FLOWERS
FROM
A PERSIAN GARDEN,
AND
OTHER PAPERS.

By W. A. Clouston,

AUTHOR OF ‘POPULAR TALES AND
FICTIONS’ AND ‘BOOK OF NOODLES’; EDITOR OF
‘A GROUP OF EASTERN ROMANCES AND STORIES,’ ‘BOOK
OF SINDIBAD,’ ‘BAKHTYAR NAMA,’ ‘ARABIAN
POETRY FOR ENGLISH READERS,’ ETC.

LONDON:
DAVID NUTT, 270, 271, STRAND.
MDCCCXC.

TO

E. SIDNEY HARTLAND, Esq.,

FELLOW OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES; MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF
THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY, ETC.

My dear Hartland,

Though you are burdened with the duties of a profession far
outside of which lie those studies that have largely occupied my
attention for many years past, yet your own able contributions to
the same, or cognate, subjects of investigation evince the truth of
the seemingly paradoxical saying, that “the busiest man finds
the greatest amount of leisure.” And in dedicating this
little book to you—would that it were more worthy!—as a
token of gratitude for the valuable help you have often rendered me
in the course of my studies, I am glad of the opportunity it
affords me for placing on record (so to say) the fact that I enjoy
the friendship of a man possessed of so many excellent qualities of
heart as well as of intellect.

The following collection of essays, or papers, is designed to
suit the tastes of a more numerous class of readers than were some
of my former books, which are not likely to be of special interest
to many besides students of comparative folk-lore—amongst
whom your own degree is high. The book, in fact, is intended mainly
for those who are rather vaguely termed “general
readers”; albeit I venture to think that even the folk-lore
student may find in it somewhat to “make a note of,” as
the great Captain Cuttle was wont to say—in season and out of
season.

Leaving the contents to speak for themselves, I shall only say
farther that my object has been to bring together, in a handy
volume, a series of essays which might prove acceptable to many
readers, whether of grave or lively temperament. What are called
“instructive” books—meaning thereby
“morally” instructive—are generally as dull
reading as is proverbially a book containing nothing but
jests—good, bad, and indifferent. We can’t (and we
shouldn’t) be always in the “serious” mood, nor
can we be for ever on the grin; and it seems to me that a mental
dietary, by turns, of what is wise and of what is witty should be
most wholesome. But, of the two, I confess I prefer to take the
former, even as one ought to take solid food, in great moderation;
and, after all, it is surely better to laugh than to mope or weep,
in spite of what has been said of “the loud laugh that speaks
the vacant mind.” Most of us, in this work-a-day world, find
no small benefit from allowing our minds to lie fallow at certain
times, as farmers do with their fields. In the following pages,
however, I believe wisdom and wit, the didactic and the diverting,
will be found in tolerably fair proportions.

But I had forgot—I am not writing a Preface, and this is
already too long for a Dedication; so believe me, with all good
wishes,

CONTENTS.

FLOWERS FROM A PERSIAN
GARDEN.

I

Sketch of the Life of the Persian Poet
Saádí—Character of his Writings—the
Gulistán, or Rose-Garden—Prefaces to
Books—Preface to the Gulistán—Eastern
Poets in praise of Springtide

II

Boy’s Archery Feat—Advantages of
Abstinence—Núshirván on Oppression—Boy in
terror at Sea—Pride of Ancestry—Misfortunes of
Friends—Fortitude and
Liberality—Prodigality—Stupid Youth—Advantages of
Education—The Fair Cup-bearer—‘January and
May’—Why an Old Man did not Marry—The Dervish who
became King—Muezzin and Preacher who had bad
voices—Witty Slave—Witty
Kází—Astrologer and his Faithless
Wife—Objectionable Neighbour

III

On Taciturnity: Parallels from Caxton’s Dictes and
preface to Kalíla wa Dimna—Difference between
Devotee and Learned Man—To get rid of Troublesome
Visitors—Fable of the Nightingale and the Ant—Aphorisms
of Saádí—Conclusion

ORIENTAL WIT AND
HUMOUR.

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 Baghdádí—The Unlucky Slippers

III

The Young Merchant of Baghdád; 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 Facetiæ

TALES OF A PARROT.

I

General Plan of Eastern Story-books—The
Tútí Náma, 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
Vazírs

VI

The Tree of Life—Legend of Rájá
Rasálú—Conclusion

• ADDITIONAL NOTE:
• The Magic Bowl,
  etc.

RABBINICAL LEGENDS, TALES,
FABLES, AND APHORISMS.

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

APOCRYPHAL LIFE OF
ESOP.

• ADDITIONAL NOTE:
• Drinking the Sea
  Dry

IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN
THE MIDDLE AGES.

THE BEARDS OF OUR
FATHERS.

INDEX.

FLOWERS
FROM A PERSIAN GARDEN.

[pg
3]

I

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE PERSIAN POET
SAADI—CHARACTER OF HIS WRITINGS—THE
“GULISTÁN”—PREFACES TO BOOKS—PREFACE
TO THE “GULISTÁN”—EASTERN POETS IN PRAISE
OF SPRINGTIDE.

It is remarkable how very little the average general reader
knows regarding the great Persian poet Saádí 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 encyclopædia. Yet Saádí
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-Dín Shaykh Saádí was born,
towards the close of the twelfth century, at Shíráz,
the famous [pg
4]capital of Fars, concerning which city the Persians have
the saying that “if Muhammed had tasted the pleasures of
Shíráz, 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
Saádí, from his patron Atabag Saád bin
Zingí, sovereign of Fars, who encouraged men of learning in
his principality. Saádí 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.

At one period of his life Saádí 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 [pg 5]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 dínars,² and took me with him to Aleppo.

“My friend had a daughter, to whom he married me, and he
presented me with a hundred dínars 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 dínars?’ ‘Yes,’
I answered; ‘he redeemed me for ten dínars, 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 [pg 6]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 Saádí in the latter part of
his life retired to a cell near Shíráz, 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 Saádí and his company had
partaken, the shaykh always put what remained in a basket suspended
from his window, that the poor wood-cutters of
Shíráz, who daily passed by his cell, might
occasionally satisfy their hunger.

The writings of Saádí, in prose
as well as verse, are numerous; his best known works being the
Gulistán, or Rose-Garden, and the
Bustán, 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. Saádí 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
[pg
7]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
Saádí’s masterly compositions. No writer,
ancient or modern, European or Asiatic, has excelled, and few have
equalled, Saádí 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 Gulistán of
Saádí, that music was formerly in such consideration
in Persia that it was a maxim of their sages [pg 8]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-Farabí (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 Sayfú ’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-Farabí 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 Baghdád 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 Sháh-Kúlí, who was brought before the
sultan Murád, 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.

[pg
9]To resume, after this anecdotical digression.
Saádí 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 Kurán 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 Saádí’s numerous and
diversified works is the Gulistán, 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 not even an Act of Parliament could cause to be generally
read, and which no publisher would be so blind to his own interests
as to reprint. As regards its size, the Gulistán is
but a small book, but intrinsically it is indeed a very great book,
such as could only be [pg 10]produced by a great mind, and it
comprises more wisdom and wit than a score of old English folios
could together yield to the most devoted reader. Some querulous
persons there are who affect to consider the present as a shallow
age, because, forsooth, huge volumes of learning—each the
labour of a lifetime—are not now produced. But the
flood-gates of knowledge are now wide open, and, no longer confined
within the old, narrow, if deep, channels, learning has spread
abroad, like the Nile during the season of its over-flow. Shallow,
it may be, but more widely beneficial, since its life-giving waters
are within the reach of all.

Unlike most of our learned old English authors,
Saádí 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 [pg 11]crocodiles, must drink of the waters of
knowledge as we run, in dread of the old enemy Time.”

Saádí, however, in his Gulistán 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 Gulistán 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. Cervantes, for instance, tells us that the
preface to the first part of Don Quixote cost him more
thought than the writing of the entire work. “It argues a
deficiency of taste,” says Isaac D’Israeli, “to
turn over an elaborate preface unread; for it is the essence of the
author’s roses—every drop distilled at an immense
cost.” And, no doubt, it is a great slight [pg 12]to an
author to skip his preface, though it cannot be denied that some
prefaces are very tedious, because the writer “spins out the
thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
argument,” and none but the most hardy readers can
persevere to the distant end. The Italians call a preface salsa
del libro, the salt of the book. A preface may also
be likened to the porch of a mansion, where it is not courteous to
keep a visitor waiting long before you open the door and make him
free of your house. But the reader who passes over the preface to
the Gulistán unread loses not a little of the spice
of that fascinating and instructive book. He who reads it, however,
is rewarded by the charming account which the author gives of how
he came to form his literary Rose-Garden:

“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 [pg 13]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.”

[pg
14]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.”

[pg
15]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 Mesíhí, 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:

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 Khánim (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:

I cannot resist the temptation to cite, in concluding this
introductory paper, another fine eulogy of the delights of spring,
by Amír Khusrú, 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 [pg 19]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.”

II

STORIES FROM THE
“GULISTÁN.”

