ADDITIONAL NOTE.

DRINKING THE SEA DRY, p. [306].

The same jest is also found in Aino Folk-Tales, translated by Prof. Basil Hall Chamberlain, and published in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1888, as follows:

There was the Chief of the Mouth of the River and the Chief of the Upper Current of the River. The former was very vain-glorious, and therefore wished to put the latter to shame or to kill him by engaging him in an attempt to perform something impossible. So he sent for him and said: “The sea is a useful thing, in so far as it is the original home of the fish which come up the river. But it is very destructive in stormy weather, when it beats wildly upon the beach. Do you now drink it dry, so that there may be rivers and dry land only. If you cannot do so, then forfeit all your possessions.” The other said, greatly to the vain-glorious man’s surprise: “I accept the challenge.” So, on their going down to the beach, the Chief of the Upper Current of the River took a cup and scooped up a little of the sea-water with it, drank a few drops, and said: “In the sea-water itself there is no harm. It is some of the rivers flowing into it that are poisonous. Do you, therefore, first close the mouths of all the rivers both in Aino-land and in Japan, and prevent them from flowing into the sea, and then I will undertake to drink the sea dry.” Hereupon the Chief of the Mouth of the River felt ashamed, acknowledged his error, and gave all his treasures to his rival.

Such an idea as this of first “stopping the rivers” might well have been conceived independently by different peoples, but surely not by such a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos, who must have got the story from the Japanese, who in their turn probably derived it from some Indian-Buddhist source—perhaps a version of the Book of Sindibád. Of course, the several European versions and variants have been copied out of one book into another, and independent invention is out of the question.

IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Orl. Whom ambles Time withal?

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin; for he sleeps easily, because he cannot study, lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning.—As You Like It.

During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names. Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon of an inscription in these words: “I, ———, have subscribed by the hand of ———, because I cannot write”; and such a bishop having thus confessed that he could not write, there followed: “I, ———, whose name is underwritten, have therefore subscribed for him.”

Alfred the Great—who was twelve years of age before a tutor could be found competent to teach him the alphabet—complained, towards the close of the 9th century, that “from the Humber to the Thames there was not a priest who understood the liturgy in his mother-tongue, or could translate the easiest piece of Latin”; and a correspondent of Abelard, about the middle of the 12th century, complimenting him upon a resort to him of pupils from all countries, says that “even Britain, distant as she is, sends her savages to be instructed by you.”

Henri Etienne, in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[¹⁴⁸] says that “the most brutish and blockish ignorance was to be found in friars’ cowls, especially mass-mongering priests, which we are the less to wonder at, considering that which Menot twits them in the teeth withal, that instead of books there was nothing to be found in their chambers but a sword, or a long-bow, or a cross-bow, or some such weapon. But how could they send ad ordos such ignorant asses? You must note, sir, that they which examined them were as wise as woodcocks themselves, and therefore judged of them as penmen of pikemen and blind men of colours. Or were it that they had so much learning in their budgets as that they could make a shift to know their inefficiency, yet to pleasure those that recommended them they suffered them to pass. One is famous among the rest, who being asked by the bishop sitting at the table: ‘Es tu dignus?’ answered, ‘No, my Lord, but I shall dine anon with your men.’ For he thought that dignus (that is, worthy) signified to dine.”

Etienne gives another example, which, however, belongs rather to the class of simpleton stories: A young man going to the bishop for admission into holy orders, to test his learning, was asked by the prelate, “Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?”[¹⁴⁹] and not knowing what answer to make, this promising candidate was refused as inefficient. Returning home, and explaining why he had not been ordained, his father told him that he must be an ass if he could not tell who was the father of the four sons of Aymon. “See, I pray thee,” quoth he, “yonder is Great John, the smith, who has four sons; if a man should ask thee who was their father, wouldst thou not say it was Great John, the smith?” “Yes,” said the brilliant youth; “now I understand it.” Thereupon he went again before the bishop, and being asked a second time, “Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?” he promptly replied: “Great John, the smith.”[¹⁵⁰]

The same author asks who but the churchmen of those days of ignorance corrupted and perverted the text of the New Testament? Thus, in the parable of the lost piece of money, evertit domum, “she overturned the house,” was substituted for everrit domum, “she swept the house.” And in the Acts of the Apostles, where Saul (or Paul) is described as being let down from the house on the wall of Damascus in a basket, for demissus per sportam was substituted demissus per portam, a correction which called forth a rather witty Latin epigram to this effect:

This way the other day did pass

As jolly a carpenter as ever was;

So strangely skilful in his trade,

That of a basket a door he made.

