaming of each other and falling in love, although they had never met or known of each other’s existence. A notable example is the story of the Two Dreams in the famous History of the Seven Wise Masters. Incidents of this kind are very common in Oriental stories: the romance of Kamarupa (of Indian origin, but now chiefly known through the Persian version) is based upon a dream which the hero has of a certain beautiful princess, with whom he falls in love, and he sets forth with his companions to find her, should it be
The Emperor’s Dream.
An emperor of China dreamt of a very beautiful damsel whom he had never seen or heard of, and, being sorely pierced with the darts of love for the creature of his dreaming fancy, he could find no peace of mind. One of his vazirs, who was an excellent portrait painter, receiving from the emperor a minute description of the lady’s features, drew the face, and the imperial lover acknowledged the likeness to be very exact. The vazir then went abroad with the portrait, to see whether any one could identify it with the fair original. After many disappointments he met with an old hermit, who at once recognised it as the portrait of the princess of Rum,[46] who, he informed the vazir, had an unconquerable aversion against men ever since she beheld, in her garden, a peacock basely desert his mate and their young ones, when the tree on which their nest was built had been struck by lightning. She believed that all men were quite as selfish as that peacock, and was resolved never to marry. Returning to his imperial master with these most interesting particulars regarding the object of his affection, he next undertakes to conquer the strange and unnatural aversion of the princess. Taking with him the emperor’s portrait and other pictures, he procures access to the princess of Rum; shows her, first, the portrait of the emperor of China, and then pictures of animals in the royal menagerie, among others that of a deer, concerning which he relates a story to the effect that the emperor, sitting one day in his summer-house, saw a deer, his doe, and their fawn on the bank of the river, when suddenly the waters overflowed the banks, and the doe, in terror for her life, fled away, while the deer bravely remained with the fawn and was drowned. This story, so closely resembling her own, struck the fair princess with wonder and admiration, and she at once gave her consent to be united to the emperor of China; and we may suppose that “they continued together in joy and happiness until they were overtaken by the terminater of delights and the separator of companions.”
[46] Originally, Rumelia (Rum Eyli)
was only implied by the
word
Rum, but in course of time it was employed to
designate
the whole Turkish empire.
* * * * *
There can be little or no doubt, I think, that in this tale we find the original of the frame, or leading story, of the Persian Tales, ascribed to a dervish named Mukhlis, of Isfahan, and written after the Arabian Nights, as it is believed, in which the nurse of the Princess has to relate almost as many stories to overcome her aversion against men (the result of an incident similar to that witnessed by the Lady of Rum) as the renowned Sheherazade had to tell her lord, who entertained—for a very different reason—a bitter dislike of women.
* * * * *
I now present a story unabridged, translated by Gerrans in the latter part of the last century. It is assuredly of Buddhistic origin:
The Golden Apparition.
In the extreme boundaries of Khurasan there once lived, according to general report, a merchant named Abdal-Malik, whose warehouses were crowded with rich merchandise, and whose coffers overflowed with money. The scions of genius ripened into maturity under the sunshine of his liberality; the sons of indigence fattened on the bread of his hospitality; and the parched traveller amply slaked his thirst in the river of his generosity. One day, as he meditated on the favours which his Creator had so luxuriantly showered upon him, he testified his gratitude by the following resolution: “Long have I traded in the theatre of the world, much have I received, and little have I bestowed. This wealth was entrusted to my care, with no other design or intention but to enable me to assist the unfortunate and indigent. Before, therefore, the Angel of Death shall come to demand the spoil of my mortality, it is my last wish and sole intention to expiate my sins and follies by voluntary oblations of this she-camel [alluding to the Muslim Feast of the Camel] in the last month of her pregnancy, and to proclaim to all men, by this late breakfasting [alluding to the Feast of Ramadan, when food is only permitted after sunset], my past mortification.”
In the tranquil hour of midnight an apparition stood before him, in the habit of a fakir. The merchant cried: “What art thou?” It answered: “I am the apparition of thy good fortune and the genius of thy future happiness. When thou, with such unbounded generosity, didst bequeath all thy wealth to the poor, I determined not to pass by thy door unnoticed, but to endow thee with an inexhaustible treasure, conformable to the greatness of thy capacious soul. To accomplish which I will, every morning, in this shape, appear to thee; thou shalt strike me a few blows on the head, when I shall instantly fall low at thy feet, transformed into an image of gold. From this freely take as much as thou shalt have occasion for; and every member or joint that shall be separated from the image shall be instantly replaced by another of the same precious metal."[47]
[47] If the members severed from
the golden image were to be
instantly
replaced by others, what need was there for
the
daily appearance of the “fakir,” as promised?—But
n’importe!
At daybreak the demon of avarice had conducted Hajm, the covetous, to the durbar of Abdal-Malik, the generous. Soon after his arrival the apparition presented itself. Abdal-Malik immediately arose, and after striking it several blows on the head it fell down before him, and was changed into an image of gold. As much as sufficed for the necessities of the day he took for himself, and gave a much larger portion to his
When the keen appetite was assuaged, and the exhilarating sherbet began to enliven the convivial meeting, Hajm seized a ponderous club, and with it regaled his guests till he broke their heads, and the crimson torrent stained the carpet of hospitality. The fakirs elevating the shriek of sore distress, the kutwal’s guard came to their assistance, and soon a multitude of people assembled, who, after binding the offender with the strong cord of captivity, carried him, together with the fakirs, before the governor of the city. He demanded to know the reason why he had so inhospitably and cruelly behaved to these harmless people. The confounded Hajm replied: “As I was yesterday in the house of Abdal-Malik, a fakir suddenly appeared. The merchant struck him some blows on the head, and he fell prostrate before him, transformed into a golden image. Imagining that any other person could, by a similar behaviour, force any fakir to undergo the like metamorphosis, I invited these men to a banquet, and regaled them with some blows of my cudgel to compel them to a similar transformation; but the demon of avarice has deceived me, and the fascinating temptation of gold has involved me in a labyrinth of ills.”
The governor at once sent for Abdal-Malik, and, demanding a solution of Hajm’s mysterious tale, was thus answered by the charitable merchant: “The unfortunate Hajm is my neighbour. Some days ago he began to exhibit symptoms of a disordered imagination and distracted brain, and during these violent paroxysms of insanity he related some ridiculous fable of me and the rest of my neighbours. No better specimen can be adduced than the extravagant action of which he now stands accused, and the absurd tale by which he attempts to apologise for the commission of it. That madness may no longer usurp the palace of reason, to revel upon the ruins of his mind, deliver him to the sons of ingenuity, the preservers and restorers of health; let them purify his blood by sparing diet, abridge him of his daily potations, and by the force of medicinal beverage recall him from the precipice of ruin.” This advice was warmly applauded by the governor, who, after Hajm had been compelled to ask pardon of the fakirs for the ill-treatment they had received, was soundly bastinadoed before the tribunal, and carried to the hospital for madness.
That each man has his “genius” of good or evil fortune is an essentially Buddhistic idea. The same story occurs, in a different form, in the Hitopadesa, or Friendly Counsel, an ancient Sanskrit collection of apologues, and an abridgment of the Panchatantra, or Five Chapters, where it forms Fable 10 of Book III: In the city of Ayodhya (Oude) there was a soldier named Churamani, who, being anxious for money, for a long time with pain of body worshipped the deity, the jewel of whose diadem is the lunar crescent. Being at length purified from his sins, in his sleep he had a vision in which, through the favour of the deity, he was directed by the lord of the Yakshas [Kuvera, the god of wealth] to do as follows: “Early in the morning, having been shaved, thou must stand, club in hand, concealed behind the door of the house; and the beggar whom thou seest come into the court thou wilt put to death without mercy by blows of thy staff. Instantly the beggar will become a pot full of gold, by which thou wilt be comfortable for the rest of thy life.” These instructions being followed, it came to pass accordingly; but the barber who had been brought to shave him, having witnessed it all, said to himself, “O is this the mode of gaining a treasure? Why, then, may not I also do the same?” From that day forward the barber in like manner, with club in hand, day after day awaited the coming of the beggar. One day a beggar being so caught was attacked by him and killed with the stick, for which offence the barber himself was beaten by the king’s officers, and died.—In the Panchatantra, in place of a soldier, a banker who had lost all his wealth determines to put an end to his life, when he dreams that the personification of Kuvera, the god of riches, appears before him in the form of a Jaina mendicant—a conclusive proof of the Buddhistic origin of the story.—A trunkless head performs the same part in the Russian folk-tale of the Stepmother’s Daughter, on which Mr. Ralston remarks that, “according to Buddhist belief the treasure which has belonged to anyone in a former existence may come to him in the form of a man, who, when killed, is turned to gold."[48]
[48] Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 224, note.
* * * * *
There is an analogous story to this of the Golden Apparition in an entertaining little book entitled, The Orientalist; or, Letters of a Rabbi, by James Noble, published at Edinburgh in 1831, of which the following is the outline:
An old Dervish falls ill in the house of a poor widow, who tends him with great care, and when he recovers his health he offers to take charge of her only son, Abdallah. The good woman gladly consents, and the Dervish sets out accompanied by his young ward, having intimated to his mother that they must perform a journey which would last about two years. One day they arrived at a solitary place, and the Dervish
[49] The same story is given by
the Comte de Caylus—but,
like
Noble, without stating where the original is to be
found—in
his Contes Orientaux, first published in
1745,
under the title of “Histoire de Dervich
Abounadar.”
These entertaining tales are reproduced in
Le
Cabinet des Fees, ed. 1786, tome xxv.—It
will be
observed
that the first part of the story bears a close
resemblance
to that of our childhood’s favourite, the
Arabian
tale of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,”
of
which
many analogues and variants, both European and
Asiatic,
are cited in the first volume of my Popular
Tales
and Fictions, 1887;—see also a supplementary
note
by me on Aladdin’s Lamp in Notes and Queries,
Jan.
5, 1889, p. 1.
* * * * *
A warning against avarice is intended to be conveyed in the tale, or rather apologue, or perhaps we should consider it as a sort of allegory, related by the sagacious bird on the 47th Night, according to the India Office MS., but the 16th Night of Kadiri’s abridgment. It is to the following effect, and may be entitled
The Four Treasure-Seekers.
Once on a time four intimate friends, who made a common fund of all their possessions, and had long enjoyed the wealth of their industrious ancestors, at length lost all their goods and money, and, barely saving their lives, quitted together the place of their nativity. In the course of their travels they meet a wise Brahman, to whom they relate the history of their misfortunes. He gives each of them a pearl, which he places on their heads, telling them, whenever the pearl drops from the head of any of them, to examine the spot, and share equally what they find there. After walking some distance the pearl drops from the head of one of the companions, and on examining the place he discovers a copper mine, the produce of which he offers to share with the others, but they refuse, and, leaving him, continue their journey. By-and-by
[50] That is, hell. Properly,
it is Je-Hinnon, near
Jerusalem,
which seems to have been in ancient times the
cremation
ground for human corpses.
* * * * *
This story of the Four Treasure-seekers forms the third of Book V of the Panchatantra, where the fourth companion, instead of finding a diamond mine guarded by serpents, etc., discovers a man with a wheel upon his head, and on his asking this man where he could procure water, who he was, and why he stood with the wheel on his head, straightway the wheel is transferred to his own head, as had been the case of the former victim who had asked the same questions of his predecessor. The third man, who had found the gold mine, wondering that his companion tarried so long, sets off in search of him, and, finding him with the wheel on his head, asks why he stood thus. The fourth acquaints him of the property of the wheel, and then relates a number of stories to show that those who want common sense will surely come to grief.
It is more than probable that several of the tales and apologues in the Panchatantra were derived from Buddhist sources; and the incident of a man with a wheel on his head is found in the Chinese-Sanskrit work entitled Fu-pen-hing-tsi-king, which Wassiljew translates ’Biography of Sakyamuni and his Companions,’ and of which Dr. Beal has published an abridged English translation under the title of the Romantic History of Buddha. In this work (p. 342 ff.) a merchant, who had struck his mother because she would not sanction his going on a trading voyage, in the course of his wanderings discovers a man “on whose head there was placed an iron wheel, this wheel was red with heat, and glowing as from a furnace, terrible to behold. Seeing this terrible sight, Maitri exclaimed: ’Who are you? Why do you carry that terrible wheel on your head?’ On this the wretched man replied: ’Dear sir, is it possible you know me not? I am a merchant chief called Gorinda.’ Then Maitri asked him and said: ’Pray, then, tell me, what dreadful crime have you committed in former days that you are constrained to wear that fiery wheel on your head.’ Then Gorinda answered: ’In former days I was angry with and struck my mother as she lay on the ground, and for this reason I am condemned to wear this fiery iron wheel around my head.’ At this time Maitri, self-accused, began to cry out and lament; he was filled with remorse on recollection of his own conduct, and exclaimed in agony: ‘Now am I caught like a deer in the snare.’ Then a certain Yaksha, who kept guard over that city, whose name was Viruka, suddenly came to the spot, and removing the fiery wheel from off the head of Gorinda, he placed it on the head of Maitri. Then the wretched man cried out in his agony and said: ‘O what have I done to merit this torment?’ to which the Yaksha replied: ’You, wretched man, dared to strike your mother on the head as she lay on the ground; now, therefore, on your head you shall wear this fiery wheel; through 60,000 years your punishment shall last: be assured of this, through all these years you shall wear this wheel.’”
THE SINGING ASS: THE FOOLISH THIEVES: THE FAGGOT-MAKER AND THE MAGIC BOWL.
Some of the Parrot’s recitals have other tales sphered within them, so to say—a plan which must be familiar to all readers of the Arabian Nights. In the following amusing tale, which is perhaps the best of the whole series (it is the 41st of the India Office MS. No. 2573, and the 31st in Kadiri’s version), there are two subordinate stories:
The Singing Ass.
At a certain period of time, as ancient historians inform us, an ass and an elk were so fond of each other’s company that they were never seen separate. If the plains were deficient in pasture, they repaired to the meadows; or, if famine pervaded the valleys, they overleaped the garden-fence, and, like friends, divided the spoil.
One night, during the season of verdure, about the gay termination of spring, after they had rioted in the cup of plenty, and lay rolling on a green carpet of spinach, the cup of the silly ass began to overflow with the froth of conceit, and he thus expressed his unseasonable intentions:
“O comrade of the branching antlers, what a mirth-inspiring night is this! How joyous are the heart-attracting moments of spring! Fragrance distils from every tree; the garden breathes otto of roses, and the whole atmosphere is pregnant with musk. In the umbrageous gloom of the waving cypress the turtles are exchanging their vows, and the bird of a thousand songs [i.e., the nightingale] sips nectar from the lips of the rose: nothing is wanting to complete the joys of spring but one of my melodious songs. When the warm blood of youth shall cease to give animation to these elegant limbs of mine, what relish shall I have for pleasure? And when the lamp of my life is extinguished, the spring will return in vain.”
Nakhshabi, music at every season is delightful, and a song sweetly murmured captivates the senses.
The musician who charms our ears will most assuredly find the road of success to our hearts.[51]
[51] The italicised passages which
occur in this tale are
verses
in the original Persian text.
The elk answered: “Sagacious, long-eared associate, what an unseasonable proposal is this? Rather let us converse together about pack-saddles and sacks; tell me a story about straw, beans, or hay-lofts, unmerciful drivers, and heavy burdens.”
What business has the Ass to meddle with music?
What occasion has Long-ears to attempt to sing?
“You ought also to recollect,” continued the elk, “that we are thieves, and that we came into this garden to plunder. Consider what an enormous quantity of beets, lettuces, parsley, and radishes we have eaten, and what a fine bed of spinach we are spoiling! ’Nothing can be more disgusting than a bird that sings out of season’ is a proverb which is as current among the sons of wisdom as a bill of exchange among merchants, and as valuable as an unpierced pearl. If you are so infatuated as to permit the enchanting melody of your voice to draw you into this inextricable labyrinth, the gardener will instantly awake, rouse his whole caravan of workmen, hasten to this garden and convert our music into mourning; so that our history will be like that of the house-breakers.”
The Prince of Folly, expressing a wish to know how that was, received the following information:
The Foolish Thieves.
In one of the cities of Hindustan some thieves broke into a house, and after collecting the most valuable movables sat down in a corner to bind them up. In this corner was a large two-eared earthen vessel, brimful of the wine of seduction, which sublime to their mouths they advanced and long-breathed potations exhausted, crying: “Everything is good in its turn; the hours of business are past—come on with the gift which fortune bestows; let us mitigate the toils of the night and smooth the forehead of care.” As they approached the bottom of the flagon, the vanguard of intoxication began to storm the castle of reason; wild uproar, tumult, and their auxiliaries commanded by a sirdar of nonsense, soon after scaled the walls, and the songs of folly vociferously proclaimed that the sultan of discretion was driven from his post, and confusion had taken possession of the garrison. The noise awakened the master of the mansion, who was first overwhelmed with surprise, but soon recollecting himself, he seized his trusty scimitar, and expeditiously roused his servants, who forthwith attacked the sons of disorder, and with very little pains or risk extended them on the pavement of death.
Nakhshabi, everything is good in its season.
Let each perform his part in the world, that the world may go round.
He who drinks at an unseasonable hour ought not to complain of the vintner.
* * * * *
Here Long-ears superciliously answered: “Pusillanimous companion, I am the blossom of the city and the luminary of the people; my presence gives life to the plains, and my harmony cultivates the desert. If, when in vulgar prose I express the unpremeditated idea, every ear is filled with delight, and the fleeting soul, through ecstacy, flutters on the trembling lips—what must be the effect of my songs?”
The elk rejoined: “The ear must be deprived of sensation, the heart void of blood, and formed of the coarsest clay must be he who can attend your lays with indifference. But condescend, for once, to listen to advice, and postpone this music, in which you are so great a proficient, and suppress not only the song, but the sweet murmuring in your throat, prelusive to your singing, and shrink not up your graceful nostrils, nor extent the extremities of your jaws, lest you should have as much reason to repent of your singing as the faggot-maker had of his dancing.” The ass demanding how that came to pass, the elk made answer as follows:
The Faggot-maker and the Magic Bowl.
As a faggot-maker was one day at work in a wood, he saw four peris [or fairies] sitting near him, with a magnificent bowl before them, which supplied them with all they wanted. If they had occasion for food of the choicest taste, wines of the most delicious flavour, garments the most valuable and convenient, or perfumes of the most odoriferous exhalation—in short, whatever necessity could require, luxury demand, or avarice wish for—they had nothing more to do but put their hands into the bowl and pull out whatever they desired. The day following, the poor faggot-maker being at work in the same place, the peris again appeared, and invited him to be one of their party. The proposal was cheerfully accepted, and impressing his wife and children with the seal of forgetfulness, he remained some days in their company. Recollecting himself, however, at last, he thus addressed his white-robed entertainers:
“I am a poor faggot-maker, father of a numerous family; to drive famine from my cot, I every evening return with my faggots; but my cares for my wife and fireside have been for some time past obliterated by the cup of your generosity. If my petition gain admission to the durbar of your enlightened auditory, I will return to give them the salaam of health, and inquire into the situation of their affairs.”
The peris graciously nodded acquiescence, adding: “The favours you have received from us are trifling, and we cannot dismiss you empty-handed. Make choice, therefore, of whatever you please, and the fervour of your most unbounded desire shall be slaked in the stream of our munificence.”
The wood-cutter replied: “I have but one wish to gratify, and that is so unjust and so unreasonable that I dread the very thought of naming it, since nothing but the bowl before us will satisfy my ambitious heart.”
The peris, bursting into laughter, answered: “We shall suffer not the least inconvenience by the loss of it, for, by virtue of a talisman which we possess, we could make a thousand in a twinkling. But, in order to make it as great a treasure to you as it has been to us, guard it with the utmost care, for it will break by the most trifling blow, and be sure never to make use of it but when you really want it.”
The faggot-maker, overcome with joy, said: “I will pay the most profound attention to this inexhaustible treasure; and to preserve it from breaking I will exert every faculty of my soul.” Upon saying this he received the bowl, with which he returned on the wings of rapture, and for some days enjoyed his good fortune better than might be expected. The necessaries and comforts of life were provided for his family, his creditors were paid, alms distributed to the poor, the brittle bowl of plenty was guarded with discretion, and everything around him was arranged for the reception of his friends, who assembled in such crowds that his cottage overflowed. The faggot-maker, who was one of those choice elevated
After the faggot-maker had thus paraded his good fortune and circulated the wine-cup with very great rapidity, he stood up and began to dance, and, to show his dexterity in the art, placed the brittle bowl on his left shoulder, which every time he turned round he struck with his hand, crying: “O soul-exhilarating goblet, thou art the origin of my ease and affluence—the spring of my pomp and equipage—the engineer who has lifted me from the dust of indigence to the towering battlements of glory! Thou art the nimble berid [running foot-man] of my winged wishes, and the regulator of all my actions! To thee am I indebted for all the splendour that surrounds me! Thou art the source of my currency, and art the author of our present festival!”
With these and similar foolish tales he entertained his company, as the genius of nonsense dictated, making the most ridiculous grimaces, rolling his eyes like a fakir in a fit of devotion, and capering like one distracted, till the bowl, by a sudden slip of his foot, fell from his shoulder on the pavement of ruin, and was broken into a hundred pieces. At the same instant, all that he had in the house, and whatever he had circulated in the city, suddenly vanished;—the banquet of exultation was quickly converted into mourning, and he who a little before danced for joy now beat his breast for sorrow, blamed to no purpose the rigour of his inauspicious fortune, and execrated the hour of his birth. Thus a jewel fell into the hands of an unworthy person, who was unacquainted with its value; and an inestimable gem was entrusted to an indigent wretch, who, by his ignorance and ostentation, converted it to his own destruction.
* * * * *
“Melodious bulbul of the long-eared race,” continued the elk, “as the wood-cutter’s dancing was an unpardonable folly which met with the chastisement it deserved, so I fearfully anticipate that your unseasonable singing will become your exemplary punishment.”
His ass-ship listened thus far with reluctance to the admonition of his friend, without intending to profit by it; but arose from the carpet of spinach, eyed his companion with a mortifying glance of contempt, pricked up his long snaky ears, and began to put himself into a musical posture. The nimble, small-hoofed elk, perceiving this, said to himself: “Since he has stretched out his neck and prepared his pitch-pipe, he will not remain long without singing.” So he left the vegetable banquet, leaped over the garden wall, and fled to a place of security. The ass was no sooner alone than he commenced a most loud and horrible braying, which instantly awoke the gardeners, who, with the noose of an insidious halter, to the trunk of a tree fast bound the affrighted musician, where they belaboured him with their cudgels till they broke every bone in his body, and converted his skin to a book, in which, in letters of gold, a munshi [learned man] of luminous pen, with the choicest flowers of the garden of rhetoric, and for the benefit of the numerous fraternity of asses, inscribed this instructive history.
* * * * *
Magical articles such as the wonderful wishing-bowl of our unlucky friend the Faggot-maker figure very frequently in the folk-tales of almost every country, assuming many different forms: a table-cloth, a pair of saddle-bags, a purse, a flask, etc.; but since a comprehensive account of those highly-gifted objects—alas, that they should no longer exist!—is furnished in the early chapters of my Popular Tales and Fictions, I presume I need not go over the same wide field again.—In the Katha Sarit Sagara (Ocean of the Streams of Story), a very large collection of tales and apologues, composed, in Sanskrit, by Somadeva, in the 12th century, after a much older work, the Vrihat Katha (or Great Story), the tale of the Faggot-maker occurs as a separate recital. It is there an inexhaustible pitcher which he receives from four yakshas—supernatural beings, who correspond to some extent with the peris of Muslim mythology—and he is duly warned that should it be broken it departs at once. For a time he concealed the secret from his relations until one day, when he was intoxicated, they asked him how it came about that he had given up carrying burdens, and had abundance of all kinds of dainties, eatable and drinkable. “He was too much puffed up with pride to tell them plainly, but, taking the wish-granting pitcher on his shoulder, he began to dance; and, as he was dancing, the inexhaustible pitcher slipped from his shoulder, as his feet tripped with over-abundance of intoxication, and, falling on the ground, was broken in pieces. And immediately it was mended again, and reverted to its original possessor; but Subadatta was reduced to his former condition, and filled with despondency.” In a note to this story, Mr. Tawney remarks that in Bartsch’s Meklenburg Tales a man possesses himself of an inexhaustible beer-can, but as soon as he tells how he got it the beer disappears.—The story of the Foolish Thieves noisily carousing in the house they had just plundered occurs also in Saadi’s Gulistan and several other Eastern story-books.
In Kadiri’s abridgment of the Parrot-Book, the Elk is taken prisoner as well as his companion the Ass, and the two subordinate stories, of the Foolish Thieves and of the Faggot-maker, are omitted. They are also omitted in the version of the Singing Ass found in the Panchatantra (B. v, F. 7), where a jackal, not an elk, is the companion of the ass, and when he perceives the latter about to “sing” he says: “Let me get to the door of the garden, where I may see the gardener as he approaches, and then sing away as long as you please.” The gardener beats the ass till he is weary, and then fastens a clog to the animal’s leg and ties him to a post. After great exertion, the ass contrives to get free from the post and hobbles away with the clog still on his leg. The jackal meets his old comrade and exclaims: “Bravo, uncle! You would sing your song, though I did all I could to dissuade you, and now see what a fine ornament you have received as recompense for your performance.” This form of the story reappears in the Tantrakhyana, a collection of tales, in Sanskrit, discovered by Prof. Cecil Bendall in 1884, of which he has given an interesting account in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xx, pp. 465-501, including the original text of a number of the stories.—In Ralston’s Tibetan Tales, translated from Schiefner’s German rendering of stories from the Kah-gyur (No. xxxii), the story is also found, with a bull in place of a jackal. An ass meets the bull one evening and proposes they should go together and feast themselves to their hearts’ content in the king’s bean-field, to which the bull replies: “O nephew, as you are wont to let your voice resound, we should run great risk.” Said the ass: “O uncle, let us go; I will not raise my voice.” Having entered the bean-field together, the ass uttered no sound until he had eaten his fill. Then quoth he: “Uncle, shall I not sing a little?” The bull responded: “Wait an instant until I have gone away, and then do just as you please.” So the bull runs away, and the ass lifts up his melodious voice, upon which the king’s servants came and seized him, cut off his long ears, fastened a pestle on his neck, and drove him out of the field.—There can be no question, I think, as to the superiority, in point of humour, of Nakhshabi’s version in Tuti Nama, as given above.
THE COVETOUS GOLDSMITH—THE KING WHO DIED OF LOVE—THE DISCOVERY OF MUSIC—THE SEVEN REQUISITES OF A PERFECT WOMAN.
To quit, for the present at least, the regions of fable and magic, and return to tales of common life: the 30th recital in Kadiri’s abridged text is of
The Goldsmith who lost his Life through his Covetousness.
A soldier finds a purse of gold on the highway, and entrusts it to the keeping of a goldsmith (how frequently do goldsmiths figure in these stories—and never to the credit of the craft!), but when he comes to demand it back the other denies all knowledge of it. The soldier cites him before the kazi, but he still persists in denying that he had ever received any money from the complainant. The kazi was, however, convinced of the truth of the soldier’s story, so he goes to the house of the goldsmith, and privately causes two of his own attendants to be locked up in a large chest that was in one of the rooms. He then confines the goldsmith and his wife in the same room. During the night the concealed men hear the goldsmith inform his wife where he had hidden the soldier’s money; and next morning, when the kazi comes again and is told by his men what they had heard the goldsmith say to his wife about the money, he causes search to be made, and, finding it, hangs the goldsmith on the spot.
* * * * *
Kazis are often represented in Persian stories as being very shrewd and ingenious in convicting the most expert rogues, but this device for discovering the goldsmith’s criminality is certainly one of the cleverest examples.
* * * * *
On the 36th Night of MS. (26th of Kadiri) the loquacious bird relates the story of
The King who died of Love for a Merchant’s beautiful Daughter.
A merchant had a daughter, the fame of whose beauty drew many suitors for her hand, but he rejected them all; and when she was of proper age he wrote a letter to the king, describing her charms and accomplishments, and respectfully offering her to him in marriage. The king, already in love with the damsel from this account of her beauty, sends his four vazirs to the merchant’s house to ascertain whether she was really as charming as her father had represented her to be. They find that she far surpassed the power of words to describe; but, considering amongst themselves that should the king take this bewitching girl to wife, he would become so entangled in the meshes of love as totally to neglect the affairs of the state, they underrate her beauty to the king, who then gives up all thought of her. But it chanced one day that the king himself beheld the damsel on the terrace of her house, and, perceiving that his vazirs had deceived him, he sternly reprimanded them, at the same time expressing his fixed resolution of marrying the girl. The vazirs frankly confessed that their reason for misrepresenting the merchant’s daughter to him was their fear lest, possessing such a charming bride, he should forget his duty to the state; upon which the king, struck with their anxiety for his true interests, resolved to deny himself the happiness of marrying the girl. But he could not suppress his affection for her: he fell sick, and soon after died, the victim of love.
* * * * *
This story forms the 17th of the Twenty-five Tales of a Demon (Vetala Panchavinsati), according to the Sanskrit version found in the Katha Sarit Sagara; but its great antiquity is proved by the circumstance that it is found in a Buddhistic work dating probably 200 years before our era—namely, Buddhaghosha’s Parables. “Dying for love,” says Richardson, “is considered amongst us as a mere poetical figure, and we can certainly support the reality by few examples; but in Eastern countries it seems to be something more, many words in the Arabic and Persian languages which express love implying also melancholy; madness, and death.” Shakspeare affirms that “men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” There is, however, one notable instance of this on record, in the story (as related by Warton, in his History of English Poetry) of the gallant troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, who died for love—and love, too, from hearsay description of the beauty of the Countess of Tripoli.
* * * * *
On the 14th Night the Parrot entertains the Lady with a very curious account of
The Discovery of Music.
Some attribute, says the learned and eloquent feathered sage (according to Gerrans), the discovery to the sounds made by a large stone against the frame of an oil-press; and others to the noise of meat when roasting; but the sages of Hind [India] are of opinion that it originated from the following accident: As a learned Brahman was travelling to the court of an illustrious raja he rested about the middle of the day under the shade of a mulberry tree, on the top of which he beheld a mischievous monkey climbing from bough to bough, till, by a sudden slip, he fell upon a sharp-pointed shoot, which instantly ripped up his belly and left his entrails suspended in the tree, while the unlucky animal fell, breathless, on the dust of death. Some time after this, as the Brahman was returning, he accidentally sat down in the same place, and, recollecting the circumstance, looked up, and saw that the entrails were dried, and yielded a harmonious sound every time the wind gently impelled them against the branches. Charmed at the singularity of the adventure, he took them down, and after binding them to the two ends of his walking-stick, touched them with a small twig, by which he discovered that the sound was much improved. When he got home he fastened the staff to another piece of wood, which was hollow, and by the addition of a bow, strung with part of his own beard, converted it to a complete instrument. In succeeding ages the science received considerable improvements. After the addition of a bridge, purer notes were extracted; and the different students, pursuing the bent of their inclinations, constructed instruments of various forms, according to their individual fancies; and to this whimsical accident we are indebted for the tuneful ney and the heart-exhilarating rabab, and, in short, all the other instruments of wind and strings.
Having thus discoursed upon the discovery of music, the Parrot proceeds to detail
The Seven Requisites of a Perfect Woman.
1 She ought not to be always merry.
2 She ought not to be always sad.
3 She ought not to be always talking.
4 She ought not to be always thinking.
5 She ought not to be constantly dressing.
6 She ought not to be always unadorned.
7 She is a perfect woman
who, at all times, possesses
herself;
can be cheerful without levity, grave
without
austerity; knows when to elevate the tongue
of persuasion,
and when to impress her lips with the
signet of
silence; never converts trifling ceremonies
into intolerable
burdens; always dresses becoming to
her rank
and age; is modest without prudery, religious
without
an alloy of superstition; can hear the one sex
praised
without envy, and converse with the other
without
permitting the torch of inconstancy to kindle
the unhallowed
fire in her breast; considers her husband
as the most
accomplished of mortals, and thinks
all the
sons of Adam besides unworthy of a transient
glance from
the corner of her half-shut eyes.
Such are the requisites of a perfect woman, and how thankful we should be that we have so many in this highly-favoured land who possess them all! These maxims are assuredly of Indian origin—no Persian could ever have conceived such virtues as being attainable by women.
THE PRINCESS OF ROME AND HER SON—THE KING AND HIS SEVEN VAZIRS.
The story told by the Parrot on the 50th Night is very singular, and presents, no doubt, a faithful picture of Oriental manners and customs. In the original text it is entitled
Story of the Daughter of the Kaysar of Rome, and her trouble by reason of her Son.
In former times there was a great king, whose army was numerous and whose treasury was full to overflowing; but, having no enemy to contend with, he neglected to pay his soldiers, in consequence of which they were in a state of destitution and discontent. At length one day the soldiers went to the prime vazir and made their condition known to him. The vazir promised that he would speedily devise a plan by which they should have employment and money. Next morning he presented himself before the king, and said that it was widely reported that the kaysar of Rome had a daughter unsurpassed for beauty—one who was fit only for such a great monarch as his Majesty—and suggested that it would be advantageous if an alliance were formed between two such potentates. The notion pleased the king well, and he forthwith despatched to Rome an ambassador with rich gifts, and requested the kaysar to grant him his daughter in marriage.