The Gulistán 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
[pg
20]flowers of this perennial Garden, the particular order
observed by Saádí 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 Nassála Shíráz, 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 Asád, 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
[pg
21]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 Núshírván the Just (whom the Greeks
called Chosroe), of the Sassanian dynasty of Persian
kings—sixth century—Saádí 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
Saádí remarks: “If the [pg 22]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 Saádí 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. Saádí tells us
of an old Arab who said to his son: “O [pg 23]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
Akhlák-i-Jalaly, a work comprising the practical
philosophy of the Muhammedans, written, in the 15th century, in the
Persian language, by Fakír Jání Muhammed
Asaád, and translated into English by W. F. Thompson,
Alí, the Prophet’s cousin, is reported to have
said:

An Arabian poet says:

And again:

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.
Saádí tells us of a merchant who, having lost a
thousand dínars, 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.”

[pg
24]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-Gúr that a liberal hand is preferable to a strong
arm.” “Hátim Taï,” remarks
Saádí, “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.”

Prodigality, however, is as much to be condemned as judicious
liberality is to be lauded. Saádí 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 [pg 25]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 is wide spread? When a man has acquired
reputation by liberality and munificence, it does not become him to
tie up his money-bags. When your good name has been spread through
the street, you cannot shut your door against it.” I
perceived (continues Saádí) that he did not approve
of my admonition, and that my warm breath did not affect his cold
iron. I ceased advising, and, quitting his society, returned into
the corner of safety, in conformity with the saying of the
philosophers: “Admonish and exhort as your charity requires;
if they mind not, it does not concern you. Although thou knowest
that they will not listen, nevertheless [pg 26]speak
whatever you know is advisable. It will soon come to pass that you
will see the silly fellow with his feet in the stocks, smiting his
hands and exclaiming, ‘Alas, that I did not listen to the
wise man’s advice!’” After some time, that which
I had predicted from his dissolute conduct I saw verified. He was
clothed in rags, and begging a morsel of food. I was distressed at
his wretched condition, and did not think it consistent with
humanity to scratch his wound with reproach. But I said in my
heart: Profligate men, when intoxicated with pleasure, reflect not
on the day of poverty. The tree which in the summer has a profusion
of fruit is consequently without leaves in winter.

The incapacity of some youths to receive instruction is always a
source of vexation to the pedagogue. Saádí tells us
of a vazír 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 [pg 27]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
Saádí, 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, [pg 28]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 Saádí) 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
vazír 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.

In the following charming little tale Saádí
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 [pg 29]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 Saádí! 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 “oldé January that wedded
was to freshé 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 [pg 30]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 [pg 31]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, Saádí 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?”

[pg
32]“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 [pg 33]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.
Saádí, 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 dínars. Now I will give you ten
dínars 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, [pg 34]you injured me in sending me away from
this station for ten dínars; for where I went they will give
me twenty dínars 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! Saádí
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 Kurán
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, [pg 35]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
Amrúlais having run away, a person was sent in pursuit of
him and brought him back. The vazír, 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 Amrúlais 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 [pg 36]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 vazír, 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 vazír what
was his advice in this matter. Quoth the vazír: “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
kází 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 kází 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 [pg 37]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!”

III

ANECDOTES AND APHORISMS FROM THE
“GULISTÁN,” WITH ANALOGUES—CONCLUSION.

Besides the maxims comprised in the concluding chapter of the
Gulistán, 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 Saádí
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
Núshírván, king [pg 38]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

A parallel to this last saying of the Persian vazír 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
[pg
39]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 Pahlaví, the ancient language of
Persia) of the celebrated Fables of Bidpaï, entitled
Kalíla 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
[pg
40]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.’”

The Persian poet Jámí—the last of the
brilliant galaxy of genius who enriched the literature of their
country, and who flourished two centuries after Saádí
had passed to his rest—reproduces these sayings of the four
kings in his work entitled Baháristán, or
Abode of Spring, which is similar in design to the
Gulistán.

Among the sayings of other wise men (whose names, however,
Saádí 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
[pg
41]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.”

Saádí’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 Saádí 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
Saádí, 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
[pg
42]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
barbut¹³
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 of the Rose, and the raven the perch of the Nightingale.
The storms of autumn raged in fury, and the foliage of the grove
was shed upon the ground. The cheek of the leaf was turned yellow,
and the breath of the wind was chill and blasting. The gathering
cloud poured down hailstones, like pearls, and flakes of snow
floated like camphor on the bosom of the air. Suddenly the
Nightingale returned into the garden, but he met neither the bloom
of the Rose nor fragrance [pg 43]of the spikenard; notwithstanding
his thousand-songed tongue, he stood stupified and mute, for he
could discover no flower whose form he might admire, nor any
verdure whose freshness he might enjoy. The Thorn turned round to
him and said: “How long, silly bird, wouldst thou be courting
the society of the Rose? Now is the season that in the absence of
thy charmer thou must put up with the heart-rending bramble of
separation.” The Nightingale cast his eye upon the scene
around him, but saw nothing fit to eat. Destitute of food, his
strength and fortitude failed him, and in his abject helplessness
he was unable to earn himself a little livelihood. He called to his
mind and said: “Surely the Ant had in former days his
dwelling underneath this tree, and was busy in hoarding a store of
provision: now I will lay my wants before her, and, in the name of
good neighbourship, and with an appeal to her generosity, beg some
small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her
charity upon me.” Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished
Nightingale presented himself at the Ant’s door, and said:
“Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital
stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness
whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How
considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a
portion of it.” The Ant replied:

“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, [pg 44]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

These are a few more of Saádí’s
aphorisms:

Riches are for the comfort of life, and not life for the
accumulation of riches.¹⁶

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 [pg 45]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

Two things indicate an obscure understanding: to be silent when
we should converse, and to speak when we should be silent.

[pg
46]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:

He had been thus anticipated by Saádí: “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:

Saádí 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
Saádí, 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, Nakhshabí, held a
different opinion: “Beauty,” he says, “adorned
[pg
47]with ornaments, portends disastrous events to our hearts.
An amiable form, ornamented with diamonds and gold, is like a
melodious voice accompanied by the rabáb.” 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, Saádí 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 Saádí says: “Man is beyond
[pg
48]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 Hindú
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
Bráhman—are sins of the most aggravated nature; but
more atrocious than these is ingratitude.”

The sentiment so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb,
“He who never reveals a secret keeps it best,” is thus
finely amplified by Saádí: “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

The imperative duty of active benevolence is thus [pg
49]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. [pg 50]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 Kurán in the house of an
infidel.”—The old proverb that “an evil bird has
an evil egg” finds expression by Saádí 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.”

Firdausí, the Homer of Persia (eleventh century), has the
following remarks in his scathing satire on the sultan
Mahmúd, of Ghazní (Atkinson’s rendering):

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 [pg 51]passage by Saádí:
“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:
Faridú ’d-Dín ’Attár, who died in
the year 1229, when over a hundred years old, was considered the
most perfect Súfí²¹ philosopher of the time in which he
lived. His father was an eminent druggist in Nishapúr, and
for a time Faridú ’d-Dín 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. ’Attár, which means druggist, or
perfumer, Faridú ’d-Dín 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 [pg 52]sighed heavily and shed
tears, as he reflected on the transitory nature of all earthly
things. ’Attár, 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
’Attár, I grieve for thee: for how canst thou ever
bring thyself to think of death—to leave all these goods
behind thee?” ’Attár replied that he hoped and
believed that he should die as contentedly as any dervish; upon
which the aged devotee, saying, “We shall see,” placed
his wooden bowl upon the ground, laid his head upon it, and,
calling on the name of God, immediately resigned his soul. Deeply
impressed with this incident, ’Attár at once gave up
his shop, and devoted himself to the study of Súfí
philosophy.²²

The death of Cardinal Mazarin furnishes another remarkable
illustration of Saádí’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!”

[pg
53]Few passages of Shakspeare are more admired than these
lines:

Saádí 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, Jámí, in
his beautiful mystical poem of Yúsuf wa
Zulaykhá, 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 [pg 54]prose, has
thus finely amplified the idea of “tongues in
trees”:

When Saádí composed his
Gulistán, 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 [pg
55]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
Gulistán, 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 Saádí “still stood the forests
primeval.”

ORIENTAL
WIT AND HUMOUR.

[pg
59]

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 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 [pg 60]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

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 [pg 61]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 in what may be termed
the lower strata of Oriental fiction, humorous and witty stories,
characteristic of the different peoples amongst whom they
originated, which, for the most part, have not yet been
appropriated by the European compilers of books of facetiæ,
and a selection of such jests—choice specimens of Oriental
Wit and Humour—gleaned from a great variety of sources, will,
I trust, amuse readers in general, and lovers of funny anecdotes in
particular.

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 [pg 62]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. [pg 63]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 Jámí, in his Baháristán,
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.”

