History of Farrukhrúz
This most entertaining little romance, which all readers would wish longer, may be considered as exemplifying—if we can allow ourselves to suppose such strange occurrences to be possible—the adage that “it is better to be born lucky than rich.” Unlike most heroes of romance, the troubles of Farrukhrúz are comparatively few and of very brief duration; and even while he is in tribulation we feel confident that he will presently emerge from it, being so evidently a favourite of Fortune. Several of the incidents in the tale are peculiarly interesting to comparative “storiologists.”
The Ungrateful Brothers—pp. [149-152].
The diabolical treatment of Farrukhrúz by his two brothers was probably adapted from the tale of “The Witch Shamsah and Táhir of Basra,” which occurs in the Turkish story-book, Al-Faraj ba’d al-Shiddah, and of which the following is the outline:
One day three jewels were brought to Harún er-Rashíd, who greatly admired them, but his vazír, Fazl bin Rabí’, told him that a merchant of Basra, called Táhir the dog-worshipper, possessed much finer ones. Táhir is sent for, exhibits his thirty unequalled jewels, protests that he is a good Mussulman, but admits that he has two dogs well cared for, and then proceeds to relate his history: His father ’Asim had left a wealthy estate to him and his two brothers, who soon squander their shares and become destitute. He has pity for them and takes them with him on a trading voyage. While he slept on deck, they threw him overboard. He escapes on a plank and is cast ashore on the island of Gang, where he finds his two brothers. They trump up a charge against him before the king, to whom they had made a present of his favourite slave-girl, and he is thrown into a dark pit, where he meets with a youth who is also the victim of a treacherous brother, and whose sweetheart rescues them both. Wandering forth, they fall in with a caravan, and here again Táhir meets his brothers, who leave him wounded and almost dead on the road, where he is found by a princess, who has his wounds dressed, and takes him to her father’s palace. She is Kamar al-Bahr, the daughter of the king of Gang, and falls in love with him. They are betrayed to the king, who is about to slay them, but makes them over to his vazír, who puts them in a boat. They fall in with pirates, who take the princess and leave Táhir in the boat, which they send adrift. The pirates fight over their prize and kill each other, all but one, whom the princess contrives to get rid of by poison. Táhir, drifting in his boat is picked up by a passing ship, where once more he finds his rascally brothers. They wish to put him to death, but are persuaded to hand him over to the king of Iram, an island on which they land.[277] There the two brothers find the princess of Gang and present her to the king, who immediately becomes madly enamoured of her, but she will not yield to his desires. Then he tries to terrify her into submission by slaying a prisoner before her eyes, who happens to be none other than Táhir. The king was raising his sword to cut off his head but gave way to her entreaties and released him. By the advice and with the help of a kind officer, Táhir crosses the sea to Jazíra-i Firdaus,[278] the realm of the mighty sorceress Shamsah, where he finds a paradise indeed, and enters a magnificent but untenanted palace. Suddenly he hears an awful sound, and a dragon appears and ascends the throne. It then changes into an old woman—Shamsah herself. She hears his story, takes pity on him, and sends with him an innumerable host of wild beasts to the conquest of Iram. He returns victorious to pay homage to Shamsah, who gives him his beloved princess in marriage and along with her a string of thirty jewels, and two magic vials of green and red oil, one having the virtue of changing men into beasts, the other that of restoring them to their natural shape. After a while Táhir returns with his wife to Basra, whither he is soon followed by his two brothers, whom he changes to dogs.—At the intercession of the Khalíf Harún er-Rashíd, Táhir consents to forgive his brothers and restores them to their human form.
If the idea of the ungrateful conduct of the two brothers towards Farrukhrúz was derived from the foregoing tale of Táhir, the latter in its turn, seems to have been adapted from the story of the dog-worshipping merchant of Nishapúr, in the Persian Kissa-i Chehár Darvesh, of which the Bagh o Bahár is a modern Urdú version, and in the latter we find the story told at very considerable length and with more details and incidents than in the Turkish version, while all that relates to the sorcerer Shamsah is peculiar to the latter. It would occupy too much space, in view of what remains to be said regarding other tales in our collection, to give even the outline of the Persian original, but it may be mentioned that in place of the two wicked brothers being changed to dogs they are confined in cages; while the merchant’s dog, who had often saved his life when attempted by his brothers, and continued faithful to him through all his vicissitudes, is adorned with a collar set with priceless rubies and attended by two slaves—the merchant thereby indicating, so to say, his approval of the aphorism of the ancient Hindú sage, that “a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man.”—In our tale, it will be observed, the two wicked brothers do not reappear after they cut Farrukhrúz adrift.