Among the many curious anecdotes told in illustration of the gross ignorance of the higher orders of the clergy in medieval times the two following are not the least amusing:

About the year 1330 Louis Beaumont was bishop of Durham. He was an extremely illiterate French nobleman, so incapable of reading that he could not, although he had studied them, read the bulls announced to the people at his consecration. During that ceremony the word “metropoliticæ” occurred. The bishop paused, and tried in vain to repeat it, and at last remarked: “Suppose that said.” Then he came to “enigmate,” which also puzzled him. “By St. Louis!” he exclaimed in indignation, “it could be no gentleman who wrote that stuff!”

Our second anecdote is probably more generally known: Andrew Forman, who was bishop of Moray and papal legate for Scotland, at an entertainment given by him at Rome to the Pope and cardinals, blundered so in his Latinity when he said grace that his Holiness and the cardinals lost their gravity. The disconcerted bishop concluded his blessing by giving “a’ the fause carles to the de’il,” to which the company, not understanding his Scotch Latinity, said “Amen!”

When such was the condition of the bishops, it is not surprising to find that few of the ordinary priests were acquainted with even the rudiments of the Latin tongue, and they consequently mumbled over masses which they did not understand. A rector of a parish, we are told, going to law with his parishioners about paving the church, cited these words, Paveant illi, non paveam ego, which, ascribing them to St. Peter, he thus construed: “They are to pave the church, not I”—and this was allowed to be good law by a judge who was himself an ecclesiastic.

We have an amusing example of the ignorance of the lower orders of churchmen during the “dark ages” in No. xii of A Hundred Mery Talys, as follows: “The archdekyn of Essex, that had ben longe in auctorite, in a tyme of vysytacyon, whan all the prestys apperyd before hym, called aside iii. of the yonge prestys which were acusyd that th[e]y could not wel say theyr dyvyne service, and askyd of them, when they sayd mas, whether they sayd corpus meus or corpum meum. The fyrst prest sayde that he sayd corpus meus. The second sayd that he sayd corpum meum. And than he asked of the thyrd how he sayde; whyche answered and sayd thus: Sir, because it is so great a dout, and dyvers men be in dyvers opynyons, therfore, because I wolde be sure I wolde not offende, whan I come to the place I leve it clene out and say nothynge therfore. Wherfore the bysshoppe than openly rebuked them all thre. But dyvers that were present thought more defaut in hym, because he hym selfe beforetyme had admytted them to be prestys.” And assuredly they were right in so thinking, and the worthy archdeacon (or bishop, as he is also styled), who had probably passed the three young men “for value received” from their fathers, should have refrained from publicly examining them afterwards.

The covetousness and irreverence of the churchmen in former times are well exemplified in another tale given in the same old jest-book, No. lxxi, which, with spelling modernised, goes thus: “Sometime there dwelled a priest in Stratford-on-Avon, of small learning, which undevoutly sang mass and oftentimes twice on one day. So it happened on a time, after his second mass was done in short space, not a mile from Stratford there met him divers merchantmen, which would have heard mass, and desired him to sing mass and he should have a groat, which answered them and said: ‘Sirs, I will say mass no more this day; but I will say you two gospels for one groat, and that is dog-cheap for a mass in any place in England.’” The story-teller does not inform us whether the pious merchants accepted of the business-like compromise offered by “Mass John.”

Hagiolatry was quite as much in vogue among the priesthood in medieval times as mariolatry has since been the special characteristic of the Romish Church, to the subordination (one might almost say, the suppression) of the only true object of worship; in proof of which, here is a droll anecdote from another early English collection, Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant to be readde (No. cxix): “A friar, preaching to the people, extolled Saint Francis above [all] confessors, doctors, virgins, martyrs, prophets—yea, and above one more than prophets, John the Baptist, and finally above the seraphical order of angels; and still he said, ‘Yet let us go higher.’ So when he could go no farther, except he should put Christ out of his place, which the good man was half afraid to do, he said aloud, ‘And yet we have found no fit place for him.’ And, staying a little while, he cried out at last, saying, ‘Where shall we place the holy father?’ A froward fellow standing among the audience,[¹⁵¹] said, ‘If thou canst find none other, then set him here in my place, for I am weary,’ and so he went his way.”—This “froward fellow’s” unexpected reply will doubtless remind the reader of the old man’s remark in the mosque, about the “calling of Noah,” ante, pp. [66], [67].[¹⁵²]

Probably not less than one third of the jests current in Europe in the 16th century turned on the ignorance of the Romish clergy—such, for instance, as that of the illiterate priest who, finding salta per tria (skip over three leaves) written at the foot of a page in his mass-book, deliberately jumped down three of the steps before the altar, to the great astonishment of the congregation; or that of another who, finding the title of the day’s service indicated only by the abbreviation Re., read the mass of the Requiem instead of the service of the Resurrection; or that of yet another, who being so illiterate as to be unable to pronounce readily the long words in his ritual always omitted them, and pronounced the word Jesus, which he said was much more devotional.