[pg
64]The low estimation in which women are so unjustly held
among Muhammedans is perhaps to be ascribed partly to the teachings
of the Kurán 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 Hindús came in contact with
the Muhammedans. Even in Europe, during mediæval 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 [pg 65]attain his object.”²⁵ We may suppose
this Turkish story, from the History of the Forty
Vezírs, 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 man—jump
down.” The man jumped down, and his ankle was dislocated, and
for a whole year he was bedridden, and his ankle came not back to
its place. Next year the man again went on the roof of his house
and repaired it. Then he called to his wife, “Ho! wife, how
shall I come down?” The woman said, “Jump not; thine
ankle has not yet come to its place—come down gently.”
The man replied, “The other time, for that I followed thy
words, and not those of the Apostle [i.e., Muhammed], was my
ankle dislocated, and it is not yet come to its place; now shall I
follow the words of the Apostle, and do the contrary of what thou
sayest [Kurán, iii, 29.]” And he jumped down, and
straightway his ankle came to its place.

In the Turkish collection of jests ascribed to
Khoja Nasrú ’d-Dín Efendi²⁶ is the following, which
has been [pg
66]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 Kurán, “I have [pg 67]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.”

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?”

[pg
68]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 Súricastle 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 awoke and saw that his ferage had been stolen, he told
his officers to bring before him whomsoever they found wearing it.
The officers, seeing the ferage on the Khoja, seized and brought
him before the governor, who said to him: “Ho! Khoja, where
did [pg
69]you obtain that ferage?” The Khoja responded
“As I was taking a walk with my friend Ahmed we saw a fellow
lying drunk, whereupon I took off his ferage and went away with it.
If it be yours, pray take it.” “O no,” said the
governor, “it does not belong to me.”

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; [pg 70]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

Many of the Muslim jests, like some our of
own, are at the expense of poor preachers. Thus: there was in
Baghdád 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 [pg 71]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 [pg 72]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.”

Apropos of misers, our English facetiæ 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.”

[pg
73]

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
BAGHDÁDÍ—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
Natésa Sastrí 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 [pg 74]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), the herd went off in
search, resolving to present the soothsayer with the calf if he
found it with the cow. To his joy, and by mere chance, of course,
he found them both, and, returning with them to the deaf man (still
sitting by the wayside), he pointed to the calf and asked him to
accept of it. Now, it so happened that the calf’s tail was
broken and crooked, and the deaf man supposed that the herdsman was
blaming him for having broken it, and by a wave of his hand he
denied the charge. This the poor deaf neatherd mistook for a
refusal of the calf and a demand for the cow, so he said:
“How very greedy you are, to be sure! I promised you the
calf, and not the cow.” “Never!” exclaimed the
deaf man in a rage. “I know nothing of you or your cow and
calf. I never broke the calf’s tail.” While they were
thus quarrelling, without understanding each other, a third man
happened to pass, and seeing his opportunity to profit by their
deafness, he said to the neatherd in a loud [pg 75]voice, yet
so as not to be heard by the other deaf man: “Friend, you had
better go away with your cow. Those soothsayers are always greedy.
Leave the calf with me, and I shall make him accept it.” The
poor neatherd, highly pleased to have secured his cow, went off,
leaving the calf with the traveller. Then said the traveller to the
deaf man: “It is, indeed, very unlawful, friend, for that
neatherd to charge you with an offence which you did not commit;
but never mind, since you have a friend in me. I shall contrive to
make clear to him your innocence; leave this matter to me.”
So saying, he walked away with the calf, and the deaf man went
home, well pleased that he had escaped from such a serious
accusation.

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
máns of wheat I have with me.” (A
mán 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 [pg
76]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
máns 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 mediæval 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. [pg
77]“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.”

[pg
78]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 [pg 79]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:

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 Shíráz 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
[pg
80]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 Jámí serve as evidence: A husband
gave a mán 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 mán; the meat would add
another mán thereto. This point is not clear to
me—that two máns should become one
mán. 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 [pg 81]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 vazír:
“Make me out a list of all the blockheads in my
kingdom.” The vazír 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 vazír, “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 vazír 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

[pg
82]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 dínars (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

For readiness of wit the Arabs would seem to compare very
favourably with any race, European or [pg 83]Asiatic, and many examples
of their felicitous repartees are furnished by native historians
and grammarians. One of the best is: When a khalíf was
addressing the people in a mosque on his accession to the
khalífate, and told them, among other things in his own
praise, that the plague which had so long raged in Baghdád
had ceased immediately he became khalíf; 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 Mélanges de Littérature
Orientale is a very good specimen of Arabian humour:³²

In former times there lived in the famous city of Baghdád
a miserly old merchant named Abú 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 Baghdád 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
[pg
84]passed into a proverb, and anything ponderous was
compared to Abú 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, Abú 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 kází
of Baghdád came also to bathe. Abú 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 kází had finished bathing,
his servants searched in vain for his slippers; none could be found
[pg
85]but a wretched pair, which were at once identified as
those of Abú Kasim. The officers hastened after the supposed
thief, and, bringing him back with the theft on his feet, the
kází, after exchanging slippers, committed him to
prison. There was no escaping from the claws of justice without
money, and, as Abú 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 Abú 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 Abú 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 [pg 86]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 Abú
Kasim’s slippers, complained of this to the governor, and
once more was Abú 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 Abú 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
kází, and Abú 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, [pg 87]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 kází
could not refuse his request, and thus Abú Kasim learned, to
his bitter cost, the danger of wearing his slippers too long.

III

THE YOUNG MERCHANT OF BAGHDÁD; 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
Sháh, the celebrated historian, who died A.D. 1450, in a collection entitled Fakihat
al-Khalífa, or Pastimes of the Khalífs, in which
a lady exhibits great ingenuity, without any very objectionable
motive. It is to the following effect:

A young merchant in Baghdád had placed over the front of
his shop, instead of a sentence from the Kurán, 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 [pg
88]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 amír 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 [pg 89]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 kází,” replied the lady, and
disappeared like a vision.

The young merchant lost no time in waiting on the
kází 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
kází 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 [pg 90]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 kází looked more and more
astonished, and even ventured to remonstrate with him on his
precipitancy, but without effect. To be brief, the
kází 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
[pg
91]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 kází 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 kází’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, [pg 92]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 kází 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 kází’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
kází, 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 [pg 93]the sake of the
kází’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 kází 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

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.

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 [pg 94]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 [pg 95]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
Liwá’í, 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, [pg 96]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

[pg
97]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):

Some amusing anecdotes regarding this singular sect are given in
the Dabistán, 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 [pg 98]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 cup, which Was her own
property. The Samradian remarked: “Thou hast given me water
instead of wine.” “It is only ideal,” she
answered; “there was no wine in existence.” The husband
then said: “Thou hast spoken well; give me the cup that I may
go to a neighbour’s house and bring it back full of
wine.” He thereupon took the gold cup and went out and sold
it, concealing the money, and, instead of the gold vase, he brought
back an earthen vessel filled [pg 99]with wine. The wife, on seeing
this, said: “What hast thou done with the golden cup?”
He quietly replied: “Thou art surely thinking of an ideal
gold cup,” on which the lady sorely repented her
witticism.³⁵

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 [pg
100]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 Kathá Manjarí, 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 [pg 101]for knowing so few, and
sent them away. A shrewd and clever man, hearing of this, presented
himself before the king, who asked his name. He replied that his
name was Ocean of Stories. The king then inquired how many stories
he knew, to which he answered that the name of Ocean had been
conferred on him because he knew an endless number. On being
desired to relate one, he thus began: “O King, there was a
tank 36,000 miles in breadth, and 54,000 in length. This was
densely filled with lotus plants, and millions upon millions of
birds with golden wings [called Hamsa] perched on those flowers.
One day a hurricane arose, accompanied with rain, which the birds
were not able to endure, and they entered a cave under a rock,
which was in the vicinity of the tank.” The king asked what
happened next, and he replied that one of the birds flew away. The
king again inquired what else occurred, and he answered:
“Another flew away”; and to every question of the king
he continued to give the same answer. At this the king felt
ashamed, and, seeing it was impossible to outwit the man, he
dismissed him with a handsome present.

A story bearing some resemblance to this is related of a
khalíf 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’í: It is
said that a khalíf, who was very penurious, contrived by a
trick to send from his presence without any reward those
[pg
102]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 mamlúk (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 mamlúk also retains it
in his memory,” and order the mamlúk 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’í, 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
[pg
103]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
khalíf.” “O brother of the Arabs,” said
the king, “hast thou heard of our condition?”
“No,” answered the poet; “and what is it, O
khalíf 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
khalíf.” So he repeated his ode. The king, perplexed,
and unable to remember any of it, made a sign to the mamlúk,
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 hast spoken truth; and the
ode is thine without doubt. I have never heard it before. Produce,
therefore, what it is written upon, and I will give thee its weight
in money, as I have promised.” “Wilt thou,” said
the poet, “send one of the attendants to carry it?”
“To carry what?” demanded the king. “Is it not
upon a paper in thy possession?” “No, O our lord
[pg
104]the khalíf. At the time I composed it I could not
procure a piece of paper on which to write it, and could find
nothing but a fragment of a marble column left me by my father; so
I engraved it upon that, and it lies in the courtyard of the
palace.” He had brought it, wrapped up, on the back of a
camel. The king, to fulfil his promise, was obliged to exhaust his
treasury; and, to prevent a repetition of this trick, in future
rewarded poets according to the custom of kings.