The Three Expeditions—p. [154] ff.
It is a very usual occurrence in folk-tales, as well as in tales of more elaborate construction, for the hero, after becoming the king’s chief favourite, to be the mark for the shafts of envy and malice. Plots are laid in order to bring about his destruction, and, commonly through the suggestions of his enviers, the king is induced to despatch him on most perilous adventures—almost invariably three in succession, as in our little romance. Sometimes it is the hero’s brothers who are envious of his good fortune and thus seek to cause his death; sometimes a courtier whom he has supplanted in the king’s favour and patronage. We have examples of both kinds of enviers in Geldart’s Folk-Lore of Modern Greece, an entertaining collection, as well as useful to such as are interested in the study of popular fictions. Thus, in the tale of “Constantes and the Dragon,” the hero’s elder brother is jealous of his favour with the king, and it is at his suggestion that Constantes is sent to procure for the king (1) the Dragon’s diamond ring; (2) the Dragon’s horse and bell; (3) the very Dragon himself. And in the tale of “Little John, the Widow’s Son,” the hero, thus styled, becomes the king’s hunter, and one day kills (1) a wild beast, whose skin was all covered with precious gems. The king shows this treasure to his courtiers, who declare they have seen nothing like it under heaven. The vazír, however, says the skin is all very well, but if the king had the bones of elephants to build a church with, all the kings of the earth would come to admire it, and the skin as well. So the young hero is despatched to procure (2) a sufficient quantity of elephants’ bones to build a church with, and returns successful. He is then sent, at the suggestion of the vazír, to bring the Dragon’s daughter to the king, in which, of course, he also succeeds, and thus the vazír’s malice comes all to naught.
We have three examples from Sweden in Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories. In No. I of “The Boy that stole the Giant’s Treasures” a peasant dies and leaves his small property to his three sons. The two elder (as in the story of the merchant of Nishapúr in the Chehár Darvesh, referred to, page 495) take all that was valuable, leaving the youngest an old split kneading-trough for his share. The lads all enter the service of a king—the youngest helps in the royal kitchen and is liked by everybody. His two elder brothers are envious of him and induce the king to send him (1) for the Troll’s seven silver ducks; (2) his gold and silver bed-quilt; and (3) his golden harp.[279]—In No. II three brothers set out in quest of their fortune, and the two elder obtain employment as helpers in the royal stables, while the youngest is taken as page to the king’s young son. His brothers are sorely nettled at his preferment, and consult how they might compass his disgrace. They tell the king of a wonderful golden lantern that shed light over both land and water, and add that it ill beseemed a king to lack so precious a treasure. The king asks, excitedly, where this lamp is to be found and who could procure it for him. The brothers reply: “No one can do that, unless it be our brother Pinkel. He knows best where the lantern is to be found.” So the king despatches Pinkel to get him the golden lantern, promising to make him the chief person at court should he bring it. Pinkel goes off and returns in safety with the (1) lantern; and the king made him the chief person at court, as he had promised. The brothers, hearing of his success, become more envious than before, and at their suggestion the king sends him to procure (2) the beautiful goat that had horns of the purest gold, from which little gold bells were suspended, which gave forth a pleasing sound whenever the animal moved; and next (3) the Troll-crone’s fur cloak, that shone like the brightest gold, and was worked with golden threads in every seam; after which the king gave him his daughter in marriage, and he thus became heir to the kingdom, but his brothers continued to be helpers in the royal stable as long as they lived.—In No. III two poor lads roam about the country in search of a livelihood. At length the younger is received by the king among his pages, but the elder goes about begging as before: through the influence of his brother, however, he is shortly taken into the king’s service as a stable-boy. The elder brother is continually thinking of how he might get the younger disgraced. One day when the king visits his stables he praises a favourite horse, upon which the stable-lad tells him that he knows of a golden horse that excels all horses in the world, but only his brother could procure it. In brief, the hero procures for the king (1) the golden horse; (2) the moon lantern; and (3) a princess who had been enchanted.
In No. 8 of M. Legrand’s Contes Populaires Grecs (Paris, 1881) the hero, at the suggestion of the Beardless Man, is sent by the king (1) for the ivory chamber; (2) for the nightingale and wall swallow; and (3) for the belle of the world.—And in M. Renè Basset’s Contes Populaires Berbères (Paris, 1887), No. 27, the hero is despatched by the king, at the instigation of his enemies, to procure (1) the coral tree; (2) the palm tree of the wild beasts; (3) the woman with silver attire; and, of course, returns successful from each perilous expedition. M. Renè Basset in his Notes, pp. 163-166, refers to several parallels or analogues from Brittany, Lorraine, the West Highlands of Scotland, etc.