Now that princess had a son by a former husband, and the kaysar had said to her before she departed: “Beware that thou mention not thy son, for my love for his society is great, and I cannot part with him.” But the princess was sick at heart for the absence of her son, and she was ever pondering how she should speak to the king about him, and in what manner she might contrive to bring him to her. It happened one day the king gave her a string of pearls and a casket of jewels. She said: “With my father is a slave well skilled in the science of jewels.” The king replied: “If I should ask that slave of thy father, would he give him to me?” “Nay,” said she; “for he holds him in the place of a son. But, if the king desire him, I will send a merchant to Rome, and I myself will give him a token, and with pleasant wiles and fair speeches will bring him hither.” Then the king sent for a clever merchant who knew Arabic eloquently and the language of Rome, and gave him goods for trading, and sent him to Rome with the object of procuring that slave. But the daughter of the kaysar said privately to the merchant: “That slave is my son; I have, for a good reason, said to the king that he is a slave; so thou must bring him as a slave, and let it be thy duty to take care of him.” In due course the merchant brought the youth to the king’s service; and when the king saw his fair face, and discovered in him many pleasing and varied accomplishments, he treated him with distinction and favour, and conferred on the merchant a robe of honour and gifts. His mother saw him from afar, and was pleased with receiving a salutation from him.
One day (the text proceeds) the king had gone to the chase, and the palace remained void of rivals; so the mother called in her son, kissed his fair face, and told him the tale of her great sorrow. A chamberlain became aware of the secret, and another suspicion fell upon him, and he said to himself: “The harem of the king is the sanctuary of security and the palace of protection. If I speak not of this, I shall be guilty of treachery, and shall have wrought unfaithfulness.” When the king returned from the chase, the chamberlain related to him what he had seen, and the king was angry and said: “This woman has deceived me with words and deeds, and has brought hither her desire by craft and cunning. This conjecture must be true, else why did she play such a trick, and why did she hatch such a plot, and
And when the chamberlain took the youth into his own house, he said to him: “O youth, know you not that the harem of the king is the sanctuary of security? What great treachery is this that thou hast perpetrated?” The youth replied: “That queen is my mother, and I am her true son. Because of her natural delicacy, she said not to the king that she had a son by another husband. And when yearning came over her, she contrived to bring me here from Rome; and while the king was engaged in the chase maternal love stirred, and she called me to her and embraced me.” On hearing this, the chamberlain said to himself: “What is passing in his mother’s breast? What I have not done I can yet do, and it were better that I preserve this youth some days, for such a rose may not be wounded through idle words, and such a bough may not be broken by a single breath. For some day the truth of this matter will be disclosed, and it will become known to the king, when repentance may be of no avail.” Another day he went before the king, and said: “That which was commanded have I fulfilled.” On hearing this the king’s wrath was to some extent removed, but his trust in the kaysar’s daughter was departed; while she, poor creature, was grieved and dazed at the loss of her son.
Now in the palace harem there was an old woman, who said to the queen: “How is it that I find thee sorrowful?” And the queen told the whole story, concealing nothing. The old woman was a heroine in the field of craft, and she answered: “Keep thy mind at ease: I will devise a stratagem by which the heart of the king will be pleased with thee, and every grief he has will vanish from his heart.” The queen said, that if she did so she should be amply rewarded. One day the old woman, seeing the king alone, said to him: “Why is thy former aspect altered, and why are traces of care and anxiety visible on thy countenance?” The king then told her all. The old woman said: “I have an amulet of the charms of Solomon, in the Syriac language, in the the writing of the jinn [genii]. When the queen is asleep do thou place it on her breast, and, whatever it may be, she will tell all the truth of it. But take care, fall thou not asleep, but listen well to what she says.” The king wondered at this, and said: “Give me that amulet, that the truth of this matter may be learned.” So the old woman gave him the amulet, and then went to the queen and explained what she had done, and said: “Do thou feign to be asleep, and relate the whole of the story faithfully.”
When a watch of the night was past, the king laid the amulet upon his wife’s breast, and she thus began: “By a former husband I had a son, and when my father gave me to this king, I was ashamed to say I had a tall son. When my yearning passed all bounds, I brought him here by an artifice. One day that the king was gone to the chase, I called him into the house, when, after the way of mothers, I took him in my arms and kissed him. This reached the king’s ears, and he unwittingly gave it another construction, and cut off the head of that innocent boy, and withdrew from me his own heart. Alike is my son lost to me and the king angry.” When the king heard these words he kissed her and exclaimed: “O my life, what an error is this thou hast committed? Thou hast brought calumny upon thyself, and hast given such a son to the winds, and hast made me ashamed!” Straightway he called the chamberlain and said: “That boy whom thou hast killed is the son of my beloved and the darling of my beauty! Where is his grave, that we may make there a guest-house?” The chamberlain said: “That youth is yet alive. When the king commanded his death I was about to kill him, but he said: ’That queen is my mother; through modesty before the king she revealed not the secret that she had a tall son. Kill me not; it may be that some day the truth will become known, and repentance profits not, and regret is useless.’” The king commanded them to bring the youth, so they brought him straightway. And when the mother saw the face of her son, she thanked God and praised the Most High, and became one of the Muslims, and from the sect of unbelievers came into the faith of Islam. And the king favoured the chamberlain in the highest degree, and they passed the rest of their lives in comfort and ease.
* * * * *
This tale is also found in the Persian Bakhtyar Nama (or the Ten Vazirs), the precise date of which has not been ascertained, but a MS. Turki (Uygur) version of it, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, bears to have been written in 1434; the Persian text must therefore have been composed before that date. In the text translated by Sir William Ouseley, in place of the daughter of the kaysar of Rome it is the daughter of the king of Irak whom the king of Abyssinia marries, after subduing the power of her father; and, so far from a present of jewels to her being the occasion of her mentioning her son, in the condition of a slave, it is said that one day the king behaved harshly to her, and spoke disrespectfully of her father, upon which she boasted that her father had in his service a youth of great beauty and possessed of every accomplishment, which excited the king’s desire to have him brought to his court; and the merchant smuggled the youth out of the country of Irak concealed in a chest, placed on the back of a camel. In Lescallier’s French translation it is said that the youth was the fruit of a liaison of the princess, unknown to her father; that his education was secretly entrusted to certain servants; and that the princess afterwards contrived to introduce the boy to her father, who was so charmed with his beauty, grace of manner, and accomplishments, that he at once took him into his service. Thus widely do manuscripts of the same Eastern work vary!
The King and his Seven Vazirs.
On the Eighth Night the Parrot relates, in a very abridged form, the story of the prince who was falsely accused by one of his father’s women of having made love to her, and who was saved by the tales which the royal counsellors related to the king in turn during seven consecutive days. The original of this romance is the Book of Sindibad, so named after the prince’s tutor, Sindibad the sage: the Arabic version is known under the title of the Seven Vazirs; the Hebrew, Mishle Sandabar; the Greek, Syntipas; and the Syriac, Sindban; and its European modifications, the Seven Wise Masters. In the Parrot-Book the first to the sixth vazirs each relate one story only, and the damsel has no stories (all other Eastern versions give two to each of the seven, and six to the queen); the seventh vazir simply appears on the seventh day and makes clear the innocence of the prince. This version, however, though imperfect, is yet of some value in making a comparative study of the several texts.
THE TREE OF LIFE—LEGEND OF RAJA RASALU—CONCLUSION.
Many others of the Parrot’s stories might be cited, but we shall merely glance at one more, as it calls up a very ancient and wide-spread legend:
The Tree of Life.
A prince, who is very ill, sends a parrot of great sagacity to procure him some of the fruit of the Tree of Life. When at length the parrot returns with the life-giving fruit, the prince scruples to eat it, upon which the wise bird relates the legend of Solomon and the Water of Immortality: how that monarch declined to purchase immunity from death on consideration that he should survive all his friends and female favourites. The prince, however, having suspicions regarding the genuineness of the fruit, sends some trusty messengers to “bring the first apple that fell from the Tree of Existence.” But it happened that a black serpent had poisoned it by seizing it in his mouth and then letting it drop again. When the messengers return with the fruit, the prince tries its effect on an old pir (holy man), who at once falls down dead. Upon seeing this the prince doomed the parrot to death, but the sagacious bird suggested that, before the prince should execute him for treason, he should himself go to the Tree of Life, and make another experiment with its fruit. He does so, and on returning home gives part of the fruit to an old woman, “who, from age and infirmity had not stirred abroad for many years,” and she had no sooner tasted it than she was changed into a blooming beauty of eighteen!—Happy, happy old woman!
* * * * *
A different version of the legend occurs in a Canarese collection, entitled Katha Manjari, which is worthy of reproduction, since it may possibly be an earlier form than that in the Persian Parrot-Book: A certain king had a magpie that flew one day to heaven with another magpie. When it was there it took away some mango-seed, and, having returned, gave it into the hands of the king, saying: “If you cause this to be planted and grow, whoever eats of its fruit old age will forsake him and youth return.” The king was much pleased, and caused it to be sown in his favourite garden, and carefully watched it. After some time, buds having shown themselves in it became flowers, then young fruit, then it was grown; and when it was full of ripe fruit, the king ordered it to be cut and brought, and that he might test it gave it to an old man. But on that fruit there had fallen poison from a serpent, as it was carried through the air by a kite, therefore he immediately withered and died. The king, having seen this, was much afraid, and exclaimed: “Is not this bird attempting to kill me?” Having said this, with anger he seized the magpie, and swung it round and killed it. Afterwards in that village the tree had the name of the Poisonous Mango. While things were thus, a washerman, taking the part of his wife in a quarrel with his aged mother, struck the latter, who was so angry at her son that she resolved to die [in order that the blame of her death should fall on him]; and having gone to the poisonous mango-tree in the garden, she cut off a fruit and ate it; and immediately she was more blooming than a girl of sixteen. This wonder she published everywhere. The king became acquainted with it, and having called her and seen her, caused the fruit to be given to other old people. Having seen what was thus done by the wonderful virtue of the mango, the king exclaimed: “Alas! is the affectionate magpie killed which gave me this divine tree? How guilty am I!” and he pierced himself with his sword and died. Therefore (moralises the story-teller) those who do anything without thought are easily ruined.[52]
[52] There is a very similar story
in the Tamil Alakesa
Katha,
a tale of a King and his Four Ministers, but the
conclusion
is different: the raja permits all his
subjects
to partake of the youth-bestowing fruit;—I
wonder
whether they are yet alive! A translation of the
romance
of the King and his Four Ministers—the first
that
has been made into English—will be found
in my
Group
of Eastern Romances and Stories, 1889.
The incident of fruit or food being poisoned by a serpent is of frequent occurrence in Eastern stories; thus, in the Book of Sindibad a man sends his slave-girl to fetch milk, with which to feast some guests. As she was returning with it in an open vessel a stork flew over her, carrying a snake in its beak; the snake dropped some of its poison into the milk, and all the guests who partook of it immediately fell down and died.—The Water of Life and the Tree of Life are the subjects of many European as well as Asiatic folk-tales. Muslims have a tradition that Alexander the Great despatched the prophet Al-Khizar (who is often confounded with Moses and Elias in legends) to procure him some of the Water of Life. The prophet, after a long and perilous journey, at length reached this Spring of Everlasting Youth, and, having taken a hearty draught of its waters, the stream suddenly disappeared—and has, we may suppose, never been rediscovered. Al-Khizar, they say, still lives, and occasionally appears to persons whom he desires especially to favour, and always clothed in a green robe, the emblem of perennial youth. In Arabic, Khizar signifies green.
* * * * *
The faithful and sagacious Parrot having entertained the lady during fifty-two successive nights, and thereby prevented her from prosecuting her intended intrigue, on the following day the merchant returned, and, missing the sharak from the cage, inquired its fate of the Parrot, who straight-way acquainted him of all that had taken place in his absence, and, according to Kadiri’s abridged text, he put his wife to death, which was certainly very unjust, since the lady’s offence was only in design, not in fact.[53]
[53] In one Telugu version, entitled
Toti Nama Cat’halu,
the
lady kills the bird after hearing all its tales; and
in
another the husband, on returning home and learning
of
his wife’s intended intrigue, cuts off her head
and
becomes
a devotee.
* * * * *
It will be observed that the frame of the Tuti Nama somewhat resembles the story, in the Arabian Nights, of the Merchant, his Wife, and the Parrot, which properly belongs to, and occurs in, all the versions of the Book of Sindibad, and also in the Seven Wise Masters; in the latter a magpie takes the place of the parrot. In my Popular Tales and Fictions I have pointed out the close analogy which the frame of the Parrot-Book bears to a Panjabi legend of the renowned hero Raja Rasalu. In the Tuti Nama the merchant leaves a parrot and a sharak to watch over his wife’s conduct in his absence, charging her to obtain their consent before she enters upon any undertaking of moment; and on her consulting the sharak as to the propriety of her assignation with the young prince, the bird refuses consent, whereupon
[54] Captain R. C. Temple’s
Legends of the Panjab, vol. i,
p.
52 ff.; and “Four Legends of Raja Rasalu,”
by the
Rev.
C. Swynnerton, in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1883,
p.
141
ff.
* * * * *
The parrot is a very favourite character in Indian fictions, a circumstance originating, very possibly, in the Hindu belief in metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls after death into other animal forms, and also from the remarkable facility with which that bird imitates the human voice. In the Katha Sarit Sagara stories of wise parrots are of frequent occurrence; sometimes they figure as mere birds, but at other times as men who had been re-born in that form. In the third of the Twenty-Five Tales of a Demon (Sanskrit version), a king has a parrot, “possessed of god-like intellect, knowing all the shastras, having been born in that condition owing to a curse”; and his queen has a hen-maina “remarkable for knowledge.” They are placed in the same cage; and “one day the parrot became enamoured of the maina, and said to her: ’Marry me, fair one, as we sleep, perch, and feed in the same cage.’ But the maina answered him: ’I do not desire intimate union with a male, for all males are wicked and ungrateful.’ The parrot answered: ’It is not true that males are wicked, but females are wicked and cruel-hearted.’ And so a dispute arose between them. The two birds then made a bargain that, if the parrot won, he should have the maina for wife, and if the maina won, the parrot should be her slave, and they came before the prince to get a true judgment.” Each relates a story—the one to show that men are all wicked and ungrateful, the other, that women are wicked and cruel-hearted.
It must be confessed that the frame of the Tuti Nama is of a very flimsy description: nothing could be more absurd, surely, than to represent the lady as decorating herself fifty-two nights in succession in order to have an interview with a young prince, and being detained each night by the Parrot’s tales, which, moreover, have none of them the least bearing upon the condition and purpose of the lady; unlike the Telugu story-book, having a somewhat similar frame (see ante, p. 127, note), in which the tales related by the bird are about chaste wives. But the frames of all Eastern story-books are more or less slight and of small account. The value of the Tuti Nama consists in the aid which the subordinate tales furnish in tracing the genealogy of popular fictions, and in this respect the importance of the work can hardly be over-rated.
ADDITIONAL NOTE.
THE MAGIC BOWL, pp. 152-156; 157, 158.
In our tale of the Faggot-maker, the fairies warn him to guard the Magic Bowl with the utmost care, “for it will break by the most trifling blow,” and he is to use it only when absolutely necessary; and in the notes of variants appended, reference is made (p. 158) to a Meklenburg story where the beer in an inexhaustible can disappears the moment its possessor reveals the secret. The gifts made by fairies and other superhuman beings have indeed generally some condition attached (most commonly, perhaps, that they are not to be examined until the recipients have reached home), as is shown pretty conclusively by my friend Mr. E. Sidney Hartland in a most interesting paper on “Fairy Births and Human Midwives,” which enriches the pages of the Archaeological Review for December, 1889, and at the close of which he cites, from Poestion’s Lapplaendische Maerchen, p. 119, a curious example, which may be fairly regarded as an analogue of the tale of the Poor Faggot-maker—“far cry” though it be from India to Swedish Lappmark:
“A peasant who had one day been unlucky at the chase was returning disgusted, when he met a fine gentleman, who begged him to come and cure his wife. The peasant protested in vain that he was no doctor. The other would take no denial, insisting that it was no matter, for if he would only put his hands on the lady she would be healed. Accordingly, the stranger led him to the very top of a mountain where was perched a castle he had never seen before. On entering, he found the walls were mirrors, the roof overhead of silver, the carpets of gold-embroidered silk, and the furniture of the purest gold and jewels. The stranger took him into a room where lay the loveliest of princesses on a golden bed, screaming with pain. As soon as she saw the peasant, she begged him to come and put his hands upon her. Almost stupified with astonishment, he hesitated to lay his coarse hands upon so fair a dame. But at length he yielded, and in a moment her pain ceased, and she was made whole. She stood up and thanked him, begging him to tarry awhile and eat with them. This, however, he declined to do, for he feared that if he tasted the food which was offered him he must remain there.
“The stranger whom he had followed then took a leathern purse, filled it with small round pieces of wood, and gave it to the peasant with these words: ’So long as thou art in possession of this purse, money will never fail thee. But if thou shouldst ever see me again, beware of speaking to me; for if thou speak thy luck will depart.’ When the man got home he found the purse filled with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full, whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner, and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat there he beheld the stranger, with a bottle in his hand, going round and gathering the drops which the guests shook from time to time out of their glasses. The rich peasant was surprised that one who had given him so much did not seem able to buy himself a single dram, but was reduced to this means of getting a drink. Thereupon he went up to him and said: ’Thou hast shown me more kindness than any other man ever did, and willingly I will treat thee to a little.’ The words were scarce out of his mouth when he received such a blow on his head that he fell stunned to the ground; and when again he came to himself the stranger and his purse were both gone. From that day forward he became poorer and poorer, until he was reduced to absolute beggary.”
Among other examples adduced by Mr. Hartland is a Bohemian legend in which “the Frau von Hahnen receives for her services to a water-nix three pieces of gold, with the injunction to take care of them, and never to let them go out of the hands of her own lineage, else the whole family would fall into poverty. She bequeathed the treasures to her three sons; but the youngest son took a wife who with a light heart gave the fairy gold away. Misery, of course, resulted from her folly, and the race of Hahnen speedily came to an end.”—But those who are interested in the study of comparative folk-lore would do well to read for themselves the whole paper, which is assuredly by far the most (if not indeed the only) comprehensive attempt that has yet been made in our language to treat scientifically the subject of fairy gifts to human beings.
INTRODUCTORY.
In the Talmud are embodied those rules and institutions—interpretations of the civil and canonical laws contained in the Old Testament—which were transmitted orally to succeeding generations of the Jewish priesthood until the general dispersion of the Hebrew race. According to the Rabbis, Moses received the oral as well as the written law at Mount Sinai, and it was by him communicated to Joshua, from whom it was transmitted through forty successive Receivers. So long as the Temple stood, it was deemed not only unnecessary,
By far the greater portion of the Talmud is devoted to the ceremonial law, as preserved by oral tradition in the manner above explained; but it also comprises innumerable sayings or aphorisms of celebrated Rabbis, together with narratives of the most varied character—legends regarding Biblical personages, moral tales, fables, parables, and facetious stories. Of the rabbinical legends, many are extremely puerile and absurd, and may rank with the extravagant and incredible monkish legends of mediaeval times; some, however, are characterised by a richness of humour which one would hardly expect to meet with in such a work; while not a few of the parables, fables, and tales are strikingly beautiful, and will favourably compare with the same class of fictions composed by the ancient sages of Hindustan.
It is a singular circumstance, and significant as well as singular, that while the Hebrew Talmud was, as Dr. Barclay remarks, “periodically banned and often publicly burned, from the age of the Emperor Justinian till the time of Pope Clement VIII,” several of the best stories in the Gesta Romanorum, a collection of moral tales (or tales “moralised”) which were read in Christian churches throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, are derived mediately or immediately from this great storehouse of rabbinical learning.[55]
[55] In midsummer, 1244, twenty
waggon loads of copies of the
Talmud
were burnt in France. This was in consequence
of,
and
four years after, a public dispute between a certain
Donin
(afterwards called Nicolaus), a converted Jew,
with
Rabbi Yehiel, of Paris, on the contents of the
Talmud.—See
Journal of Philology, vol. xvi, p.
133.—In
the year 1569, the famous Jewish library in
Cremona
was plundered, and 12,000 copies of the Talmud
and
other Jewish works were committed to the
flames.—The
Talmud, by Joseph Barclay, LL.D., London,
1875,
p. 14.
The traducers of the Talmud, among other false assertions, have represented the Rabbis as holding their own work as more important than even the Old Testament itself, and as fostering among the Jewish people a spirit of intolerance towards all persons outside the pale of the Hebrew religion. In proof of the first assertion they cite the following passage from the Talmud: “The Bible is like water, the Mishna, like wine, the Gemara, spiced wine; the Law, like salt, the Mishna, pepper, the Gemara, balmy spice.” But surely only a very shallow mind could conceive from these similitudes that the Rabbis rated the importance of the Bible as less than that of the Talmud; yet an English Church clergyman, in an article published in a popular periodical a few years since, reproduced this passage in proof of rabbinical presumption—evidently in ignorance of the peculiar style of Oriental metaphor. What is actually taught by the Rabbis in the passage in question, regarding the comparative merits of the Bible and the Talmud, is this: The Bible is like water, the Law is like salt; now, water and salt are indispensable to mankind. The Mishna is like wine and pepper—luxuries, not necessaries of life; while the Gemara is like spiced wine and balmy spices—still more refined luxuries, but not necessaries, like water and salt.
With regard to the accusation of intolerance brought against the Rabbis, it is worse than a misconception of words or phrases; it is a gross calumny, the more reprehensible if preferred by those who are acquainted with the teachings of the Talmud, since they are thus guilty of wilfully suppressing the truth. In the following passages a broad, humane spirit of toleration is clearly inculcated:
“It is our duty to maintain the heathen poor along with those of our own nation.”
“We must visit their sick, and administer to their relief, bury their dead,” and so forth.
“The heathens that dwell out of the land of Israel ought not to be considered as idolators, since they only follow the customs of their fathers.”
“The pious men of the heathen will have their portion in the next world.”
“It is unlawful to deceive or over-reach any one, not even a heathen.”
“Be circumspect in the fear of the Lord, soft in speech, slow in wrath, kind and friendly to all, even to the heathen.”
Alluding to the laws inimical to the heathen, Rabbi Mosha says: “What wise men have said in this respect was directed against the ancient idolators, who believed neither in a creation nor in a deliverance from Egypt; but the nations among whom we live, whose protection we enjoy, must not be considered in this light, since they believe in a creation, the divine origin of the law, and many other fundamental doctrines of our religion. It is, therefore, not only our duty to shelter them against actual danger, but to pray for their welfare and the prosperity of their respective governments."[56]
[56] Introductory Essay to Hebrew
Tales, by Hyman Hurwitz;
published
at London in 1826.
Let the impartial reader compare these teachings of the Rabbis with the intolerant doctrines and practices of Christian pastors, even in modern times as well as during the Middle Ages: when they taught that out of the pale of the Church there could be no salvation; that no faith should be kept with heretics, or infidels: when Catholics persecuted Protestants, and Protestants retaliated upon Catholics:
Christians have burned each other, quite
persuaded
That all the Apostles would have done
as they did!
It will probably occur to most readers, in connection with the rabbinical doctrine, that it is unlawful to over-reach any one, that the Jews appear to have long ignored such maxims of morality. But it should be remembered that if they have earned for themselves, by their chicanery in mercantile transactions, an evil reputation, their ancestors in the bad old times were goaded into the practice of over-reaching by cunning those Christian sovereigns and nobles who robbed them of their property by force and cruel tortures. Moreover, where are the people to be found whose daily actions are in accordance with the religion they profess? At least, the Rabbis, unlike the spiritual teachers of mediaeval Europe, did not openly inculcate immoral doctrines.
LEGENDS OF SOME BIBLICAL CHARACTERS.
There is, no doubt, very much in the Talmud that possesses a recondite, spiritual meaning; but it would likely puzzle the most ingenious and learned modern Rabbis to construe into mystical allegories such absurd legends regarding Biblical personages as the following:
Adam and Eve.
Adam’s body, according to the Jewish Fathers, was formed of the earth of Babylon, his head of the land of Israel, and his other members of other parts of the world. Originally his stature reached the firmament, but after his fall the Creator, laying his hand upon him, lessened him very considerably.[57] Mr Hershon, in his Talmudic Miscellany, says there is a notion among the Rabbis that Adam was at first possessed of a bi-sexual organisation, and this conclusion they draw from Genesis i, 27, where it is said: “God created man in his own image,
[57] Commentators on the Kuran say
that Adam’s beard did not
grow
till after his fall, and it was the result of his
excessive
sorrow and penitence. Strange to say, he was
ashamed
of his beard, till he heard a voice from heaven
calling
to him and saying: “The beard is man’s
ornament
on
earth; it distinguishes him from the feeble woman.”
Thus
we ought to—should we not?—regard
our beards as
the
offshoots of what divines term “original sin”;
and
cherish
them as mementoes of the Fall of Man. Think of
this,
ye effeminate ones who use the razor!
[58] The notion of man being at
first androgynous, or
man-woman,
was prevalent in most of the countries of
antiquity.
Mr. Baring-Gould says that “the idea, that
man
without woman and woman without man are imperfect
beings,
was the cause of the great repugnance with which
the
Jews and other nations of the East regarded
celibacy.”
(Legends of the Old Testament, vol. i, p.
22.)
But this, I think, is not very probable. The
aversion
of Asiatics from celibacy is rather to be
ascribed
to their surroundings in primitive times, when
neighbouring
clans were almost constantly at war with
each
other, and those chiefs and notables who had the
greatest
number of sturdy and valiant sons and grandsons
would
naturally be best able to hold their own against
an
enemy. The system of concubinage, which seems
to have
existed
in the East from very remote times, is not
matrimony,
and undoubtedly had its origin in the
passionate
desire which, even at the present day, every
Asiatic
has for male offspring. By far the most common
opening
of an Eastern tale is the statement that there
was
a certain king, wise, wealthy, and powerful, but
though
he had many beautiful wives and handmaidens,
Heaven
had not yet blest him with a son, and in
consequence
of this all his life was embittered, and he
knew
no peace day or night.
[59] Professor Charles Marelle,
of Berlin, in an interesting
little
collection, Affenschwanz, &c.; Variants orales
de
Contes Populaires, Francais et Etrangers
(Braunschweig,
1888), gives an amusing story, based
evidently
on this rabbinical legend: The woman formed
from
Adam’s tail proved to be as mischievous as a
monkey,
and gave her spouse no peace; whereupon another
was
formed from a part of his breast, and she was a
decided
improvement on her sister. All the giddy girls
in
the world are descended from the woman who was made
from
Adam’s tail.
Adam’s excuse for eating of the forbidden fruit, “She gave me of the tree and I did eat,” is said to be thus ingeniously explained by the learned Rabbis: By giving him of the tree is meant that Eve took a stout crab-tree cudgel, and gave her husband (in plain English) a sound rib-roasting, until he complied with her will!—The lifetime of Adam, according to the Book of Genesis, ch. v, 5, was nine hundred and thirty years, for which the following legend (reproduced by the Muslim traditionists) satisfactorily accounts: The Lord showed to Adam every future generation, with their heads, sages, and scribes.[60] He saw that David was destined to live only three hours, and said: “Lord and Creator of the world, is this unalterably fixed?” The Lord answered: “It was my original design.” “How many years shall I live?” “One thousand.” “Are grants known in heaven?” “Certainly.” “I grant then seventy years of my life to David.” What did Adam therefore do? He gave a written grant, set his seal to it, and the same was done by the Lord and Metatron.
[60] You and I, good reader, must
therefore have been seen by
the
Father of Mankind.
The body of Adam was taken into the ark by Noah, and when at last it grounded on the summit of Mount Ararat [which it certainly never did!], Noah and his three sons removed the body, “and they followed an angel, who led them to a place where the First Father was to lie. Shem (or Melchizidek, for they are one), being consecrated by God to the priesthood, performed the religious rites, and buried Adam at the centre of the earth, which is Jerusalem. But some say he was buried by Shem, along with Eve in the cave of Machpelah in Hebron; others relate that Noah on leaving the ark distributed the bones of Adam among his sons, and that he gave the head to Shem, who buried it in Jerusalem."[61]
[61] Legends of Old Testament
Characters, by S.
Baring-Gould,
vol. i, pp. 78, 79.
Cain and Abel.
The Hebrew commentators are not agreed regarding the cause of Cain’s enmity towards his brother Abel. According to one tradition, Cain and Abel divided the whole world between them, one taking the moveable and the other the immoveable possessions. One day Cain said to his brother: “The earth on which thou standest is mine; therefore betake thyself to the air.” Abel rejoined: “The garment which thou dost wear is mine; therefore take it off.” From this there arose a conflict between them, which resulted in Abel’s death. Rabbi Huna teaches, however, that they contended for a twin sister of Abel; the latter claimed her because she was born along with him, while Cain pleaded his right of primogeniture. After Adam’s first-born had taken his brother’s life, the sheep-dog of Abel faithfully guarded his master’s corpse from the attacks of beasts and birds of prey. Adam and Eve also sat near the body of their pious son, weeping bitterly, and not knowing how to dispose of his lifeless clay. At length a raven, whose mate had lately died, said to itself: “I will go and show to Adam what he must do with his son’s body,” and accordingly scooped a hole in the ground and laid the dead raven therein, and covered it with earth. This having been observed by Adam, he likewise buried the body of Abel. For this service rendered to our great progenitor, we are told, the Deity rewarded the raven, and no one is allowed to injure its young: “they have food in abundance, and their cry for rain is always heard."[62]
[62] The Muhammedan legend informs
us that Cain was
afterwards
slain by the blood-avenging angel. But the
Jewish
traditionists say that God was at length moved by
Cain’s
contrition and placed on his brow a seal, which
indicated
that the fratricide was fully pardoned. Adam
happened
to meet him, and observing the seal on his
forehead,
asked him how he had turned aside the wrath of
God.
He replied: “By confession of my sin and
sincere
repentance.”
On hearing this Adam exclaimed, beating his
breast:
“Woe is me! Is the virtue of repentance
so great
and
I knew it not?”
The Planting of the Vine.
When Noah planted the vine, say the Rabbis, Satan slew a sheep, a lion, an ape, and a sow, and buried the carcases under it; and hence the four stages from sobriety to absolute drunkenness: Before a man begins to drink, he is meek and innocent as a lamb, and as a sheep in the hand of the shearer is dumb; when he has drank enough, he is fearless as a lion, and says there is no one like him in the world; in the next stage, he is like an ape, and dances, jests, and talks nonsense, knowing not what he is doing and saying; when thoroughly drunken, he wallows in the mire like a sow.[63] To this legend Chaucer evidently alludes in the Prologue to the Maniciple’s Tale:
I trow that ye have dronken wine of
ape,
And that is when men plaien at a strawe.
[63] A garbled version of this legend
is found in the Latin
Gesta
Romanorum (it does not occur in the Anglican
versions
edited by Sir F. Madden for the Roxburghe Club,
and
by Mr. S. J. Herrtage for the Early English Text
Society),
Tale 179, as follows: “Josephus, in his
work
on
‘The Causes of Things,’ says that Noah
discovered the
vine
in a wood, and because it was bitter he took the
blood
of four animals, viz., of a lion, a lamb, a pig,
and
a monkey. This mixture he united with earth and
made
a
kind of manure, which he deposited at the roots of
the
trees.
Thus the blood sweetened the fruit, with the
juice
of which he afterwards intoxicated himself, and
lying
naked was derided by his youngest son.”
Luminous Jewels.
Readers of that most fascinating collection of Eastern tales, commonly but improperly called the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, must be familiar with the remarkable property there ascribed to certain gems, of furnishing light in the absence of the sun. Possibly the Arabians adopted this notion from the Rabbis, in whose legends jewels are frequently represented as possessing the light-giving property. For example, we learn that Noah and his family, while in the ark, had no light besides what was obtained from diamonds and other precious stones. And Abraham, who, it appears, was extremely jealous of his wives, built for them an enchanted city, of which the walls were so high as to shut out the light of the sun; an inconvenience which he easily remedied by means of a large basin full of rubies and other jewels, which shed forth a flood of light equal in brilliancy to that of the sun itself.[64]
[64] Luminous jewels figure frequently
in Eastern tales, and
within
recent years, from experiments and observations,
the
phosphorescence of the diamond, sapphire, ruby, and
topaz
has been fully established.
Abraham’s Arrival in Egypt.
When Abraham journeyed to Egypt he had among his impedimenta a large chest. On reaching the gates of the capital the customs officials demanded the usual duties. Abraham begged them to name the sum without troubling themselves to open the chest. They demanded to be paid the duty on clothes. “I will pay for clothes,” said the patriarch, with an alacrity which aroused the suspicions of the officials, who then insisted upon being paid the duty on silk. “I will pay for silk,” said Abraham. Hereupon the officials demanded the duty on gold, and Abraham readily offered to pay the amount. Then they surmised that the chest contained jewels, but Abraham was quite as willing to pay the higher duty on gems, and now the curiosity of the officials could be no longer restrained. They broke open the chest, when, lo, their eyes were dazzled with the lustrous beauty of Sarah! Abraham, it seems, had adopted this plan for smuggling his lovely wife into the Egyptian dominions.