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 Shíráz. 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 [pg 105]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 khalífs 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 Thálebí
read before the khalíf Al-Mansúr a poem which he had
just composed, and it found acceptance. The khalíf said:
“O Thálebí, which wouldst thou rather
have—that I give thee 300 gold dínars [about
£150], or three wise sayings, each worth 100
dínars?” The poet replied: “Learning, O
Commander of the Faithful, is better than transitory
treasure.” “Well, then,” said the khalíf,
“the first saying is: When thy garment grows old, sew not a
new patch on it, for it hath an ill look.” “O
woe!” cried the poet, “one hundred dínars are
lost!” Mansúr smiled, and proceeded: “The second
saying is: When thou anointest thy beard, anoint not the lower
part, for that would [pg 106]soil the collar of thy vest.”
“Alas!” exclaimed Thálebí, “a
thousand times, alas! two hundred dínars are lost!”
Again the khalíf smiled, and continued: “The third
saying”—but before he had spoken it, the poet said:
“O khalíf of our prosperity, keep the third maxim in
thy treasury, and give me the remaining hundred dínars, for
they will be worth a thousand times more to me than the hearing of
maxims.” At this the khalíf laughed heartily, and
commanded his treasurer to give Thálebí five hundred
dínars of gold.

A droll story is told of the Persian poet Anwarí: 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 Anwarí himself as
his own. Anwarí went up to the man, and said: “Sir,
whose poems are these you are reciting?” He replied:
“They are Anwarí’s.” “Do you know
him, then?” said Anwarí. The man, with cool
effrontery, answered: “What do you say? I am
Anwarí.” On hearing this Anwarí laughed, and
remarked: “I have heard of one who stole poetry, but never of
one who stole the poet himself!”—Talking of
“stealing poetry,” Jámí 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.”

[pg
107]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.”

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 OIL-MAN’S
PARROT—THE MOGHUL AND HIS PARROT—THE PERSIAN SHOPKEEPER
AND THE PRIME MINISTER—HEBREW FACETIÆ.

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 [pg
108]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

[pg
109]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 a sick
child in her arms. The old man, as he laboured under the weight of
the colt, kept groaning, “O Allah! O Allah!” and,
supposing him to be a dervish, the woman asked him to pray for the
recovery of her child. In compliance, the old man said: “O
Allah! I beseech thee to shorten the days of this poor
child.” “Alas!” cried the mother, “why hast
thou made such a cruel prayer?” “Fear nothing,”
said the old man; “thy child will assuredly enjoy long life.
It is my fate to have the reverse of whatever I pray for. I
implored Allah for assistance to carry me over this hill, and, by
way of help, I suppose, I have had this colt imposed on my
shoulders.”

Jámí tells this humorous story
in the Sixth “Garden” of his
Baháristán, or Abode of Spring: A man said the
prescribed prayers in a mosque and then began his personal
supplications. An old woman, [pg 110]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 Vezírs: 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 [pg 111]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 Kashmír (Trübner: 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 [pg 112]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
topís (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: [pg 113]“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 [pg 114]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 Masnaví of Jelálu-‘d-Dín
er-Rúmí (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 [pg 115]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

[pg
116]Somewhat more credible is the tale of the man who taught
a parrot to say, “What doubt is there of this?”
(dur ín cheh shuk) and took it to market for sale,
fixing the price at a hundred rupís. A Moghul asked the
bird: “Are you really worth a hundred rupís?” 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 Isfahán, in his entertaining
Sketches of Persia, as follows: When the celebrated Haji
Ibrahím was prime minister of Persia [some sixty years
since], his brother was governor of Isfahán, while other
members of his family held [pg 117]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
Isfahání. “To Shíráz or
Kashan.” “Your nephew rules in one city and your
brother in the other.” “Go to the Sháh, and
complain if you like.” “Your brother the Haji is prime
minister.” “Then go to Satan,” said the enraged
governor. “Haji Merhúm, your father, the pious
pilgrim, is dead,” rejoined the undaunted
Isfahání. “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 [pg 118]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

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 [pg 119]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!”

TALES OF A
PARROT.

[pg
123]

I

GENERAL PLAN OF EASTERN ROMANCES—THE
“TÚTÍ NÁMA,” 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
Sindibád, in which a prince is falsely accused by one of
his father’s ladies, and defended by the king’s seven
vazírs, 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 the wickedness and perfidy of men; and that of the
[pg
124]Bakhtyár Náma, in which a youth,
falsely accused of having violated the royal harem, obtains for
himself a respite from death during ten days by relating to the
king each day a story designed to caution him against precipitation
in matters of importance. In others supernatural beings are the
narrators of the subordinate tales, as in the Indian romances,
Vetála Panchavinsati, or Twenty-five Tales of a
Demon, and the Sinhásana Dwatrinsati, or Tales of the
Thirty-two Speaking Statues—literally, Thirty-two (Tales) of
a Throne. In others, again, the relators are birds, as in the
Indian work entitled Hamsa Vinsati, or Twenty Tales of a
Goose.

Of this last class is the popular Persian work,
Tútí Náma, (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 Nakhshabí, 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
[pg
125]story, of the Persian Parrot-Book is to the following
effect:

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, ‘siller’—Fr.
‘l’argent’] is handsome; the sun never shines on
the inauspicious man without money.”⁴² Before leaving home the
merchant purchased at great cost in the bazaar a wonderful parrot,
that could discourse eloquently and [pg 126]intelligently, and also
a sharak, a species of nightingale, which, according to Gerrans,
“imitates the human voice in so surprising a manner that, if
you do not see the bird, you cannot help being deceived”;
and, having put them into the same cage, he charged his spouse that
whenever she had any matter of importance to transact she should
first obtain the sanction of both birds.

The merchant having protracted his absence many months
(Vatsyayana, in his Káma 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 [pg 127]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

[pg
128]The order of the parrot’s tales is not the same in
all texts; in Kádirí’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 Kádirí 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 Kádirí 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
Hindú 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
[pg
129]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 kází; 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

[pg
130]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, each claiming her
for himself; the carpenter, because he had carved her with his own
hands; the goldsmith, because he had adorned her with gems; the
tailor, because he had suitably clothed her; and the dervish,
because he had, by his intercession, [pg 131]endowed her with life.
While they were thus disputing, a man came to the spot, to whom
they referred the case. On seeing the woman, he exclaimed:
“This is my own wife, whom you have stolen from me,”
and compelled them to come before the kutwal, who, on viewing her
beauty, in his turn claimed her as the wife of his brother, who had
been waylaid and murdered in the desert. The kutwal took them all,
with the woman, before the kází, who declared that
she was his slave, who had absconded from his house with a large
sum of money. An old man who was present suggested that they should
all seven appeal to the Tree of Decision, and thither they went
accordingly; but no sooner had they stated their several claims
than the trunk of the tree split open, the woman ran into the
cleft, and on its reuniting she was no more to be seen. A voice
proceeded from the tree, saying: “Everything returns to its
first principles”; and the seven suitors of the woman were
overwhelmed with shame.⁴⁵

[pg
132]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 kází, and stated his complaint.
The kází inquired of the merchant what he had to say
in his own defence; but he pretended to be dumb, answering
[pg
133]not a word to the judge’s interrogatives. Upon
this the kází 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 kází observed that if he was duly
warned against the accident he had himself to blame, and so
dismissed the case.

II

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 Kámarupa (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 at the uttermost ends of the
earth. It so happens that the damsel also dreams of him, and, when
they do meet, they need no introduction to each other. The Indian
romance of Vasayadatta has [pg 134]a similar plot. But the
royal dreamer and lover in the following story, told by the Parrot
on the 39th Night, according to the India Office MS. No. 2573,
adopted a plan for the discovery of the beauteous object of his
vision more conformable to his own ease:

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 vazírs, 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 vazír 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 Rúm,⁴⁶ who, he informed the vazír, 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 [pg 135]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 Rúm; 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.”

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
Isfahán, 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 [pg 136]an incident similar to that witnessed
by the Lady of Rúm) 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 Khurasán 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 [pg
137][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 fakír. 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

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 [pg
138]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 visitor. Hajm
was overjoyed at the present, and concluded from what he had seen
that he or any other person who should treat a fakír in the
same manner could convert him into gold, and consequently that by
beating a number he might multiply his golden images. Heated with
this fond imagination, he quickly returned to his house and gave
the necessary orders for a most sumptuous entertainment, to which
he invited all the fakírs in the province.

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 fakírs 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
fakírs, 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 fakír suddenly
appeared. The merchant struck him some blows on the head, and he
fell prostrate before him, transformed into a [pg 139]golden
image. Imagining that any other person could, by a similar
behaviour, force any fakír 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 fakírs
for the ill-treatment they had received, was soundly bastinadoed
before the tribunal, and carried to the hospital for madness.