A story from Salsette, entitled “Karne da Pequeno João,” by Geo. Fr. D’Penha, in the Indian Antiquary, 1888, p. 327 ff., is full of interest to folk-lorists, apart from its connection with the “envious brothers” cycle: Three brothers, of whom Little John, the youngest, is as usual the only clever one, set out to seek their fortunes. They rest for the night in the abode of an ogre, who resolves to kill them while they are asleep and eat all three for breakfast. The ogre has three daughters, and he puts white caps on them and red caps on the youths. The two elder brothers are soon fast asleep, not so Little John. He suspects mischief is brewing, and changes caps with the ogre’s daughters, who are consequently killed by their father in mistake for the three lads. Little John rouses his two brothers and they cross the river, which the ogre cannot do, being unable to swim. In the morning the ogre sees them, and cries out that he will make John pay for it yet! They take service with a king: John is made a shepherd, the others are given places of trust. John puts on one of the caps (he had taken all of them with him) on his head and begins to play on his pipe, whereupon all the sheep begin to caper and dance. The princess sees this, and gets the cap from him, and so on till she has got the sixth, on the promise of her love. The king, at the instigation of the princess, pays John better wages, and his brothers are envious of his good fortune. Soon after this the king falls ill, and the two elder brothers suggest to him that John should be sent to fetch (1) the ogre’s parrot. John manages to carry off the bird, and the ogre cries after him that he’ll make him pay for it yet! But John says he’ll come again. In short, John afterwards procures (2) the ogre’s mare; (3) his diamond ring; (4) his sword; (5) his blanket; and (6) the ogre himself. After each expedition John is promoted to a still higher station till he is made vazír and finally marries the princess. He does not punish his brothers, the good young man, but raises them to high offices of state.
In many instances, as in the case of Farrukhrúz, the hero is assisted by fairies or other superhuman beings, but with the means by which the seemingly impossible tasks are accomplished we have no present concern and so I have passed them over. The third and last expedition of Farrukhrúz, suggested by the envious vazírs of the king of Yaman—who was, like the monarchs of Eastern fictions generally, a credulous blockhead—by which they made sure to cause the death of the favourite, but which ended so disastrously for themselves—thus illustrating the saying that “he who digs a pit for another,” and so forth: the proverb is somewhat musty—namely,
The Expedition to Paradise (p. [183] ff.)
has its close parallel in the Kalmuk Relations of Siddhí Kúr,[280] which form the first part of Miss Busk’s Sagas from the Far East, a work chiefly derived from Jülg’s German translation. In Miss Busk’s book, the story is No. VIII and entitled “How Ananda the Woodcarver and Ananda the Painter strove together,” and, pruned of some redundancies of language, this is how it goes:
Long ago there lived two men, a wood-carver and a painter, both named Ananda. While they appeared to be on very friendly terms, in reality jealousy reigned in their hearts. One day the painter presented himself before the Khán, and told him that his father of blessed memory had been re-born in the kingdom of the gods, in proof of which he handed the Khán a letter, forged by himself, which stated such to be the fact, and directed the Khán to send forthwith Ananda the Woodcarver to the kingdom of the gods, to adorn with his cunning a temple which he was building—“the way and means of his coming shall be explained by Ananda the Painter.” The Khán, believing all this to be true, at once sent for the Woodcarver, informed him of his father the late Khán’s message, and commanded him to prepare forthwith to depart for the kingdom of the gods. The Woodcarver knew that this was the device of the Painter, and resolved to meet craft with craft, but, dissembling his feelings, asked by what means he was to win thither. Hereupon the Khán sent for the Painter, and ordered him to declare the way and manner of the journey to the kingdom of the gods. The Painter replied, addressing the Woodcarver: “When thou hast collected all the materials and instruments appertaining to thy calling, and hast gathered them at thy feet, thou shalt order a pile of beams of wood well steeped in spirit distilled from sesame grain to be heaped around thee. Then, to the accompaniment of every solemn-sounding instrument, kindle the pile, and rise to the gods’ kingdom, borne on the obedient clouds of smoke as on a swift charger.”