The Infamous Citizens of Sodom.
Some of the rabbinical legends descriptive of the singular customs of the infamous citizens of Sodom are exceedingly amusing—or amazing. The judges of that city are represented as notorious liars and mockers of justice. When a man had cut off the ear of his neighbour’s ass, the judge said to the owner: “Let him have the ass till the ear is grown again, that it may be returned to thee as thou wishest.” The hospitality shown by the citizens to strangers within their gates was of a very peculiar kind. They had a particular bed for the weary traveller who entered their city and desired shelter for the night. If he was found to be too long for the bed, they reduced him to the proper size by chopping off so much of his legs; and if he was shorter than the bed, he was stretched to the requisite length.[65] To preserve their reputation for hospitality, when a stranger arrived each citizen was required to give him a coin with his name written on it, after which the unfortunate traveller was refused food, and as soon as he had died of hunger every man took back his own money. It was a capital offence for any one to supply the stranger with food, in proof of which it is recorded that a poor man, having arrived in Sodom, was presented with money and refused food by all to whom he made his wants known. It chanced that, as he lay by the roadside almost starved to death, he was observed by one of Lot’s daughters, who had compassion on him, and supplied him with food for many days, as she went to draw water for her father’s household. The citizens, marvelling at the man’s tenacity of life, set a person to watch him, and Lot’s daughter being discovered bringing him bread, she was condemned to death by burning. Another kind-hearted maiden who had in like manner relieved the wants of a stranger, was punished in a still more dreadful manner, being smeared over with honey, and stung to death by bees.
[65] Did the Talmudist borrow this
story from the Greek
legend
of the famous robber of Attica, Procrustes, who
is
said to have treated unlucky travellers after the
same
barbarous fashion?
It may be naturally supposed that travellers who were acquainted with the peculiar ways of the citizens of Sodom would either pass by that city without entering its inhospitable gates, or, if compelled by business to go into the town, would previously provide themselves with food; but even this last precaution did not avail them against the wiles of those wicked people: A man from Elam, journeying to a place beyond Sodom, reached the infamous city about sunset. The stranger had with him an ass, bearing a valuable saddle to which was strapped a large bale of merchandise. Being refused a lodging by each citizen of whom he asked the favour, our traveller made a virtue of necessity, and determined to pass the night, along with his animal and his goods, as best he might, in the streets.
Abraham once sent his servant Eliezer to Sodom with his compliments to Lot and his family, and to inquire concerning their welfare. As Eliezer entered Sodom he saw a citizen beating a stranger, whom he had robbed of his property. “Shame upon thee!” exclaimed Eliezer to the citizen. “Is this the way you act towards strangers?” To this remonstrance the man replied by picking up a stone and striking Eliezer with it on the forehead with such force as to cause the blood to flow down his face. On seeing the blood the citizen caught hold of Eliezer and demanded to be paid his fee for having freed him of impure blood. “What!” said Eliezer, “am I to pay thee for wounding me?” “Such is our law,” returned the citizen. Eliezer refused to pay, and the man brought him before the judge, to whom he made his complaint. The judge then decreed: “Thou must pay this man his fee, since he has let thy blood; such is our law.” “There, then,” said Eliezer, striking the judge with a stone, and causing him to bleed, “pay my fee to this man, I want it not,” and then departed from the court.[66]
[66] There are two Italian stories
which bear some
resemblance
to this queer legend: In the fourth novel of
Arienti
an advocate is fined for striking his opponent
in
court, and “takes his change” by repeating
the
offence;
and in the second novel of Sozzini, Scacazzone,
after
dining sumptuously at an inn, and learning from
the
waiter that the law of that town imposed a fine of
ten
livres for a blow on the face, provokes the landlord
so
that he gets a slap from him on the cheek, upon which
he
tells Boniface to pay himself out of the fine he
should
have had to pay for the blow if charged before
the
magistrate, and give the rest of the money to the
waiter.—A
similar story is told in an Arabian
collection,
of a half-witted fellow and the kazi.
Abraham and Ishmael’s Wife.
Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, was given as a slave to Abraham, by her father, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who said: “My daughter had better be a slave in the house of Abraham than mistress in any other house.” Her son Ishmael, it is said, took unto himself a wife of the daughters of Moab. Three years afterwards Abraham set out to visit his son, having solemnly promised Sarah (who, it thus appears, was still jealous of her former handmaid) that he would not alight from his camel. He reached Ishmael’s house about noontide, and found his wife alone. “Where is Ishmael?” inquired the patriarch. “He is gone into the wilderness with his mother to gather dates and other fruits.” “Give me, I pray thee, a little bread and water, for I am fatigued with travelling.” “I have neither bread nor water,” rejoined the inhospitable matron. “Well,” said the patriarch, “tell Ishmael when he comes home that an old man came to see him, and recommends him to change the door-post of his house, for it is not worthy of him.” On Ishmael’s return she gave him the message, from which he at once understood that the stranger was his father, and that he did not approve of his wife. Accordingly he sent her back to her own people, and Hagar procured him a wife from her father’s house. Her name was Fatima.
Another period of three years having elapsed, Abraham again resolved to visit his son; and having, as before, pledged his word to Sarah that he would not alight at Ishmael’s house, he began his journey. When he arrived at his son’s domicile he found Fatima alone, Ishmael being abroad, as on the occasion of his previous visit. But from Fatima he received every attention, albeit she knew not that he was her husband’s father. Highly gratified with Fatima’s hospitality, the patriarch called down blessings upon Ishmael, and returned home. Fatima duly informed Ishmael of what had happened in his absence, and then he knew that Abraham still loved him as his son.
This is one of the few rabbinical legends regarding Biblical characters which do not exceed the limits of probability; and I confess I can see no reason why these interesting incidents should be considered as purely imaginary. As a rule, however, the Talmudic legends of this kind must be taken not only cum grano salis, but with a whole bushel of that most necessary commodity, particularly such marvellous relations as that of Rabbi Jehoshua, when he informs us that the “ram caught in a thicket,” which served as a substitute for sacrifice when Abraham was prepared to offer up his son Isaac, was brought by an angel out of Paradise, where it pastured under the Tree of Life and drank from the brook which flows beneath it. This creature, the Rabbi adds, diffused its perfume throughout the world.[67]
[67] The commentators on the Kuran
have adopted this legend.
But
according to the Kuran it was not Isaac, but
Ishmael,
the great progenitor of the Arabs, who was to
be
sacrificed by Abraham.
Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife.
The story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, as related in the Book of Genesis, finds parallels in the popular tales and legends of many countries: the vengeance of “woman whose love is scorned,” says a Hindu writer, “is worse than poison”! But the rabbinical version is quite unique in representing the wife of Potiphar as having aiders and abettors in carrying out her scheme of revenge: For some days after the pious young Israelite had declined her amorous overtures, she looked so ill that her female friends inquired of her the cause, and having told them of her adventure with Joseph, they said: “Accuse him before thy husband, that he may be cast into prison.” She desired them to accuse him likewise to their husbands, which they did accordingly; and their husbands went before Pharaoh and complained of Joseph’s misconduct towards their wives.[68]
[68] Commentators on the Kuran inform
us that when Joseph was
released
from prison, after so satisfactorily
interpreting
Pharaoh’s two dreams, Potiphar was degraded
from
his high office. One day, while Joseph was riding
out
to inspect a granary beyond the city, he observed a
Zulaykha was the name of Potiphar’s wife, if we may believe Muhammedan legends, and the daughter of the king of Maghrab (or Marocco), who gave her in marriage to the grand vazir of the king of Egypt, and the beauteous princess was disgusted to find him, not only very old, but, as a modest English writer puts it, very mildly, “belonged to that unhappy class which a practice of immemorial antiquity in the East excluded from the pleasures of love and the hope of posterity.” This device of representing Potiphar as being what Byron styles “a neutral personage” was, of course, adopted by Muslim traditionists and poets in order to “white-wash” the frail Zulaykha.—There are extant many Persian and Turkish poems on the “loves” of Yusuf wa Zulaykha, most of them having a mystical signification, and that by the celebrated Persian poet Jami is universally considered as by far the best.
Joseph and his Brethren.
Wonderful stories are related of Joseph and his brethren. Simeon, if we may credit the Talmudists, must have been quite a Hercules in strength. The Biblical narrative of Simeon’s detention by his brother Joseph is brief but most expressive: “And he turned himself about from them and wept; and returned to them again, and communed with them, and took from them Simeon, and bound him before their eyes."[69] The Talmudists condescend more minutely regarding this interesting incident: When Joseph ordered seventy valiant men to put Simeon in chains, they had no sooner approached him than he roared so loud that all the seventy fell down at his feet and broke their teeth! Joseph then said to his son Manasseh: “Chain thou him”; whereupon Manasseh dealt Simeon a single blow and immediately overpowered him; upon which Simeon exclaimed: “Surely this was the blow of a kinsman!”—When Joseph sent Benjamin to prison, Judah cried so loud that Chushim, the son of Dan, heard him in Canaan and responded. Joseph feared for his life, for Judah was so enraged that he wept blood. Some say that Judah wore five garments, one over the other; but when he was angry his heart swelled so much that his five garments burst open. Joseph cried so terribly that one of the pillars of his house fell in and was changed into sand. Then Judah said: “He is valiant, like one of us.”
[69] Gen. xlii, 24.—It
does not appear from the sacred
narrative
why Joseph selected his brother Simeon as
hostage.
Possibly Simeon was most eager for his death,
before
he was cast into the dry well and then sold to
the
Ishmaelites; and indeed both he and his brother Levi
seem
to have been “a bad lot,” judging from
the dying
Jacob’s
description of them, Gen. xlix, 5-7.
Jacob’s Sorrow.
But like a gem, among a heap of rubbish is the touching little story of how the news of Joseph’s being alive and the viceroy of Egypt was conveyed to the aged and sorrow-stricken Jacob. When the brethren had returned to the land of Canaan, after their second expedition, they were perplexed how to communicate to their father the joyful intelligence that his long-lamented son still lived, fearing it might have a fatal effect on the old man if suddenly told to him. At length Serach, the daughter of Asher, proposed that she should convey the tidings to her grandfather in a song. Accordingly she took her harp, and sang to Jacob the whole story of Joseph’s life and his present greatness, and her music soothed his spirit; and when he fully realised that his son was yet alive, he fervently blessed her, and she was taken into Paradise, without tasting of death.[70]
[70] “Jacob’s grief”
is proverbial in Muslim countries. In
the
Kuran, sura xii, it is stated that the patriarch
became
totally blind through constant weeping for the
loss
of Joseph, and that his sight was restored by means
of
Joseph’s garment, which the governor of Egypt
sent by
his
brethren.—In the Makamat of Al-Hariri,
the
celebrated
Arabian poet (A.D. 1054-1122), Harith bin
Hamman
is represented as saying that he passed a night
of
“Jacobean sorrow,” and another imaginary
character is
said
to have “wept more than Jacob when he lost his
son.”
Moses and Pharaoh.
The slaughter of the Hebrew male children by the cruel command of the “Pharoah who knew not Joseph” was a precaution adopted, we are informed by the Rabbis, in consequence of a dream which that monarch had, of an aged man who held a balance in his right hand; in one scale he placed all the sages and nobles of Egypt, and in the other a little lamb, which weighed down them all. In the morning Pharaoh told his strange dream to his counsellors, who were greatly terrified, and Bi’lam, the son of Beor, the magician, said: “This dream, O King, forebodes great affliction, which one of the children of Israel will bring upon Egypt.” The king asked the soothsayer whether this threatened evil might not be avoided. “There is but one way of averting the calamity—cause every male child of Hebrew parents to be slain at birth.” Pharaoh approved of this advice, and issued an edict accordingly. The Egyptian monarch’s kind-hearted daughter (whose name, by the way, was Bathia), who rescued the infant Moses from the common fate of the Hebrew male children, was a leper, and consequently was not permitted to use the warm baths. But no sooner had she stretched forth her hand to the crying infant than she was healed of her leprosy, and, moreover, afterwards admitted bodily into Paradise.[71]
[71] Muslims say that Pharaoh’s
seven daughters were all
lepers,
and that Bathia’s sisters, as well as herself,
were
cured through her saving the infant Moses.
According to the Hebrew traditionists, nine human beings entered Paradise without having tasted of death, viz.: Enoch; Messiah; Elias; Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; the servant of the king of Kush; Hiram, king of Tyre; Jaabez, the son of the Prince, and the Rabbi, Juda; Serach, the daughter of Asher; and Bathia, the daughter of Pharaoh.
The last of the race of genuine Dublin ballad-singers, who rejoiced in the nom de guerre of “Zozimus” (ob. 1846), used to edify his street patrons with a slightly different reading of the romantic story of the finding of Moses in the bulrushes, which has the merit of striking originality, to say the least:
In Egypt’s land, upon the banks of Nile, King Pharaoh’s daughter went to bathe in style; She tuk her dip, then went unto the land, And, to dry her royal pelt, she ran along the strand. A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw A smiling babby in a wad of straw; She tuk it up, and said, in accents mild, “Tare an’ agers, gyurls, which av yez owns this child?”
The story of the finding of Moses has its parallels in almost every country—in the Greek and Roman legends of Perseus, Cyrus, and Romulus—in Indian, Persian, and Arabian tales—and a Babylonian analogue is given, as follows, by the Rev. A. H. Sayce, in the Folk-Lore Journal for 1883: “Sargon, the mighty monarch, the king of Agane, am I. My mother was a princess; my father I knew not. My father’s brother loved the mountain land. In the city of Azipiranu, which on the bank of the Euphrates lies, my mother, the princess, conceived me; in an inacessible spot she brought me forth. She placed me in a basket of rushes; with bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not. The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it brought me. Akki, the irrigator, in the tenderness of his heart, lifted me up. Then Akki, the irrigator, as his gardener appointed me, and in my gardenership the goddess Istar loved me. For forty-five years the kingdom I have ruled, and the black-headed (Akkadian) race have governed.”
Of the childhood of Moses a curious story is told to account for his being in after life “slow of speech and slow of tongue”: Pharaoh was one day seated in his banqueting hall, with his queen at his right hand and Bathia at his left, and around him were his two sons, Bi’lam, the chief soothsayer, and other dignitaries of his court, when he took little Moses (then three years old) upon his knee, and began to fondle him. The Hebrew urchin stretched forth his hand and took the kingly crown from Pharaoh’s brow and deliberately placed it upon his own head. To the monarch and his courtiers this action of the
It was no easy matter for Moses and his brother to gain access to Pharaoh, for his palace had 400 gates, 100 on each side; and before each gate stood no fewer than 60,000 tried warriors. Therefore the angel Gabriel introduced them by another way, and when Pharaoh beheld Moses and Aaron he demanded to know who had admitted them. He summoned the guards, and ordered some of them to be beaten and others to be put to death. But next day Moses and Aaron returned, and the guards, when called in, exclaimed: “These men are sorcerers, for they cannot have come in through any of the gates.” There were, however, much more formidable guardians of the royal palace: the 400 gates were guarded by bears, lions, and other ferocious beasts, who suffered no one to pass unless they were fed with flesh. But when Moses and Aaron came, they gathered about them, and licked the feet of the prophets, accompanying them to Pharaoh.—Readers who are familiar with the Thousand and One Nights and other Asiatic story-books will recollect many tales in which palaces are similarly guarded. In the spurious “Canterbury” Tale of Beryn (taken from the first part of the old French romance of the Chevalier Berinus), which has been re-edited for the Chaucer Society, the palace-garden of Duke Isope is guarded by eight necromancers who look like “abominabill wormys, enough to frighte the hertiest man on erth,” also by a white lion that had eaten five hundred men.
LEGENDS OF DAVID AND SOLOMON, ETC.
Muhammed, the great Arabian lawgiver, drew very largely from the rabbinical legends in his composition of the Kuran, every verse of which is considered by pious Muslims as a miracle, or wonder (ayet). The well-known story of the spider weaving its web over the mouth of the cave in which Muhammed and Abu Bekr had concealed themselves in their flight from Mecca to Medina was evidently borrowed from the Talmudic legend of David’s flight from the malevolence of Saul: Immediately after David had entered the cave of Adullam, a spider spun its web across the opening. His pursuers presently passing that way were about to search the cave; but perceiving the spider’s web, they naturally concluded that no one could have recently entered there, and thus was the future king of Israel preserved from Saul’s vengeance.
King David once had a narrow escape from death at the hands of Goliath’s brother Ishbi. The king was hunting one morning when Satan appeared before him in the form of a deer.[72] David drew his bow, but missed him, and the feigned deer ran off at the top of his speed. The king, with true sportsman’s instinct, pursued the deer, even into the land of the Philistines—which, doubtless, was Satan’s object in assuming that form. It unluckily happened that Ishbi, the brother of Goliath, recognised in the person of the royal hunter the slayer of the champion of Gath, and he immediately seized David, bound him neck and heels together, and laid him beneath his wine-press, designing to crush him to death. But, lo, the earth became soft, and the Philistine was baffled. Meanwhile, in the land of Israel a dove with silver wings was seen by the courtiers of King David fluttering about, apparently in great distress, which signified to the wise men that their royal master was in danger of his life. Abishai, one of David’s counsellors, at once determined to go and succour his sovereign, and accordingly mounted the king’s horse, and in a few minutes was in the land of the Philistines. On arriving at Ishbi’s house, he discovered that gentleman’s venerable mother spinning at the door. The old lady threw her distaff at the Israelite, and, missing him, desired him to bring it back to her. Abishai returned it in such a manner that she never afterwards required a distaff. This little incident was witnessed by Ishbi, who, resolving to rid himself of one of his enemies forthwith, took David from beneath the wine-press, and threw him high into the air, expecting that he would fall upon his spear, which he had previously fixed into the ground. But Abishai pronounced the Great Name (often referred to in the Talmud), and David, in consequence, remained suspended between earth and sky. In the sequel they both unite against Ishbi, and put him to death.[73]
[72] That the arch-fiend could,
and often did, assume various
forms
to lure men to their destruction was universally
believed
throughout Europe during mediaeval times and
even
much later; generally he appeared in the form of a
most
beautiful young woman; and there are still current
in
obscure parts of Scotland wild legends of his having
thus
tempted even godly men to sin.—In Asiatic
tales
rakshasas,
ghuls (ghouls), and such-like demons
frequently
assume the appearance of heart-ravishing
damsels
in order to delude and devour the unwary
traveller.
In many of our old European romances fairies
are
represented as transforming themselves into the
semblance
of deer, to decoy into sequestered places
noble
hunters of whom they had become enamoured.
[73] The “Great Name”
(in Arabic, El-Ism el-Aazam, “the
Most
Great Name"), by means of which King David was
saved
from a cruel death, as above, is often employed in
Eastern
romances for the rescue of the hero from deadly
peril,
as well as to enable him to perform supernatural
exploits.
It was generally engraved on a signet-ring,
but
sometimes it was communicated orally to the
fortunate
hero by a holy man, or by a king of the
genii—who
was, of course, a good Muslim.
Of Solomon the Wise there are, of course, many curious rabbinical legends. His reputation for superior sagacity extended over all the world, and the wisest men of other nations came humbly to him as pupils. It would appear that this great monarch was not less willing to afford the poorest of his subjects the benefit of his advice when they applied to him than able to solve the knottiest problem which the most keen-witted casuist could propound. One morning a man, whose life was embittered by a froward, shrewish wife, left his house to seek the advice of Solomon. On the road he overtook another man, with whom he entered into conversation, and presently learned that he was also going to the king’s palace. “Pray, friend,” said he, “what might be your business with the king? I am going to ask him how I should manage a wife who has long been froward.” “Why,” said the other, “I employ a great many people, and have a great deal of capital invested in my business; yet I find I am losing more and more every year, instead of gaining; and I want to know the cause, and how it may be remedied.” By-and-by they overtook a third man, who informed them that he was a physician whose practice had fallen off considerably, and he was proceeding to ask King Solomon’s advice as to how it might be increased. At length they reached the palace, and it was arranged among them that the man who had the shrewish wife should first present himself before the king. In a short time he rejoined his companions with a rather puzzled expression of countenance, and the others inquiring how he had sped, he answered: “I can see no wisdom in the king’s advice; he simply advised me to go to a mill.” The second man then went in, and returned quite as much perplexed as the first, saying: “Of a truth, Solomon is not so wise as he is reported to be; would you believe it?—all he said to me when I had told him my grievance was, get up early in the morning.” The third man, somewhat discouraged by these apparently idle answers, entered the presence-chamber, and on coming out told his companions that the king had simply advised him to be proud. Equally disappointed, the trio returned homeward together. They had not gone far when one of them said to the first man: “Here is a mill; did not the king advise you to go into one?” The man entered, and presently ran out, exclaiming: “I’ve got it!
[74] At the “mill” the
man who was plagued with a bad wife
doubtless
saw some labourers threshing corn, since
grinding
corn would hardly suggest the idea of
beating
his provoking spouse.—By the way, this man
had
evidently never heard the barbarous sentiment,
expressed
in the equally barbarous English popular
rhyme—composed,
probably, by some beer-sodden
bacon-chewer,
and therefore, in those ancient times,
non
inventus—
A
woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The
more you beat ’em, the better they be—
else,
what need for him to consult King Solomon about
his
paltry domestic troubles?
[75] A variant of this occurs in
the Decameron of
Boccaccio,
Day ix, Nov. 9, of which Dunlop gives the
following
outline: Two young men repair to Jerusalem to
consult
Solomon. One asks how he may be well liked, the
other
how he may best manage a froward wife. Solomon
advised
the first to “love others,” and the second
to
“repair
to the mill.” From this last counsel neither
can
extract
any meaning; but it is explained on their road
home,
for when they came to the bridge of that name they
meet
a number of mules, and one of these animals being
restive
its master forced it on with a stick. The advice
of
Solomon, being now understood, is followed, with
complete
success.
Among the innumerable tales current in Muhammedan countries regarding the extraordinary sagacity of Solomon is the following, which occurs in M. Rene Basset’s Contes Populaires Berbers (Paris, 1887): Complaint was made to Solomon that some one had stolen a quantity of eggs. “I shall discover him,” said Solomon. And when the people were assembled in the mosque (sic), he said: “An egg-thief has come in with you, and he has got feathers on his head.” The thief in great fright raised his hand to his head, which Solomon perceiving, he cried out: “There is the culprit—seize him!” There are many variants of this story in Persian and Indian collections, where a kazi, or judge, takes the place of Solomon, and it had found its way into our own jest-books early in the 16th century. Thus in Tales and Quicke Answeres, a man has a goose stolen from him and complains to the priest, who promises to find out the thief. On Sunday the priest tells the congregation to sit down, which they do accordingly. Then says he, “Why are ye not all seated?” Say they, “We are all seated.” “Nay,” quoth Mass John, “but he that stole the goose sitteth not down.” “But I am seated,” says the witless goose-thief.
We learn from the Old Testament that the Queen of Sheba (or Saba, whom the Arabians identify with Bilkis, queen of El-Yemen) “came to prove the wisdom of Solomon with hard questions,” and that he answered them all. What were the questions—or riddles—the solution of which so much astonished the Queen of Sheba we are not told; but the Rabbis inform us that, after she had exhausted her budget of riddles, she one day presented herself at the foot of Solomon’s throne, holding in one hand a bouquet of natural flowers and in the other a bouquet of artificial flowers, desiring the king to say which was the product of nature. Now, the artificial flowers were so exactly modelled in imitation of the others that it was thought impossible for him to answer the question, from the distance at which she held the bouquets. But Solomon was not to be baffled by a woman with scraps of painted paper: he caused a window in the audience-chamber to be opened, when a cluster of bees immediately flew in and alighted upon one of the bouquets, while not one of the insects fixed upon the other. By this device Solomon was enabled to distinguish between the natural and the artificial flowers.
Again the Queen of Sheba endeavoured to outwit the sagacious monarch. She brought before him a number of boys and girls, apparelled all alike, and desired him to distinguish those of one sex from those of the other, as they stood before him. Solomon caused a large basin full of water to be fetched in, and ordered them all to wash their hands. By this expedient he discovered the males from the females; since the boys merely washed their hands, while the girls washed also their arms.[76]
[76] Among the Muhammedan legends
concerning Solomon and the
Queen
of Sheba, it is related that, after he had
satisfactorily
answered all her questions and solved her
riddles,
“before he would enter into more intimate
relations
with her, he desired to clear up a certain
point
respecting her, and to see whether she actually
had
cloven feet, as several of his demons would have him
to
believe; or whether they had only invented the defect
from
fear lest he should marry her, and beget children,
who,
as descendants of the genii [the mother of Bilkis
is
said to have been of that race of beings], would be
even
more mighty than himself. He therefore caused
her
to
be conducted through a hall, whose floor was of
crystal,
and under which water tenanted by every variety
of
fish was flowing. Bilkis, who had never seen a
crystal
floor, supposed that there was water to be
passed
through, and therefore raised her robe slightly,
when
the king discovered to his great joy a beautifully
shaped
female foot. When his eye was satisfied, he
called
to her: ’Come hither; there is no water
here, but
only
a crystal floor; and confess thyself to the faith
in
the one only God.’ Bilkis approached the
throne,
which
stood at the end of the hall, and in Solomon’s
presence
abjured the worship of the sun. Solomon then
married
Bilkis, but reinstated her as Queen of Saba, and
spent
three days in every month with her.”
The Arabians and Persians, who have many traditions regarding Solomon, invariably represent him as adept in necromancy, and as being intimately acquainted with the language of beasts and birds. Josephus, the great Jewish historian, distinctly states that Solomon possessed the art of expelling demons, that he composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated, and that he left behind him the manner of using exorcisms, by which they drive out demons, never to return. Of course, Josephus merely reproduces rabbinical traditions, and there can be no doubt but the Arabian stories regarding Solomon’s magical powers are derived from the same source. It appears that Solomon’s signet-ring was the chief instrument with which he performed his numerous magical exploits.[77] By its wondrous power he imprisoned Ashmedai, the prince of devils; and on one occasion the king’s curiosity to increase his store of magical knowledge cost him very dear—no less than the loss of his kingdom for a time. Solomon was in the habit of daily plying Ashmedai with questions, to all of which the fiend returned answers, furnishing the desired information, until one day the king asked him a particular question which the captive evil spirit flatly refused to answer, except on condition that Solomon should
[77] According to the Muslim legend,
eight angels appeared
before
Solomon in a vision, saying that Allah had sent
them
to surrender to him power over them and the eight
winds
which were at their command. The chief of the
angels
then presented him with a jewel bearing the
inscription:
“To Allah belong greatness and might.”
Solomon
had merely to raise this stone towards the
heavens
and these angels would appear, to serve him.
Four
other angels next appeared, lords of all creatures
living
on the earth and in the waters. The angel
representing
the kingdom of birds gave him a jewel on
which
were inscribed the words: “All created things
praise
the Lord.” Then came an angel who gave him
a
jewel
conferring on the possessor power over earth and
sea,
having inscribed on it: “Heaven and earth
are
servants
of Allah.” Lastly, another angel appeared
and
presented
him with a jewel bearing these words (the
formula
of the Muslim Confession of Faith): “There
[78] We are not told here how the
demon came to part with
this
safeguard of his power. The Muslim form of the
legend,
as will be seen presently, is much more
consistent,
and corresponds generally with another
rabbinical
version, which follows the present one.
Another account informs us that the demon, having cajoled Solomon out of possession of his magic ring, at once flung it into the sea and cast the king 400 miles away. Solomon came to a place called Mash Kerim, where he was made chief cook in the palace of the king of Ammon, whose daughter, called Naama, became enamoured of him, and they eloped to a far distant country. As Naama was one day preparing a fish for broiling, she found Solomon’s ring in its stomach, which, of course, enabled him to recover his kingdom and to imprison the demon in a copper vessel, which he cast into the Lake of Tiberias.[79]
[79] According to the Muslim version,
Solomon’s temporary
degradation
was in punishment for his taking as a
concubine
the daughter of an idolatrous king whom he had
vanquished
in battle, and, through her influence, bowing
himself
to “strange gods.” Before going to
the bath, one
day,
he gave this heathen beauty his signet to take care
of,
and in his absence the rebellious genie Sakhr,
assuming
the form of Solomon, obtained the ring. The
king
was driven forth and Sakhr ruled (or rather,
misruled)
in his stead; till the wise men of the palace,
suspecting
him to be a demon, began to read the Book of
the
Law in his presence, whereupon he flew away and cast
the
signet into the sea. In the meantime Solomon hired
himself
to some fishermen in a distant country, his
wages
being two fishes each day. He finds his signet
in
the
maw of one of the fish, and so forth.
It may appear strange to some readers that the Rabbis should represent the sagacious Solomon in the character of a practitioner of the Black Art. But the circumstance simply indicates that Solomon’s acquirements in scientific knowledge were considerably beyond those of most men of his age; and, as in the case of our own Friar Bacon, his superior attainments were popularly attributed to magical arts. Nature, it need hardly be remarked, is the only school of magic, and men of science are the true magicians.
Unheard-of Monsters.
The marvellous creatures which are described by Pliny, and by our own old English writers, Sir John Mandeville and Geoffrey of Monmouth, are common-place in comparison with some of those mentioned in the Talmud. Even the monstrous roc of the Arabian Nights must have been a mere tom-tit compared with the bird which Rabbi bar Chama says he once saw. It was so tall that its head reached the sky, while its feet rested on the bottom of the ocean; and he affords us some slight notion of the depth of the sea by informing us that a carpenter’s axe, which had accidentally fallen in, had not reached the bottom in seven years. The same Rabbi saw “a frog as large as a village containing sixty houses.” Huge as this frog was, the snake that swallowed it must have been the very identical serpent of Scandinavian mythology, which encircled the earth; yet a crow gobbled up this serpent, and then flew to the top of a cedar, which was as broad as sixteen waggons placed side by side.—Sailors’ “yarns,” as they are spun to marvel-loving old ladies in our jest-books, are as nothing to the rabbinical accounts of “strange fish,” some with eyes like the moon, others horned, and 300 miles in length. Not less wonderful are some four-footed creatures. The effigy of the unicorn, familiar to every schoolboy, on the royal arms of Great Britain, affords no adequate idea of the actual dimensions of that remarkable animal. Since a unicorn one day old is as large as Mount Tabor, it may readily be supposed that Noah could not possibly have got a full-grown one into the ark; he therefore secured it by its horn to the side, and thus the creature was saved alive. (The Talmudist had forgot that the animals saved from the Flood were in pairs.)[80] The celebrated Og, king of Bashan, it seems, was one of the antediluvians, and was saved by riding on the back of the unicorn. The dwellers in Brobdignag were pigmies compared with the renowned King Og, since his footsteps were forty miles apart, and Abraham’s ivory bed was made of one of his teeth. Moses, the Rabbis tell us, was ten cubits high[81] and his walking-stick ten cubits more, with the top of which, after jumping ten cubits from the ground, he contrived to touch the heel of King Og; from which it has been concluded that that monarch was from two to three thousand cubits in height. But (remarks an English writer) a certain Jewish traveller has shown the fallacy of this mensuration, by meeting with the end of one of the leg-bones of the said King Og, and travelling four hours before he came to the other end. Supposing this Rabbi to have been a fair walker, the bone was sixteen miles long!
[80] Is it possible that this “story”
of the unicorn was
borrowed
and garbled from the ancient Hindu legend of
the
Deluge? “When the flood rose Manu embarked
in the
ship,
and the fish swam towards him, and he fastened the
ship’s
cable to its horn.” But in the Hindu legend
the
fish
(that is, Brahma in the form of a great fish) tows
the
vessel, while in the Talmudic legend the ark of Noah
takes
the unicorn in tow.
[81] In a manuscript preserved in
the Lambeth Palace Library,
of
the time of Edward IV, the height of Moses is said
to
have
been “xiij. fote and viij. ynches and half”;
and
the
reader may possibly find some amusement in the
“longitude
of men folowyng,” from the same veracious
work:
“Cryste, vj. fote and iij. ynches. Our Lady,
vj.
fote
and viij. ynches. Crystoferus, xvij. fote and
viij.
ynches.
King Alysaunder, iiij. fote and v. ynches.
Colbronde,
xvij. fote and ij. ynches and half. Syr Ey.,
x.
fote iij. ynches and half. Seynt Thomas of
Caunterbery,
vij. fote, save a ynche. Long Mores, a man
of
Yrelonde borne, and servaunt to Kyng Edward the
iiijth.,
vj. fote and x. ynches and half.”—Reliquae
Antiquae,
vol i, p. 200.
MORAL AND ENTERTAINING TALES.