[pg
140]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 [pg 141]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

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 said to Abdallah: “My son, we
are now at the end of our [pg 142]journey. I shall employ my
prayers to obtain from Allah that the earth shall open and make an
entrance wide enough to permit thee to descend into a place where
thou shalt find one of the greatest treasures that the earth
contains. Hast thou courage to descend into the vault?”
Abdallah assured him that he might depend on his fidelity; and then
the Dervish lighted a small fire, into which he cast a perfume: he
read and prayed for some minutes, after which the earth opened, and
he said to the young man: “Thou mayest now enter. Remember
that it is in thy power to do me a great service; and that this is
perhaps the only opportunity thou shalt ever have of testifying to
me that thou art not ungrateful. Do not let thyself be dazzled by
the riches that thou shalt find there: think only of seizing upon
an iron candlestick with twelve branches, which thou shalt find
close to the door. That is absolutely necessary to me: come up with
it at once.” Abdallah descended, and, neglecting the advice
of the Dervish, filled his vest and sleeves with the gold and
jewels which he found heaped up in the vault, whereupon the opening
by which he had entered closed of itself. He had, however,
sufficient presence of mind to seize the iron candlestick, and
endeavoured to find some other means of escape from the vault. At
length he discovers a narrow passage, which he follows until he
reaches the surface of the earth, and looking for the Dervish saw
him not, but to his surprise found that he was close to his
mother’s house. On showing his wealth to his mother, it all
suddenly vanished. But [pg 143]the candlestick remained. He lighted
one of the branches, upon which a dervish appeared, and after
turning round an hour he threw down an asper (about three farthings
in value) and vanished. Next night he put a lighted candle in each
of the branches, when twelve dervishes appeared, and having
continued their gyrations for an hour each threw down an asper and
vanished. In this way did Abdallah and his mother contrive to live
for a time, till at length he resolved to carry the candlestick to
the good Dervish, hoping to obtain from him the treasure which he
had seen in the vault. He remembered his name and city, and on
reaching his dwelling found the Dervish living in a magnificent
palace, with fifty porters at the gate. The Dervish thus addressed
Abdallah: “Thou art an ungrateful wretch! Hadst thou known
the value of the candlestick thou wouldst never have brought it to
me. I will show thee its true use.” Then the Dervish placed a
light in each branch, whereupon twelve dervishes appeared and began
to whirl, but on his giving each a blow with a stick, in an instant
they were changed into twelve heaps of sequins, diamonds, and other
precious stones. Ungrateful as Abdallah had shown himself, yet the
Dervish gave him two camels laden with gold, and a slave, telling
him that he must depart the next morning. During the night Abdallah
stole the candlestick and placed it at the bottom of his sacks. At
daybreak he took leave of the generous Dervish and set off. When
about half a day’s journey from his own city he sold the
slave, that there should be no [pg 144]witness to his former
poverty, and bought another in his stead. Arriving home, he
carefully placed his loads of treasure in a private chamber, and
then put a light in each branch of the candlestick; and when the
twelve dervishes appeared, he dealt each of them a blow with a
stick. But he had not observed that the good Dervish employed his
left hand, and he had naturally used his right, in consequence of
which the twelve dervishes drew each from under their robes a heavy
club and beat him till he was nearly dead, and then vanished, as
did also the treasure, the camels, the slave, and the
wonder-working candlestick!⁴⁹

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 Kádirí’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 [pg 145]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
Bráhman, 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 the pearl drops from the head of another of the
friends, and a silver mine is found; but the two others, believing
that better things were in store farther on, left him to his
treasure, and proceeded on their way till the pearl of the third
companion dropped, and they found in the place a rich gold mine. In
vain does he endeavour to persuade his companion to be content with
the wealth here obtainable: he disdainfully refuses, saying that,
since copper, silver, and gold had been found, fortune had
evidently reserved something infinitely better for him; and so he
quitted his friend and went on, till he reached a narrow valley
destitute of water; the air like that of Jehennan;⁵⁰ the surface of the
earth like [pg 146]infernal fire; no animal or bird was
to be seen; and chilling blasts alternated with sulphurous
exhalations. Here the fourth pearl dropped and the owner discovered
a mine of diamonds and other gems, but the ground was covered with
snakes, cockatrices, and the most venomous serpents. On seeing this
he determines to return and share the produce of the third
companion’s gold mine; but when he comes to the spot he can
find no trace of the mine or of the owner. Proceeding next to the
silver mine, he finds it is exhausted, and his friend who owned it
has gone; so he will now content himself with copper; but, alas!
his first friend had died the day before his arrival, and strangers
were now in possession of the mine, who laughed at his pretensions,
and even beat him for his impertinence. Sad at heart, he journeys
on to where he and his companions had met the Bráhman, but
he had long since departed to a far distant country; and thus,
through his obstinacy and avarice, he was overwhelmed with poverty
and disgrace—without money and without friends.

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 [pg 147]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 Sákyamuni 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, Máitri 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
Máitri 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.’
[pg
148]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 Máitri, 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 Máitri. 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.’”

III

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 [pg 149]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
[pg
150]have for pleasure? And when the lamp of my life is
extinguished, the spring will return in vain.”

Nakhshabí, 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

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 [pg 151]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 Hindústán 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.

[pg
152]Nakhshabí, 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
perís [or fairies] sitting near him, with [pg 153]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 perís
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 perís 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.”

[pg
154]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 perís, 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 spirits whose money never rusts in their possession,
finding his habitation inadequate for the entertainment of his
guests, built another, more [pg 155]spacious and magnificent, to
which he invited the whole city, and placed the magic bowl in the
middle of the grand saloon, and every time he made a dip pulled out
whatever was wished for. Though the views of his visitors were
various, contentment was visibly inscribed on every forehead: the
hungry were filled with the bread of plenty; the aqueducts
overflowed with the wine of Shíráz; the effeminate
were satiated with musky odours, and the thirst of avarice was
quenched by the bowl of abundance. The wondering spectators
exclaimed: “This is no bowl, but a boundless ocean of
mystery! It is not what it appears to be, a piece of furniture, but
an inexhaustible magazine of treasure!”

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!”

[pg
156]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 fakír 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 [pg
157]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 múnshí [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 Kathá Sarit Ságara (Ocean
of the Streams of Story), a [pg 158]very large collection of tales
and apologues, composed, in Sanskrit, by Somadeva, in the 12th
century, after a much older work, the Vrihat Kathá
(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 perís 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
Saádí’s Gulistán and several
other Eastern story-books.

[pg
159]In Kádíri’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
Tantrákhyána, 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 [pg 160]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
Nakhshabí’s version in Tútí
Náma, as given above.

IV

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
Kádíri’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 [pg 161]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
kází, but he still persists in denying that he had
ever received any money from the complainant. The
kází 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
kází 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.

Kázís 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
Kádiri) 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 [pg 162]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 vazírs 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 vazírs had
deceived him, he sternly reprimanded them, at the same time
expressing his fixed resolution of marrying the girl. The
vazírs 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 (Vetála Panchavinsati), according to
the [pg
163]Sanskrit version found in the Kathá Sarit
Ságara; 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
Bráhman was travelling to the court of an illustrious
rájá he rested about the [pg 164]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 Bráhman 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 rabáb, and, in short, all the other
instruments of wind and strings.

[pg
165]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.

[pg
166]

V

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 vazír and made their
condition known to him. The vazír 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. But the [pg 167]kaysar
waxed wroth at this, and refused to give his daughter to the king.
When the ambassador returned thus unsuccessful, the king, enraged
at being made of no account, resolved to make war upon the kaysar,
and, opening the doors of his treasury, he distributed much money
among his troops, and then, “with a woe-bringing lust, and a
blood-drinking army, he trampled Rome and the Romans in the
dust.” And when the kaysar was become powerless, he sent his
daughter to the king, who married her according to the law of
Islám.

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, [pg 168]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 why
did she send the merchant?” The king, enraged, went into the
harem. [pg
169]The queen saw from his countenance that the occurrence
of the night before had become known to him, and she said:
“Be it not that I see the king angry.” He said:
“How should I not be angry? Thou, by craft, and trickery, and
intrigue, and plotting, hast brought thy desire from
Rome—what wantonness is this that thou hast done?” Then
he thought to slay her, but he forbore, because of his great love
for her. But he ordered the chamberlain to carry the youth to some
obscure place, and straightway sever his head from his body. When
the poor mother saw this she well-nigh fell on her face, and her
soul was near leaving her body. But she knew that sorrow would not
avail, and she restrained herself.

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 [pg 170]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 [pg 171]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 [pg 172]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 Islám. 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
Bakhtyár Náma (or the Ten Vazírs), the
precise date of which has not been ascertained, but a MS.
Túrkí (Uygúr) 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
Irák 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 [pg
173]smuggled the youth out of the country of Irák
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 Vazírs.

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 Sindibád, so named after the
prince’s tutor, Sindibád the sage: the Arabic version
is known under the title of the Seven Vazírs; the
Hebrew, Mishlé Sandabar; the Greek, Syntipas;
and the Syriac, Sindbán; and its European
modifications, the Seven Wise Masters. In the Parrot-Book
the first to the sixth vazírs 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
vazír simply appears on the seventh day and makes clear the
innocence [pg 174]of the prince. This version, however,
though imperfect, is yet of some value in making a comparative
study of the several texts.