There is a diverting tale of a foolish curé of Brou, which is well worthy of reproduction, in Les Contes; ou, les Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis, by Bonaventure des Periers—one of the best story-books of the 16th century (Bonaventure succeeded the celebrated poet Clement Marot as valet-de-chambre to Margaret, queen of Navarre):

It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her way to Châteaudun to keep there the festival of Easter, passed through Brou on Good Friday, about ten o’clock in the morning, and, wishing to hear service, she went into the church. When the curé came to the Passion he said it in his own peculiar manner, and made the whole church ring when he said, “Quem, quæritis?” But when it came to the reply, “Jesum, Nazarenum,”[¹⁵³] he spoke as low as he possibly could, and in this manner he continued the Passion. The lady, who was very devout and, for a woman, well-informed, in the Holy Scriptures [the reader will understand this was early in the 16th century], and attentive to ecclesiastical ceremonies, felt scandalised at this mode of chanting, and wished that she had never entered the church. She had a mind to speak to the curé, and tell him what she thought of it, and for this purpose sent for him to come to her after service. When he was come, “Monsieur le Curé,” she said to him, “I don’t know where you have learned to officiate on a day like this, when the people ought to be all humility. But to hear you perform the service is enough to drive away anybody’s devotion.” “How so, madame?” said the curé. “How so?” responded the lady. “You have said a Passion contrary to all rules of decency. When our Lord speaks you cry as if you were in the town-hall, and when it is Caiaphas, or Pilate, or the Jews, you speak softly like a young bride. Is this becoming in one like you? Are you fit to be a curé? If you had what you deserve, you would be turned out of your benefice, and then you would be made to know your fault.” When the curé had very attentively listened to the good lady, “Is this what you have to say to me, madame?” said he. “By my soul! it is very true what you say, and the truth is, there are many people who talk of things which they do not understand. Madame, I believe I know my office as well as another, and beg all the world to know that God is as well served in this parish according to its condition as in any place within a hundred leagues of it. I know very well that the other curés chant the Passion quite differently. I could easily chant it like them if I would; but they don’t understand their business at all. I should like to know if it becomes those rogues of Jews to speak as loud as our Lord? No, no, madame; rest assured that in my parish it is my will that God be master, and he shall be as long as I live, and let others do in their parishes according to their understanding.”

This is another of Des Periers’ comical tales at the expense of the clerical orders: There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be because he had seen a little more than his Cato. And this made him set up his feathers and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth in order to make people think him a great doctor. Even at confession he made use of terms which astonished the poor people. One day he was confessing a poor working man, of whom he asked: “Here, now, my friend, tell me, art thou not ambitious?” The poor man said, “No,” thinking this was a word which belonged to great lords, and almost repented of having come to confess to this priest; for he had already heard that he was such a great clerk and that he spoke so grandly that nobody understood him, which he knew by the word ambitious; for although he might have heard it somewhere, yet he knew not at all what it meant. The priest went on to ask: “Art thou not a gourmand?” Said the labourer, who understood as little as before: “No.” “Art thou not superbe” [proud]? “No.” “Art thou not iracund” [passionate]? “No.” The priest, seeing the man always answer, “No,” was somewhat surprised. “Art thou not concupiscent?” “No.” “And what are thou, then?” said the priest. “I am,” said he, “a mason—here’s my trowel.”

Readers acquainted with the fabliaux of the minstrels (the Trouvères) of Northern France know that those light-hearted gentry very often launched their satirical shafts at the churchmen of their day. One of the fabliaux in Barbazan’s collection relates how a doltish, thick-headed priest was officiating in his church on Good Friday, and when about to read the service for that day he discovered that he had lost his book-mark (“mais il ot perdu ses festuz.”)[¹⁵⁴] Then he began to go back and turn over the leaves, but until Ascension Day he found not the Passion service. And the assembled peasants fretted and complained that he made them fast too long, since it was time for the festival. “Had he but said them the service,” interjects the fableur, “should I make you a longer story?” So much did they grumble on all sides, that the priest began on them and fell to saying very rapidly, first in a loud and then in a low tone of voice, “Dixit Dominus Domino meo” (the Lord said unto my Lord); “but,” says the fableur, “I cannot find here any sequel.” The priest having read the text as chance might lead him, read the vespers for Sunday;—and you must know he travailed hard, that the offerings should be worth something to him. Then he fell to crying, “Barabbas!”—no crier could have cried a ban so loud as he cried to them; and everyone began to confess his sins aloud (i.e., struck up “mea culpa”) and cried, “Mercy!” The priest, who read on the sequence of his Psalter, once more began to cry out, saying, “Crucify him!” So that both men and women prayed God that he would defend them from torment. But it sorely vexed the clerk, who said to the priest, “Make an end”; but he answered, “Make no end, friend, till ‘unto the marvellous works’”—referring to a passage in the Psalter. The clerk then said that a long Passion service boots nothing, and that it is never a gain to keep the people too long. And as soon as the offerings of the people were collected he finished the Passion.—“By this tale,” adds the raconteur, “I would show you how—by the faith of Saint Paul!—it as well befits a fool to talk folly and sottishness as it becomes a wise man to speak wisely. And he is a fool who believes me not.”[¹⁵⁵]—A commentary, this, which recalls the old English saying, that “it is as great marvel to see a woman weep as to see a goose go barefoot.”