If most of the rabbinical legends cited in the preceding sections have served simply to amuse the general reader—though to those of a philosophical turn they must have been suggestive of the depths of imbecility to which the human mind may descend—the stories, apologues, and parables contained in the Talmud, of which specimens are now to be presented, are calculated to furnish wholesome moral instruction as well as entertainment to readers of all ranks and ages. In the art of conveying impressive moral lessons, by means of ingenious fictions, the Hebrew sages have never been excelled, and perhaps they are rivalled only by the ancient philosophers of India. The significant circumstance has already been noticed (in the introductory section) that several of the most striking tales in European mediaeval collections—particularly the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsus and the famous Gesta Romanorum—are traceable to Talmudic sources. Little did the priest-ridden, ignorant, marvel-loving laity of European countries imagine that the moral fictions which their spiritual directors recited every Sunday for their edification were derived from the wise men of the despised Hebrew race! But, indeed, there is reason to believe that few mere casual readers even at the present day have any notion of the extent to which the popular fictions of Europe are indebted to the old Jewish Rabbis.
Like the sages of India, the Hebrew Fathers in their teachings strongly inculcate the duty of active benevolence—the liberal giving of alms to the poor and needy; and, indeed, the wealthy Jews are distinguished at the present day by their open-handed liberality in support of the public charitable institutions of the several countries of which they are subjects. “What you increase bestow on good works,” says the Hindu sage. “Charity is to money what salt is to meat,” says the Hebrew philosopher: if the wealthy are not charitable their riches will perish. In illustration of this maxim is the story of
Rabbi Jochonan and the Poor Woman.
One day Rabbi Jochonan was riding outside the city of Jerusalem, followed by his disciples, when he observed a poor woman laboriously gathering the grain that dropped from the mouths of the horses of the Arabs as they were feeding. Looking up and recognising Jochonan, she cried: “O Rabbi, assist me!” “Who art thou?” demanded Jochonan. “I am the daughter of Nakdimon, the son of Guryon.” “Why, what has become of thy father’s money—the dowry thou receivedst on thy wedding day?” “Ah, Rabbi, is there not a saying in Jerusalem, ’the salt was wanting to the money?’” “But thy husband’s money?” “That followed the other: I have lost them both.” The good Rabbi wept for the poor woman and helped her. Then said he to his disciples, as they continued on their way: “I remember that when I signed that woman’s marriage contract her father gave her as a dowry one million of gold dinars, and her husband was a man of considerable wealth besides.”
* * * * *
The ill-fated riches of Nakdimon are referred to in another tale, as a lesson to those who are not charitable according to their means:
A Safe Investment.
Rabbi Taraphon, though a very wealthy man, was exceedingly avaricious, and seldom gave help to the poor. Once, however, he involuntarily bestowed a considerable sum in relieving the distressed. Rabbi Akiba came to him one day, and told him that he knew of certain real estate, which would be a very profitable investment. Rabbi Taraphon handed him 4000 dinars in gold to be so invested, and Rabbi Akiba forthwith distributed the whole among the poor. By-and-by, Rabbi Taraphon, happening to meet his friend, desired to know where the real estate was in which his money had been invested. Rabbi Akiba took him to the college, where he caused one of the boys to read aloud the 112th Psalm, and on his reaching the 9th verse, “He distributeth, he giveth to the needy, his righteousness endureth for ever”—“There,” said he, “thou seest where thy money is invested.” “And why hast thou done this?” demanded Rabbi Taraphon. “Hast thou forgotten,” answered his friend, “how Nakdimon, the son of Guryon, was punished because he gave not according to his means?” “But why didst thou not tell me of thy purpose? I could myself have bestowed my money on the poor.” “Nay,” rejoined Rabbi Akiba, “it is a greater virtue to cause another to give than to give one’s self.”
* * * * *
Resignation to the divine will under sore family bereavements has, perhaps, never been more beautifully illustrated than by the incident related of the Rabbi Meir. This little tale, as follows, is one of three Talmudic narratives which the poet Coleridge has translated:[82]
The Jewels.
The celebrated teacher Rabbi Meir sat during the whole of the Sabbath day in the public school instructing the people. During his absence from the house his two sons died, both of them of uncommon beauty, and enlightened in the law. His wife bore them to her bed-chamber, laid them upon the marriage-bed, and spread a white covering over their bodies. In the evening the Rabbi Meir came home. “Where are my two sons,” he asked, “that I may give them my blessing? I repeatedly looked round the school, and I did not see them there.” She reached him a goblet. He praised the Lord at the going out of the Sabbath, drank, and again asked: “Where are my sons, that they too may drink of the cup of blessing?” “They will not be afar off,” she said, and placed food before him that he might eat. He was in a gladsome and genial mood, and when he had said grace after the meal, she thus addressed him: “Rabbi, with thy permission, I would fain propose to thee one question.” “Ask it then, my love,” he replied. “A few days ago a person entrusted some jewels into my custody, and now he demands them of me; should I give them back again?” “This is a question,” said the Rabbi, “which my wife should not have thought it necessary to ask. What! wouldst thou hesitate or be reluctant to restore to every one his own?” “No,” she replied; “but yet I thought it best not to restore them without acquainting you therewith.” She then led him to the chamber, and, stepping to the bed, took the white covering from the dead bodies. “Ah, my sons—my sons!” thus loudly lamented the father. “My sons! the light of my eyes, and the light of my understanding! I was your father, but ye were my teachers in the law.” The mother turned away and wept bitterly. At length she took her husband by the hand, and said: “Rabbi, didst thou not teach me that we must not be reluctant to restore that which was entrusted to our keeping? See—’the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!’"[83] “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” echoed Rabbi Meir. “And blessed be his name for thy sake too, for well is it written: ’Whoso hath found a virtuous wife, hath a greater prize than rubies; she openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.’"[84]
[82] The Friend, ed. 1850, vol. ii, p. 247.
[83] Book of Job, i, 21.
[84] Prov. xxxi, 10, 26.
* * * * *
The originals of not a few of the early Italian tales are found in the Talmud—the author of the Cento Novelle Antiche, Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and other novelists having derived the groundwork of many of their fictions from the Gesta Romanorum and the Disciplina Clericalis of Peter Alfonsus, which are largely composed of tales drawn from Eastern sources. The 123rd novel of Sacchetti, in which a young man carves a capon in a whimsical fashion, finds its original in the following Talmudic story:
The Capon-Carver.
It happened that a citizen of Jerusalem, while on a distant provincial journey on business, was suddenly taken ill, and, feeling himself to be at the point of death, he sent for the master of the house, and desired him to take charge of his property until his son should arrive to claim it; but, in order to make sure that the claimant was really the son, he was not to deliver up the property until the applicant had proved his wisdom by performing three ingenious actions. Shortly after having given his friend these injunctions the merchant died, and the melancholy intelligence was duly transmitted to his son, who in the course of a few weeks left Jerusalem to claim his property. On reaching the town where his father’s friend resided, he began to inquire of the people where his house was situated, and, finding no one who could, or would, give him this necessary information, the youth was in sore perplexity how to proceed in his quest, when he observed a man carrying a heavy load of firewood. “How much for that wood?” he cried. The man readily named his price. “Thou shalt have it,” said the stranger. “Carry it to the house of —— [naming his father’s friend], and I will follow thee.” Well satisfied to have found a purchaser on his own terms, the man at once proceeded as he was desired, and on arriving at the house he threw down his load before the door. “What is all this?” demanded the master. “I have not ordered any wood.” “Perhaps not,” said the man; “but the person behind me has bought it, and desired me to bring it hither.” The stranger had now come up, and, saluting the master of the house, told him who he was, and explained that, since he could not ascertain where his house was situated by inquiries of people in the streets, he had adopted this expedient, which had succeeded. The master praised the young man’s ingenuity, and led him into the house.
When the several members of the family, together with the stranger, were assembled round the dinner-table, the master of the house, in order to test the stranger’s ingenuity, desired his guest to carve a dish containing five chickens, and to distribute a portion to each of the persons who were present—namely, the master and mistress, their two daughters and two sons, and himself. The young stranger acquitted himself of the duty in this manner: One of the chickens he divided between the master and the mistress; another between the two daughters; the third between the two sons; and the remaining two he took for his own share. “This visitor of mine,” thought the master, “is a curious carver; but I will try him once more at supper.”
Various amusements made the afternoon pass very agreeably to the stranger, until supper-time, when a fine capon was placed upon the table, which the master desired his guest to carve for the company. The young man took the capon, and began to carve and distribute it thus: To the master of the house he gave the head; to the mistress, the inward part; to the two daughters, each a wing; to the two sons, each a leg; and the remainder he took for himself. After supper the master of the house thus addressed his visitor: “Friend, I thought thy carving at dinner somewhat peculiar, but thy distribution of the capon this evening seems to me extremely whimsical. Give me leave to ask, do the citizens of Jerusalem usually carve their capons in this fashion?”
“Master,” said the youth, “I will gladly explain my system of carving, which does appear to you so strange. At dinner I was requested to divide five chickens among seven persons. This I could not do otherwise than arithmetically; therefore, I adopted the perfect number three as my guide—thou, thy wife, and one chicken made three; thy two daughters and one chicken made three; thy two sons and one chicken made three; and I had to take the remaining chickens for my own share, as two chickens and myself made three.” “Very ingenious, I must confess,” said the master. “But how dost thou explain thy carving of the capon?” “That, master, I performed according to what appeared to me the fitness of things. I gave the head of the capon to thee, because thou art the head of this house; I gave the inward part to the mistress, as typical of her fruitfulness; thy daughters are both of marriageable years, and, as it is natural to wish them well settled in life, I gave each of them a wing, to indicate that they should soon fly abroad; thy two sons are the pillars of thy house, and to them I gave the legs, which are the supporters of the animal; while to myself I took that part of the capon which most resembles a boat, in which I came hither, and in which I intend to return.” From these proofs of his ingenuity the master was now fully convinced that the stranger was the true son of his late friend the merchant, and next morning he delivered to him his father’s property.[85]
[85] The droll incident of dividing
the capon, besides being
found
in Sacchetti, forms part of a popular story
current
in Sicily, and is thus related in Professor
Crane’s
Italian Popular Tales, p. 311 ff., taken from
Prof.
Comparetti’s Fiabe, Novelle, e Racconti
(Palermo,
1875), No. 43, “La Ragazza astuta”:
Once upon
a
time there was a huntsman who had a wife and two
children,
a son and a daughter; and all lived together
in
a wood where no one ever came, and so they knew
nothing
about the world. The father alone sometimes went
to
the city, and brought back the news. The king’s
MORAL TALES, FABLES, AND PARABLES.
Reverence for parents, which is still a marked characteristic of Eastern races, has ever been strongly inculcated by the Jewish Fathers; and the noble conduct of Damah, the son of Nethuna, towards both his father and mother, is adduced in the Talmud as an example for all times and every condition of life:
A Dutiful Son.
The mother of Damah was unfortunately insane, and would frequently not only abuse him but strike him in the presence of his companions; yet would not this dutiful son suffer an ill word to escape his lips, and all he used to say on such occasions was: “Enough, dear mother, enough.” One of the precious stones attached to the high priest’s sacerdotal garments was once, by some means or other,
An Ingenious Will.
One of the best rabbinical stories of common life is of a wise man who, residing at some distance from Jerusalem, had sent his son to the Holy City in order to complete his education, and, dying during his son’s absence, bequeathed the whole of his estate to one of his own slaves, on the condition that he should allow his son to select any one article which pleased him for an inheritance. Surprised, and naturally angry, at such gross injustice on the part of his father in preferring a slave for his heir in place of himself, the young man sought counsel of his teacher, who, after considering the terms of the will, thus explained its meaning and effect: “By this action thy father has simply secured thy inheritance to thee: to prevent his slaves from plundering the estate before thou couldst formally claim it, he left it to one of them, who, believing himself to be the owner, would take care of the property. Now, what a slave possesses belongs to his master. Choose, therefore, the slave for thy portion, and then possess all that was thy father’s.” The young man followed his teacher’s advice, took possession of the slave, and thus of his father’s wealth, and then gave the slave his freedom, together with a considerable sum of money.[86]
[86] This story seems to be the
original of a French popular
tale,
in which a gentleman secures his estate for his
son
by a similar device. The gentleman, dying at Paris
while
his son was on his travels, bequeathed all his
wealth
to a convent, on condition that they should give
his
son “whatever they chose.” On the
son’s return he
received
from the holy fathers a very trifling portion
of
the paternal estate. He complained to his friends
of
this
injustice, but they all agreed that there was no
* * * * *
And now we proceed to cite one or two of the rabbinical fables, in the proper signification of the term—namely, moral narratives in which beasts or birds are the characters. Although it is generally allowed that Fable was the earliest form adopted for conveying moral truths, yet it is by no means agreed among the learned in what country of remote antiquity it originated. Dr. Landsberger, in his erudite introduction to Die Fabeln des Sophos (1859), contends that the Jews were the first to employ fables for purposes of moral instruction, and that the oldest fable extant is Jotham’s apologue of the trees desiring a king (Book of Judges, ix. 8-15).[87] According to Dr. Landsberger, the sages of India were indebted to the Hebrews for the idea of teaching by means of fables, probably during the reign of Solomon, who is believed to have had commerce with the western shores of India.[88] We are told by Josephus that Solomon “composed of parables and similitudes three thousand; for he spoke a parable upon every sort of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar; and, in like manner, also about beasts, about all sorts of living creatures, whether upon earth, or in the seas, or in the air; for he was not unacquainted with any of their natures, nor omitted inquiring about them, but described them all like a philosopher, and demonstrated his exquisite knowledge of their several properties.” These fables of Solomon, if they were ever committed to writing, had perished long before the time of the great Jewish historian; but there seems no reason to doubt the fact that the wise king of Israel composed many works besides those ascribed to him in the Old Testament. The general opinion among European orientalists is that Fable had its origin in India; and the Hindus themselves claim the honour of inventing our present system of numerals (which came into Europe through the Arabians, who derived it from the Hindus), the game of chess, and the Fables of Vishnusarman (the Panchatantra and its abridgment, the Hitopadesa).
[87] But the Book of Judges was
probably edited after the
time
of Hesiod, whose fable of the Hawk and the
Nightingale
(Works and Days, B. i, v. 260) must be
considered
as the oldest extant fable.
[88] This theory, though perhaps
somewhat ingenious, is
generally
considered as utterly untenable.
It is said that Rabbi Meir knew upwards of three hundred fables relating to the fox alone; but of these only three fragments have been preserved, and this is one of them, according to Mr. Polano’s translation:
The Fox and the Bear.
A Fox said to a Bear: “Come, let us go into this kitchen; they are making preparations for the Sabbath, and we shall be able to find food.” The Bear followed the Fox, but, being bulky, he was captured and punished. Angry thereat, he designed to tear the Fox to pieces, under the pretence that the forefathers of the Fox had once stolen his food, wherein occurs the saying, “the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge."[89] “Nay,” said the Fox, “come with me, my good friend; let us not quarrel. I will lead thee to another place where we shall surely find food.” The Fox then led the Bear to a deep well, where two buckets were fastened together by a rope, like a balance. It was night, and the Fox pointed to the moon reflected in the water, saying: “Here is a fine cheese; let us descend and partake of it.” The Fox entered his bucket first, but being too light to balance the weight of the Bear, he took with him a stone. As soon as the Bear had got into the other bucket, however, the Fox threw the stone away, and consequently the bear descended to the bottom and was drowned.
[89] Ezekiel, xviii, 2.
* * * * *
The reader will doubtless recognise in this fable the original of many modern popular tales having a similar catastrophe. It will also be observed that the vulgar saying of the moon being “a fine cheese” is of very considerable antiquity.[90]
[90] This wide-spread fable is found
in the Disciplina
Clericalis
(No. 21) and in the collection of Marie de
France,
of the 13th century; and it is one of the many
spurious
Esopic fables.
And here is another rabbinical fable of a Fox—a very common character in the apologues of most countries; although the “moral” appended to this one by the pious fabulist is much more striking than is sometimes the case of those deduced from beast-fables:
The Fox in the Garden.
A Fox once came near a very fine garden, where he beheld lofty trees laden with fruit that charmed the eye. Such a beautiful sight, added to his natural greediness, excited in him the desire of possession. He fain would taste the forbidden fruit; but a high wall stood between him and the object of his wishes. He went about in search of an entrance, and at last found an opening in the wall, but it was too small to admit his body. Unable to penetrate, he had recourse to his usual cunning. He fasted three days, and became sufficiently reduced in bulk to crawl through the small aperture. Having effected an entrance, he carelessly roved about in this delightful region, making free with its exquisite produce and feasting on its more rare and delicious fruits. He remained for some time, and glutted his appetite, when a thought occurred to him that it was possible he might be observed, and in that case he should pay dearly for his feast. He therefore retired to the place where he had entered, and attempted to get out, but to his great consternation he found his endeavours vain. He had by indulgence grown so fat and plump that the same space would no more admit him. “I am in a fine predicament,” said he to himself. “Suppose the master of the garden were now to come and call me to account, what would become of me? I see my only chance of escape is to fast and half starve myself.” He did so with great reluctance, and after suffering hunger for three days, he with difficulty made his escape. As soon as he was out of danger, he took a farewell view of the scene of his late pleasure, and said: “O garden! thou art indeed charming, and delightful are thy fruits—delicious and exquisite; but of what benefit art thou to me? What have I now for all my labour and cunning? Am I not as lean as I was before?”—It is even so with man, remarks the Talmudist. Naked he comes into the world—naked must he go out of it, and of all his toils and labour he can carry nothing with him save the fruits of his righteousness.
* * * * *
From fables to parables the transition is easy; and many of those found in the Talmud are exceedingly beautiful, and are calculated to cause even the most thoughtless to reflect upon his way of life. Let us first take the parable of the Desolate Island, one of those adapted by the monkish compilers of European mediaeval tales, to which reference has been made in the preceding sections:
The Desolate Island.
A very wealthy man, who was of a kind, benevolent disposition, desired to make his slave happy. He therefore gave him his freedom, and presented him with a shipload of merchandise. “Go,” said he, “sail to different countries; dispose of these goods, and that which thou mayest receive for them shall be thy own.” The slave sailed away upon the broad ocean, but before he had been long on his voyage a storm overtook him, his ship was driven on a rock and went to pieces; all on board
The Talmudist thus explains this beautiful parable of the Desolate Island: The wealthy man of kindly disposition is God, and the slave to whom he gave freedom is the soul which he gives to man. The island at which the slave arrives is the world: naked and weeping he appears to his parents, who are the inhabitants that greet him warmly and make him their king. The friends who tell him of the ways of the country are his good inclinations. The year of his reign is his span of life, and the desolate island is the future world, which he must beautify by good deeds—the workmen and materials—or else live lonely and desolate for ever.[91]
[91] This is similar to the 10th
parable in the spiritual
romance
of Barlaam and Joasaph, written in Greek,
probably
in the first half of the 7th century, and
ascribed
to a monk called John of Damascus. Most of the
matter
comprised in this interesting work (which has not
been
translated into English) was taken from well-known
Buddhist
sources, and M. Zotenberg and other eminent
scholars
are of the opinion that it was first composed,
probably
in Egypt, before the promulgation of Islam. The
10th
parable is to this effect: The citizens of a
certain
great city had an ancient custom, to take a
stranger
and obscure man, who knew nothing of the city’s
laws
and traditions, and to make him king with absolute
power
for a year’s space; then to rise against him
all
unawares,
while he, all thoughtless, was revelling and
squandering
and deeming the kingdom his for ever; and
stripping
off his royal robes, lead him naked in
procession
through the city, and banish him to a
long-uninhabited
and great island, where, worn down for
want
of food and raiment, he bewailed this unexpected
change.
Now, according to this custom, a man was chosen
whose
mind was furnished with much understanding, who
was
not led away by sudden prosperity, and was
thoughtful
and earnest in soul as to how he should best
order
his affairs. By close questioning, he learned
from
a
Closely allied to the foregoing is the characteristic Jewish parable of
The Man and his Three Friends.
A certain man had three friends, two of whom he loved dearly, but the other he lightly esteemed. It happened one day that the king commanded his presence at court, at which he was greatly alarmed, and wished to procure an advocate. Accordingly he went to the two friends whom he loved: one flatly refused to accompany him, the other offered to go with him as far as the king’s gate, but no farther. In his extremity he called upon the third friend, whom he least esteemed, and he not only went willingly with him, but so ably defended him before the king that he was acquitted. In like manner, says the Talmudist, every man has three friends when Death summons him to appear before his Creator. His first friend, whom he loves most, namely, his money, cannot go with him a single step; his second, relations and neighbours, can only accompany him to the grave, but cannot defend him before the Judge; while his third friend, whom he does not highly esteem, the law and his good works, goes with him before the king, and obtains his acquittal.[92]
[92] This is the 9th parable in
the romance of Barlaam and
Joasaph,
where it is told without any variation.
* * * * *
Another striking and impressive parable akin to the two immediately preceding is this of
The Garments.
A king distributed amongst his servants various costly garments. Now some of these servants were wise and some were foolish. And those that were wise said to themselves: “The king may call again for the garments; let us therefore take care they do not get soiled.” But the fools took no manner of care of theirs, and did all sorts of work in them, so that they became full of spots and grease. Some time afterwards the king called for the garments. The wise servants brought theirs clean and neat, but the foolish servants brought theirs in a sad state, ragged and unclean. The king was pleased with the first, and said: “Let the clean garments be placed in the treasury, and let their keepers depart in peace. As for the unclean garments, they must be washed and purified, and their foolish keepers must be cast into prison.”—This parable is designed to illustrate the passage in Eccles., xii, 7, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God, who gave it”; which words “teach us to remember that God gave us the soul in a state of innocence and purity, and that it is therefore our duty to return it unto him in the same state as he gave it unto us—pure and undefiled.”
Solomon’s Choice
of Wisdom, in preference to all other precious things, is thus finely illustrated: A certain king had an officer whom he fondly loved. One day he desired his favourite to choose anything that he could give, and it would at once be granted him. The officer considered that if he asked the king for gold and silver and precious stones, these would be given him in abundance; then he thought that if he had a more exalted station it would be granted; at last he resolved to ask the king for his daughter, since with such a bride both riches and honours would also be his. In like manner did Solomon pray, “Give thy servant an understanding heart,” when the Lord said to him, “What shall I give thee?” (1st Kings, iii, 5, 9.)
But perhaps the most beautiful and touching of all the Talmudic parables is the following (Polano’s version), in which Israel is likened to a bride, waiting sadly, yet hopefully, for the coming of her spouse:
Bride and Bridegroom.
There was once a man who pledged his dearest faith to a maiden beautiful and true. For a time all passed pleasantly, and the maiden lived in happiness. But then the man was called from her side, and he left her. Long she waited, but still he did not return. Friends pitied her, and rivals mocked her; tauntingly they pointed to her and said: “He has left thee, and will never come back.” The maiden sought her chamber, and read in secret the letters which her lover had written to her—the letters in which he promised to be ever faithful, ever true. Weeping, she read them, but they brought comfort to her heart; she dried her eyes and doubted not. A joyous day dawned for her: the man she loved returned, and when he learned that others had doubted,
[93] Psalm cxix, 92.—By
the way, it is probably known to
most
readers that the twenty-two sections into which
this
grand poem is divided are named after the letters
of
the Hebrew alphabet; but from the translation given
in
our English Bible no one could infer that in the
original
every one of the eight verses in each section
begins
with the letter after which it is named, thus
forming
a very long acrostic.
* * * * *
In the account of the Call of Abraham given in the Book of Genesis, xii, 1-3, we are not told that his people were all idolaters; but in the Book of Joshua, xxiv, 1-2, it is said that the great successor of Moses, when he had “waxed old and was stricken with age,” assembled the tribes of Israel, at Shechem, and said to the people: “Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor; and they served other gods.” The sacred narrative does not state the circumstances which induced Abraham to turn away from the worship of false deities, but the information is furnished by the Talmudists—possibly from ancient oral tradition—in this interesting tale of
Abraham and the Idols.
Abraham’s father Terah, who dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees, was not only an idolater, but a maker of idols. Having occasion to go a journey of some distance, he instructed Abraham how to conduct the business of idol-selling during his absence. The future founder of the Hebrew nation, however, had already obtained a knowledge of the true and living God, and consequently held the practice of idolatry in the utmost abhorrence. Accordingly, whenever any one came to buy an idol Abraham inquired his age, and upon his answering, “I am fifty (or sixty) years old,” he would exclaim, “Woe to the man of fifty who would worship the work of man’s hands!” and his father’s customers went away shamefaced at the rebuke. But, not content with this mode of showing his contempt for idolatry, Abraham resolved to bring matters to a crisis before his father returned home; and an opportunity was presented for his purpose one day when a woman came to Terah’s
[94] After Abraham had walked to
and fro unscathed amidst the
fierce
flames for three days, the faggots were suddenly
transformed
into a blooming garden of roses and
fruit-trees
and odoriferous plants.—This legend is
introduced
into the Kuran, and Muslim writers, when they
expatiate
on the almighty power of Allah, seldom omit to
make
reference to Nimrod’s flaming furnace being turned
into
a bed of roses.
* * * * *
Alexander the Great is said to have wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer; and truly says the sage Hebrew King, “The grave and destruction can never have enough, nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied” (Prov. xxvii, 20), a sentiment which the following tale, or parable, is designed to exemplify:
The Vanity of Ambition.
Pursuing his journey through dreary deserts and uncultivated ground, Alexander came at last to a small rivulet, whose waters glided peacefully along their shelving banks. Its smooth, unruffled surface was the image of contentment, and seemed in its silence to say, “This is the abode of tranquility.” All was still: not a sound was heard save soft murmuring tones which seemed to whisper in the ear
Following the course of the river, he at length arrived at the gates of Paradise. The gates were shut. He knocked, and, with his usual impetuosity, demanded admittance. “Thou canst not be admitted here,” exclaimed a voice from within; “this gate is the Lord’s.” “I am the Lord—the Lord of the earth,” rejoined the impatient chief. “I am Alexander the Conqueror. Will you not admit me?” “No,” was the answer; “here we know of no conquerors, save such as conquer their passions: None but the just can enter here.” Alexander endeavoured in vain to enter the abode of the blessed—neither entreaties nor menaces availed. Seeing all his attempts fruitless, he addressed himself to the guardian of Paradise, and said: “You know I am a great king, who has received the homage of nations. Since you will not admit me, give me at least some token that I may show an astonished world that I have been where no mortal has ever been before me.” “Here, madman,” said the guardian of Paradise—“here is something for thee. It may cure the maladies of thy distempered soul. One glance at it may teach thee more wisdom than thou hast hitherto derived from all thy former instructors. Now go thy ways.”
Alexander took the present with avidity, and repaired to his tent. But what was his confusion and surprise to find, on examining his present, that it was nothing but a fragment of a human skull. “And is this,” exclaimed he, “the mighty gift that they bestow on kings and heroes? Is this the fruit of so much toil and danger and care?” Enraged and disappointed, he threw it on the ground. “Great king,” said one of the learned men who were present, “do not despise this gift. Contemptible as it may appear in thine eyes, it yet possesses some extraordinary qualities, of which thou mayest soon be convinced, if thou wilt but cause it to be weighed against gold or silver.” Alexander
* * * * *
Shakspeare’s well-known masterly description of the Seven Ages of Man, which he puts into the mouth of the melancholy Jaques (As You Like It, ii, 7), was anticipated by Rabbi Simon, the son of Eliezer, in this Talmudic description of
The Seven Stages of Human Life.
Seven times in one verse did the author of Ecclesiastes make use of the word vanity, in allusion to the seven stages of human life.[95]
[95] Eccles., i, 2. The word
Vanity (remarks Hurwitz, the
translator)
occurs twice in the plural, which the Rabbi
considered
as equivalent to four, and three times in the
singular,
making altogether seven.
The first commences in the first year of human existence, when the infant lies like a king on a soft couch, with numerous attendants about him, all ready to serve him, and eager to testify their love and attachment by kisses and embraces.
The second commences about the age of two or three years, when the darling child is permitted to crawl on the ground, and, like an unclean animal, delights in dirt and filth.
Then at the age of ten, the thoughtless boy, without reflecting on the past or caring for the future, jumps and skips about like a young kid on the enamelled green, contented to enjoy the present moment.
The fourth stage begins about the age of twenty, when the young man, full of vanity and pride, begins to set off his person by dress; and, like a young unbroken horse, prances and gallops about in search of a wife.
Then comes the matrimonial state, when the poor man, like a patient ass, is obliged, however reluctantly, to toil and labour for a living.
Behold him now in the parental state, when surrounded by helpless children craving his support and looking to him for bread. He is as bold, as vigilant, and as fawning, too, as the faithful dog; guarding his little flock, and snatching at everything that comes in his way, in order to provide for his offspring.
At last comes the final stage, when the decrepit old man, like the unwieldy though most sagacious elephant, becomes grave, sedate, and distrustful. He then also begins to hang down his head towards the ground, as if surveying the place where all his vast schemes must terminate, and where ambition and vanity are finally humbled to the dust.
* * * * *
But the Talmudist, in his turn, was forestalled by Bhartrihari, an ancient Hindu sage, one of whose three hundred apothegms has been thus rendered into English by Sir Monier Williams:
Now for a little while a child; and now
An amorous youth; then for a season turned
Into a wealthy householder; then, stripped
Of all his riches, with decrepit limbs
And wrinkled frame, man creeps towards
the end
Of life’s erratic course; and, like
an actor,
Passes behind Death’s curtain out
of view.
Here, however, the Indian philosopher describes human life as consisting of only four scenes; but, like our own Shakspeare, he compares the world to a stage and man to a player. An epigram preserved in the Anthologia also likens the world to a theatre and human life to a drama:
This life a theatre we well may call,
Where every actor must perform
with art;
Or laugh it through, and make a farce
of all,
Or learn to bear with grace
a tragic part.
It is surely both instructive and interesting thus to discover resemblances in thought and expression in the writings of men of comprehensive intellect, who lived in countries and in times far apart.
WISE SAYINGS OF THE RABBIS.
“Concise sentences,” says Bacon, “like darts, fly abroad and make impressions, while long discourses are flat things, and not regarded.” And Seneca has remarked that “even rude and uncultivated minds are struck, as it were, with those short but weighty sentences which anticipate all reasoning by flashing truths upon them at once.” Wise men in all ages seem to have been fully aware of the advantage of condensing into pithy sentences the results of their observations of the course of human life; and the following selection of sayings of the Jewish Fathers, taken from the Pirke Aboth (the 41st treatise of the Talmud, compiled by Nathan of Babylon, A.D. 200), and other sources, will be found to be quite as sagacious as the aphorisms of the most celebrated philosophers of India and Greece:
This world is like an ante-chamber in comparison with the world to come; prepare thyself in the ante-chamber, therefore, that thou mayest enter into the dining-room.
Be humble to a superior, and affable to an inferior, and receive all men with cheerfulness.
Be not scornful to any, nor be opposed to all things; for there is no man that hath not his hour, nor is there anything which hath not its place.
Attempt not to appease thy neighbour in the time of his anger, nor comfort him in the time when his dead is lying before him, nor ask of him in the time of his vowing, nor desire to see him in the time of his calamity.[96]
[96] “Do not,” says
Nakhshabi, “try to move by persuasion the
soul
that is afflicted with grief. The heart that is
overwhelmed
with the billows of sorrow will, by slow
degrees,
return to itself.”
Hold no man responsible for his utterances in times of grief.
Who gains wisdom? He who is willing to receive instruction from all sources. Who is rich? He who is content with his lot. Who is deserving of honour? He who honoureth mankind. Who is the mighty man? He who subdueth his temper.[97]
[97] “He who subdueth his
temper is a mighty man,” says the
Talmudist;
and Solomon had said so before him: “He
that
is
slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that
ruleth
his spirit than he that taketh a city” (Prov.
xvi,
32). A curious parallel to these words is found
in
an
ancient Buddhistic work, entitled Buddha’s
Dhammapada,
or Path of Virtue, as follows: “If one man
conquer
in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and
if
another conquer himself, he is the greatest of
conquerors.”
(Professor Max Mueller’s translation,
prefixed
to Buddhagosha’s Parables, translated
by
Captain
Rogers.)
When a liar speaks the truth, he finds his punishment in being generally disbelieved.
The physician who prescribes gratuitously gives a worthless prescription.
He who hardens his heart with pride softens his brains with the same.
The day is short, the labour vast; but the labourers are still slothful, though the reward is great, and the Master presseth for despatch.[98]
[98] Cf. Saadi, ante, page 41, “Life is snow,” etc.
He who teacheth a child is like one who writeth on new paper; and he who teacheth old people is like one who writeth on blotted paper.[99]
[99] Locke was anticipated not only
by the Talmudist, as
above,
but long before him by Aristotle, who termed the
infant
soul tabula rasa, which was in all likelihood
borrowed
by the author of the Persian work on the
practical
philosophy of the Muhammedans, entitled
Akhlak-i-Jalaly,
who says: “The minds of children are
like
a clear tablet, equally open to all inscriptions.”
First learn and then teach.
Teach thy tongue to say, “I do not know.”
The birds of the air despise a miser.
If thy goods sell not in one city, take them to another.
Victuals prepared by many cooks will be neither cold nor hot.[100]
[100] Too many cooks spoil the broth.—English Proverb.