VI

THE TREE OF LIFE—LEGEND OF
RÁJÁ RASÁLÚ—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 pír (holy man), who at once
falls down dead. Upon seeing this the prince doomed the parrot to
death, but the sagacious bird suggested that, [pg 175]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 Kathá Manjarí,
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
[pg
176]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

The incident of fruit or food being poisoned by a serpent is of
frequent occurrence in Eastern stories; thus, in the Book of
Sindibád a man sends his slave-girl [pg 177]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 Kádiri’s abridged text, he put his wife
to death, which was certainly very [pg 178]unjust, since the
lady’s offence was only in design, not in
fact.⁵³

It will be observed that the frame of the Tútí
Náma 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 Sindibád, 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
Panjábí legend of the renowned hero
Rájá Rasálú. In the
Tútí Náma 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 the enraged dame kills it on the spot;
but the parrot, by pursuing a middle course, saves his life and his
master’s honour. In the Panjábí legend
Rájá Rasálú, who was very frequently
from home on hunting excursions, left behind him a parrot and a
maina (hill starling), to act as spies upon his young wife, the
Rání Kokla. One day while Rasálú was
from home she was visited by the [pg 179]handsome
Rájá Hodí, who climbed to her balcony by a
rope (this incident is the subject of many paintings in fresco on
the panels of palaces and temples in India), when the maina
exclaimed, “What wickedness is this?” upon which the
rájá went to the cage, took out the maina, and dashed
it to the ground, so that it died. But the parrot, taking warning,
said, “The steed of Rasálú is swift, what if he
should surprise you? Let me out of my cage, and I will fly over the
palace, and will inform you the instant he appears in sight”;
and so she released the parrot. In the sequel, the parrot betrays
the rání, and Rasálú kills
Rájá Hodí and causes his heart to be served to
the rání for supper.⁵⁴

The parrot is a very favourite character in
Indian fictions, a circumstance originating, very possibly, in the
Hindú 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
Kathá Sarit Ságara 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 [pg 180]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 Tútí
Náma 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
Telúgú story-book, having a somewhat similar frame
(see ante, p. 127, note 43), in which the tales related by the
bird are about chaste wives. But the frames of all Eastern
story-books are more or [pg 181]less slight and of small account. The
value of the Tútí Náma 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
Archæological Review for December, 1889, and at the
close of which he cites, from Poestion’s
Lappländische Märchen, 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 [pg
182]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.

RABBINICAL
LEGENDS, TALES, FABLES, AND APHORISMS.

[pg
185]

I

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, but absolutely
unlawful, to commit these ancient and carefully-preserved
traditions to writing; but after the second destruction of
Jerusalem, under Hadrian, when the Jewish people were scattered
over the world, the system of oral transmission of these traditions
from generation to generation became impracticable, and, to prevent
their being lost, they were formed into a permanent record about
A.D. 190, [pg 186]by Rabbi Jehudah the
Holy, who called his work Mishna, or the Secondary Laws.
About a hundred years later a commentary on it was written by Rabbi
Jochonan, called Gemara, or the Completion, and these two
works joined together are known as the (Jerusalem) Talmud,
or Directory. But this commentary being written in an obscure
style, and omitting many traditions known farther east, another was
begun by Rabbi Asche, who died A.D. 427,
and completed by his disciples and followers about the year 500,
which together with the Mishna formed the Babylonian Talmud. Both
versions were first printed at Venice in the 16th century—the
Jerusalem Talmud, in one folio volume, about the year 1523; and the
Babylonian Talmud, in twelve folio volumes, 1520-30. In the 12th
century Moses Maimonides, a Spanish Rabbi, made an epitome, or
digest, of all the laws and institutions of the Talmud. Such, in
brief, is the origin and history of this famed compilation, which
has been aptly described as an extraordinary monument of human
industry, human wisdom, and human folly.

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 [pg 187]puerile and absurd, and may rank with
the extravagant and incredible monkish legends of mediæval
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
Hindústán.

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

The traducers of the Talmud, among other false assertions, have
represented the Rabbis as holding their own work as more important
than even the [pg 188]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 [pg
189]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

[pg
190]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:

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 mediæval Europe,
did not openly inculcate immoral doctrines.

[pg
191]

II

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, male-female [pg 192]created
he him.”⁵⁸ These two natures it was thought lay
side by side; according to some, the male on the right and the
female on the left; according to others, back to back; while there
were those who maintained that Adam was created with a
tail, and that it was from this appendage that Eve was
fashioned!⁵⁹ Other Jewish traditions (continues Mr.
Hershon) inform us that Eve was made from the thirteenth rib of the
right side, [pg 193]and that she was not drawn out by the
head, lest she should be vain; nor by the eyes, lest she should be
wanton; nor by the mouth, lest she should be given to garrulity;
nor by the ears, lest she should be an eavesdropper; nor by the
hands, lest she should be intermeddling; nor by the feet, lest she
should be a gadder; nor by the heart, lest she should be
jealous;—but she was taken out from the side: yet, in spite
of all these precautions, she had every one of the faults so
carefully guarded against!

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
[pg
194]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.

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

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 [pg 195]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

[pg
196]

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:

Luminous Jewels.

Readers of that most fascinating collection of Eastern tales,
commonly but improperly called the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments, must be familiar [pg 197]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

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. [pg 198]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, [pg 199]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.

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 [pg
200]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. His preparations with this
view were observed by a cunning and treacherous citizen, named
Hidud, who came up, and, accosting him courteously, desired to know
whence he had come and whither he was bound. The stranger answered
that he had come from Hebron, and was journeying to such a place;
that, being refused shelter by everybody, he was preparing to pass
the night in the streets; and that he was provided with bread for
his own use and with fodder for his beast. Upon this Hidud invited
the stranger to his house, assuring him that his lodging should
cost him nothing, while the wants of his beast should not be
forgotten. The stranger accepted of Hidud’s proffered
hospitality, and when they came to his house the citizen relieved
the ass of the saddle and merchandise, and carefully placed them
for security in his private closet. He then led the ass into his
stable and amply supplied him with provender; and returning to the
house, he set food before his guest, who, having supped, retired to
rest. Early in the [pg 201]morning the stranger arose, intending
to resume his journey, but his host first pressed him to partake of
breakfast, and afterwards persuaded him to remain at his house for
two days. On the morning of the third day our traveller would no
longer delay his departure, and Hidud therefore brought out his
beast, saying kindly to his guest: “Fare thee well.”
“Hold!” said the traveller. “Where is my
beautiful saddle of many colours and the strings attached thereto,
together with my bale of rich merchandise?” “What
sayest thou?” exclaimed Hidud, in a tone of surprise. The
stranger repeated his demand for his saddle and goods.
“Ah,” said Hidud, affably, “I will interpret thy
dream: the strings that thou hast dreamt of indicate length of days
to thee; and the many-coloured saddle of thy dream signifies that
thou shalt become the owner of a beauteous garden of odorous
flowers and rich fruit trees.” “Nay,” returned
the stranger, “I certainly entrusted to thy care a saddle and
merchandise, and thou hast concealed them in thy house.”
“Well,” said Hidud, “I have told thee the meaning
of thy dream. My usual fee for interpreting a dream is four pieces
of silver, but, as thou hast been my guest, I will only ask three
pieces of thee.” On hearing this very unjust demand the
stranger was naturally enraged, and he accused Hidud in the court
of Sodom of stealing his property. After each had stated his case,
the judge decreed that the stranger must pay Hidud’s fee,
since he was well known as a professional [pg
202]interpreter of dreams. Hidud then said to the stranger:
“As thou hast proved thyself such a liar, I must not only be
paid my usual fee of four pieces of silver, but also the value of
the two days’ food with which I provided thee in my
house.” “I will cheerfully pay thee for the
food,” rejoined the traveller, “on condition that thou
restore my saddle and merchandise.” Upon this the litigants
began to abuse each other and were thrust into the street, where
the citizens, siding with Hidud, soundly beat the unlucky stranger,
and then expelled him from the city.

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
[pg
203]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

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.” [pg 204]“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 [pg 205]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

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 Hindú 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 [pg 206]before
Pharaoh and complained of Joseph’s misconduct towards their
wives.⁶⁸

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 [pg 207]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.”

[pg
208]

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

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 [pg 209]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

[pg
210]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 [pg 211]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 child was
ominous, and Pharaoh inquired of his counsellors how, in their
judgment, the audacious little Hebrew should be punished.
Bi’lam, the sooth-sayer, answered: “Do not suppose, O
King, that this is necessarily the thoughtless action of a child;
recollect thy dream which I did interpret for thee. But let us
prove whether this child is possessed of understanding beyond his
years, in this manner: let two plates, one containing fire, the
other gold, be placed before the child; and if he grasp the gold,
then is he of superior understanding, and should therefore be put
to death.” The plates, as proposed by the soothsayer, were
placed before the child Moses, who immediately seized upon the
fire, and put it into his mouth, which caused him henceforward to
stammer in his speech.

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 [pg 212]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.

III

LEGENDS OF DAVID AND SOLOMON, ETC.