They were bold fellows, those Trouvères. Not content with making the ignorance and the gross vices of the clerical orders the subjects of their fabliaux, they did not scruple to ridicule their superstitious teachings, as witness the satire on saint-worship, entitled “Du vilain [i.e., peasant] qui conquist Paradis par plait,” the substance of which is as follows: A poor peasant dies suddenly, and his soul escapes at a moment when neither angel nor demon was on the watch, so that, unclaimed and left to his own discretion, the peasant follows St. Peter, who happened to be on his way to Paradise, and enters the gate with him unperceived. When the saint finds that the soul of such a low person has found its way into Paradise he is angry, and rudely orders the peasant out. But the latter accuses St. Peter of denying his Saviour, and, conscience-stricken, the gate-keeper of heaven applies to St. Thomas, who undertakes to drive away the intruder. The peasant, however, disconcerts St. Thomas by reminding him of his disbelief, and St. Paul, who comes next, fares no better—he had persecuted the saints. At length Christ hears of what had occurred, and comes himself. The Saviour listens benignantly to the poor soul’s pleading, and ends by forgiving the peasant his sins, and allowing him to remain in Paradise.[¹⁵⁶]

There exists a very singular English burlesque of the unprofitable sermons of the preaching friars in the Middle Ages, which is worthy of Rabelais himself, and of which this is a modernised extract:

Mollificant olera durissima crusta.—“Friends, this is to say to your ignorant understanding, that hot plants and hard crusts make soft hard plants. The help and the grace of the gray goose that goes on the green, and the wisdom of the water wind-mill, with the good grace of a gallon pitcher, and all the salt sausages that be sodden in Norfolk upon Saturday, be with us now at our beginning, and help us in our ending, and quit you of bliss and both your eyes, that never shall have ending. Amen. My dear curst creatures, there was once a wife whose name was Catherine Fyste, and she was crafty in court, and well could carve. Hence she sent after the four Synods of Rome to know why, wherefore, and for what cause that Alleluja was closed before the cup came once round. Why, believest thou not, forsooth, that there stood once a cock on St. Paul’s steeple-top, and drew up the strapples of his breech? How provest thou that tale? By all the four doctors of Wynberryhills—that is to say, Vertas, Gadatryne, Trumpas, and Dadyltrymsert—the which four doctors say there was once an old wife had a cock to her son, and he looked out of an old dove-cot, and warned and charged that no man should be so hardy either to ride or go on St. Paul’s steeple-top unless he rode on a three-footed stool, or else that he brought with him a warrant of his neck”—and so on, in this fantastical style.

The meaning of the phrase “benefit of clergy” is not perhaps very generally understood. The phrase had its origin in those days of intellectual darkness, when the state of letters was so low that anyone found guilty in a court of justice of a crime which was punishable with death, if he could prove himself able to read a verse in a Latin Bible he was pardoned, as being a man of learning, and therefore likely to be useful to the state; but if he could not read he was sure to be hanged. This privilege, it is said, was granted to all offences, excepting high treason and sacrilege, till after the year 1350. At first it was extended not only to the clergy but to any person that could read, who, however, had to vow that he would enter into holy orders; but with the increase of learning this “benefit to clergy” was restricted by several Acts of Parliament, and it was finally abolished only so late as the reign of George IV.

In Pasquils Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments, a book of facetiæ very popular in the 16th century, a story is told of a criminal at the Oxford Assizes who “prayed his clergy,” and a Bible was accordingly handed to him that he might read a verse. He could not read a word, however, which a scholar who chanced to be present observing, he stood behind him and prompted him with the verse he was to read; but coming towards the end, the man’s thumb happened to cover the remaining words, and so the scholar, in a low voice, said: “Take away thy thumb,” which words the man, supposing them to form part of the verse he was reading, repeated aloud, “Take away thy thumb”—whereupon the judge ordered him to be taken away and hanged. And in Taylor’s Wit and Mirth (1630): “A fellow having his book [that is, having read a verse in the Bible] at the sessions, was burnt in the hand, and was commanded to say: ‘May God save the King.’ ‘The King!’ said he, ‘God save my grandam, that taught me to read; I am sure I had been hanged else.’”

The verse in the Bible which a criminal was required to read, in order to entitle him to the “benefit of clergy” (the beginning of the 51st Psalm, “Miserere mei”), was called the “neck-verse,” because his doing so saved his neck from the gallows. It is sometimes jestingly alluded to in old plays. For example, in Massinger’s Great Duke of Florence, Act iii, sc. 1:

Cataminta.—How the fool stares!