Two pieces of money in a large jar make more noise than a hundred.[101]
[101] Two farthings and a thimble
In
a tailor’s pocket make a jingle.—English
Saying.
Into the well which supplies thee with water cast no stones.[102]
[102] “Don’t speak ill of
the bridge that bore you safe over
the
stream” seems to be the European equivalent.
When love is intense, both find room enough upon one bench; afterwards, they may find themselves cramped in a space of sixty cubits.[103]
[103] Python, of Byzantium, was a very
corpulent man. He once
said
to the citizens, in addressing them to make friends
after
a political dispute: “Gentlemen, you see
how stout
I
am. Well, I have a wife at home who is still stouter.
Now,
when we are good friends, we can sit together on a
very
small couch; but when we quarrel, I do assure you,
the
whole house cannot contain us.”—Athenaeus,
xii.
The place honours not the man; it is the man who gives honour to the place.
Few are they who see their own faults.[104]
[104] Compare Burns:
O wad some power the giftie
gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend’s friend has a friend: be discreet.[105]
[105] See the Persian aphorisms on
revealing secrets, ante,
p. 48.—Burns, in his “Epistle
to a Young Friend,” says:
Aye free aff hand your story
tell
When wi’ a bosom crony,
But still keep something to yoursel’
Ye scarcely tell to ony.
Poverty sits as gracefully upon some people as a red saddle upon a white horse.
Rather be thou the tail among lions than the head among foxes.[106]
[106] The very reverse of our English
proverb, “Better to be
the head of the commonalty than the tail of
the gentry.”
The thief who finds no opportunity to steal considers himself an honest man.
Use thy noble vase to-day, for to-morrow it may perchance be broken.
Descend a step in choosing thy wife; ascend a step in choosing thy friend.
A myrtle even in the dust remains a myrtle.[107]
[107] Saadi has the same sentiment in
his Gulislan—see
ante,
p. 49.
Every one whose wisdom exceedeth his deeds, to what is he like? To a tree whose branches are many and its roots few; and the wind cometh and plucketh it up, and overturneth it on its face.[108]
[108] See also Saadi’s aphorisms
on precept and practice,
ante,
p. 47.
If a word spoken in time be worth one piece of money, silence in its place is worth two.[109]
[109] Here we have a variant of Thomas
Carlyle’s favourite
maxim,
“Speech is silvern; silence is golden.”
Silence is the fence round wisdom.[110]
[110] “Nothing is so good for an
ignorant man as silence; and
if
he were sensible of this he would not be
ignorant.”—Saadi.
A saying ascribed to Esop has been frequently cited with admiration. The sage Chilo asked Esop what God was doing, and he answered that he was “depressing the proud and exalting the humble.” A parallel to this is presented in the answer of Rabbi Jose to a woman who asked him what God had been doing since the creation: “He makes ladders on which he causes the poor to ascend and the rich to descend,” in other words, exalts the lowly and humbles the haughty.
* * * * *
The lucid explanation of the expression, “I, God, am a jealous God,” given by a Rabbi, has been thus elegantly translated by Coleridge:[111]
[111] The Friend, ed. 1850, vol. ii, p. 249.
“Your God,” said a heathen philosopher to a Hebrew Rabbi, “in his Book calls himself a jealous God, who can endure no other god besides himself, and on all occasions makes manifest his abhorrence of idolatry. How comes it, then, that he threatens and seems to hate the worshippers of false gods more than the false gods themselves?”
“A certain king,” said the Rabbi, “had a disobedient son. Among other worthless tricks of various kinds, he had the baseness to give his dogs his father’s names and titles. Should the king show anger with the prince or his dogs?”
“Well-turned,” replied the philosopher; but if God destroyed the objects of idolatry, he would take away the temptation to it.”
“Yea,” retorted the Rabbi; “if the fools worshipped such things only as were of no farther use than that to which their folly applied them—if the idol were always as worthless as the idolatry is contemptible. But they worship the sun, the moon, the host of heaven, the rivers, the sea, fire, air, and what not. Would you that the Creator, for the sake of those fools, should ruin his own works, and disturb the laws applied to nature by his own wisdom? If a man steal grain and sow it, should the seed not shoot up out of the earth because it was stolen? O no! The wise Creator lets nature run its own course, for its course is his own appointment. And what if the children of folly abuse it to evil? The day of reckoning is not far off, and men will then learn that human actions likewise reappear in their consequences by as certain a law as that which causes the green blade to rise up out of the buried cornfield.”
* * * * *
Not less conclusive was the form of illustration employed by Rabbi Joshuah in answer to the emperor Trajan. “You teach,” said Trajan, “that your God is everywhere. I should like to see him.” “God’s presence,” replied the Rabbi, “is indeed everywhere, but he cannot be seen. No mortal can behold his glory.” Trajan repeated his demand. “Well,” said the Rabbi, “suppose we try, in the first place, to look at one of his ambassadors.” The emperor consented, and Joshuah took him into the open air, and desired him to look at the sun in its meridian splendour. “I cannot,” said Trajan; “the light dazzles me.” “Thou canst not endure the light of one of his creatures,” said the Rabbi, “yet dost thou expect to behold the effulgent glory of the Creator!”
* * * * *
Our selections from the sayings of the Hebrew Fathers might be largely extended, but we shall conclude them with the following: A Rabbi, being asked why God dealt out manna to the Israelites day by day, instead of giving them a supply sufficient for a year, or more, answered by a parable to this effect: There was once a king who gave a certain yearly allowance to his son, whom he saw, in consequence, but once a year, when he came to receive it; so the king changed his plan, and paid him his allowance daily, and thus had the pleasure of seeing his son each day. And so with the manna: had God given the people a supply for a year they would have forgotten their divine benefactor, but by sending them each day the requisite quantity, they had God constantly in their minds.
* * * * *
There can be no doubt that the Rabbis derived the materials of many of their legends and tales of Biblical characters from foreign sources; but their beautiful moral stories and parables, which “hide a rich truth in a tale’s pretence,” are probably for the most part of their own invention; and the fact that the Talmud was partially, if not wholly, translated into Arabic shortly after the settlement of the Moors in Spain sufficiently accounts for the early introduction of rabbinical legends into Muhammedan works, apart from those found in the Kuran.
ADDITIONAL NOTES.
In the apocryphal Revelation of Moses, which appears to be of Rabbinical extraction, Adam, when near his end, informs his sons; that, because of his transgression, God had laid upon his body seventy strokes, or plagues. The trouble of the first stroke was injury to the eyes; the trouble of the second stroke, of the hearing; and so on, in succession, all the strokes should overtake him. And Adam, thus speaking to his sons, groaned out loud, and said, “What shall I do? I am in great grief.” And Eve also wept, saying: “My lord Adam, arise; give me the half of thy disease, and let me bear it, because through me this has happened to thee; through me thou art
The Revelation, or Apocalypse, of Moses, remarks Mr. Alex. Walker (from whose translation the foregoing is extracted: Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Revelations, 1870), “belongs rather to the Old Testament than to the New. We have been unable to find in it any reference to any Christian writing. In its form, too, it appears to be a portion of some larger work. Parts of it at least are of an ancient date, as it is very likely from this source that the celebrated legend of the Tree of Life and the Oil of Mercy was derived”—an account of which, from the German of Dr. Piper, is given in the Journal of Sacred Literature, October, 1864, vol. vi (N.S.), p. 30 ff.
When “our first parents” were expelled from Paradise, Adam fell upon the mountain in Ceylon which still retains his name ("Adam’s Peak"), while Eve descended at Juddah, which is the port of Mecca, in Arabia. Seated on the pinnacle of the highest mountain in Ceylon, with the orisons of the angelic choirs still vibrating in his ears, the fallen progenitor of the human race had sufficient leisure to bewail his guilt, forbearing all food and sustenance for the space of forty days.[112] But Allah, whose mercy ever surpasses his indignation, and who sought not the death of the wretched penitent, then despatched to his relief the angel Gabriel, who presented him with a quantity of wheat, taken from that fatal tree[113] for which he had defied the wrath of his Creator, with the information that it was to be for food to him and to his children. At the same time he was directed to set it in the earth, and afterwards to grind it into flour. Adam obeyed, for it was part of his penalty that he should toil for sustenance; and the same day the corn sprang up and arrived at maturity, thus affording him an immediate resource against the evils of hunger and famine. For the benevolent archangel did not quit him until he had farther taught him how to construct a mill on the side of the mountain, to grind his corn, and also how to convert the flour into dough and bake it into bread.
[112] The number Forty occurs very frequently
in the Bible
(especially
the Old Testament) in connection with
important
events, and also in Asiatic tales. It is, in
fact,
regarded with peculiar veneration alike by Jews
and
Muhammedans. See notes to my Group of Eastern
Romances
and Stories (1889), pp. 140 and 456.
[113] The “fruit of the forbidden
tree” was not an apple, as
we
Westerns fondly believe, but wheat, say the
Muslim
doctors.
With regard to the forlorn associate of his guilt, from whom a long and painful separation constituted another article in the punishment of his disobedience, it is briefly related that, experiencing also for the first time the craving of hunger, she instinctively dipped her hand into the sea and brought out a fish, and laying it on a rock in the sun, thus prepared her first meal in this her state of despair and destitution.
Adam continued to deplore his guilt on the mountain for a period of one hundred years, and it is said that from his tears, with which he moistened the earth during this interval of remorse, there grew up that useful variety of plants and herbs which in after times by their medicinal qualities served to alleviate the afflictions of the human race; and to this circumstance is to be ascribed the fact that the most useful drugs in the materia medica continue to this day to be supplied from the peninsula of India and the adjoining islands. The angel Gabriel had now tamed the wild ox of the field, and Allah himself had discovered to Adam in the caverns of the same mountain that most important of minerals, iron, which he soon learned to fashion into a variety of articles necessary to the successful prosecution of his increasing labours. At the termination of one hundred years, consumed in toil and sorrow, Adam having been instructed by the angel Gabriel in a penitential formula by which he might hope yet to conciliate Allah, the justice of Heaven was satisfied, and his repentance was finally accepted by the Most High. The joy of Adam was now as intense as his previous sorrow had been extreme, and another century passed, during which the tears with which Adam—from very different emotions—now bedewed the earth were not less effectual in producing every species of fragrant and aromatic flower and shrub, to delight the eye and gratify the sense of smell by their odours, than they were formerly in the generation of medicinal plants to assuage the sufferings of humanity.
Tradition has ascribed to Adam a stature so stupendous that when he stood or walked his forehead brushed the skies; and it is stated that he thus partook in the converse of the angels, even after his fall. But this, by perpetually holding to his view the happiness which he had lost, instead of alleviating, contributed in a great degree to aggravate his misery, and to deprive him of all repose upon earth. Allah, therefore, in pity of his sufferings, shortened his stature to one hundred cubits, so that the harmony of the celestial hosts should no longer reach his ear.
Then Allah caused to be raised up for Adam a magnificent pavilion, or temple, constructed entirely of rubies, on the spot which is now occupied by the sacred Kaaba at Mecca, and which is in the centre of the earth and immediately beneath the throne of Allah. The forlorn Eve—whom Adam had almost forgotten amidst his own sorrows—in the course of her weary wanderings came to the palace of her spouse, and, once more united, they returned to Ceylon. But Adam revisited the sacred pavilion at Mecca every year until his death. And wherever he set his foot there arose, and exists to this day, some city, town, or village, or other place to indicate the presence of man and of human cultivation. The spaces between his footsteps—three days’ journey—long remained barren wilderness.
On the twentieth day of that disorder which terminated the earthly existence of Adam, the divine will was revealed to him through the angel Gabriel, that he was to make an immediate bequest of his power as Allah’s vicegerent on earth to Shayth, or Seth, the discreetest and most virtuous of all his sons, which having done, he resigned his soul to the Angel of Death on the following day. Seth buried his venerable parent on the summit of the mountain in Ceylon ("Adam’s Peak"); but some writers assert that he was buried under Mount Abu Kebyss, about three miles from Mecca. Eve died a twelvemonth after her husband, and was buried in his grave. Noah conveyed their remains in the ark, and afterwards interred them in Jerusalem, at the spot afterwards known as Mount Calvary.
* * * * *
The foregoing is considerably abridged from An Essay towards the History of Arabia, antecedent to the Birth of Mahommed, arranged from the ‘Tarikh Tebry’ and other authentic sources, by Major David Price, London, 1824, pp. 4, 11.—We miss in this curious legend the brief but pathetic account of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, as found in the last two verses of the 3rd chapter of Genesis, which suggested to Milton the fine conclusion of his Paradise Lost: how “some natural tears they dropped,” as the unhappy pair went arm-in-arm out of Paradise—and “the world was all before them, where to choose.” Adam’s prolonged residence at the top of a high mountain in Ceylon seems to be of purely Muhammedan invention; and assuredly the Arabian Prophet did not obtain from the renegade Jew who is said to have assisted him in the composition of the Kuran the “information” that Allah taught Adam the mystery of working in iron, since in the Book of Genesis (iv, 22) it is stated that Tubal-cain was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,” as his brother Jubal was “the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ” (21).—The disinterment of the bones of Adam and Eve by Noah before the Flood began and their subsequent burial at the spot on which Jerusalem was afterwards built, as also the stature of Adam, are, of course, derived from Jewish tradition.
The following interesting legend is taken from Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali’s Observations on the Mussulmans of India (1832), vol. i, pp. 170-175. It was translated by her husband (an Indian Muslim) from a commentary on the history of Musa, or Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver, and in all probability is of rabbinical origin:
When the prophet Musa—to whose spirit be peace!—was on earth, there lived near him a poor but remarkably religious man, who had for many years supported himself and his wife by the daily occupation of cutting wood for his richer neighbours, four small copper coins being the reward of his toil, which at best afforded the poor couple but a scanty meal after his day’s exertions. One morning the Prophet Musa, passing the woodcutter, was thus addressed: “O Musa! Prophet of the Most High! behold I labour each day for my coarse and scanty meal. May it please thee, O Prophet! to make petition for me to our gracious God, that he may, in his mercy, grant me at once the whole supply for my remaining years, so that I shall enjoy one day of earthly happiness, and then, with my wife, be transferred to the place of eternal rest.” Musa promised, and made the required petition. His prayer was thus answered from Mount Tor: “This man’s life is long, O Musa! Nevertheless, if he be willing to surrender life when his supply is exhausted, tell him thy prayer is heard, the petition accepted, and the whole amount shall be found beneath his prayer-carpet after his morning prayers.”
The woodcutter was satisfied when Musa told him the result of his petition, and, the first duties of the morning being performed, he failed not in looking for the promised gift, and to his surprise found a heap of silver coins in the place indicated. Calling his wife, he told her what he had acquired of the Lord through his holy prophet Musa, and they both agreed that it was very good to enjoy a short life of happiness on earth and depart in peace; although they could not help again and again recurring to the number of years on earth they had thus sacrificed. “We will make as many hearts rejoice as this the Lord’s gift will permit,” they both agreed; “and thus we shall secure in our future state the blessed abode promised to those who fulfil the commands of God in this life, since to-morrow it must close for us.”
The day was spent in procuring and preparing provisions for the feast. The whole sum was expended on the best sorts of food, and the poor were made acquainted with the rich treat the woodcutter and his wife were cooking for their benefit. The food being cooked, allotments were made to each hungry applicant, and the couple reserved to themselves one good substantial meal, which was to be eaten only after the poor were all served and satisfied. It happened at the very moment they were seated to enjoy this their last meal, as they believed, a voice was heard, saying:
They had scarcely raised the savoury food to their mouths when a bewailing voice arrested their attention, and stayed the hands already charged with food. A poor creature who had not tasted food for two days moaned his piteous tale, in accents which drew tears from the woodcutter and his wife; their eyes met and the sympathy was mutual: they were more willing to depart for Paradise without the promised benefit of one earthly enjoyment, than suffer the hungry man to die from want of that meal they had before them. The dish was promptly tendered to the unfortunate one, and the woodcutter and his wife consoled each other with reflecting that, as the time of their departure was now so near at hand, the temporary enjoyment of a meal was not worth one moment’s consideration: “To-morrow we die; then of what consequence is it to us whether we depart with full or empty stomachs?”
And now their thoughts were set on the place of eternal rest. They slept, and arose to their morning orisons with hearts reposing humbly on their God, in the fullest expectation that this was their last day on earth. The prayer was concluded, and the woodcutter was in the act of rolling up his carpet, on which he had prostrated himself with gratitude, reverence, and love to his Creator, when he perceived a fresh heap of silver on the floor. He could scarcely believe but it was a dream. “How wonderful art thou, O God!” cried he. “This is thy bounteous gift, that I may indeed enjoy one day before I quit this earth.” And Musa, when he came to him, was satisfied with the goodness and the power of God. But he retired again to the Mount, to inquire of God the cause of the woodcutter’s respite. The reply which Musa received was as follows: “That man has faithfully applied the wealth given in answer to his petition. He is worthy to live out his numbered years on earth who, receiving my bounty, thought not of his own enjoyments whilst his fellow men had wants which he could supply.” And to the end of the wood-cutter’s long life God’s bounty lessened not in substance; neither did the pious man relax in his charitable duties of sharing with the indigent all that he had, and with the same disregard of his own enjoyments.
Commentators on the Kuran state that while Solomon was still a mere youth he frequently upset the decisions of the judges in open court, and they became displeased with his interference, though they could not but confess to themselves that his judgment was always superior to theirs. Having prevailed upon King David to permit the sagacity of his son to be publicly tested, they plied him with what they deemed very difficult questions, which, however, were hardly uttered before he answered them correctly, and at length they became silent and shame-faced. Then Solomon rose and said (I take the paragraph which follows from the English translation of Dr. Weil’s interesting work, The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, 1846, p. 165 f.):
“You have exhausted yourselves in subtleties, in the hope of manifesting your superiority over me before this great assembly. Permit me now also to put to you a very few simple questions, the solution of which needs no manner of study, but only a little intellect and understanding. Tell me: What is Everything, and what is Nothing? Who is Something, and who is less than Nothing?” Solomon waited long, and when the judge whom he had addressed was not able to answer, he said: “Allah, the Creator, is Everything, and the world, the creature, is Nothing. The believer is Something, but the hypocrite is less than Nothing.” Turning to another, Solomon inquired: “Which are the most in number, and which are the fewest? What is the sweetest, and what is the most bitter?” But as the second judge also was unable to find proper answers to these questions, Solomon said: “The most numerous are the doubters, and they who possess a perfect assurance of faith are fewest in number. The sweetest is the possession of a virtuous wife, excellent children, and a respectable competency; but a wicked wife, undutiful children, and poverty are the most bitter.” Finally Solomon put this question to a third judge: “Which is the vilest, and which is the most beautiful? What is the most certain, and what is the least so?” But these questions also remained unanswered until Solomon said: “The vilest thing is when a believer apostasises, and the most beautiful is when a sinner repents. The most certain thing is death and the last judgment, and the most uncertain, life and the fate of the soul after the resurrection. You perceive,” he continued, “it is not the oldest and most learned that are always the wisest. True wisdom is neither of years nor of learned books, but only of Allah, the All-wise.”
The judges were full of admiration, and unanimously lauded the unparalleled sagacity of the future ruler of Israel.—The Queen of Sheba’s “hard questions” (already referred to, p. 218) were probably of a somewhat similar nature. Such “wit combats” seem to have been formerly common at the courts and palaces of Asiatic monarchs and nobles; and a curious, but rather tedious, example is furnished in the Thousand and One Nights, in the story of Abu al-Husn and his slave Tawaddad, which will be found in vol. iv of Mr. John Payne’s and vol. v of Sir R. F. Burton’s complete translations.
A curious popular tradition of Solomon, in French verse, is given by M. Emile Blemont in La Tradition (an excellent journal of folklore, etc., published at Paris) for March 1889, p. 73: Solomon, we are informed, in very ancient times ruled over all beings [on the earth], and, if we may believe our ancestors, was the King of magicians. One day Man appeared before him, praying to be delivered from the Serpent, who ever lay in wait to devour him. “That I cannot do,” said Solomon; “for he is my preceptor, and I have given him the privilege to eat whatsoever he likes best.” Man responded: “Is that so? Well, let him gorge himself without stint; but he has no right to devour me.” “So you say,” quoth Solomon; “but are you sure of it?” Said Man: “I call the light to witness it; for I have the high honour of being in this world superior to all other creatures.” At these words the whole of the assembly [of animals] protested. “And I!” said the Eagle, with a loud voice, as he alighted on a rock. “Corcorico!” chanted the Cock. The Monkey was scratching himself and admiring his grinning phiz in the water, which served him for a looking-glass. Then the Buzzard was beside himself [with rage]. And the Cuckoo was wailing. The Ass rolled over and over, crying: “Heehaw! how ugly Man is!” The Elephant stamped about with his heavy feet, his trumpet raised towards the heavens. The Bear assumed dignified airs, while the Peacock was showing off his wheel-like tail. And in the distance the Lion was majestically exhaling his disdain in a long sigh.
Then said Solomon: “Silence! Man is right: is he not the only beast who gets drunk at all seasons? But, to accede to his request, as an honest prince, I ought to be able to give the Serpent something preferable, or at least equal, to his favourite prey. Therefore hear my decision: Let the Gnat—the smallest of animals—find out in what creature circulates the most exquisite blood in the world; and that creature shall belong to you, O Serpent. And I summon you all to appear here, without fail, on this day twelvemonths hence, that the Gnat may tell us the result of his experiments.”
The year past, the Gnat—subtle taster—was slowly winging his way back when he met the Swallow. “Good day, friend Swallow,” says he. “Good day, friend Gnat,” replies the Swallow. “Have you accomplished your mission?” “Yes, my dear,” responded the Gnat. “Well, what is then the most delicious blood under the heavens?” “My dear, it is that of Man.” “What!—of him? I haven’t heard. Speak louder.” The Gnat was beginning to raise his voice, and opened his mouth to speak louder, when the Swallow quickly fell upon him and nipped off his tongue in the middle of a word. Spite of this, the Gnat continued his way, and arrived next day at the general assembly, where Solomon was already seated. But when the
Everybody was astonished: the Gnat was mad with rage. “I hold,” said Solomon, “to all that I promised. Friend Serpent, renounce Man henceforth—that food is bad. The Frog is the best meat; so eat as much Frog as you please.” So the Serpent had to submit to his deplorable lot, and I leave you to think how the bile was stirred up within the rascally reptile. As the Swallow was passing him—mocking and sneering—the Serpent darted at her, but the bird swiftly passed beyond reach, and with little effort cleft the vast blue sky and ascended more than a league. The Serpent snapped only the end of the bird’s tail, and that is how the Swallow’s tail is cloven to this day; but, so far from finding it an inconvenience, she is thereby the more lively and beautiful. And Man, knowing what he owes to her, is full of gratitude. She has her abode under the eaves of our houses, and good luck comes wherever she nestles. Her gay cries, sweet and shrill, rouse the springtide. Is she not a bird-fairy—a good angel? On the other hand, the crafty Serpent hardly knows how to get out of the mud, and drags himself along, climbing and climbing; while the Swallow, free and light, flies in the gold of the day. For she is faithful Friendship—the little sister of Love.
M. Blemont does not say in what part of France this legend is current, but it is doubtless of Asiatic extraction—whether Jewish or Muhammedan.
THE CAPON-CARVER, p. 231.
A variant of the same incident occurs in No. IV of M. Emile Legrand’s Receuil de Contes Populaires Grecs (Paris, 1881), where a prince sets out in quest of some maiden acquainted with “figurative language,” whom he would marry. He comes upon an old man and his daughter, and overhears the latter address her father in metaphorical terms, which she has to explain to the old man, at which the prince is highly pleased, and following them to their hut desires and obtains shelter for the night. “As there was not much to eat, the old man bade them kill a cock, and when it was roasted it was placed on the table. Then the young girl got up and carved the fowl. She gave the head to her father; the body to her mother; the wings to the prince; and the
“As the room wherein the girl spoke with her father was adjacent to that in which the stranger lay, the latter heard all that she said. Great was his joy, and he said to himself that he would well like for wife one who could thus speak figurative language. And when it was day he rose, took his leave, and went away. On his return to the palace he called a servant and gave him in a sack containing 31 loaves, a whole cheese, a cock stuffed and roasted, and a skin of wine; and indicating to him the position of the cabin where he had put up, told him to go there and deliver these presents to a young girl of 18 years.
“The servant took the sack and set out to execute the orders of his master.—But, pardon me, ladies [quoth the story-teller], if I have forgotten to tell you this: Before setting out, the servant was ordered by the prince to say these words to the young girl: ’Many, many compliments from my master. Here is what he sends you: the month has 31 days; the moon is full; the chorister of the dawn is stuffed and roasted; the he-goat’s skin is stretched and full.’—The servant then went towards the cabin, but on the way he met some friends. ’Good day, Michael. Where are you going with this load, and what do you carry?’ ‘I’m going over the mountain to a cabin where my master sends me.’ ’And what have you got in there? The smell of it makes our mouths water.’ ’Look, here are loaves, cheese, wine, and a roasted cock. It’s a present which my master has given me to take to a poor girl.’ ’O indeed, simpleton! Sit down, that we may eat a little. How should thy master ever know of it?’ Down they sat on the green mountain sward and fell-to. The more they ate the keener their appetites grew, so that our fine fellows cleared away 13 loaves, half the cheese, the whole cock, and nearly half the wine. When they had eaten and drank their fill, the servant took up the remainder and resumed his way to the cabin. Arrived, he found the young girl, gave her the presents, and repeated the words which his master had ordered him to say.
“The girl took what he brought and said to him: ’You shall say to your master: “Many, many compliments. I thank him for all that he has sent me; but the month has only 18 days, the moon is only half full, the chorister of dawn was not there, and the he-goat’s skin is lank and loose. But, to please the partridge, let him not beat the sow."’ (That is to say, there were only 18 loaves, half a cheese, no roasted cock, and the wine-skin was scarcely half full; but that, to please the young girl, he was not to beat the servant, who had not brought the gift entire.)
“The servant left and returned to the palace. He repeated to the prince what the young girl had said to him, except the last clause, which he forgot. Then the prince understood all, and caused another servant to give the rogue a good beating. When the culprit had received such a caning that his skin and bones were sore, he cried out: ’Enough, prince, my master! Wait until I tell you another thing that the young girl said to me, and I have forgotten to tell you.’ ’Come, what have you to say?—be quick.’ ’Master, the young girl added, “But, to please the partridge, let him not beat the sow."’ ‘Ah, blockhead!’ said the prince to him. ’Why did you not tell me this before? Then you would not have tasted the cane. But so be it.’ A few days later the prince married the young girl, and fetes and great rejoicings were held.”
THE FOX AND THE BEAR, p. 240.
In no other version of this fable does the Fox take a stone with him when he enters one of the buckets and then throw it away—nor indeed does he go into the bucket at all; he simply induces the other animal to descend into the well, in order to procure the “fine cheese.” La Fontaine gives a variant of the fable, in which a fox goes down into a well with the same purpose, and gets out by asking a wolf to come down and feast on the “cheese”: as the wolf descends in one bucket he draws up the fox in the other one, and so the wolf, like Lord Ullin, is “left lamenting."[114] M. Berenger-Feraud thinks this version somewhat analogous to a fable in his French collection of popular Senegambian Tales,[115] of the Clever Monkey and the Silly Wolf, of which, as it is short, I may offer a free translation, as follows:
A proud lion was pacing about a few steps forward, then a side movement, then a grand stride backward. A monkey on a tree above imitates the movements, and his antics enrage the lion, who warns him to desist. The monkey however goes on with the caricature, and at last falls off the tree, and is caught by the lion, who puts him into a hole in the ground, and having covered it with a large stone goes off to seek his mate, that they should eat the monkey together. While he is absent a wolf comes to the spot, and is pleased to hear the monkey cry, for he had a grudge against him. The wolf asks why the monkey cries. “I am singing,” says the monkey, “to aid my digestion. This is a hare’s retreat,
[114] Fables de La Fontaine, Livre
xi^e, fable v^e: “Le Loup
et
le Renard.”
[115] Recueil de Contes Populaires
de la Senegambie,
recueillis
par L.-J.-B.-Berenger-Feraud. Paris, 1885.
Page
51.
[116] I have to thank my friend Dr. David
Ross, Principal,
E.
C. Training College, Glasgow, for kindly drawing my
attention
to this diverting tale.
Strange as it may appear, there is a variant of the fable of the Fox and the Bear current among the negroes in the United States, according to Uncle Remus, that most diverting collection. In No. XVI, “Brer Rabbit” goes down in a bucket into a well, and “Brer Fox” asks him what he is doing there. “O I’m des a fishing, Brer Fox,” says he; and Brer Fox goes into the bucket while Brer Rabbit escapes and chaffs his comrade.
THE DESOLATE ISLAND, p. 243.
There is a tale in the Gesta Romanorum (ch. 74 of the text translated by Swan) which seems to have been suggested by the Hebrew parable of the Desolate Island, and which has passed into general currency throughout Europe: A dying king bequeaths to his son a golden apple, which he is to give to the greatest fool he can find. The young prince sets out on his travels, and after meeting with many fools, none of whom, however, he deemed worthy of the “prize,” he comes to a country the king of which reigns only one year, and finds him indulging in all kinds of pleasure. He offers the king the apple, explaining the terms of his father’s bequest, and saying that he considers him the greatest of all fools, in not having made a proper use of his year of sovereignty.—A common oral form of this story is to the effect that a court jester came to the bedside of his dying master, who told him that he was going on a very long journey, and the jester inquiring whether he had made due preparation was answered in the negative. “Then,” said the fool, “prithee take my bauble, for thou art truly the greatest of all fools.”
As analogues, or variants, of incidents in several wide-spread European popular tales, other Hebrew legends are cited in some of my former books; e.g.: The True Son, in Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. i, p. 14; Moses and the Angel (the ways of Providence: the original of Parnell’s “Hermit"), vol. i, p. 25; a mystical hymn, “A kid, a kid, my Father bought,” the possible original of our nursery cumulative rhyme of “The House that Jack built,” vol. i, p. 291; the Reward of Sabbath observance, vol. i, p. 399; the Intended Divorce, vol. ii, p. 328, of which, besides the European variants there cited, other versions will be found in Prof. Crane’s Italian Popular Tales: “The Clever Girl” and Notes; the Lost Camel, in A Group of Eastern Romances and Stories, p. 512. In Originals and Analogues of some of Chaucer’s ’Canterbury Tales’ (for the Chaucer Society) I have cited two curious Jewish versions of the Franklin’s Tale, in the paper entitled “The Damsel’s Rash Promise,” pp. 315, 317. A selection of Hebrew Facetiae is given at the end of the papers on Oriental Wit and Humour in the present volume (p. 117); and an amusing story, also from the Talmud, is reproduced in my Book of Sindibad, p. 103, note, of the Athenian and the witty Tailor; and in the same work, p. 340, note, reference is made to a Jewish version of the famous tale of the Matron of Ephesus. There may be more in these books which I cannot call to mind.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Every land has its favourite tale of love: in France, that of Abelard and Eloisa, in Italy, of Petrarch and Laura; all Europe has the touching tale of Romeo and Juliet in common; and Muslims have the ever fresh tale of the loves and sorrows of Majnun and Layla. Of the ten or twelve Persian poems extant on this old tale those by Nizami, who died A.D. 1211, and Jami, of the 15th century, are considered as by far the best; though Hatifi’s version (ob. 1520) is highly praised by Sir William Jones. The Turkish poet Fazuli (ob. 1562) also made this tale the basis of a fine mystical poem, of which Mr. Gibb has given some translated specimens—reproducing the original rhythm and rhyme-movement very cleverly—in his Ottoman Poems. The following is an epitome of the tale of Majnun and Layla:
Kays (properly, Qays), the handsome son of Syd Omri, an Arab chief of Yemen, becomes enamoured of a beauteous maiden of another tribe: a damsel bright as the moon,[117] graceful as the cypress;[118] with locks dark as night, and hence she was called Layla;[119] who captivated all hearts, but chiefly that of Kays. His passion is reciprocated, but soon the fond lovers are separated. The family of Layla remove to the distant mountains of Nejd, and Kays, distracted, with matted locks and bosom bare to the scorching sun, wanders forth into the desert in quest of her abode, causing the rocks to echo his voice, constantly calling upon her name. His friends, having found him in woeful plight, bring him home, and henceforth he is called Majnun—that is, one who is mad, or frantic, from love. Syd Omri, his father, finding that Majnun is deaf to good counsel—that nothing but the possession of Layla can restore him to his senses—assembles his followers and departs for the abode of Layla’s family, and presenting himself before the maiden’s father, proposes in haughty terms the union of his son with Layla; but the offer is declined, on the ground that Syd Omri’s son is a maniac, and he will not give his daughter to a man bereft of his senses; but should he be restored to his right mind he will consent to their union. Indignant at this answer, Syd Omri returns home, and after his friends had in vain tried the effect of love-philtres to make Layla’s father relent, as a last resource they propose that Majnun should wed another damsel, upon which the demented lover once more seeks the desert, where they again find him almost at the point of death, and bring him back to his tribe.