Muhammed, the great Arabian lawgiver, drew very largely from the
rabbinical legends in his composition of the Kurán, 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 Abú
Bekr had concealed themselves in their flight from [pg 213]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
[pg
214]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

[pg
215]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. [pg 216]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! I’ve got it! I am to beat my wife!” He went home
and gave his spouse a sound thrashing, and she was ever afterwards
a very obedient wife.⁷⁴ The second man got up very early the
next morning, and discovered a number of [pg 217]his
servants idling about, and others loading a cart with goods from
his warehouse, which they were stealing. He now understood the
meaning of Solomon’s advice, and henceforward always rose
early every morning, looked after his servants, and ultimately
became very wealthy. The third man, on reaching home, told his wife
to get him a splendid robe, and to instruct all the servants to
admit no one into his presence without first obtaining his
permission. Next day, as he sat in his private chamber, arrayed in
his magnificent gown, a lady sent her servant to demand his
attendance, and he was about to enter the physician’s
chamber, as usual, without ceremony, when he was stopped, and told
that the doctor’s permission must be first obtained. After
some delay the lady’s servant was admitted, and found the
great doctor seated among his books. On being desired to visit the
lady, the doctor told the servant that he could not do so without
first receiving his fee. In short, by this professional pride, the
physician’s practice rapidly increased, and in a few years he
acquired a large fortune. And thus in each case Solomon’s
advice proved successful.⁷⁵

[pg
218]We learn from the Old Testament that the Queen of Sheba
(or Sába, whom the Arabians identify with Bilkís,
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,
[pg
219]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

[pg
220]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 [pg 221]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 lend him his
signet-ring. The king’s passion for magical knowledge
overcame his prudence, and he handed his ring to the fiend, thereby
depriving himself of all power over his captive, who immediately
swallowed the monarch, and stretching out his wings, flew up into
the air, and shot out his “inside passenger” four
hundred leagues [pg 222]distant from Jerusalem! Ashmedai then
assumed the form of Solomon, and sat on his throne. Meanwhile
Solomon was become a wanderer on the face of the earth, and it was
then that he said (as it is written in the book of Ecclesiasticus
i, 3): “This is the reward of all my labour”; which
word this, one learned Rabbi affirms to have reference to
Solomon’s walking-staff, and another commentator, to his
ragged coat; for the poor monarch went begging from door to door,
and in every town he entered he always cried aloud: “I, the
Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem!” But the people
all thought him insane. At length, in the course of his wanderings,
he reached Jerusalem, where he cried, as usual: “I, the
Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem!” and as he never
varied in his recital, certain wise counsellors, reflecting that a
fool is not constant in his tale, resolved to ascertain, if
possible, whether the poor beggar was really King Solomon. With
this object they assembled, and taking the mendicant with them,
they gave him the magical ring and led him into the
throne-room.⁷⁸ Ashmedai no sooner caught sight of his
old master than he shrieked wildly and flew away; and Solomon
resumed his mild and beneficent rule over the people of Israel. The
Rabbis add, that ever afterwards, even to his dying day, Solomon
was afraid of the prince of devils, and could not go to sleep
without [pg 223]having his bed surrounded by an armed
guard, as it is written in the Book of Canticles, iii, 7, 8.

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

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 [pg 224]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 [pg 225]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 high⁸¹ and his
[pg
226]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!

IV

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. [pg 227]The
significant circumstance has already been noticed (in the
introductory section) that several of the most striking tales in
European mediæval 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 Hindú 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 [pg 228]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 dínars, 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 [pg 229]4000 dínars 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 [pg 230]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 [pg 231]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

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 [pg 232]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 [pg 233]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, [pg
234]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
[pg
235]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

[pg
236]

V

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, lost. Informed that the son of
Nethuna had one like it, the priests went to him and offered him a
very large price for it. He consented to take the sum offered, and
went into an adjoining room to fetch the jewel. On entering he
found his father asleep, his foot resting on the chest wherein the
gem was deposited. Without disturbing his father, [pg 237]he went
back to the priests and told them that he must for the present
forego the large profit he could make, as his father was asleep.
The case being urgent, and the priests thinking that he only said
so to obtain a larger price, offered him more money.
“No,” said he; “I would not even for a moment
disturb my father’s rest for all the treasures in the
world.” The priests waited till the father awoke, when Damah
brought them the jewel. They gave him the sum they had offered him
the second time, but the good man refused to take it. “I will
not,” said he, “barter for gold the satisfaction of
having done my duty. Give me what you offered at first, and I shall
be satisfied.” This they did, and left him with a
blessing.

An Ingenious Will.

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 [pg 239]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 Panchatantra (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 [pg 240]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 Hindús themselves claim the honour of
inventing our present system of numerals (which came into Europe
through the Arabians, who derived it from the Hindús), the
game of chess, and the Fables of Vishnusarman (the
Panchatantra and its abridgment, the Hitopadesa).

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 [pg 241]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.

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

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. [pg 242]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 [pg
243]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 mediæval 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 were
lost—all save this slave, who swam to an island near by. Sad,
despondent, with nothing in this world, he traversed this island
until he approached a large and beautiful city, and [pg 244]many
people approached him, joyously shouting: “Welcome! welcome!
Long live the king!” They brought a rich carriage, and,
placing him therein, escorted him to a magnificent palace, where
many servants gathered about him—clothing him in royal
garments, and addressing him as their sovereign, and expressing
their obedience to his will. The slave was amazed and dazzled,
believing that he was dreaming, and that all he saw, heard, and
experienced was mere passing fantasy. Becoming convinced of the
reality of his condition, he said to some men about him, for whom
he entertained a friendly feeling: “How is this? I cannot
understand it. That you should thus elevate and honour a man whom
you know not—a poor, naked wanderer, whom you have never seen
before—making him your ruler—causes me more wonder than
I can readily express.” “Sire,” they replied,
“this island is inhabited by spirits. Long since they prayed
to God to send them yearly a son of man to reign over them, and he
has answered their prayers. Yearly he sends them a son of man, whom
they receive with honour and elevate to the throne; but his dignity
and power end with the year. With its close the royal garments are
taken from him, he is placed on board a ship, and carried to a vast
and desolate island, where, unless he has previously been wise and
prepared for the day, he will find neither friend nor subject, and
be obliged to pass a weary, lonely, miserable life. Then a new king
is selected here, and so year follows year. The kings who preceded
thee were careless and [pg 245]indifferent, enjoying their power to
the full, and thinking not of the day when it should end. Be wise,
then. Let our words find rest within thy heart.” The
newly-made king listened attentively to all this, and felt grieved
that he should have lost even the time he had already spent for
making preparations for his loss of power. He addressed the wise
man who had spoken, saying: “Advise me, O spirit of wisdom,
how I may prepare for the days which will come upon me in the
future.” “Naked thou camest to us,” replied the
other, “and naked thou wilt be sent to the desolate island,
of which I have told thee. At present thou art king, and mayest do
as pleaseth thee; therefore, send workmen to this island, let them
build houses, till the ground, and beautify the surroundings. The
barren soil will be changed into fruitful fields, people will
journey thither to live, and thou wilt have established a new
kingdom for thyself, with subjects to welcome thee in gladness when
thou shalt have lost thy power here. The year is short, the work is
long; therefore be earnest and energetic.” The king followed
this advice. He sent workmen and materials to the desolate island,
and before the close of his temporary power it had become a
blooming, pleasant, and attractive spot. The rulers who had
preceded him had anticipated the close of their power with dread,
or smothered all thought of it in revelry; but he looked forward to
it as a day of joy, when he should enter upon a career of permanent
peace and happiness. The day came; [pg 246]the freed slave who had
been made a king was deprived of his authority; with his power he
lost his royal garments; naked he was placed upon a ship, and its
sails were set for the desolate island. When he approached its
shores, however, the people whom he had sent there came to meet him
with music, song, and great joy. They made him a prince among them,
and he lived ever after in pleasantness and peace.

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

[pg
247]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. [pg 248]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

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 [pg 249]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.)