Fiorinda.—And looks as if he were conning his neck-verse;

and in the same dramatist’s play of The Picture:

Twang it perfectly,

As if it were your neck-verse.

In the anonymous Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissell (1603), Act ii, sc. 1, we find this custom again referred to:

Farnese.—Ha, hah! Emulo not write and read?

Rice.—Not a letter, an you would hang him.

Urcenze.—Then he’ll never be saved by his book.

In Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel, the moss-trooper, William of Deloraine, assures the lady, who had warned him not to look into what he should receive from the Monk of St. Mary’s Aisle, “be it scroll or be it book,” that

“Letter nor line know I never a one,

Were’t my neck-verse at Haribee”—

the place where such Border rascals were usually executed.

It was formerly the custom to sing a psalm at the gallows before a criminal was “turned off.” And there is a good story, in Zachary Gray’s notes to Hudibras, told of one of the chaplains of the famous Montrose; how, being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his expeditions, and being upon the ladder and ordered to select a psalm to be sung, expecting a reprieve, he named the 119th Psalm, with which the officer attending the execution complied (the Scottish Presbyterians were great psalm-singers in those days), and it was well for him he did so, for they had sung it half through before the reprieve came. Any other psalm would certainly have hanged him! Cotton, in his Virgil Travestie, thus alludes to the custom of psalm-singing at the foot of the gallows:

Ready, when Dido gave the word,

To be advanced into the halter,

Without the benefit on’s Psalter.

Then ’cause she would, to part the sweeter,

A portion have of Hopkins’ metre,

As people use at execution,

For the decorum of conclusion,

Being too sad to sing, she says.[¹⁵⁷]

If the clergy in medieval times had, as they are said to have had, all the learning among themselves, what a blessed state of ignorance must the laity have been in! And so, indeed, it appears, for there is extant an old Act of Parliament which provides that a nobleman shall be entitled to the “benefit of clergy,” even though he could not read. And another law sets forth that “the command of the sheriff to his officer by word of mouth, and without writing is good; for it may be that neither the sheriff nor his officer can write or read!” Many charters are preserved to which persons of great dignity, even kings, have affixed the sign of the cross, because they were not able to write their names, and hence the term of signing, instead of subscribing. In this respect a ten-year-old Board School boy in these “double-distilled” days is vastly superior to the most renowned of the “barons bold.”

THE BEARDS OF OUR FATHERS.

’Tis merry in the hall when beards wag all.—Old Song.

Among the harmless foibles of adolescence which contribute to the quiet amusement of folks of mature years is the eager desire of youths to have their smooth faces adorned with that “noble” distinction of manhood—a beard. And no wonder. For, should a clever lad, getting out of his “teens,” venture to express opinions contrary to those of his elders present, is he not at once snubbed by being called “a beardless boy”? A boy! Bitter taunt! He very naturally feels that he is grossly insulted, and all because his “dimpled chin never has known the barber’s shear.” Full well does our ingenuous youth know that a man is not wise in consequence of his beard—that, as the Orientals say of women’s long hair, it often happens that men with long beards have short wits; nevertheless, had he but a beard himself, he should then be free from such a wretched “argument”—such an implied accusation of his lack of wit, as that he is beardless. The young Roman watched the first appearance of the downy precursor of his beard with no little solicitude, and applied the household oil to his face—there were no patent specifics in those days for “infallibly producing luxuriant whiskers and moustaches in a few weeks”—to promote its tardy growth, and entitle him, from the incipient fringe, to be styled “barbatulus.” When his beard was full-grown he was called “barbatus.”

It would seem that the beard was held in the highest esteem, especially in Asiatic countries, from the earliest period of which any records have been preserved. The Hebrew priests are commanded in the Book of Leviticus, ch. xix, not to shave off the corners of their beards; and the first High Priest, Aaron, probably wore a magnificent beard, since the amicable relations between brethren are compared, in the 133rd Psalm, to “the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments.” The Assyrian kings intertwined gold thread with their fine beards—and, judging from mural sculptures, curling tongs must have been in considerable demand with them. In ancient Greece the beard was universally worn, and it is related of Zoilus, the founder of the anti-Homeric school, that he shaved the crown of his head, in order that all the virtue should go to the nourishment of his beard. Persius could not think of a more complimentary epithet to apply to Socrates than that of “Magistrum Barbatum,” or Bearded Master—the notion being that the beard was the symbol of profound sagacity.[¹⁵⁸] Alexander the Great, however, caused his soldiers to shave off their beards, because they furnished their enemies with handles whereby to seize hold of them in battle. The beard was often consecrated to the deities, as the most precious offering. Chaucer, in his Knight’s Tale, represents Arcite as offering his beard to Mars:

And evermore, unto that day I dye,

Eternè fyr I wol bifore the fynde,

And eek to this avow I wol me bynde,

My berd, myn heer, that hangeth long a doun,

That neuer yit ne felt offensioun

Of rasour ne of schere, I wol ye giue,

And be thy trewè seruaunt whiles I lyue.[¹⁵⁹]

Selim I was the first Turkish sultan who shaved his beard after his accession to the throne; and when his muftis remonstrated with him for this dangerous innovation, he facetiously replied that he had removed his beard in order that his vazírs should not have wherewith to lead him. The beards of modern Persian soldiers were abolished in consequence of a singular accident, which Morier thus relates in his Second Journey: When European discipline was introduced into the Persian army, Lieutenant Lindsay raised a corps of artillery. His zeal was only equalled by the encouragement of the king, who liberally adopted every method proposed. It was only upon the article of shaving off the beards of the Persian soldiers that the king was inexorable; nor would the sacrifice have ever taken place had it not happened that, in discharging the guns before the prince, a powder-horn exploded in the hand of a gunner who had been gifted with a very long beard, which in an instant was blown away from his chin. Lieutenant Lindsay, availing himself of this lucky opportunity to prove his argument on the inconvenience of beards to soldiers, immediately produced the scorched gunner before the prince, who was so much struck with his woeful appearance that the abolition of military beards was at once decided upon.

It was customary for the early French monarchs to place three hairs of their beard under the seal attached to important documents; and there is still extant a charter of the year 1121, which concludes with these words: “Quod ut ratum et stabile perseveret in posterum, præsentis scripto sigilli mei robur apposui cum tribus pilis barbæ meæ.”—In obedience to his spiritual advisers, Louis VII of France had his hair cut close and his beard shaved off. But his consort Eleanor was so disgusted with his smooth face and cropped head that she took her own measures to be revenged, and the poor king was compelled to obtain a divorce from her. She subsequently gave her hand to the Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II of England, and the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne were her dowry. From this sprang those terrible wars which continued for three centuries, and cost France untold treasure and three millions of men—and all because Louis did not consult his consort before shaving off his beard!

Charles the Fifth of Spain ascending the throne while yet a mere boy, his courtiers shaved their beards in compliment to the king’s smooth face. But some of the shaven Dons were wont to say bitterly, “Since we have lost our beards, we have lost our souls!” Sully, the eminent statesman and soldier, scorned, however, to follow the fashion, and, being one day summoned to Court on urgent business of State, his beard was made the subject of ridicule by the foppish courtiers. The veteran thus gravely addressed the king: “Sire, when your father, of glorious memory, did me the honour to consult me in grave State matters, he first dismissed the buffoons and stage-dancers from the presence-chamber.” It may be readily supposed that after this well-merited rebuke the grinning courtiers at once disappeared.

Julius II, one of the most warlike of all the Roman Pontiffs, was the first Pope who permitted his beard to grow, to inspire the faithful with still greater respect for his august person. Kings and their courtiers were not slow to follow the example of the Head of the Church and the ruler of kings, and the fashion soon spread among people of all ranks.

So highly prized was the beard in former times that Baldwin, Prince of Edessa, as Nicephorus relates in his Chronicle, pawned his beard for a large sum of money, which was redeemed by his father Gabriel, Prince of Melitene, to prevent the ignominy which his son must have suffered by its loss. And when Juan de Castro, the Portuguese admiral, borrowed a thousand pistoles from the citizens of Goa he pledged one of his whiskers, saying, “All the gold in the world cannot equal this natural ornament of my valour.” And it is said the people of Goa were so much affected by the noble message that they remitted the money and returned the whisker—though of what earthly use it could prove to the gallant admiral, unless, perhaps, to stuff a tennis ball, it is not easy to say.

To deprive a man of his beard was a token of ignominious subjection, and is still a common mode of punishment in some Asiatic countries. And such was the treatment that the conjuror Pinch received at the hands of Antipholus of Ephesus and his man, in the Comedy of Errors, according to the servant’s account of the outrage, who states that not only had they “beaten the maids a-row,” but they

bound the doctor,

Whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire;

And ever as it blazed they threw on him

Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair (v, 1).

In Persia and India when a wife is found to have been unfaithful, her hair—the distinguishing ornament of woman, as the beard is considered to be that of man—is shaved off, among other indignities.

Don Sebastian Cobbarruvius gravely relates the following marvellous legend to show that nothing so much disgraced a Spaniard as pulling his beard: “A noble of that nation dying (his name Cid Lai Dios), a Jew, who hated him much in his lifetime, stole privately into the room where his body was laid out, and, thinking to do what he never durst while living, stooped down and plucked his beard; at which the body started up, and drawing out half way his sword, which lay beside him, put the Jew in such a fright that he ran out of the room as if a thousand devils had been behind him. This done, the body lay down as before to rest; and,” adds the veracious chronicler, “the Jew after that turned Christian.”—In the third of Don Quevedo’s Visions of the Last Judgment, we read that a Spaniard, after receiving sentence, was taken into custody by a pair of demons who happened to disorder the set of his moustache, and they had to re-compose them with a pair of curling-tongs before they could get him to proceed with them!