[117] Nothing is more hackneyed in Asiatic
poetry than the
comparison
of a pretty girl’s face to the moon, and not
seldom
to the disparagement of that luminary. Solomon,
in
his love-songs, exclaims: “Who is she that
looketh
forth
in the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the
sun?”
The greatest of Persian poets, Firdausi, says of a
damsel:
“Love
ye the moon? Behold her face,
And
there the lucid planet trace.”
And
Kalidasa, the Shakspeare of India (6th century
B.C.),
says:
“Her countenance is brighter than the moon.”
Amongst ourselves the epithet “moon-faced” is not usually regarded as complimentary, yet Spenser speaks of a beautiful damsel’s “moon-like forehead.”—Be sure, the poets are right!
[118] The lithe figure of a pretty girl
is often likened by
Eastern
poets to the waving cypress, a tree which we
associate
with the grave-yard.—“Who is walking
there?”
asks
a Persian poet. “Thou, or a tall cypress?”
[119] “Nocturnal.”
Now the season of pilgrimage to Mecca draws nigh, and it is thought that a visit to the holy shrine and the waters of the Zemzem[120] might cure his frenzy. Accordingly Majnun, weak and helpless, is conveyed to Mecca in a litter. Most fervently his sorrowing father prays in the Kaaba for his recovery, but all in vain, and they return home. Again Majnun escapes to the desert, whence his love-plaints, expressed in eloquent verse, find their way to Layla, who contrives to reply to them, also in verse, assuring her lover of her own despair, and of her constancy.
[120] The sacred well in the Kaaba at
Mecca, which, according
to
Muslim legends, miraculously sprang up when Hagar and
her
son Ishmael were perishing in the desert from thirst.
One day a gallant young chief, Ibn Salam, chances to pass near the dwelling of Layla, and, seeing the beauteous maiden among her companions, falls in love with her, and straightway asks her in marriage of her parents. Layla’s father does not reject the handsome and wealthy suitor, who scatters his gold about as if it were mere sand, but desires him to wait until his daughter is of proper age for wedlock, when the nuptials should be duly celebrated; and with this promise Ibn Salam departs.
Meanwhile, Noufal, the chief in whose land Majnun has taken up his abode, while hunting one day comes upon the wretched lover, and, struck with his appearance, inquires the cause of his distress. Noufal conceives a warm friendship for Majnun, and sends a messenger to Layla’s father to demand her in marriage with his friend. But the damsel’s parent scornfully refused to comply, and Noufal then marches with his followers against him. A battle ensues, in which Noufal is victorious. The father of Layla then comes to Noufal, and offers submission; but he declares that rather than consent to his daughter’s union with Majnun he would put her to death before his face. Seeing the old man thus resolute, Noufal abandons his enterprise and returns to his own country.
And now Ibn Salam, having waited the appointed time, comes with his tribesmen to claim the hand of Layla; and, spite of her tears and protestations, she is married to the wealthy young chief. Years pass on—weary years of wedded life to poor Layla, whose heart is ever true to her wandering lover. At length a stranger seeks out Majnun, and tells him that his beloved Layla wishes to have a brief interview with him, near her dwelling. At once the frantic lover speeds towards the rendezvous; but when Layla is informed of his arrival, her sense of duty overcomes the passion of her life, and she resolves to forego the dangerous meeting, and poor Majnun departs without having seen his darling. Henceforth he is a constant dweller in the desert, having for his companions the beasts and birds of the wilderness—his clothes in tatters, his hair matted, his body wasted to a shadow, his bare feet lacerated with thorns.
[121] According to Muslim law, four months
and ten days must
elapse
before a widow can marry again.
* * * * *
Possibly, readers of a sentimental turn—oft inclined to the “melting” mood—may experience a kind of pleasing sadness in perusing a rhythmical prose translation of the passage in Nizami’s poem in which
Majnun bewails the Death of Layla.
When Zayd,[122] with heart afflicted, heard that in the silent tomb that moon[123] had set, he wept and mourned, and sadly flowed his tears. Who in this world is free from grief and tears? Then, clothed in sable garments, like one oppressed who seeks redress, he, agitated, and weeping like a vernal cloud, hastened to the grave of Layla; but, as he o’er it hung, ask not how swelled his soul with grief; while from his eyes the tears of blood incessant flowed, and from his sight and groans the people fled. Sometimes he mourned with grief so deep and sad that from his woe the sky became obscure. Then from the tomb of that fair flower he to the desert took his way. There sought the wanderer from the paths of man him whose night was now in darkness veiled, as that bright lamp was gone; and, seated near him, weeping and sighing, he beat his breast and struck upon the earth his head. When Majnun saw him thus afflicted he said: “What has befallen thee, my brother, that thy soul is thus overpowered? and why so pale that cheek? and why these sable robes?” He thus replied: “Because that fortune now has changed: a sable stream has issued from the earth, and even death has burst its iron gates; a storm of hail has on the garden poured, and not a leaf of all our rose-bower now remains. The moon has fallen from the firmament, and prostrate on the mead that waving cypress lies! Layla was, but from the world has now departed; and from the wound thy love had caused she died.”
[122] An attendant, who had always befriended Majnun.
[123] “The moon,” to wit,
the unhappy Layla. See the note,
p.
284.
Scarce had these accents reached his listening ear e’er, senseless, Majnun fell as one by lightning struck. A short time, fainting, thus he lay; recovered, then he raised his head to heaven and thus exclaimed: “O merciless! what fate severe is this on one so helpless? Why such wrath? Why blast a blade of grass with lightning, and on the ant [i.e. himself] thy power exert? One ant and a thousand pains of hell, when one single spark would be enough! Why thus with blood the goblet crown, and all my hopes deceive? I burned with flames that by that lamp were fed; and by that breath which quenched its light I too expire.” Thus, like Asra, did he complain, and, like Wamik, traversed on every side the desert,[124] his heart broken, and his garments rent; while, as the beasts gazed on him, his tears so constant flowed, that in their eyes the tear-drop stood; and like a shadow Zayd his footsteps still pursued. When, weeping and mourning, Majnun thus o’er many a hill and many a vale had passed, as grief his path directed, he wished to view the tomb of all he loved; and then inquired of Zayd where was the spot that held her grave, and where the turf that o’er it grew.
[124] See Note on ‘Wamik and Asra’ at the end of this paper.
But soon as to the tomb he came, struck with its view, his senses fled. Recovering, then he thus exclaimed: “O Heaven! what shall I do, or what resource attempt, as like a lamp I waste away? Alas! that heart-enslaver was all that in this world I prized: and now, alas! in wrath, dire Fate with ruthless blow has snatched her from me. In my hand I held a lovely flower; the wind came and scattered all its leaves. I chose a cypress that in the garden graceful grew; but soon the wind of fate destroyed it. Spring bade a blossom bloom; but Fortune would not guard the flower. A group of lilies I preserved, pure as the thoughts that in my bosom rose; but one unjust purloined them. I sowed, but he the harvest reaped.”
Then, resting within the tomb his head, he mourning wept, and said: “O lovely floweret, struck by autumn’s blast, and from this world departed ere thou knewest it! A garden once in bloom, but now laid waste! O fruit matured, but not enjoyed! To earth’s mortality can such as thou be subject, and such as thou within the darkness of the tomb repose? And where is now that mole which seemed a grain of musk?[125] And where those eyes soft as the gazelle’s? Where those ruby lips? And where those curling ringlets? In what bright hues is now thy form adorned? And through the love of whom does now thy lamp consume? To whose fond eyes are now thy charms displayed? And whom to captivate do now thy tresses wave? Beside the margin of what stream is now that cypress seen? And in what bower is now the banquet spread? Ah, can such as thou have felt the pangs of death, and be reclined
[125] A mole on the fair face of Beauty
is not regarded as a
blemish,
but the very contrary, by Asiatics—or by
Europeans
either, else why did the ladies of the last
century
patch their faces, if not (originally) to set
off
the clearness of their complexion by contrast with
the
little black wafer?—though (afterwards)
often to
hide
a pimple! Eastern poets are for ever raving over
the
mole on a pretty face. Hafiz goes the length of
declaring:
“For the mole on the
cheek of that girl of Shiraz
I would give away Samarkand and Bukhara”—
albeit they were none of his to give to anybody.
[126] Cf. Shelley, in the fine
opening of that wonderful
poetical offspring of his adolescence, Queen
Mab:
“Hath, then, the
gloomy Power
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres
Seized on her sinless soul?”
* * * * *
“This,” methinks I hear some misogynist exclaim, after reading it—“this is rank nonsense—it is stark lunacy!” And so it is, perhaps. At all events, these impassioned words are supposed to be uttered by a poor youth who had gone mad from love. Our misogynist—and may I venture to include the experienced married man?—will probably retort, that all love between young folks is not only folly but sheer madness; and he will be the more confirmed in this opinion when he learns that, according to certain grave Persian writers, Layla was really of a swarthy visage, and far from being the beauty her infatuated lover conceived her to be: thus verifying the dictum of our great dramatist, in the ever-fresh passage where he makes “the lunatic, the lover, and the poet” to be “of imagination all compact,” the lover seeing “Helen’s beauty in the brow of Egypt!”—Notwithstanding all this, the ancient legend of Layla and Majnun has proved an inspiring theme to more than one great poet of Persia, during the most flourishing period of the literature of that country—for which let us all be duly thankful.
ADDITIONAL NOTES.
‘WAMIK AND ASRA,’ p. 289.
This is the title of an ancient Persian poem, composed in the reign of Nushirvan, A.D. 531-579, of which some fragments only now remain, incorporated with an Arabian poem. In 1833, Von Hammer published a German translation, at Vienna: Wamik und Asra; das ist, Gluehende und die Bluehende. Das aelteste Persische romantische Gedicht. Jun fuenftelsaft abgezogen, von Joseph von Hammer (Wamik and Asra; that is, the Glowing and the Blowing. The most ancient Persian Romantic Poem. Transfer the Fifth, etc.) The hero and heroine, namely, Wamik and Asra, are personifications of the two great principles of heat and vegetation, the vivifying energy of heaven and the correspondent productiveness of earth.—This noble poem is the subject of a very interesting article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. xviii, 1836-7, giving some of the more striking passages in English verse, of which the following may serve as a specimen:
‘The Blowing One’ Asra was
justly named,
For she, in mind
and form, a blossom stood;
Of beauty, youth, and grace divinely framed,
Of holiest spirit,
filled with heavenly good.
The Spring, when warm, in fullest splendour
showing,
Breathing gay
wishes to the inmost core
Of youthful hearts, and fondest influence
throwing,
Yet veiled its
bloom, her beauty’s bloom before;
For her the devotee
his very creed forswore.
Her hair was bright as hyacinthine dyes;
Her cheek was blushing, sheen
as Eden’s rose;
The soft narcissus tinged her sleeping
eyes,
And white her forehead, as
the lotus shows
’Gainst Summer’s earliest
sunbeams shimmering fair.
A curious story is related by Dawlat Shah regarding this poem, which bears a close resemblance to the story of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, by order of the fanatical khalif ’Umar: One day when Amir Abdullah Tahir, governor of Khurasan under the Abbasside khalifs, was giving audience, a person laid before him a book, as a rare and valuable present. He asked: “What book is this?” The man replied: “It is the story of Wamik and Asra.” The Amir observed: “We are the readers of the Kuran, and we read nothing except that sacred volume, and the traditions of the Prophet, and such accounts as relate to him, and we have therefore no use for books of this kind. They are besides compositions of infidels, and the productions of worshippers of fire, and are therefore to be rejected and contemned by us.” He then ordered the book to be thrown into the water, and issued his command that whatever books could be found in the kingdom which were the composition of the Persian infidels should be immediately burnt.
Scarcely less celebrated than the story of Majnun and Layla—among the Arabs, at least—is that of the poet Jamil and the beauteous damsel Buthayna. It is said that Jamil fell in love with her while he was yet a boy, and on attaining manhood asked her in marriage, but her father refused. He then composed verses in her honour and visited her secretly at Wadi-’l Kura, a delightful valley near Medina, much celebrated by the poets. Jamil afterwards went to Egypt, with the intention of reciting to Abdu-’l Aziz Ibn Marwan a poem he had composed in his honour. This governor admitted Jamil into his presence, and, after hearing his eulogistic verses and rewarding him generously, he asked him concerning his love for Buthayna, and was told of his ardent and painful passion. On this Abdu-’l Aziz promised to unite Jamil to her, and bade him stay at Misr (Cairo), where he assigned him a habitation and furnished him with all he required. But Jamil died there shortly after, A.H. 82 (A.D. 701).
The following narrative is given in the Kitabal-Aghani, on the authority of the famous poet and philologist Al-Asma’i, who flourished in the 8th century:
A person who was present at the death of Jamil in Egypt relates that the poet called him and said: “If I give you all I leave after me, will you perform one thing which I shall enjoin you?” “By Allah, yes,” said the other. “When I am dead,” said Jamil, “take this cloak of mine and put it aside, but keep everything else for yourself. Then go to Buthayna’s tribe, and when you are near them, saddle this camel of mine and mount her; then put on my cloak and rend it, and mounting on a hill, shout out these verses: ’A messenger hath openly proclaimed the death of Jamil. He hath now a dwelling in Egypt from which he will never return. There was a time when, intoxicated with love, he trained his mantle proudly in the fields and palm-groves of Wadi-’l Kura! Arise, Buthayna! and lament aloud: weep for the best of all thy lovers!’” The man did what Jamil ordered, and had scarcely finished the verses when Buthayna came forth, beautiful as the moon when it appears from behind a cloud. She was muffled in a cloak, and on coming up to him said: “Man, if what thou sayest be true, thou hast killed me; if false, thou hast dishonoured me!” [i.e. by associating her name with that of a strange man, still alive.] He replied: “By Allah! I only tell the truth,” and he showed her Jamil’s mantle, on seeing which she uttered a loud cry and smote her face, and the women of the tribe gathered around, weeping with her and lamenting her lover’s death. Her strength at length failed her, and she swooned away. After some time she revived, and said [in verse]: “Never for an instant shall I feel consolation for the loss of Jamil! That time shall never come. Since thou art dead, O Jamil, son of Mamar! the pains of life and its pleasures are alike to me.” And quoth the lover’s messenger: “I never saw man or woman weep more than I saw that day.”—Abridged from Ibn Khallikan’s great Biographical Dictionary as translated by Baron De Slane, vol. i, pp. 331-326.
The origin of the Beast-Fable is still a vexed question among scholars, some of whom ascribe it to the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of human souls into different animal forms; others, again, are of the opinion that beasts and birds were first adopted as characters of fictitious narratives, in order to safely convey reproof or impart wholesome counsel to the minds of absolute princes, who would signally resent “plain speaking."[127] Several nations of antiquity—notably the Greeks, the Hindus, the Egyptians—have been credited with the invention of the beast-fable, and there is no reason to believe that it may not have been independently devised in different countries. It is very certain, however, that Esop was not the inventor of this kind of narrative in Greece, while those fables ascribed to him, which have been familiar to us from our nursery days, are mostly spurious, and have been traced to ancient Oriental sources. The so-called Esopic apologue of the Lion and the House is found in an Egyptian papyrus preserved at Leyden.[128] Many of them are quite modern rechauffes of Hindu apologues, such as the Milkmaid and her Pot of Milk, which gave rise to our popular saying, “Don’t count your chickens until they be hatched.” Nevertheless, genuine fables of Esop were current in Athens at the best period of its literary history, though it does not appear that they existed in writing during his lifetime. Aristophanes represents a character in one of his plays as learning Esop’s fables from oral recitation. When first reduced to writing they were in prose, and Socrates is said to have turned some of them into verse, his example being followed by Babrius, amongst others, of whose version but few fables remain entire. The most celebrated of his Latin translators is Phaedrus, who takes care to inform us that
If any thoughts in these Iambics shine,
The invention’s Esop’s, and
the verse is mine.[129]
[127] The reader may with advantage consult
the article
‘Beast-Fable,’
by Mr. Thos. Davidson, in Chambers’s
Encylopaedia,
new edition.
[128] But this papyrus might be of as
late a period as the
second
century of our era.
[129] For the most complete history of
the Esopic Fable, see
vol.
i of Mr. Joseph Jacobs’ edition of The Fables
of
Aesop,
as first printed by Caxton in 1484, with those of
Avian,
Alfonso, and Poggio, recently published by Mr.
David
Nutt; where a vast amount of erudite information
will
be found on the subject in all its ramifications.
Mr.
Jacobs, indeed, seems to have left little for future
gleaners:
he has done his work in a thorough,
Benfey-like
manner, and students of comparative
folk-lore
are under great obligations to him for the
indefatigable
industry he has devoted to the valuable
outcome
of his wide-reaching learning.
Little is authentically known regarding the career of the renowned fabulist, who is supposed to have been born about B.C. 620, and, as in the case of Homer, various places are assigned as that of his nativity—Samos, Sardis, Mesembria in Thrace, and Cotiaeium in Phrygia. He is said to have been brought as a slave to Athens when very young, and after serving several masters was enfranchised by Iadmon, the Samian. His death is thus related by Plutarch: Having gone to Delphos, by the order of Croesus, with a large quantity of gold and silver, to offer a costly sacrifice to Apollo and to distribute a considerable sum among the inhabitants, a quarrel arose between him and the Delphians, which induced him to return the money, and inform the king that the people were unworthy of the liberal benefaction he had intended for them. The Delphians, incensed, charged him with sacrilege, and, having procured his condemnation, precipitated him from a rock and caused his death.—The popular notion that Esop was a monster of ugliness and deformity is derived from a “Life” of the fabulist, prefixed to a Greek collection of fables purporting to be his, said to have been written by Maximus Planudes, a monk of the 14th century, which, however apocryphal, is both curious and entertaining, from whatever sources the anecdotes may have been drawn.
According to Planudes,[130] Esop was born at Amorium, in the Greater Phrygia, a slave, ugly exceedingly: he was sharp-chinned, snub-nosed, bull-necked, blubber-lipped, and extremely swarthy (whence his name, Ais-opos, or Aith-opos: burnt-face, blackamoor); pot-bellied, crook-legged, and crook-backed; perhaps uglier even than the Thersites of Homer; worst of all, tongue-tied, obscure and inarticulate in his speech; in short, everything but his mind seemed to mark him out for a slave. His first master sent him out to dig one day. A husbandman having presented the master with some fine fresh figs, they were given to a slave to be set before him after his bath. Esop had occasion to go into the house; meanwhile the other slaves ate the figs, and when the master missed them they accused Esop, who begged a moment’s respite: he then drank some warm water and caused himself to vomit, and as he had not broken his fast his innocence was thus manifest. The same test discovered the thieves, who by their punishment illustrated the proverb:
Whoso against another worketh guile
Thereby himself doth injure unaware.[131]
[130] Fabulae Romanenses Graece conscriptae
ex recensione et
cum
adnotationibus, Alfredi Eberhard (Leipzig, 1872),
vol.
i, p. 226 ff.
[131] It would have been well had the
sultan Bayazid compelled
his
soldier to adopt this plan when accused by an old
woman
of having drunk up all her supply of goat’s milk.
The
soldier declared his innocence, upon which Bayazid
ordered
Next day the master goes to town. Esop works in the field, and entertains with his own food some travellers who had lost their way, and sets them on the right road again. They are really priests of Artemis, and having received their blessing he falls asleep, and dreams that Tyche (i.e. Fortune) looses his tongue, and gives him eloquence. Waking, he finds he can say bous, onos, dikella, (ox, ass, mattock). This is the reward of piety, for “well-doing is full of good hopes.” Zenas, the overseer, is rebuked by Esop for beating a slave. This is the first time he has been heard to speak distinctly. Zenas goes to his master and accuses Esop of having blasphemed him and the gods, and is given Esop to sell or give away as he pleases. He sells him to a trader for three obols (4-1/2d.), Esop pleading that, if useless for aught else, he will do for a bugbear to keep his children quiet. When they arrive home the little ones begin to cry. “Was I not right?” quoth Esop, and the other slaves think he has been bought to avert the Evil Eye.
The merchant sets out for Asia with all his house-hold. Esop is offered the lightest load, as being a raw recruit. From among the bags, beds, and baskets he chooses a basket full of bread—“a load for two men.” They laugh at his folly, but let him have his will, and he staggers under the burden to the wonder of his master. But at the first halt for ariston, or breakfast, the basket is half-emptied, and by the evening wholly so, and then Esop marches triumphantly ahead, all commending his wit. At Ephesus the merchant sells all his slaves, excepting a musician, a scribe, and Esop. Thence he goes to Samos, where he puts new garments on the two former (he had none left for Esop), and sets them out for sale, Esop between them. Xanthus, the philospher, lived at Samos. He goes to the slave market, and, seeing the three, praises the dealer’s cunning in making the two look handsomer than they were by contrast with the ugly one. Asking the scribe and the musician what they know, their answer is, “Everything,” upon which Esop laughs. The price of the musician (1000 obols, or six guineas) and of the scribe (three times that sum) prevents the philosopher from buying them, and he turns to Esop to see what he is made of. He gives him the customary salutation, “Khaire!” (Rejoice). “I wasn’t grieving,” retorts Esop. “I greet thee,” says Xanthus. “And I thee,” replies Esop. “What are thou?” “Black.” “I don’t mean that, but in what sort of place wast thou born?” “My mother didn’t tell me whether in the second floor or the cellar.” “What can you do?” “Nothing.” “How?”
One day Xanthus, meeting friends at the bath, sends Esop home to boil pease (idiomatically using the word in the singular), for his friends are coming to eat with him. Esop boils one pea and sets it before Xanthus, who tastes it and bids him serve up. The water is then placed on the table, and Esop justifies himself to his distracted master, who then sends him for four pig’s feet. While they boil, Xanthus slyly abstracts one, and when Esop discovers this he takes it for a plot against him of the other slaves. He runs into the yard, cuts a foot from the pig feeding there, and tosses it into the pot. Presently the other foot is put back, and Esop is confounded to see five trotters on the boil. He serves them up, however, and when Xanthus asks him what the five mean he replies: “How many feet have two pigs?” Xanthus saying, “Eight,” quoth Esop: “Then here are five, and the porker feeding below goes on three.” On being reproached he urges: “But, master, there is no harm in doing a sum in addition and subtraction, is there?” For very shame Xanthus forbears whipping him.
One morning Xanthus gives a breakfast, for which Esop is sent to buy “the best and most useful.” He buys tongues, and the guests (philosophers all) have nothing else. “What could be better for man than tongue?” quoth Esop. Another time he is ordered to get “the worst and most worthless”; again he brings tongues, and again is ready with a similar defence.[132] A guest reviles him, and Esop retorts that he is “malicious and a busybody.” On hearing this Xanthus commands him to find some one who is not a busybody. In the road Esop finds a simple soul and brings him home to his master, who persuades his wife to bear with him in anything he should pretend to do to her; if the guest is a busybody (or one who meddles) Esop will get a beating. The plan fails; for the good man continues eating and takes no notice of the wife-cuffing going on, and when his host seems about to burn her, he only asks leave to bring his own wife to be also placed on the pile.
[132] This story is also found in the
Liber de Donis of
Etienne
de Bourbon (No. 246), a Dominican monk of the
14th
century; in the Summa Praedicantium of John
Bromyard,
and several other medieval monkish collections
of
exempla, or stories designed for the use of
preachers:
in these the explanation is that nothing can
be
better and nothing worse than tongue.
At a symposium Xanthus takes too much wine, and in bravado wagers his house and all that it contains that he will drink up the waters of the sea. Out of this scrape Esop rescues him by suggesting that he should demand that all the rivers be stopped from flowing into the sea, for he did not undertake to drink them too, and the other party is satisfied.[133]
[133] This occurs in the several Asiatic
versions of the Book
of
Sindibad (Story of the Sandalwood Merchant); in the
Gesta
Romanorum; in the old English metrical Tale
of
Beryn;
in one of the Italian Novelle of Sacchetti;
and
in the exploits of Tyl Eulenspiegel, the German
Rogue.
A party of scientific guests are coming to dinner one day, and Esop is set just within the door to keep out “all but the wise.” When there is a knock at the door Esop shouts: “What does the dog shake?” and all save one go away in high dudgeon, thinking he means them; but this last answers: “His tail,” and is admitted.
At a public festival an eagle carries off the municipal ring, and Esop obtains his freedom by order of the state for his interpretation of this omen—that some king purposes to annex Samos. This, it turns out, is Croesus, who sends to claim tribute. Hereupon Esop relates his first fable, that of the Wolf, the Dog, and the Sheep, and, going on an embassy to Croesus, that of the Grasshopper who was caught by the Locust-gatherer. He brings home “peace with honour.” After this Esop travels over the world, showing his wisdom and wit. At Babylon he is made much of by the king. He then visits Egypt and confounds the sages in his monarch’s behalf. Once more he returns to Greece, and at Delphi is accused of stealing a sacred golden bowl and condemned to be hurled from a rock. He pleads the fables of the Matron of Ephesus,[134] the Frog and the Mouse, the Beetle and the Eagle, the Old Farmer and his Ass-waggon, and others, but all is of no avail, and the villains break his neck.
[134] Taken from Petronius Arbiter.
The story is widely
spread.
It is found in the Seven Wise Masters,
and—mutatis
mutandis—is well known to the Chinese.
Planudes
takes some liberties with his original,
substituting
for the soldier guarding the suspended
corpse
of a criminal, who “comforts” the sorrowing
widow,
a herdsman with his beasts, which he loses in
prosecuting
his amour.
* * * * *
Such are some of the apocryphal sayings and doings of Esop the fabulist—the manner of his death being the only circumstance for which there is any authority. The idea of his bodily deformity is utterly without foundation, and may have been adopted as a foil to his extraordinary shrewdness and wit, as exhibited in the anecdotes related of him by Planudes. That there was nothing uncouth in the person of Esop is evident from the fact that the Athenians erected a fine statue of him, by the famed sculptor Lysippus.—The Latin collection of the fables ascribed to Esop was first printed at Rome in 1473 and soon afterwards translated into most of the languages of Europe. About the year 1480 the Greek text was printed at Milan. From a French version Caxton printed them
And, in my dreme, methocht come throw
the schaw[137]
The fairest man that ever befoir I saw.
His gowne wes of ane claith als quhyte
as milk,
His chymeris[138]
wes of chambelote purpour broun;
His hude[139] of scarlet, bordourit[140]
weill with silk,
On hekellit-wyis,[141]
untill his girdill doun;
His bonat round,
and of the auld fassoun,[142]
His beird was quhyte, his ene was greit
and gray,
With lokker[143] hair, quilk ouer his
schulderis lay.
Ane roll of paper in his hand he bair,
Ane swannis pen stikkand[144]
under his eir,
Ane inkhorne, with ane prettie gilt pennair,[145]
Ane bag of silk, all at his
belt can beir:
Thus was he gudelie graithit[146]
in his geir.
Of stature large, and with ane feirfull[147]
face;
Evin quhair I lay, he came ane sturdie
pace.
[135] Mr. Jacobs was obliged to omit the
Life of Esop in his
reprint
of Caxton’s text of the Fables, as it would have
unduly
increased the bulk of his second volume. But
those
interested in the genealogy of popular tales and
fables
will be glad to have Mr. Jacobs’ all but
exhaustive
account of the so-called Esopic fables,
together
with his excellent synopsis of parallels, in
preference
to the monkish collection of spurious
anecdotes
of the fabulist, of which the most noteworthy
are
given in the present paper.
[136] Robert Henryson was a schoolmaster
in Dunfermline in the
latter
part of the 15th century. His Moral Fables,
edited
by Dr. David Irving, were printed for the
Maitland
Club in 1832, and his complete works (Poems and
Fables)
were edited by Dr. David Laing, and published in
1865.
His Testament of Cresseid, usually considered
as
his
best performance, is a continuation of Chaucer’s
Troilus
and Cresseide, which was derived from the
Latin
of an unknown author named Lollius. Henryson was
the
author of the first pastoral poem composed in the
English
(or Scottish) language—that of Robin
and
Makyn.
“To his power of poetical conception,”
Dr. Laing
justly
remarks, “he unites no inconsiderable skill in
versification:
his lines, if divested of their uncouth
orthography,
might be mistaken for those of a more
modern
poet.”
[137] Schaw, a wood, a covert.
[138] Chymeris, a short, light gown.
[139] Hude, hood.
[140] Bordourit, embroidered.
[141] Hekellit-wise, like the feathers in the neck of a cock.
[142] Fassoun, fashion.
[143] Lokker, (?) gray.
[144] Stikkand, sticking.
[145] Pennair, pen-case.
[146] Graithit, apparelled, arrayed.
[147] Feirfull, awe-inspiring, dignified.
The Arabian sage Lokinan is represented by tradition to have been a black slave, and of hideous appearance, from which, and from the identity of the apologues in the Arabian collection that bears his name as the author with the so-called Esopic fables, some writers have supposed that Esop and Lokman are simply different names of one and the same individual. But the fables ascribed to Lokman have been for the most part (if not indeed entirely) derived from the Greek; and there is no authority whatever that Lokman composed any apologues. Various traditions exist regarding Lokman’s origin and history. It is said that he was an Ethiopian, and was sold as a slave to the Israelites during the reign of David. According to one version, he was a carpenter; another describes him as having been originally a tailor; while a third account states that he was a shepherd. If the Arabs may be credited, he was nearly related to the patriarch Job. Among the anecdotes which are recounted of his amiable disposition is the following: His master once gave him a bitter lemon to eat. Lokman ate it all, upon which his master, greatly astonished, asked him: “How was it possible for you to eat so unpalatable a fruit?” Lokman replied: “I have received so many favours from you, that it is no wonder I should once in my life eat a bitter melon from your hand.”
ADDITIONAL NOTE.
DRINKING THE SEA DRY, p. 306.
The same jest is also found in Aino Folk-Tales, translated by Prof. Basil Hall Chamberlain, and published in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1888, as follows:
There was the Chief of the Mouth of the River and the Chief of the Upper Current of the River. The former was very vain-glorious, and therefore wished to put the latter to shame or to kill him by engaging him in an attempt to perform something impossible. So he sent for him and said: “The sea is a useful thing, in so far as it is the original home of the fish which come up the river. But it is very destructive in stormy weather, when it beats wildly upon the beach. Do you now drink it dry, so that there may be rivers and dry land only. If you cannot do so, then forfeit all your possessions.” The other said, greatly to the vain-glorious man’s surprise: “I accept the challenge.” So, on their going down to the beach, the Chief of the Upper Current of the River took a cup and scooped up a little of the sea-water with it, drank a few drops, and said: “In the sea-water itself there is no harm. It is some of the rivers flowing into it that are poisonous. Do you, therefore, first close the mouths of all the rivers both in Aino-land and in Japan, and prevent them from flowing into the sea, and then I will undertake to drink the sea dry.” Hereupon the Chief of the Mouth of the River felt ashamed, acknowledged his error, and gave all his treasures to his rival.
* * * * *
Such an idea as this of first “stopping the rivers” might well have been conceived independently by different peoples, but surely not by such a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos, who must have got the story from the Japanese, who in their turn probably derived it from some Indian-Buddhist source—perhaps a version of the Book of Sindibad. Of course, the several European versions and variants have been copied out of one book into another, and independent invention is out of the question.
Orl. Whom ambles Time withal?
Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin;
for he sleeps easily,
because he cannot study, lacking the burden
of lean and wasteful
learning.—As You Like It.
During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names. Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon of an inscription in these words: “I, ——, have subscribed by the hand of ——, because I cannot write”; and such a bishop having thus confessed that he could not write, there followed: “I, ——, whose name is underwritten, have therefore subscribed for him.”
Alfred the Great—who was twelve years of age before a tutor could be found competent to teach him the alphabet—complained, towards the close of the 9th century, that “from the Humber to the Thames there was not a priest who understood the liturgy in his mother-tongue, or could translate the easiest piece of Latin”; and a correspondent of Abelard, about the middle of the 12th century, complimenting him upon a resort to him of pupils from all countries, says that “even Britain, distant as she is, sends her savages to be instructed by you.”
Henri Etienne, in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[148] says that “the most brutish and blockish ignorance was to be found in friars’ cowls, especially mass-mongering priests, which we are the less to wonder at, considering that which Menot twits them in the teeth withal, that instead of books there was nothing to be found in their chambers but a sword, or a long-bow, or a cross-bow, or some such weapon. But how could they send ad ordos such ignorant asses? You must note, sir, that they which examined them were as wise as woodcocks themselves, and therefore judged of them as penmen of pikemen and blind men of colours. Or were it that they had so much learning in their budgets as that they could make a shift to know their inefficiency, yet to pleasure those that recommended them they suffered them to pass. One is famous among the rest, who being asked by the bishop sitting at the table: ‘Es tu dignus?’ answered, ’No, my Lord, but I shall dine anon with your men.’ For he thought that dignus (that is, worthy) signified to dine.”