[pg
250]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, while she
had not, he asked her how she had preserved her faith; and she
showed his letters to him, declaring her eternal trust. [In like
manner] Israel, in misery and captivity, was mocked by the nations;
her hopes of redemption were made a laughing-stock; her sages
scoffed at; her holy men derided. Into her synagogues, into her
schools, went Israel. She read the letters which her God had
written, and believed in the holy promises which [pg 251]they
contained. God will in time redeem her; and when he says:
“How could you alone be faithful of all the mocking
nations?” she will point to the law and answer: “Had
not thy law been my delight, I should long since have perished in
my affliction.”⁹³

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 [pg 252]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 house with a bowl of fine flour, which she desired
Abraham to place as a votive offering before the idols. Instead of
doing this, however, Abraham took a hammer and broke all the idols
into fragments excepting the largest, into whose hands he then
placed the hammer. On Terah’s return he discovered the
destruction of his idols, and angrily demanded of Abraham, who had
done the mischief. “There came hither a woman,” replied
Abraham, “with a bowl of fine flour, which, as she desired, I
set before the gods, whereupon they disputed among themselves who
should eat first, and the tallest god broke all the rest into
pieces with the hammer.” “What fable is this thou art
telling [pg 253]me?” exclaimed Terah. “As
for the god thou speakest of, is he not the work of my own
hands?’ Did I not carve him out of the timber of the tree
which I cut down in the wilderness? How, then, could he have done
this evil? Verily thou hast broken my idols!”
“Consider, my father,” said Abraham, “what it is
thou sayest—that I am capable of destroying the gods which
thou dost worship!” Then Terah took and delivered him to
Nimrod, who said to Abraham: “Let us worship the fire.”
To which Abraham replied: “Rather the water that quenches the
fire.” “Well, the water.” “Rather the cloud
which carries the water.” “Well, the cloud.”
“Rather the wind that scatters the cloud.” “Well,
the wind.” “Rather man, for he endures the wind.”
“Thou art a babbler!” exclaimed Nimrod. “I
worship the fire, and will cast thee into it. Perchance the God
whom thou dost adore will deliver thee from thence.” Abraham
was accordingly thrown into a heated furnace, but God saved
him.⁹⁴

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 [pg 254]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 of the weary traveller, “Come, and partake
of nature’s bounty,” and to complain that such an offer
should be made in vain. To a contemplative mind, such a scene might
have suggested a thousand delightful reflections. But what charms
could it have for the soul of Alexander, whose breast was filled
with schemes of ambition and conquest; whose eye was familiarised
with rapine and slaughter; and whose ears were accustomed to the
clash of arms—to the groans of the wounded and the dying?
Onward, therefore, he marched. Yet, overcome by fatigue and hunger,
he was soon obliged to halt. He seated himself on the bank of the
river, took a draught of the water, which he found of a very fine
flavour and most refreshing. He then ordered some salt fish, with
which he was well provided, to be brought to him. These he caused
to be dipped in the stream, in order to take off [pg 255]the
briny taste, and was greatly surprised to find them emit a fine
fragrance. “Surely,” said he, “this river, which
possesses such uncommon qualities, must flow from some very rich
and happy country.”

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 [pg 256]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 ordered this to be done. A pair of
scales were brought. The skull was placed in one, a quantity of
gold in the other; when, to the astonishment of the beholders, the
skull over-balanced the gold. More gold was added, yet still the
skull preponderated. In short, the more gold there was put in the
one scale the lower sank that which contained the skull.
“Strange,” exclaimed Alexander, “that so small a
portion of matter should outweigh so large a mass of gold! Is there
nothing that will counterpoise it?” “Yes,”
answered the philosophers, “a very little matter will do
it.” They then took some earth and covered the skull with it,
when immediately down went the gold, and the opposite scale
ascended. “This is very extraordinary,” said Alexander,
astonished. “Can you explain this phenomenon?”
“Great king,” said the sages, “this fragment is
the socket of a human eye, which, though small in [pg
257]compass, is yet unbounded in its desires. The more it
has, the more it craves. Neither gold nor silver nor any other
earthly possession can ever satisfy it. But when it is once laid in
the grave and covered with a little earth, there is an end to its
lust and ambition.”

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

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.

[pg
258]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 Hindú sage, one of
whose [pg
259]three hundred apothegms has been thus rendered into
English by Sir Monier Williams:

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:

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.

VI

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 [pg
260]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

[pg
261]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

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

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

[pg
262]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

Two pieces of money in a large jar make more noise than a
hundred.¹⁰¹

Into the well which supplies thee with water cast no
stones.¹⁰²

When love is intense, both find room enough upon one bench;
afterwards, they may find themselves cramped in a space of sixty
cubits.¹⁰³

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

[pg
263]Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend’s friend
has a friend: be discreet.¹⁰⁵

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

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

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

If a word spoken in time be worth one piece of money, silence in
its place is worth two.¹⁰⁹

Silence is the fence round wisdom.¹¹⁰

[pg
264]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

“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.”

[pg
265]“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 [pg 266]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 [pg
267]in Spain sufficiently accounts for the early
introduction of rabbinical legends into Muhammedan works, apart
from those found in the Kurán.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

ADAM AND
THE OIL OF MERCY.

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 in distresses and
troubles.” And Adam said to Eve: “Arise, and go with
our son Seth near Paradise, and put earth upon your heads, and
weep, beseeching the Lord that he may have compassion upon me, and
send his angel to Paradise, and give me of the tree out of which
flows the oil, that thou mayest bring it unto me; and I shall
anoint myself and have rest, and show thee the manner in which we
were deceived at first.”… And Seth went with his
mother Eve near Paradise, and they wept there, beseeching God to
send his angel to give them the Oil of Compassion. And God sent to
them the archangel Michael, who said to them these words:
“Seth, man of God, do not weary thyself praying in this
supplication about the tree from which flows the oil to anoint thy
father Adam; for it will not happen to thee now, but at the last
times…. Do thou again go to thy father, since the measure of
his life is fulfilled, saving three days.”

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 [pg 268]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.

MUSLIM
LEGEND OF ADAM’S PUNISHMENT, PARDON, DEATH, AND BURIAL.

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
Júddah, 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
tree¹¹³ 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.

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 [pg
269]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 Kaába 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 [pg 270]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 Abú 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 Kurán 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.

MOSES AND
THE POOR WOODCUTTER.

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 [pg 271]commentary on the history of
Músa, or Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver, and in all
probability is of rabbinical origin:

When the prophet Músa—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 Músa, passing
the woodcutter, was thus addressed: “O Músa! 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.” Músa promised, and made the
required petition. His prayer was thus answered from Mount Tor:
“This man’s life is long, O Músa! 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 Músa 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 Músa, 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: “O
friend! I have heard of your feast; I am late, yet it may be that
you have still a little [pg 272]to spare, for I am hungry to my very
heart. The blessing of God be on him who relieves my present
sufferings from hunger!” The woodcutter and his wife agreed
that it would be much better for them to go to Paradise with half a
meal than to leave one fellow creature famishing on earth. So they
shared their own portion with him who had none, and he went away
from them rejoicing. “Now,” said the happy pair,
“we shall eat of our half-share with unmixed delight, and
with thankful hearts. By to-morrow evening we shall be transferred
to Paradise.”

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
Músa, 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
Músa 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.

[pg
273]

PRECOCIOUS
SAGACITY OF SOLOMON.

Commentators on the Kurán 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
Korán, 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
[pg
274]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 Abú 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.

SOLOMON AND
THE SERPENT’S PREY.

A curious popular tradition of Solomon, in French verse, is
given by M. Emile Blémont 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 [pg 275]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
king questioned him, he had no means of proving his zeal. Said the
king: “Give us thy report.” “Bizz! bizz!
bizz!” said the poor fellow. “Speak out, and let thy
talk be clear,” quoth the king. “Bizz! bizz!
bizz!” cried the other again. “What’s the matter
with the little stupid?” exclaimed the king, in a rage. Here
the Swallow intervened in a sweet and shrill tone: “Sire, it
is not his fault. Yesterday we were flying side by side, when
suddenly he became mute. But, by good luck, down there about the
sacred springs, before he met with this misfortune, he told me the
result of his investigations. May I depone in his name?”
“Certainly,” replied Solomon. “What is the best
blood, according to thy companion?” “Sire, it is the
blood of the Frog.”

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; [pg 276]while the Swallow, free and
light, flies in the gold of the day. For she is faithful
Friendship—the little sister of Love.

M. Blémont 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 flesh to the children. The
old man, seeing his daughter divide the fowl in this manner, turned
and looked at his wife, for he was ashamed to speak of it before
the stranger. But when they were going to bed he said to his
daughter: ‘Why, my child, did you cut up the fowl so badly?
The stranger has gone starving to bed.’ ‘Ah, my
father,’ she replied, ‘you have not understood it; wait
till I explain: I gave the head to you, because you are the head of
this house; to my mother I gave the body, because, like the body of
a ship, she has borne us in her sides; I gave the wings to the
stranger, because to-morrow he will take his flight and go away;
and lastly, to us the children I gave the bits of flesh, because we
are the true flesh of the house. Do you understand it now, my good
father?’”—The remainder of the story is so droll
that, though but remotely related to the Capon-carver, I think it
worth while to give a translation of it:

“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.

[pg
277]“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 [pg 278]tasted
the cane. But so be it.’ A few days later the prince married
the young girl, and fêtes 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.
Bérenger-Féraud 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, and we two ate so heartily this morning that I cannot
move, and the hare is gone out for some medicine. We have lots of
more food.” “Let me in,” says the wolf; “I
am a friend.” The monkey, of course, readily consents, and
just as the wolf enters he slips out, and, replacing the stone,
imprisons the wolf. By-and-by the lion and his mate come up.
“We shall have monkey to-day,” says the lion, lifting
the stone—“faith! we shall only have wolf after
all!” So the poor wolf is instantly torn into pieces, while
the clever monkey once more overhead re-enacts his
lion-pantomime.¹¹⁶

Strange as it may appear, there is a variant of the fable of the
[pg
279]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.”

OTHER
RABBINICAL LEGENDS AND TALES.

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 [pg 280]Tale, in the paper entitled “The
Damsel’s Rash Promise,” pp. 315, 317. A selection of
Hebrew Facetiæ 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 Sindibád, 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.