By the rules of the Church of Rome, lay monks were compelled to wear their beards, and only the priests were permitted to shave.[¹⁶⁰] The clergy at length became so corrupt and immoral, and lived such scandalous lives, that they could not be distinguished from the laity except by their close-shaven faces. The first Reformers, therefore, to mark their separation from the Romish Church, allowed their beards to grow. Calvin, Fox, Cranmer, and other leaders of the Reformation are all represented in their portraits with long flowing beards. John Knox, the great Scottish Reformer, wore, as is well known, a beard of prodigious length.

The ancient Britons shaved the chin and cheeks, but wore their moustaches down to the breast. Our Saxon ancestors wore forked beards. The Normans at the Conquest shaved not only the chin, but also the back of the head. But they soon began to grow very long beards. During the Wars of the Roses beards grew “small by degrees and beautifully less.”

Queen Mary of England, in the year 1555, sent to Moscow four accredited agents, who were all bearded; but one of them, George Killingworth, was particularly distinguished by a beard five feet two inches long, at the sight of which, it is said, a smile crossed the grim features of Ivan the Terrible himself; and no wonder. But the longest beard known out of fairy tales was that of Johann Mayo, the German painter, commonly called “John the Bearded.” His beard actually trailed on the ground when he stood upright, and for convenience he usually kept it tucked in his girdle. The emperor Charles V, it is said, was often pleased to cause Mayo to unfasten his beard and allow it to blow in the faces of his courtiers.—A worthy clergyman in the time of Queen Elizabeth gave as the best reason he had for wearing a beard of enormous length, “that no act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance.”

Queen Elizabeth, in the first year of her reign, made an abortive attempt to abolish her subjects’ beards by an impost of 3s. 4d. a year (equivalent to four times that sum in these “dear” days) on every beard of more than a fortnight’s growth. And Peter the Great also laid a tax upon beards in Russia: nobles’ beards were assessed at a rouble, and those of commoners at a copeck each. “But such veneration,” says Giles Fletcher, “had this people for these ensigns of gravity that many of them carefully preserved their beards in their cabinets to be buried with them, imagining perhaps that they should make but an odd figure in their grave with their naked chins.”

The beard of the renowned Hudibras was portentous, as we learn from Butler, who thus describes the Knight’s hirsute honours:

His tawny beard was th’ equal grace

Both of his wisdom and his face;

In cut and dye so like a tile,

A sadden view it would beguile:

The upper part whereof was whey,

The nether orange mixt with grey.

This hairy meteor did denounce

The fall of sceptres and of crowns;

With grisly type did represent

Declining age of government,

And tell, with hieroglyphic spade,

Its own grave and the state’s were made.

Philip Nye, an Independent minister in the time of the Commonwealth, and one of the famous Assembly of Divines, was remarkable for the singularity of his beard. Hudibras, in his Heroical Epistle to the lady of his “love,” speaks of

Amorous intrigues

In towers, and curls, and periwigs,

With greater art and cunning reared

Than Philip Nye’s thanksgiving beard.

Nye opposed Lilly the astrologer with no little virulence, for which he was rewarded with the privilege of holding forth upon Thanksgiving Day, and so, as Butler says, in some MS. verses,

He thought upon it and resolved to put

His beard into as wonderful a cut.

Butler even honoured Nye’s beard with a whole poem, entitled “On Philip Nye’s Thanksgiving Beard,” which is printed in his Genuine Remains, edited by Thyer, vol. i, p. 177 ff., and opens thus:

A beard is but the vizard of the face,

That nature orders for no other place;

The fringe and tassel of a countenance

That hides his person from another man’s,

And, like the Roman habits of their youth,

Is never worn until his perfect growth.

And in another set of verses he has again a fling at the obnoxious beard of the same preacher:

This reverend brother, like a goat,

Did wear a tail upon his throat;

The fringe and tassel of a face

That gives it a becoming grace,

But set in such a curious frame,

As if ’twere wrought in filograin;

And cut so even as if ’t had been

Drawn with a pen upon the chin.

As it was customary among the peoples of antiquity who wore their beards to cut them off, and for those who shaved to allow their beards to grow, in times of mourning, so many of the Presbyterians and Independents vowed not to cut their beards till monarchy and episcopacy were utterly destroyed. Thus in a humorous poem, entitled “The Cobler and the Vicar of Bray,” we read:

This worthy knight was one that swore,

He would not cut his beard

Till this ungodly nation was

From kings and bishops cleared.

Which holy vow he firmly kept,

And most devoutly wore

A grisly meteor on his face,

Till they were both no more.