[148] This is a work distinct from Henri
Etienne’s Apologia
pour
Herodote. An English translation of it was
published
at London in 1807, and at Edinburgh in 1808,
under
the title of “A World of Wonders; or,
an
Introduction
to a Treatise touching the Conformitie of
Ancient
and Modern Wonders; or, a Preparative Treatise
Etienne gives another example, which, however, belongs rather to the class of simpleton stories: A young man going to the bishop for admission into holy orders, to test his learning, was asked by the prelate, “Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?"[149] and not knowing what answer to make, this promising candidate was refused as inefficient. Returning home, and explaining why he had not been ordained, his father told him that he must be an ass if he could not tell who was the father of the four sons of Aymon. “See, I pray thee,” quoth he, “yonder is Great John, the smith, who has four sons; if a man should ask thee who was their father, wouldst thou not say it was Great John, the smith?” “Yes,” said the brilliant youth; “now I understand it.” Thereupon he went again before the bishop, and being asked a second time, “Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?” he promptly replied: “Great John, the smith."[150]
[149] One of the Charlemagne Romances,
translated by Caxton
from
the French, and printed by him about the year 1489,
under
the title of The Right Pleasaunt and Goodly
Historie
of the Four Sonnes of Aymon. It has been
reprinted
for the Early English Text Society, ably
edited
by Miss Octavia Richardson.
[150] A slightly different version is
found in A Hundred Mery
Talys,
No. lxix, “Of the franklyns sonne that cam to
take
orders.” The bishop says that Noah had three
sons,
Shem,
Ham, and Japheth;—who was the father of
Japheth?
When
the “scholar” returns home and tells his
father how
he
had been puzzled by the bishop, he endeavours to
enlighten
his son thus: “Here is Colle, my dog, that
hath
three whelps; must not these three whelps have
Colle
for their sire?” Going back to the bishop, he
informs
his lordship that the father of Japheth was
“Colle,
my father’s dogge.”
The same author asks who but the churchmen of those days of ignorance corrupted and perverted the text of the New Testament? Thus, in the parable of the lost piece of money, evertit domum, “she overturned the house,” was substituted for everrit domum, “she swept the house.” And in the Acts of the Apostles, where Saul (or Paul) is described as being let down from the house on the wall of Damascus in a basket, for demissus per sportam was substituted demissus per portam, a correction which called forth a rather witty Latin epigram to this effect:
This way the other day did pass
As jolly a carpenter as ever was;
So strangely skilful in his trade,
That of a basket a door
he made.
Among the many curious anecdotes told in illustration of the gross ignorance of the higher orders of the clergy in medieval times the two following are not the least amusing:
About the year 1330 Louis Beaumont was bishop of Durham. He was an extremely illiterate French nobleman, so incapable of reading that he could not, although he had studied them, read the bulls announced to the people at his consecration. During that ceremony the word “metropoliticae” occurred. The bishop paused, and tried in vain to repeat it, and at last remarked: “Suppose that said.” Then he came to “enigmate,” which also puzzled him. “By St. Louis!” he exclaimed in indignation, “it could be no gentleman who wrote that stuff!”
Our second anecdote is probably more generally known: Andrew Forman, who was bishop of Moray and papal legate for Scotland, at an entertainment given by him at Rome to the Pope and cardinals, blundered so in his Latinity when he said grace that his Holiness and the cardinals lost their gravity. The disconcerted bishop concluded his blessing by giving “a’ the fause carles to the de’il,” to which the company, not understanding his Scotch Latinity, said “Amen!”
When such was the condition of the bishops, it is not surprising to find that few of the ordinary priests were acquainted with even the rudiments of the Latin tongue, and they consequently mumbled over masses which they did not understand. A rector of a parish, we are told, going to law with his parishioners about paving the church, cited these words, Paveant illi, non paveam ego, which, ascribing them to St. Peter, he thus construed: “They are to pave the church, not I”—and this was allowed to be good law by a judge who was himself an ecclesiastic.
We have an amusing example of the ignorance of the lower orders of churchmen during the “dark ages” in No. xii of A Hundred Mery Talys, as follows: “The archdekyn of Essex, that had ben longe in auctorite, in a tyme of vysytacyon, whan all the prestys apperyd before hym, called aside iii. of the yonge prestys which were acusyd that th[e]y could not wel say theyr dyvyne service, and askyd of them, when they sayd mas, whether they sayd corpus meus or corpum meum. The fyrst prest sayde that he sayd corpus meus. The second sayd that he sayd corpum meum. And than he asked of the thyrd how he sayde; whyche answered and sayd thus: Sir, because it is so great a dout, and dyvers men be in dyvers opynyons, therfore, because I wolde be sure I wolde not offende, whan I come to the place I leve it clene out and say nothynge therfore. Wherfore the bysshoppe than openly rebuked them all thre. But dyvers that were present thought more defaut in hym, because he hym selfe beforetyme had admytted them to be prestys.” And assuredly they were right in so thinking, and the worthy archdeacon (or bishop, as he is also styled), who had probably passed the three young men “for value received” from their fathers, should have refrained from publicly examining them afterwards.
The covetousness and irreverence of the churchmen in former times are well exemplified in another tale given in the same old jest-book, No. lxxi, which, with spelling modernised, goes thus: “Sometime there dwelled a priest in Stratford-on-Avon, of small learning, which undevoutly sang mass and oftentimes twice on one day. So it happened on a time, after his second mass was done in short space, not a mile from Stratford there met him divers merchantmen, which would have heard mass, and desired him to sing mass and he should have a groat, which answered them and said: ’Sirs, I will say mass no more this day; but I will say you two gospels for one groat, and that is dog-cheap for a mass in any place in England.’” The story-teller does not inform us whether the pious merchants accepted of the business-like compromise offered by “Mass John.”
Hagiolatry was quite as much in vogue among the priesthood in medieval times as mariolatry has since been the special characteristic of the Romish Church, to the subordination (one might almost say, the suppression) of the only true object of worship; in proof of which, here is a droll anecdote from another early English collection, Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant to be readde (No. cxix): “A friar, preaching to the people, extolled Saint Francis above [all] confessors, doctors, virgins, martyrs, prophets—yea, and above one more than prophets, John the Baptist, and finally above the seraphical order of angels; and still he said, ‘Yet let us go higher.’ So when he could go no farther, except he should put Christ out of his place, which the good man was half afraid to do, he said aloud, ’And yet we have found no fit place for him.’ And, staying a little while, he cried out at last, saying, ‘Where shall we place the holy father?’ A froward fellow standing among the audience,[151] said, ’If thou canst find none other, then set him here in my place, for I am weary,’ and so he went his way.”—This “froward fellow’s” unexpected reply will doubtless remind the reader of the old man’s remark in the mosque, about the “calling of Noah,” ante, pp. 66, 67.[152]
[151] There were no pews in the churches
in those “good old
times.”
[152] Apropos of saint-worship,
quaint old Thomas Fuller
relates
a droll story in his Church History, ed. 1655,
p.
278: A countryman who had lived many years in
the
Hercinian
woods, in Germany, at last came into a
populous
city, demanding of the people therein, what God
they
did worship. They answered him, that they
worshipped
Jesus Christ. Whereupon the wild wood-man
asked
the names of the several churches in the city,
which
were all called by sundry saints, to whom they
were
consecrated. “It is strange,” said
he, “that you
should
worship Jesus Christ, and he not have a temple in
all
the city dedicated to him.”
Probably not less than one third of the jests current in Europe in the 16th century turned on the ignorance of the Romish clergy—such, for instance, as that of the illiterate priest who, finding salta per tria (skip over three leaves) written at the foot of a page in his mass-book, deliberately jumped down three of the steps before the altar, to the great astonishment of the congregation; or that of another who, finding the title of the day’s service indicated only by the abbreviation Re., read the mass of the Requiem instead of the service of the Resurrection; or that of yet another, who being so illiterate as to be unable to pronounce readily the long words in his ritual always omitted them, and pronounced the word Jesus, which he said was much more devotional.
There is a diverting tale of a foolish cure of Brou, which is well worthy of reproduction, in Les Contes; ou, les Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis, by Bonaventure des Periers—one of the best story-books of the 16th century (Bonaventure succeeded the celebrated poet Clement Marot as valet-de-chambre to Margaret, queen of Navarre):
It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her way to Chateaudun to keep there the festival of Easter, passed through Brou on Good Friday, about ten o’clock in the morning, and, wishing to hear service, she went into the church. When the cure came to the Passion he said it in his own peculiar manner, and made the whole church ring when he said, “Quem, quaeritis?” But when it came to the reply, “Jesum, Nazarenum,"[153] he spoke as low as he possibly could, and in this manner he continued the Passion. The lady, who was very devout and, for a woman, well-informed, in the Holy Scriptures [the reader will understand this was early in the 16th century], and attentive to ecclesiastical ceremonies, felt scandalised at this mode of chanting, and wished that she had never entered the church. She had a mind to speak to the cure, and tell him what she thought of it, and for this purpose sent for him to come to her after service. When he was come, “Monsieur le Cure,” she said to him, “I don’t know where you have learned to officiate on a day like this, when the people ought to be all humility. But to hear you perform the service is enough to drive away anybody’s devotion.” “How so, madame?” said the cure. “How so?” responded the lady. “You have said a Passion contrary to all rules of decency. When our Lord speaks you cry as if you were in the town-hall, and when it is Caiaphas, or Pilate, or the Jews, you speak softly like a young bride. Is this becoming in one like you? Are you fit to be a cure? If you had what you deserve, you would be turned out of your benefice, and then you would be made to know your fault.” When the cure had very attentively listened to the good lady, “Is this what you have to say to me, madame?” said he. “By my soul! it is very true what you say, and the truth is, there are many people who
[153] “Jesus, therefore, knowing
all things that should come
upon
him, went forth, and said unto them, ’Whom seek
ye?’
They answered him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’”—Gospel
of
S. John, xviii, 4, 5.
This is another of Des Periers’ comical tales at the expense of the clerical orders: There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be because he had seen a little more than his Cato. And this made him set up his feathers and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth in order to make people think him a great doctor. Even at confession he made use of terms which astonished the poor people. One day he was confessing a poor working man, of whom he asked: “Here, now, my friend, tell me, art thou not ambitious?” The poor man said, “No,” thinking this was a word which belonged to great lords, and almost repented of having come to confess to this priest; for he had already heard that he was such a great clerk and that he spoke so grandly that nobody understood him, which he knew by the word ambitious; for although he might have heard it somewhere, yet he knew not at all what it meant. The priest went on to ask: “Art thou not a gourmand?” Said the labourer, who understood as little as before: “No.” “Art thou not superbe” [proud]? “No.” “Art thou not iracund” [passionate]? “No.” The priest, seeing the man always answer, “No,” was somewhat surprised. “Art thou not concupiscent?” “No.” “And what are thou, then?” said the priest. “I am,” said he, “a mason—here’s my trowel.”
* * * * *
Readers acquainted with the fabliaux of the minstrels (the Trouveres) of Northern France know that those light-hearted gentry very often launched their satirical shafts at the churchmen of their day. One of the fabliaux in Barbazan’s collection relates how a doltish, thick-headed priest was officiating in his church on Good Friday, and when about to read the service for that day he discovered that he had lost his book-mark ("mais il ot perdu ses festuz.")[154] Then he began to go back and turn over the leaves, but until Ascension Day he found not the Passion service. And the assembled peasants fretted and complained that he made them fast too long, since it was time
[154] Festueum, the split straw so used in the Middle Ages.
[155] See Meon’s edition of Barbazan’s
Fabliaux et Contes,
ed.
1808, tome ii, p. 442, and a prose extrait in
Le
Grand
d’Aussy’s collection, ed. 1781, tome iv,
p. 101,
“Du
Pretre qui dit la Passion.”
* * * * *
They were bold fellows, those Trouveres. Not content with making the ignorance and the gross vices of the clerical orders the subjects of their fabliaux, they did not scruple to ridicule their superstitious teachings, as witness the satire on saint-worship, entitled “Du vilain [i.e., peasant] qui conquist Paradis par plait,” the substance of which is as follows: A poor peasant dies suddenly, and his soul escapes at a moment when neither angel nor demon was on the watch, so that, unclaimed and left to his own discretion, the peasant follows St. Peter, who happened to be on his way to Paradise, and enters the gate with him unperceived. When the saint finds that the soul of such a low person has found its way into Paradise he is angry, and rudely orders the peasant out. But the latter accuses St. Peter of denying his Saviour, and, conscience-stricken,
[156] See Meon’s Barbazan, 1808,
tome iv, p. 114; also Le
Grand,
1781, tome ii, p. 190: “Du Vilain qui gagna
Paradis
en plaidant.”
* * * * *
There exists a very singular English burlesque of the unprofitable sermons of the preaching friars in the Middle Ages, which is worthy of Rabelais himself, and of which this is a modernised extract:
Mollificant olera durissima crusta.—“Friends, this is to say to your ignorant understanding, that hot plants and hard crusts make soft hard plants. The help and the grace of the gray goose that goes on the green, and the wisdom of the water wind-mill, with the good grace of a gallon pitcher, and all the salt sausages that be sodden in Norfolk upon Saturday, be with us now at our beginning, and help us in our ending, and quit you of bliss and both your eyes, that never shall have ending. Amen. My dear curst creatures, there was once a wife whose name was Catherine Fyste, and she was crafty in court, and well could carve. Hence she sent after the four Synods of Rome to know why, wherefore, and for what cause that Alleluja was closed before the cup came once round. Why, believest thou not, forsooth, that there stood once a cock on St. Paul’s steeple-top, and drew up the strapples of his breech? How provest thou that tale? By all the four doctors of Wynberryhills—that is to say, Vertas, Gadatryne, Trumpas, and Dadyltrymsert—the which four doctors say there was once an old wife had a cock to her son, and he looked out of an old dove-cot, and warned and charged that no man should be so hardy either to ride or go on St. Paul’s steeple-top unless he rode on a three-footed stool, or else that he brought with him a warrant of his neck”—and so on, in this fantastical style.
* * * * *
The meaning of the phrase “benefit of clergy” is not perhaps very generally understood. The phrase had its origin in those days of intellectual darkness, when the state of letters was so low that anyone found guilty in a court of justice of a crime which was punishable with death, if he could prove himself able to read a verse in a Latin Bible he was pardoned, as being a man of learning, and therefore likely to be useful to the state; but if he could not read he was sure to be hanged. This privilege, it is said, was granted to all offences, excepting high treason and sacrilege, till after the year 1350. At first it was extended not only to the clergy but to any person that could read, who, however, had to vow that he would enter into holy orders; but with the increase of learning this “benefit to clergy” was restricted by several Acts of Parliament, and it was finally abolished only so late as the reign of George IV.
In Pasquils Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments, a book of facetiae very popular in the 16th century, a story is told of a criminal at the Oxford Assizes who “prayed his clergy,” and a Bible was accordingly handed to him that he might read a verse. He could not read a word, however, which a scholar who chanced to be present observing, he stood behind him and prompted him with the verse he was to read; but coming towards the end, the man’s thumb happened to cover the remaining words, and so the scholar, in a low voice, said: “Take away thy thumb,” which words the man, supposing them to form part of the verse he was reading, repeated aloud, “Take away thy thumb”—whereupon the judge ordered him to be taken away and hanged. And in Taylor’s Wit and Mirth (1630): “A fellow having his book [that is, having read a verse in the Bible] at the sessions, was burnt in the hand, and was commanded to say: ’May God save the King.’ ‘The King!’ said he, ’God save my grandam, that taught me to read; I am sure I had been hanged else.’”
The verse in the Bible which a criminal was required to read, in order to entitle him to the “benefit of clergy” (the beginning of the 51st Psalm, “Miserere mei"), was called the “neck-verse,” because his doing so saved his neck from the gallows. It is sometimes jestingly alluded to in old plays. For example, in Massinger’s Great Duke of Florence, Act iii, sc. 1:
Cataminta.—How the fool stares!
Fiorinda.—And looks as if he were conning his neck-verse;
and in the same dramatist’s play of The Picture:
Twang
it perfectly,
As if it were your neck-verse.
In the anonymous Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissell (1603), Act ii, sc. 1, we find this custom again referred to:
Farnese.—Ha, hah! Emulo not write and read?
Rice.—Not a letter, an you would hang him.
Urcenze.—Then he’ll never be saved by his book.
In Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel, the moss-trooper, William of Deloraine, assures the lady, who had warned him not to look into what he should receive from the Monk of St. Mary’s Aisle, “be it scroll or be it book,” that
“Letter nor line know I never a
one,
Were’t my neck-verse at Haribee”—
the place where such Border rascals were usually executed.
It was formerly the custom to sing a psalm at the gallows before a criminal was “turned off.” And there is a good story, in Zachary Gray’s notes to Hudibras, told of one of the chaplains of the famous Montrose; how, being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his expeditions, and being upon the ladder and ordered to select a psalm to be sung, expecting a reprieve, he named the 119th Psalm, with which the officer attending the execution complied (the Scottish Presbyterians were great psalm-singers in those days), and it was well for him he did so, for they had sung it half through before the reprieve came. Any other psalm would certainly have hanged him! Cotton, in his Virgil Travestie, thus alludes to the custom of psalm-singing at the foot of the gallows:
Ready, when Dido gave the word,
To be advanced into the halter,
Without the benefit on’s Psalter.
* * * * *
Then ’cause she would, to part the
sweeter,
A portion have of Hopkins’ metre,
As people use at execution,
For the decorum of conclusion,
Being too sad to sing, she says.[157]
[157] Scarronides; or, Virgil Travestie,
etc., by Charles
Cotton,
Book iv. Poetical Works, 5th edition, London,
1765,
pp. 122, 140.
If the clergy in medieval times had, as they are said to have had, all the learning among themselves, what a blessed state of ignorance must the laity have been in! And so, indeed, it appears, for there is extant an old Act of Parliament which provides that a nobleman shall be entitled to the “benefit of clergy,” even though he could not read. And another law sets forth that “the command of the sheriff to his officer by word of mouth, and without writing is good; for it may be that neither the sheriff nor his officer can write or read!” Many charters are preserved to which persons of great dignity, even kings, have affixed the sign of the cross, because they were not able to write their names, and hence the term of signing, instead of subscribing. In this respect a ten-year-old Board School boy in these “double-distilled” days is vastly superior to the most renowned of the “barons bold.”
’Tis merry in the hall when beards wag all.—Old Song.
Among the harmless foibles of adolescence which contribute to the quiet amusement of folks of mature years is the eager desire of youths to have their smooth faces adorned with that “noble” distinction of manhood—a beard. And no wonder. For, should a clever lad, getting out of his “teens,” venture to express opinions contrary to those of his elders present, is he not at once snubbed by being called “a beardless boy”? A boy! Bitter taunt! He very naturally feels that he is grossly insulted, and all because his “dimpled chin never has known the barber’s shear.” Full well does our ingenuous youth know that a man is not wise in consequence of his beard—that, as the Orientals say of women’s long hair, it often happens that men with long beards have short wits; nevertheless, had he but a beard himself, he should then be free from such a wretched “argument”—such an implied accusation of his lack of wit, as that he is beardless. The young Roman watched the first appearance of the downy precursor of his beard with no little solicitude, and applied the household oil to his face—there were no patent specifics in those days for “infallibly producing luxuriant whiskers and moustaches in a few weeks”—to promote its tardy growth, and entitle him, from the incipient fringe, to be styled “barbatulus.” When his beard was full-grown he was called “barbatus.”
It would seem that the beard was held in the highest esteem, especially in Asiatic countries, from the earliest period of which any records have been preserved. The Hebrew priests are commanded in the Book of Leviticus, ch. xix, not to shave off the corners of their beards; and the first High Priest, Aaron, probably wore a magnificent beard, since the amicable relations between brethren are compared, in the 133rd Psalm, to “the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments.” The Assyrian kings intertwined gold thread with their fine beards—and, judging from mural sculptures, curling tongs must have been in considerable demand with them. In ancient Greece the beard was universally worn, and it is related of Zoilus, the founder of the anti-Homeric school, that he shaved the crown of his head, in order that all the virtue should go to the nourishment of his beard. Persius could not think of a more complimentary epithet to apply to Socrates than that of “Magistrum Barbatum,” or Bearded Master—the notion being that the beard was the symbol of profound sagacity.[158] Alexander the Great, however, caused his soldiers to shave off their beards, because they furnished their enemies with handles whereby to seize hold of them in battle. The beard was often consecrated to the deities, as the most precious offering. Chaucer, in his Knight’s Tale, represents Arcite as offering his beard to Mars:
And evermore, unto that day I dye,
Eterne fyr I wol bifore the fynde,
And eek to this avow I wol me bynde,
My berd, myn heer, that hangeth long a
doun,
That neuer yit ne felt offensioun
Of rasour ne of schere, I wol ye giue,
And be thy trewe seruaunt whiles I lyue.[159]
[158] The notion that a beard indicated
wisdom on the part of
the
wearer is often referred to in early European
literature.
For example, in Lib. v of Caxton’s Esop, the
Fox,
to induce the sick King Lion to kill the Wolf, says
he
has travelled far and wide, seeking a good medicine
for
his Majesty, and “certaynly I have found no better
counceylle
than the counceylle of an auncyent Greke,
with
a grete and long berd, a man of grete wysdom, sage,
and
worthy to be praysed.” And when the Fox,
in another
fable,
leaves the too-credulous Goat in the well,
Reynard
adds insult to injury by saying to him, “O
maystre
goote, yf thow haddest be [i.e. been] wel
wyse,
with thy fayre berde,” and so forth. (Pp. 153
and
196
of Mr. Jacobs’ new edition.)—A story
is told of a
close-shaven
French ambassador to the court of some
Eastern
potentate, that on presenting his credentials
his
Majesty made sneering remarks on his smooth face
(doubtless
he was himself “bearded to the eyes"), to
which
the envoy boldly replied: “Sire, had my
master
supposed
that you esteem a beard so highly, instead of
me,
he would have sent your Majesty a goat as his
ambassador.”
[159] Harleian MS. No. 7334, lines 2412-2418.
Printed for the
Early
English Text Society.
Selim I was the first Turkish sultan who shaved his beard after his accession to the throne; and when his muftis remonstrated with him for this dangerous innovation, he facetiously replied that he had removed his beard in order that his vazirs should not have wherewith to lead him. The beards of modern Persian soldiers were abolished in consequence of a singular accident, which Morier thus relates in his Second Journey: When European discipline was introduced into the Persian army, Lieutenant Lindsay raised a corps of artillery. His zeal was only equalled by the encouragement of the king, who liberally adopted every method proposed. It was only upon the article of shaving off the beards of the Persian soldiers that the king was inexorable; nor would the sacrifice have ever taken place had it not happened that, in discharging the guns before the prince, a powder-horn exploded in the hand of a gunner who had been gifted with a very long beard, which in an instant was blown away from his chin. Lieutenant Lindsay, availing himself of this lucky opportunity to prove his argument on the inconvenience of beards to soldiers, immediately produced the scorched gunner before the prince, who was so much struck with his woeful appearance that the abolition of military beards was at once decided upon.
It was customary for the early French monarchs to place three hairs of their beard under the seal attached to important documents; and there is still extant a charter of the year 1121, which concludes with these words: “Quod ut ratum et stabile perseveret in posterum, praesentis scripto sigilli mei robur apposui cum tribus pilis barbae meae.”—In obedience to his spiritual advisers, Louis VII of France had his hair cut close and his beard shaved off. But his consort Eleanor was so disgusted with his smooth face and cropped head that she took her own measures to be revenged, and the poor king was compelled to obtain a divorce from her. She subsequently gave her hand to the Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II of England, and the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne were her dowry. From this sprang those terrible wars which continued for three centuries, and cost France untold treasure and three millions of men—and all because Louis did not consult his consort before shaving off his beard!
Charles the Fifth of Spain ascending the throne while yet a mere boy, his courtiers shaved their beards in compliment to the king’s smooth face. But some of the shaven Dons were wont to say bitterly, “Since we have lost our beards, we have lost our souls!” Sully, the eminent statesman and soldier, scorned, however, to follow the fashion, and, being one day summoned to Court on urgent business of State, his beard was made the subject of ridicule by the foppish courtiers. The veteran thus gravely addressed the king: “Sire, when your father, of glorious memory, did me the honour to consult me in grave State matters, he first dismissed the buffoons and stage-dancers from the presence-chamber.” It may be readily supposed that after this well-merited rebuke the grinning courtiers at once disappeared.
Julius II, one of the most warlike of all the Roman Pontiffs, was the first Pope who permitted his beard to grow, to inspire the faithful with still greater respect for his august person. Kings and their courtiers were not slow to follow the example of the Head of the Church and the ruler of kings, and the fashion soon spread among people of all ranks.
So highly prized was the beard in former times that Baldwin, Prince of Edessa, as Nicephorus relates in his Chronicle, pawned his beard for a large sum of money, which was redeemed by his father Gabriel, Prince of Melitene, to prevent the ignominy which his son must have suffered by its loss. And when Juan de Castro, the Portuguese admiral, borrowed a thousand pistoles from the citizens of Goa he pledged one of his whiskers, saying, “All the gold in the world cannot equal this natural ornament of my valour.” And it is said the people of Goa were so much affected by the noble message that they remitted the money and returned the whisker—though of what earthly use it could prove to the gallant admiral, unless, perhaps, to stuff a tennis ball, it is not easy to say.
To deprive a man of his beard was a token of ignominious subjection, and is still a common mode of punishment in some Asiatic countries. And such was the treatment that the conjuror Pinch received at the hands of Antipholus of Ephesus and his man, in the Comedy of Errors, according to the servant’s account of the outrage, who states that not only had they “beaten the maids a-row,” but they
bound
the doctor,
Whose beard they have singed off with
brands of fire;
And ever as it blazed they threw on him
Great pails of puddled mire to quench
the hair (v, 1).
In Persia and India when a wife is found to have been unfaithful, her hair—the distinguishing ornament of woman, as the beard is considered to be that of man—is shaved off, among other indignities.
Don Sebastian Cobbarruvius gravely relates the following marvellous legend to show that nothing so much disgraced a Spaniard as pulling his beard: “A noble of that nation dying (his name Cid Lai Dios), a Jew, who hated him much in his lifetime, stole privately into the room where his body was laid out, and, thinking to do what he never durst while living, stooped down and plucked his beard; at which the body started up, and drawing out half way his sword, which lay beside him, put the Jew in such a fright that he ran out of the room as if a thousand devils had been behind him. This done, the body lay down as before to rest; and,” adds the veracious chronicler, “the Jew after that turned Christian.”—In the third of Don Quevedo’s Visions of the Last Judgment, we read that a Spaniard, after receiving sentence, was taken into custody by a pair of demons who happened to disorder the set of his moustache, and they had to re-compose them with a pair of curling-tongs before they could get him to proceed with them!
By the rules of the Church of Rome, lay monks were compelled to wear their beards, and only the priests were permitted to shave.[160] The clergy at length became so corrupt and immoral, and lived such scandalous lives, that they could not be distinguished from the laity except by their close-shaven faces. The first Reformers, therefore, to mark their separation from the Romish Church, allowed their beards to grow. Calvin, Fox, Cranmer, and other leaders of the Reformation are all represented in their portraits with long flowing beards. John Knox, the great Scottish Reformer, wore, as is well known, a beard of prodigious length.
[160] In a scarce old poem, entitled,
The Pilgrymage and the
Wayes
of Jerusalem, we read:
The thyrd Seyte beyn prestis of oure lawe, That synge masse at the Sepulcore; At the same grave there oure lorde laye, They synge the leteny every daye. In oure manner is her [i.e. their] songe, Saffe, here [i.e. their] berdys be ryght longe, That is the geyse of that contre, The lenger the berde the bettyr is he; The order of hem [i.e. them] be barfote freeres.
The ancient Britons shaved the chin and cheeks, but wore their moustaches down to the breast. Our Saxon ancestors wore forked beards. The Normans at the Conquest shaved not only the chin, but also the back of the head. But they soon began to grow very long beards. During the Wars of the Roses beards grew “small by degrees and beautifully less.”
Queen Mary of England, in the year 1555, sent to Moscow four accredited agents, who were all bearded; but one of them, George Killingworth, was particularly distinguished by a beard five feet two inches long, at the sight of which, it is said, a smile crossed the grim features of Ivan the Terrible himself; and no wonder. But the longest beard known out of fairy tales was that of Johann Mayo, the German painter, commonly called “John the Bearded.” His beard actually trailed on the ground when he stood upright, and for convenience he usually kept it tucked in his girdle. The emperor Charles V, it is said, was often pleased to cause Mayo to unfasten his beard and allow it to blow in the faces of his courtiers.—A worthy clergyman in the time of Queen Elizabeth gave as the best reason he had for wearing a beard of enormous length, “that no act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance.”
Queen Elizabeth, in the first year of her reign, made an abortive attempt to abolish her subjects’ beards by an impost of 3s. 4d. a year (equivalent to four times that sum in these “dear” days) on every beard of more than a fortnight’s growth. And Peter the Great also laid a tax upon beards in Russia: nobles’ beards were assessed at a rouble, and those of commoners at a copeck each. “But such veneration,” says Giles Fletcher, “had this people for these ensigns of gravity that many of them carefully preserved their beards in their cabinets to be buried with them, imagining perhaps that they should make but an odd figure in their grave with their naked chins.”
The beard of the renowned Hudibras was portentous, as we learn from Butler, who thus describes the Knight’s hirsute honours:
His tawny beard was th’ equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sadden view it would beguile:
The upper part whereof was whey,
The nether orange mixt with grey.
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns;
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government,
And tell, with hieroglyphic spade,
Its own grave and the state’s were
made.
Philip Nye, an Independent minister in the time of the Commonwealth, and one of the famous Assembly of Divines, was remarkable for the singularity of his beard. Hudibras, in his Heroical Epistle to the lady of his “love,” speaks of
Amorous
intrigues
In towers, and curls, and periwigs,
With greater art and cunning reared
Than Philip Nye’s thanksgiving
beard.
Nye opposed Lilly the astrologer with no little virulence, for which he was rewarded with the privilege of holding forth upon Thanksgiving Day, and so, as Butler says, in some MS. verses,
He thought upon it and resolved to
put
His beard into as wonderful a cut.
Butler even honoured Nye’s beard with a whole poem, entitled “On Philip Nye’s Thanksgiving Beard,” which is printed in his Genuine Remains, edited by Thyer, vol. i, p. 177 ff., and opens thus:
A beard is but the vizard of the face,
That nature orders for no other place;
The fringe and tassel of a countenance
That hides his person from another man’s,
And, like the Roman habits of their youth,
Is never worn until his perfect growth.
And in another set of verses he has again a fling at the obnoxious beard of the same preacher:
This reverend brother, like a goat,
Did wear a tail upon his throat;
The fringe and tassel of a face
That gives it a becoming grace,
But set in such a curious frame,
As if ’twere wrought in filograin;
And cut so even as if ’t had been
Drawn with a pen upon the chin.
As it was customary among the peoples of antiquity who wore their beards to cut them off, and for those who shaved to allow their beards to grow, in times of mourning, so many of the Presbyterians and Independents vowed not to cut their beards till monarchy and episcopacy were utterly destroyed. Thus in a humorous poem, entitled “The Cobler and the Vicar of Bray,” we read:
This worthy knight was one that swore,
He would not cut his beard
Till this ungodly nation was
From kings and bishops cleared.
Which holy vow he firmly kept,
And most devoutly wore
A grisly meteor on his face,
Till they were both no more.
In Pericles, Prince of Tyre, when the royal hero leaves his infant daughter Marina in charge of his friend Cleon, governor of Tharsus, to be brought up in his house, he declares to Cleon’s wife (Act iii, sc. 3):
Till she be married, madam,
By bright Diana, whom we honour all,
Unscissored shall this hair of mine remain,
Though I show well in’t;
and that he meant his beard is evident from what he says at the close of the play, when his daughter is about to be married to Lysimachus, governor of Mitylene (Act v, sc. 3):
And
now
This ornament, that makes me look so dismal,
Will I, my loved Marina, clip to form;
And what these fourteen years no razor
touched,
To grace thy marriage day, I’ll
beautify.
Scott, in his Woodstock, represents Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, whilom Ranger of Woodstock Park (or Chase), as wearing his full beard, to indicate his profound grief for the death of the “Royal Martyr,” which indeed was not unusual with elderly and warmly devoted Royalists until the “Happy Restoration”—save the mark!
Another extraordinary beard was that of Van Butchell, the quack doctor, who died at London in 1814, in his 80th year. This singular individual had his first wife’s body carefully embalmed and preserved in a glass case in his “study,” in order that he might enjoy a handsome annuity to which he was entitled “so long as his wife remained above ground.” His person was for many years familiar to loungers in Hyde Park, where he appeared regularly every afternoon, riding on a little pony, and wearing a magnificent beard of twenty years’ growth, which an Oriental might well have envied, the more remarkable in an age when shaving was so generally practised.—A jocular epitaph was composed on “Mary Van Butchell,” of which these lines may serve as a specimen:
O fortunate and envied man!
To keep a wife beyond life’s span;
Whom you can ne’er have cause to
blame,
Is ever constant and the same;
Who, qualities most rare, inherits
A wife that’s dumb, yet full
of spirits.
The celebrated Dr. John Hunter is said to have embalmed the body of Van Butchell’s first wife—for the bearded empiric married again—and the “mummy,” in its original glass case, is still to be seen in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeon’s, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, London.