The Woodcarver durst not refuse the Khán’s behest, but obtained an interval of seven days in order to collect the materials and implements of his calling, and also to devise some plan of avenging himself upon the Painter. Returning home he consulted with his wife, who proposed a means of evading while seeming to obey the Khán’s command. In a field belonging to her husband, not far from the house, she caused a large flat stone to be laid, on which the sacrifice was to be consummated, and, at night, beneath it she had an underground passage made communicating with the house. And when the eighth day came, the Khán and all the people were assembled round the pile of wood steeped in spirit distilled from sesame grain in the Woodcarver’s field, and in the midst of it stood the Woodcarver, calm and impassable, while all kinds of musical instruments sent forth their solemn-sounding tones. And when the smoke began to rise in concealing density, the Woodcarver pushed aside the stone with his feet and returned to his house by the underground passage. The Painter, never doubting but that he must have fallen a prey to the flames, rubbed his hands, and, pointing to the curling smoke, cried to the people: “Behold the spirit of Ananda the Woodcarver ascending to the kingdom of the gods!” And all the people, believing him, echoed his words.
For the space of a whole month the Woodcarver remained secluded in his house, daily washing his face with milk and keeping out of the sunshine. Then his wife brought him a garment of white gauze, with which he covered himself, and, taking with him a letter which he had forged, he went into the presence of the Khán, who when he saw him said: “Thou art returned from the kingdom of the gods—how didst thou leave my father?” Then he gave the forged letter to the Khán, who caused it to be read aloud to the people. The letter stated that the Woodcarver had executed the sculptures well, but it was necessary that they should send thither Ananda the Painter, in order that they should be suitably decorated. When the Khán heard this letter read he was overjoyed, and he loaded the Woodcarver with rich presents. And then he sent for Ananda the Painter, and told him how his father in the kingdom of the gods required his services. On hearing this the Painter was seized with great fear, but when he looked at the Woodcarver, all white and radiant from the milk-washing, and clad in celestial raiment, as if the light of the gods’ kingdom yet clove to him, and that the fire had not burnt him, neither should it burn himself; moreover, if he refused to go, death must be his portion, while if he went he should, like the Woodcarver, also receive great wealth on his return. So he consented to have his gear in readiness in seven days. And when the prescribed day arrived, the Khán, in his robes of state, and attended by his ministers and officers, and all the people assembled in the Painter’s field, where was a great pile of wood steeped as before in spirit, and in the midst of it they placed the Painter; and, amidst the sound of all sorts of musical instruments, they set fire to the pile. At first the Painter bore the torture, expecting to rise on the clouds of smoke, but soon the extreme pain caused him to shout to the people to come and release him. But the sound of the music—his own device to drown the cries of the Woodcarver—prevailed against him: no one could hear his cries, and he perished miserably in the flames.
This story is doubtless of Buddhist extraction; but it is not very probable that our author was indebted to any Mongolian version such as the foregoing for the materials of the tale he has told so well, in which he represents the vile complotters against the life of Farrukhrúz as crying out for mercy when they saw the awful doom they had brought upon themselves, and the silly King of Yaman as still firm in the belief that they should really go to Paradise and return in safety with his beatified ancestors’ grand presents.
As a pendant, I may reproduce, from Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain’s interesting collection of Aino Folk-Tales, privately printed for the Folk-Lore Society, 1888, the story of “The Wicked Wizard Punished” (No. XXV):
One day a wizard told a man whom he knew that if any one were to climb a certain mountain-peak and jump off on to the belt of clouds below, he would be able to ride about on them as on a horse and see the whole world. Trusting in this, the man did as the wizard had told him, and in very truth was enabled to ride about on the clouds. He visited the whole world in this manner, and brought back a map which he had drawn of the whole world, both of men and gods. On arriving back at the mountain-peak in Aino-land, he stepped off the cloud on to the mountain, and, descending to the valley, told the wizard how successful and delightful the journey had been, and thanked him for the opportunity kindly granted him of seeing sights so numerous and so strange. The wizard was overcome with astonishment. For what he had told the other man was a lie—a wicked lie, invented with the sole intention of causing his death, for he hated him. Nevertheless, seeing that what he had simply meant for an idle tale was apparently an actual fact, he decided to see the world himself in this easy fashion. So, ascending the mountain-peak, and seeing a belt of clouds a short way below, he jumped off on to it, but was instantly dashed to pieces in the valley below. That night the god of the mountain appeared to the good man in a dream, and said: “The wizard has met with the death which his fraud and folly deserved. You I kept from hurt, because you are a good man. So when, obedient to the wizard’s advice, you leapt off on to the cloud I bore you up, and showed you the world to make you a wiser man. Let all men learn from this how wickedness leads to condign punishment!”
Such a tale as this is not at all likely to have been invented by a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos; and we must, I think, consider it as one of the tales and legends which they derived from the Japanese. As it is, the story presents a remarkable general resemblance to the Mongolian tale of the Woodcarver and the Painter, of which one might almost say it is a reflection or an adaptation.