It was once the fashion for gallants to dye their beards various colours, such as yellow, red, gray, and even green. Thus in the play of Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom the weaver asks in what kind of beard he is to play the part of Pyramis—whether “in your straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard, your perfect yellow?” (Act i, sc. 2.) In ancient church pictures, and in the miracle plays performed in medieval times, both Cain and Judas Iscariot were always represented with yellow beards. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Quickly asks Simple whether his master (Slender) does not wear “a great round beard, like a glover’s paring-knife,” to which he replies: “No, forsooth; he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard—a Cain-coloured beard” (Act i, sc. 4).—Allusions to beards are of very frequent occurrence in Shakspeare’s plays, as may be seen by reference to any good Concordance, such as that of the Cowden Clarkes.
Harrison, in his Description of England, ed. 1586, p. 172, thus refers to the vagaries of fashion of beards in his time: “I will saie nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like womans lockes, manie times cut off, above or under the eares, round as by a woodden dish. Neither will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others with a pique de vant (O fine fashion!), or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailors. And therfore if a man have a leane and streight face, a marquesse Ottons cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter like, a long slender beard will make it seeme the narrower; if he be wesell becked, then much heare left on the cheekes will make the owner looke big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose."[161]
[161] Reprint for the Shakspere Society,
1877, B. ii, ch. vii,
p.
169.
Barnaby Rich, in the conclusion of his Farewell to the Military Profession (1581), says that the young gallants sometimes had their beards “cutte rounde, like a Philippes doler; sometymes square, like the kinges hedde in Fishstreate; sometymes so neare the skinne, that a manne might judge by his face the gentlemen had had verie pilde lucke."[162]
[162] Reprint for the (old) Shakspeare Society, 1846, p. 217.
In Taylor’s Superbiae Flagellum we find the following amusing description of the different “cuts” of beards:
Now a few lines to paper I will put,
Of mens Beards strange and variable cut:
In which there’s some doe take as
vaine a Pride,
As almost in all other things beside.
Some are reap’d most substantiall,
like a brush,
Which makes a Nat’rall wit knowne
by the bush:
(And in my time of some men I have heard,
Whose wisedome have bin onely wealth and
beard)
Many of these the proverbe well doth fit,
Which sayes Bush naturall, More haire
then wit.
Some seeme as they were starched stiffe
and fine,
Like to the bristles of some angry swine:
And some (to set their Loves desire on
edge)
Are cut and prun’de like to a quickset
hedge.
Some like a spade, some like a forke,
some square,
Some round, some mow’d like stubble,
some starke bare,
Some sharpe Steletto fashion, dagger like,
That may with whispering a mans eyes out
pike:
Some with the hammer cut, or Romane T,[163]
Their beards extravagant reform’d
must be,
Some with the quadrate, some triangle
fashion,
Some circular, some ovall in translation,
Some perpendicular in longitude,
Some like a thicket for their crassitude,
That heights, depths, bredths, triforme,
square, ovall, round,
[163] Formed by the moustache and a chin-tuft,
as worn by
Louis
Napoleon and his imperialist supporters.
[164] Works of John Taylor, the Water
Poet, comprised in the
Folio
edition of 1630. Printed for the Spenser Society,
1869.
“Superbiae Flagellum, or the Whip of Pride,”
p. 34.
The staunch Puritan Phillip Stubbes, in the second part of his Anatomie of Abuses (1583), thus rails at the beards and the barbers of his day:
“There are no finer fellowes under the sunne, nor experter in their noble science of barbing than they be. And therefore in the fulnes of their overflowing knowledge (oh ingenious heads, and worthie to be dignified with the diademe of follie and vaine curiositie), they have invented such strange fashions and monstrous maners of cuttings, trimings, shavings and washings, that you would wonder to see. They have one maner of cut called the French cut, another the Spanish cut, one called the Dutch cut, another the Italian, one the newe cut, another the old, one of the bravado fashion, another of the meane fashion. One a gentlemans cut, another the common cut, one cut of the court, another of the country, with infinite the like vanities, which I overpasse. They have also other kinds of cuts innumerable; and therefore when you come to be trimed, they will aske you whether you will be cut to looke terrible to your enimie, or amiable to your freend, grime and sterne in countenance, or pleasant and demure (for they have divers kinds of cuts for all these purposes, or else they lie). Then when they have done all their feats, it is a world to consider, how their mowchatowes [i.e., moustaches] must be preserved and laid out, and from one cheke to another, yea, almost from one eare to another,
[165] Reprint for the Shakspere Society,
Part ii (1882),
pp.
50, 51.
* * * * *
A very curious Ballad of the Beard, of the time of Charles I, if not earlier, is reproduced in Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume, edited by F. W. Fairholt, for the Percy Society, in which “the varied forms of beards which characterised the profession of each man are amusingly descanted on”:
The beard, thick or thin, on the lip or
the chin,
Doth dwell so near the tongue,
That her silence in the beards defence
May do her neighbour wrong.
Now a beard is a thing that commands in
a king,
Be his sceptre ne’er
so fair:
Where the beard bears the sway the people
obey,
And are subject to a hair.
’Tis a princely sight, and a grave
delight,
That adorns both young and
old;
A well-thatcht face is a comely grace,
And a shelter from the cold.
When the piercing north comes thundering
forth,
Let a barren face beware;
For a trick it will find, with a razor
of wind,
To shave a face that’s
bare.
But there’s many a nice and strange
device
That doth the beard disgrace;
But he that is in such a foolish sin
Is a traitor to his face.
Now of beards there be such company,
And fashions such a throng,
That it is very hard to handle a beard,
Tho’ it be never so
long.
The Roman T, in its bravery,
Both first itself disclose,
But so high it turns, that oft it burns
With the flames of a torrid
nose.
The stiletto-beard, oh, it makes me afear’d,
It is so sharp beneath,
For he that doth place a dagger in ’s
face,
What wears he in his sheath?
But, methinks, I do itch to go thro’
the stitch
The needle-beard to amend,
Which, without any wrong, I may call too
long,
For a man can see no end.
The soldier’s beard doth march in
shear’d,
In figure like a spade,
With which he’ll make his enemies
quake,
And think their graves are
made.
* * * * *
What doth invest a bishop’s breast,
But a milk-white spreading
hair?
Which an emblem may be of integrity
Which doth inhabit there.
* * * * *
But oh, let us tarry for the beard of
King Harry,
That grows about the chin,
With his bushy pride, and a grove on each
side,
And a champion ground between.
“Barnes in the defence of the Berde” is another curious piece of verse, or rather of arrant doggrel, printed in the 16th century. It is addressed to Andrew Borde, the learned and facetious physician, in the time of Henry VIII, who seems to have written a tract against the wearing of beards, of which nothing is now known. In the second part Barnes (whoever he was) says:
But, syr, I praye you, yf you tell can,
Declare to me, when God made man,
(I meane by our forefather Adam)
Whyther he had a berde than;
And yf he had, who dyd hym shave,
Syth that a barber he coulde not have.
Well, then, ye prove hym there a knave,
Bicause his berde he dyd so save:
I fere it not.
* * * * *
Sampson, with many thousandes more
Of auncient phylosophers (!), full great store,
Wolde not be shaven, to dye therefore;
Why shulde you, then, repyne so sore?
Admit that men doth imytate
Thynges of antyquite, and noble state,
Such counterfeat thinges oftymes do mytygate
Moche ernest yre and debate:
I fere it not.
Therefore, to cease, I thinke be best;
For berdyd men wolde lyve in rest.
You prove yourselfe a homly gest,
So folysshely to rayle and jest;
For if I wolde go make in ryme,
How new shavyd men loke lyke scraped swyne,
And so rayle forth, from tyme to tyme,
A knavysshe laude then shulde be myne:
I fere it not.
What should this avail him? he asks; and so let us all be good friends, bearded and unbearded.[166]
[166] The Treatise answerynge
the boke of Berdes, Compyled by
Collyn Clowte, dedicated to Barnarde, Barber,
dwellyng
in Banbury: “Here foloweth
a treatyse made, Answerynge
the treatyse of doctor Borde upon Berdes.”—Appended
to
reprint of Andrew Borde’s Introduction
of Knowledge,
edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, for the Early
English Text
Society, 1870—see pp. 314, 315.
But Andrew Borde, if he did ever write a tract against beards, must have formerly held a different opinion on the subject, for in his Breviary of Health, first printed in 1546, he says: “The face may have many impediments. The first impediment is to see a man having no beard, and a woman to have a beard.” It was long a popular notion that the few hairs which are sometimes seen on the chins of very old women signified that they were in league with the arch-enemy of mankind—in plain English, that they were witches. The celebrated Three Witches who figure in Macbeth, “and palter with him in a double sense,” had evidently this distinguishing mark, for says Banquo to the “weird sisters” (Act i, sc. 2):
You
should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
And in the ever-memorable scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor, when Jack Falstaff, disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, is escaping from Ford’s house, he is cuffed and mauled by Ford, who exclaims, “Hang her, witch!” on which the honest Cambrian Sir Hugh Evans sapiently remarks: “Py yea and no, I think the ’oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a ’oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under her muffler!” (Act iv, sc. 2.)
There have been several notable bearded women in different
parts of Europe. The Duke of Saxony had the portrait
painted of a poor Swiss woman who had a remarkably
fine, large beard. Bartel Graefje, of Stuttgart,
who was born in 1562, was another bearded woman.
In 1726 there appeared at Vienna a female dancer with
a large bushy beard. Charles XII of Sweden had
in his army a woman who wore a beard a yard and a
half in length. In 1852 Mddle. Bois de Chene,
who was born at Genoa in 1834, was exhibited in London:
she had “a profuse head of hair, a strong black
beard, and large bushy whiskers.” It is
not unusual to see dark beauties in our own country
with a moustache which must be the envy of “young
shavers.” And, apropos, the poet
Rogers is said to have had a great dislike of ladies’
beards, such as this last described; and he happened
to be in a circulating library turning over the books
on the counter, when a lady, who seemed to cherish
her beard with as much affection as the young gentlemen
aforesaid, alighted from her carriage, and, entering
the shop, asked the librarian for a certain book.
The polite man of books replied that he was sorry
he had not a copy at present. “But,”
said Roger, slily, “you have the Barber of
Page 189
Seville, have you not?” “O yes,”
said the bookseller, not seeing the poet’s drift,
“I have the Barber of Seville, very much
at your ladyship’s service.” The
lady drove away, evidently much offended, but the beard
afterwards disappeared. Talking of barbers—but
they deserve a whole paper to themselves, and they
shall have it, from me, some day, if I live a little
longer.
* * * * *
In No. 331 of the Spectator, Addison tells us how his friend Sir Roger de Coverley, in Westminster Abbey, pointing to the bust of a venerable old man, asked him whether he did not think “our ancestors looked much wiser in their beards than we without them. For my part,” said he, “when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many patriarchs, and at the same time looking upon myself as an idle, smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings.”
* * * * *
During most part of last century close shaving was general throughout Europe. In France the beard began to appear on the faces of Bonaparte’s “braves,” and the fashion soon extended to civilians, then to Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia, and lastly to England, where, after the gradual enlargement of the side-whiskers, the full beard is now commonly worn—to the comfort and health of the wearers.
Abbas the Great, 107.
Abraham: jealous of his
wives, 197;
arrival in Egypt,
197;
his servant in
Sodom, 202;
Ishmael’s
wives, 203;
the ‘ram
caught in a thicket,’ 205;
the idols, 251.
Abstinence, advantages of,
20.
Acrostic in the Bible, 251.
Adam and Eve, 191, 267, 268.
Addison’s Spectator,
359.
Advice to a conceited man,
44;
gratuitous, 261.
Aesop—see
Esop.
Affenschwanz, etc., 192.
Aino Folk-Tales, 312.
Akhlak-i Jalaly, 23, 261.
Aladdin’s Lamp, 144.
Alakesa Katha, 176.
Alexander the Great, 253,
254.
Alfonsus, Petrus, 99, 100,
227, 231, 241.
Alfred the Great, 315.
Ali, Mrs. Meer Hassan, 270.
Ambition, vanity of, 254.
Amir Khusru, 18.
Ancestry, pride of, 22.
Androgynous nature of Adam,
191, 192.
Ant and Nightingale, 41.
Antar, the Arabian poet-hero,
46.
Anthologia, 259.
Anwari, the Persian poet,
106.
Aphorisms of Saadi, 7, 41,
44, 125;
of the Jewish
Fathers, 260.
Apparition, the golden, 136.
Arab and his camel, 82.
Arab Shah, 87.
Arabian lovers, 283, 294.
Babrius, 300.
Babylonian tale, 210.
Bacon on aphorisms, 259.
Baghdadi, witty, 83.
Baharistan, 40, 48, 63, 109.
Bakhtyar Nama, 124, 172.
Barbary Tales, 218.
Barbazan’s Fabliaux,
327, 328.
Baring-Gould, 142, 192, 194.
Barlaam and Joasaph, 246,
248.
Basset’s Tales of Barbary,
218.
Basket made into a door, 318.
Bayazid and the old woman,
302.
Beal, Samuel, 147.
Beards: Asiatics’,
338;
Ballad of the
Beard, 355;
Barnes in defence
of the Beard, 356;
Britons’
and Normans’, 344;
Coverley (Sir
Roger de), on his ancestors’, 359;
dedicated to deities,
339;
dyeing the beard,
349;
famous beards,
344, 346;
French kings’,
346;
Greeks’,
338;
Monks’,
343;
Pope Julius II,
341;
pledged for loans,
342;
pulling beard,
343;
reformers’,
344;
Roman youths’,
337;
Sully’s
beard, 341;
shapes of, 350,
351, 352, 355;
taxes on, 345;
tokens of wisdom,
338;
Turkish sultans’,
339;
vowing not to
cut or shave, 342, 347;
witches’,
358;
women, bearded,
358.
Beast-fables, origin of, 239,
299.
Beaumont, bp. of Durham, 318.
Beauty unadorned, 46.
Beggar and Khoja, 68.
Bendall, Cecil, 159.
Beneficence, 24, 44, 48.
Berenger-Feraud, 278.
Berkeley’s ‘ideal’
theory, 97.
Beryn, Tale of, 212, 306.
Bhartrihari, 258.
Bible, 191, 193, 205, 207,
229, 231, 239, 240, 249, 251,
254,
257, 261, 270, 323, 331, 332.
Bidpai’s Fables, 39.
Birth, pride of, 22.
Bishop and ignorant priest,
316;
and the simple
youth, 317.
‘Bi’smi’llahi,’
etc., 53.
Bi-sexual nature of Adam,
191.
Blemont, Emile, 274.
Blind man’s wife, 62.
Blockheads, list of, 80.
Boccaccio’s Decameron,
82, 217, 231.
Boethius’ Consol.
Phil., 131.
Bonaventure des Periers, 82,
323, 325.
Borde, Andrew, 356, 357.
Boy in terror at sea, 22.
Bride and Bridegroom, 250.
Bromyard, John, 305.
Broth, Hot, 69.
Buddha, Rom. Hist, of,
147.
Buddha’s Dhammapada,
261.
Buddhaghosha’s Parables,
163, 261.
Burns, the Scottish poet,
262, 263.
Butler’s Hudibras, etc.,
332, 345, 346.
Burton, Sir R. F., 38, 274.
Buthayna and Jamil, 294.
Buzurjmihr on silence, 38.
Cabinet des Fees, 144.
Cain and Abel, 194.
Camel and cat, 82.
Capon-carver, 231, 276.
Cardonne’s Mel. de Litterature
Orientale, 83.
Carlyle, Thos., 60, 263.
Cat and its master, 80.
Cauldron, the, 67.
Caution with friends, 46,
263.
Caxton’s Dictes, 38;
Esop’s Fables,
300, 308, 339.
Caylus, Comte de, 144.
Cento Novelle Antiche, 231.
Chamberlain, B. H., 312.
Chaste Wives, Value of, 127.
Chaucer, 196, 279, 339.
Chess, game of, 240.
Chinese Humour: rich
man and smiths, 77;
to keep plants
alive, 78;
criticising a
portrait, 78.
Clergy, Benefit of, 329.
Clouston’s Analogues
of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 279;
Book of Noodles,
66, 111;
Book of Sindibad,
280;
Eastern Romances,
176, 268, 279;
Popular Tales
and Fictions, 144, 157, 178, 279.
Coleridge, the poet, 229,
264.
Comparetti, Prof., 235.
Conceited man, 44.
Conde Lucanor, 81, 247.
Condolence, house of, 62.
Conjugal quarrels, 262.
Contes Orientaux, 144.
Cooks, too many, 262.
‘Corpus meum,’
320.
Cotton’s Virgil Travestie,
332.
Courtier and old friend, 79.
Coverley, Sir Roger de, 359.
Covetous man, 93;
goldsmith, 128,
160.
Covetousness, 45.
Crane’s Italian Tales,
100, 235, 279.
Cup-bearer and Saadi, 28.
Cypress, 284.
Dabistan, 97, 99.
Daulat Shah, 294.
David, legends of King, 213.
Davidson, Thos., 299.
Deaf men, 73, 75.
Death, rest to the poor, 51.
Decameron, 82, 217.
Deluge, 225.
Demon, Tales of a, 124, 162,
179.
Dervish and magic candlestick,
141.
Dervish who became king, 32.
Dervishes, Three, 113.
Desolate Island, 243, 279.
Des Periers, Bonaventure,
82, 323, 325.
Devotee and learned man, 40.
Dictes, or the sayings of
philosophers, 38.
Disciplina Clericalis, 99,
100, 227, 231, 241.
Domestics, lazy, 76.
Don Quixote, 11, 99.
Dreams of fair women, 133,
134.
Drinking the sea dry, 312.
Drunken governor, 68.
Dublin ballad-singer, 209.
Dutiful son, 236.
Eastern story-books, general
plan of, 123.
Eberhard’s ed. of Planudes’
Life of Esop, 301.
Education, advantages of,
27.
Egg-stealer and Solomon, 218.
Eliezer in Sodom, 202.
Eliot, George, 45.
Ellis’ Metrical Romances,
100.
Emperor’s dream, 134.
Esop: unlucky omens,
108;
wise saying of,
264;
apocryphal Life,
by Planudes, 301;
Jacobs on the
Esopic Fable, 300;
the figs, 302;
how Esop became
eloquent, 303;
his choice of
Fabliaux, 96, 100, 327, 328.
Fables, origin of, 239, 300.
Facetiae, Jewish, 117.
Faggot-maker, 152.
Fairholt, F. W., 355.
Fairies’ gifts, 153,
157, 181.
Fate, decrees of, 99.
Faults, 7, 44, 262.
Feraud, Berenger, 278.
Firdausi, 50, 284.
Fitnet Khanim, Turkish poetess,
17.
Flood, 225.
Flowers, hymn to the, 54.
Folk-Lore of S. India, 73.
Fool, greatest, 279.
Fools, list of, 80.
Foolish peasants, 111;
thieves, 151.
Forbidden tree, 268.
Forman, bp. of Moray, 319.
Fortitude and liberality,
24.
Fortune capricious, 45.
Forty, the number, 268.
Forty Vezirs, History of,
65, 110, 132.
Fox and Bear, 240, 278;
Fox in the garden,
241.
Friends: caution with,
46, 263;
man with three,
247;
misfortunes of,
23.
Fryer’s Eng. Fairy
Tales, 115.
Fuller’s Church History,
322.
Furnivall, F. J., 357.
Garments, the, 248.
Garrick and Dr. Johnson, 52.
Gemara, authors of the, 186.
Generosity, 24, 44, 48.
Gerrans, 124, 126, 136.
Gesta Romanorum, 187, 196,
227, 231, 279, 306.
Gibb, E. J. W., 15, 110, 132,
283.
Gisli the Outlaw, 65.
Gladwin’s Persian Moonshee,
71.
Goat, the dead, 71.
God, a jealous God, 264.
God, for the sake of, 9.
Good or evil genius, 140,
141.
‘God, the merciful,’
etc., 53.
Golden apparition, 136.
Goldsmith, the covetous, 128,
160.
Goliath’s brother, 213.
Goose, Tales of a, 124.
Goose-thief, 218.
Gospels, two, for a groat,
320.
Governor and the Khoja, 68;
and the poor poet,
104;
and the shopkeeper,
116.
Gratitude for benefits, 262.
Great Name, 214.
Greek Popular Tales, 276.
Grey, Zachary, 332.
Grief and anger, times of,
260.
Grissell, Patient, 331.
Gulistan, or rose-garden,
9.
Hafiz, the Persian poet, 291.
Hagiolatry, 321, 327.
Hamsa Vinsati, 124.
Hariri, the Arabian poet,
208.
Harrison on beards, 350.
Hartland, E. Sidney, 181.
Hatim Tai, 24.
Hazar u Yek Ruz, 93.
Hebrew facetiae, 117.
Henryson, Robert, 309.
’Idda: compulsory
widowhood, 287.
Ideal, not the real, 97.
Idleness and industry, 41,
261.
Ignorance, 262.
Ill news, breaking, 95;
telling, 45.
Images, the stolen, 128.
Indian poetess, 25, 27, 44.
Inferiors and superiors, 260.
Ingratitude, 47.
Intolerance, religious, 188,
190.
Investment, safe, 228.
Irving, David, 309.
Isfahani and the governor,
116.
Ishmael’s wives, 203.
Island, Desolate, 243, 279.
Israel likened to a bride,
250.
Italian Tales, 100, 115, 203,
231, 235, 279, 306.
Jacob’s sorrow, 208.
Jacobs, Joseph, on the Esopic
Fables, 300, 308.
Jami, 40, 48, 63, 109.
Jamil and Buthayna, 294.
‘January and May,’
29.
Jehennan, 145.
Jehoshua, Rabbi, 205.
Jehudah, Rabbi, 186.
Jests, antiquity of, 60.
Jewels, the, 229;
luminous, 196.
Jewish facetiae, 117
Jochonan, Rabbi, 186;
and the poor woman,
227.
Johnson and Garrick, 52.
Johnson, Dr., on springtide,
14.
Jones, Sir William, 15.
Joseph and Potiphar’s
wife, 205;
and his brethren,
206.
Josephus on Solomon’s
fables, 239.
Jotham’s fable, 239.
Julien, Stanislas, 77.
Kadiri’s Tuti Nama,
124.
Kah-gyur, 159.
Kalila wa Dimna, 39.
Kalidasa, 284.
Kama Sutra, 126.
Kamarupa, 133.
Kashifi, 38.
Kashmiri Folk-Tales, 111,
118.
Katha Manjari, 71, 100, 175.
Katha Sarit Sagara, 157, 163,
179.
Khalif and poet, 101, 105.
Khizar and the Water of Life,
177.
Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, 65, 70.
King and his Four Ministers,
176;
and the horse-dealers,
81;
and the Seven
Vazirs, 173;
and the story-teller,
99, 100;
who died of love,
161.
Knowles, J. H., 111, 118.
Kuran, 65.
Ladies, witty Persian, 63.
Laing, David, 309.
La Fontaine, 278.
Landsberger on Fables, 239.
Langles (not Lescallier),
93.
La Rochefoucauld, 23.
Lapplaendische Maerchen, 181.
Laughter, 59, 60.
Layla and Majnun, 283.
Lazy servants, 76.
Learned man and blockhead,
49;
youth, modesty
of, 27.
Learning the best treasure,
27;
and virtue, 47.
Le Grand’s Fabliaux,
96, 327, 328.
Madden, Sir F., 196.
Magic Bowl, etc., 153,
157, 181.
Maiden and Saadi, 28.
Maimonides, 186.
Majnun and Layla, 273.
Makamat of El-Hariri, 208.
Malcolm’s Sketches of
Persia, 107, 116.
Man, a laughing animal, 59;
and his three
friends, 247;
and the place,
262;
the mighty man,
261.
Manna, daily, 266.
Manuel, Don Juan, 81.
Marcus Aurelius, 49.
Mare kicked by a horse, 132.
Marelle, Charles, 192.
Marguerite, queen of Navarre,
82, 323.
Marie de France, 241.
Massinger’s plays, 331.
Mazarin, Cardinal, 52.
Meir’s (Rabbi) fables,
240.
Melanges de Litt. Orient.,
83.
Merchant and lady, 87;
and poor Bedouin,
95.
Merchandise, 262.
Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres,
37, 71, 218, 321.
Mesihi’s ode on spring,
15.
Metempsychosis, 179, 301.
Mihra-i Iskandar, 18.
Milton’s Paradise Lost,
270.
Mind, the infant, 261.
Miser, 262.
Misers, Muslim, 71, 72.
Mishle Sandabar, 173.
Misfortunes of friends, 23.
Mishna, authors of the, 186.
Mole on the face, 291.
Money, in praise of, 125;
sound of two coins,
262.
Monsters, unheard of, 224.
Moon, a type of female beauty,
284.
Moses and Pharaoh, 208;
height of Moses,
225;
Moses and the
Poor Woodcutter, 270.
Muezzin with harsh voice,
33.
Muhammedan legends, 195, 206,
209, 218, 219, 223, 268, 270.
Mukhlis of Isfahan, 135.
Music, discovery of, 163;
effects of, 7.
Musician, bad, 7.
Muslim confession of Faith,
53.
Nakhshabi, 46, 124, 260.
Name, the Great, 214.
Nasr-ed-Din, Khoja, 65.
Natesa Sastri, 73.
Nathan of Babylon, 260.
‘Neck-verse,’
331.
Neighbour, objectionable,
37.
‘Night and Day,’
61.
Nightingale and Ant, 41;
and Rose, 42.
Nimrod and Abraham, 253.
Noah, 194, 196, 225, 270.
Noble’s Orientalist,
141.
‘No rule without exception,’
119.
Numerals, Arabic, 240.
Nushirvan the Just, 21, 37.
Nye, Philip, 346.
Og, king of Bashan, 225, 226.
Old man and young wife, 29.
Old man’s prayer, 109;
reason for not
marrying, 31.
Old woman in mosque, 109.
Omens, unlucky, 107, 108.
Opportunity, 263.
Oriental story-books, general
plan of, 123.
Orientalist, or Letters of
a Rabbi, 141.
Origin, all things return
to their, 131.
Ouseley, Sir Gore, 6, 52.
Painter and critics, 78.
Panchatantra, 49, 129, 140,
146, 147, 159, 240.
Panjabi Legends, 179.
Paradise, persons translated
to, 209.
Parents, reverence for, 236.
Parrot and maina, 178;
oilman’s
parrot, 114;
Moghul’s
parrot, 116.
Parrot-Book, 124;
frame-story of,
125, 178.
Parrot, Seventy Tales of a,
124.
Parrots in Hindu fictions,
179.
Passion-service, 323, 326.
Pasquil’s Jests, 81,
330.
Patient Grissell, 331.
‘Paveant illi,’
etc., 319.
Payne’s Arabian Nights,
274.
Peasant in Paradise, 327.
Peasants, Foolish, 111.
Persian and his cat, 80;
and the governor,
116;
courtier and old
friend, 79;
ladies, witty,
63;
Moonshee, 71;
poet and the impostor,
106;
Tales of a Thousand
and one Days, 93, 135.
Petis de la Croix, 93.
Petronius Arbiter, 307.
Phaedrus, 300.
Pharaoh and Moses, 208.
Pharaoh’s daughters,
209.
Pirke Aboth, 260.
Plants, to keep alive, 78.
Planudes’ Life of Esop,
108, 301.
Poets in praise of springtide,
14.
Poet, rich man and, 107.
Poet’s meaning, 104.
Poetry, ‘stealing,’
106.
Poets, royal gifts to, 101,
104, 105.
Poverty, 263.
Prayers, odd, 71, 109.
Preachers, Muslim, 34, 66,
70, 71.
Precept and Practice, 47,
263.
Prefaces to books, 11.
Priest confessing poor man,
325.
Pride, 261.
Princess of Rum and her son,
166.
Procrustes, bed of, 199.
Prodigality, 24.
Psalm-singing at gallows,
331.
Quevedo’s Visions, 343.
Rabbi and the poor woman,
227;
and the emperor
Trajan, 265;
and the cup of
wine, 119.
Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales,
141;
Tibetan Tales,
159.
‘Ram caught in a thicket,’
205.
Rasalu, Legend of Raja, 178.
Rats that ate iron, 129.
Richardson, Octavia, 317.
Rich, Barnaby, 350.
Riches, 44, 50, 261.
Rieu, Charles, 124.
Robber and the Khoja, 69.
Rogers, the poet, 359.
Rose and Nightingale, 42.
Ross, David, 278.
Rum, country of, 134.
Russian Folk-Tales, 141.
Saadi: sketch of his
life, 3;
character of his
writings, 6;
on a bad musician,
7;
his ‘Gulistan,’
9;
prefaces to books,
11;
preface to the
‘Gulistan,’ 12;
the fair cup-bearer,
28;
assured of lasting
fame, 55;
on money, 125.
Sacchetti, 231, 306.
Saint-worship, 321, 327.
Samradians, sect of the, 97.
Satan in form of a deer, 213.
Satiety and hunger, 45.
Sayce, A. H., 210.
Scarronides, 332.
Schoolmaster and wit, 79.
Scornfulness, 260.
Scott’s ‘Lay,’
331.
Scribe’s excuse, 79.
Secrets, 48, 263.
Seneca on aphorisms, 259.
Senegambian Tales, 278.
Sermon, burlesque, 328.
Servant, wakeful, 112.
Servants, lazy, 76.
Seven stages of human life,
257.
Seven Vazirs, 173
see also
Sindibad, Book of.
Seven Wise Masters, 133, 173,
178, 307.
Shakspeare, 53, 163, 257,
342, 347, 349, 350.
Sheba, Queen of, 218.
Shelley’s Queen Mab,
291.
Signing with x, 333.
Silence, on keeping, 38, 39,
45, 263.
Simonides, 40.
Sindibad, Book of, 123, 159,
173, 176, 178, 306.
Singing Ass, 149.
Sinhasana Dwatrinsati, 124.
Shopkeeper and governor, 116.
Sindban, 173.
‘Skip over three leaves,’
322.
Slander, 44.
Slave, witty, 35.
Slippers, the unlucky, 83.
Smith, Horace, 53.
Smiths and rich man, 77.
Socrates, 300, 338.
Sodom, the citizens of, 198.
Solomon: advice to three
men, 215;
the Queen of Sheba,
218;
the egg-stealer,
218;
his signet-ring,
220;
his lost fables,
239;
his precocious
sagacity, 73;
his choice of
wisdom, 249;
the serpent’s
prey, 274.
Son, dutiful, 236.
Sorrow, times of, 260.
Spectator, Addison’s,
359.
Spenser, Edmund, 284.
Springtide, in praise of,
14.
Stingy merchant and poor Bedouin,
95.
Story-teller and the King,
100.
Stubbes on beards and barbers,
352.
Stupidity, 26.
Sufis, 51.
Suka Saptati, 124.
Sully and the courtiers, 341.
Summa Praedicantium, 305.
Superiors and inferiors, 260.
Swynnerton, Charles, 179.
Syntipas, 173.
Tales and Quicke Answeres,
37, 71, 218, 321.
Talkers, comprehensive, 45.
Talmud, authors of the, 185,
186;
traducers of the,
187;
teachings of the,
188.
Tantrakhyana, 159.
Taylor’s Wit and Mirth,
330;
Superbiae Flagellum,
351.
Teaching and learning, 262.
Temple’s Panjabi Legends,
179.
Thalebi and the Khalif, 105.
Thief, self-convicted, 218;
without opportunity,
263.
Ugly wife, 61, 62.
Uncle Remus, 279.
Unicorn, 225.
Unlucky omens, 107, 108.
Unlucky slippers, 83.
Van Butchell, 348.
Vasayadatta, 133.
Vase, use thy, 263.
Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra,
126.
Vazirs, the Seven, 173.
Vetala Panchavinsati, 124,
162, 179.
Vicious hate the virtuous,
44.
Vine, planting of the, 196.
Virgil Travestie, 332.
Virtue cannot come out of
vice, 50.
Visitors, troublesome, 40.
Von Hammer, 293.
Vrihat Katha, 158.
Wakeful servant, 112.
Wamik and Azra, 293.
Want: moderation, 7.
Warton’s Hist. of Eng.
Poetry, 163.
Water of Life, 174, 177.
Weil’s Bible, Koran,
and Talmud, 273.
Weeping Turkmans, 110.
Wheel on man’s head,
146, 147.
Wicked rich man, 44.
Widowhood, compulsory, 287.
Wife, choosing a, 263.
Williams, Sir Monier, 259.
Will, Ingenious, 237.
Wisdom, who gains, 261.
Wise man in mean company,
49.
Witches’ beards, 358.
Witty Baghdadi, 83;
Isfahani, 116;
Jewish boys, 117,
118;
Persian ladies,
63;
slave, 35.
Woman: carved out of
wood, 130;
seven requisites
of, 165.
Woman’s counsel, 64,
65;
wiles, 87.
Women, bearded, 358.
Woodcutter and Moses, 270.
World of Wonders, 316.
Wright’s Latin Stories,
76.
Young’s Night Thoughts,
46.
Youth, modest and learned,
27.
Zemzem, 285.
Zotenberg, Hermann, 246.
Zozimus, the ballad-singer,
209.
Zulaykha, Potiphar’s
wife, 206.