In Pericles, Prince of Tyre, when the royal hero leaves his infant daughter Marina in charge of his friend Cleon, governor of Tharsus, to be brought up in his house, he declares to Cleon’s wife (Act iii, sc. 3):

Till she be married, madam,

By bright Diana, whom we honour all,

Unscissored shall this hair of mine remain,

Though I show well in’t;

and that he meant his beard is evident from what he says at the close of the play, when his daughter is about to be married to Lysimachus, governor of Mitylene (Act v, sc. 3):

And now

This ornament, that makes me look so dismal,

Will I, my loved Marina, clip to form;

And what these fourteen years no razor touched,

To grace thy marriage day, I’ll beautify.

Scott, in his Woodstock, represents Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, whilom Ranger of Woodstock Park (or Chase), as wearing his full beard, to indicate his profound grief for the death of the “Royal Martyr,” which indeed was not unusual with elderly and warmly devoted Royalists until the “Happy Restoration”—save the mark!

Another extraordinary beard was that of Van Butchell, the quack doctor, who died at London in 1814, in his 80th year. This singular individual had his first wife’s body carefully embalmed and preserved in a glass case in his “study,” in order that he might enjoy a handsome annuity to which he was entitled “so long as his wife remained above ground.” His person was for many years familiar to loungers in Hyde Park, where he appeared regularly every afternoon, riding on a little pony, and wearing a magnificent beard of twenty years’ growth, which an Oriental might well have envied, the more remarkable in an age when shaving was so generally practised.—A jocular epitaph was composed on “Mary Van Butchell,” of which these lines may serve as a specimen:

O fortunate and envied man!

To keep a wife beyond life’s span;

Whom you can ne’er have cause to blame,

Is ever constant and the same;

Who, qualities most rare, inherits

A wife that’s dumb, yet full of spirits.

The celebrated Dr. John Hunter is said to have embalmed the body of Van Butchell’s first wife—for the bearded empiric married again—and the “mummy,” in its original glass case, is still to be seen in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeon’s, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, London.

It was once the fashion for gallants to dye their beards various colours, such as yellow, red, gray, and even green. Thus in the play of Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom the weaver asks in what kind of beard he is to play the part of Pyramis—whether “in your straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard, your perfect yellow?” (Act i, sc. 2.) In ancient church pictures, and in the miracle plays performed in medieval times, both Cain and Judas Iscariot were always represented with yellow beards. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Quickly asks Simple whether his master (Slender) does not wear “a great round beard, like a glover’s paring-knife,” to which he replies: “No, forsooth; he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard—a Cain-coloured beard” (Act i, sc. 4).—Allusions to beards are of very frequent occurrence in Shakspeare’s plays, as may be seen by reference to any good Concordance, such as that of the Cowden Clarkes.

Harrison, in his Description of England, ed. 1586, p. 172, thus refers to the vagaries of fashion of beards in his time: “I will saie nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like womans lockes, manie times cut off, above or under the eares, round as by a woodden dish. Neither will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others with a pique de vant (O fine fashion!), or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailors. And therfore if a man have a leane and streight face, a marquesse Ottons cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter like, a long slender beard will make it seeme the narrower; if he be wesell becked, then much heare left on the cheekes will make the owner looke big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose.”[¹⁶¹]

Barnaby Rich, in the conclusion of his Farewell to the Military Profession (1581), says that the young gallants sometimes had their beards “cutte rounde, like a Philippes doler; sometymes square, like the kinges hedde in Fishstreate; sometymes so neare the skinne, that a manne might judge by his face the gentlemen had had verie pilde lucke.”[¹⁶²]

In Taylor’s Superbiae Flagellum we find the following amusing description of the different “cuts” of beards:

Now a few lines to paper I will put,

Of mens Beards strange and variable cut:

In which there’s some doe take as vaine a Pride,

As almost in all other things beside.

Some are reap’d most substantiall, like a brush,

Which makes a Nat’rall wit knowne by the bush:

(And in my time of some men I have heard,

Whose wisedome have bin onely wealth and beard)

Many of these the proverbe well doth fit,

Which sayes Bush naturall, More haire then wit.

Some seeme as they were starched stiffe and fine,

Like to the bristles of some angry swine:

And some (to set their Loves desire on edge)

Are cut and prun’de like to a quickset hedge.

Some like a spade, some like a forke, some square,

Some round, some mow’d like stubble, some starke bare,

Some sharpe Steletto fashion, dagger like,

That may with whispering a mans eyes out pike:

Some with the hammer cut, or Romane T,[¹⁶³]

Their beards extravagant reform’d must be,

Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion,

Some circular, some ovall in translation,

Some perpendicular in longitude,

Some like a thicket for their crassitude,

That heights, depths, bredths, triforme, square, ovall, round,

And rules Ge’metricall in beards are found.

Besides the upper lip’s strange variation,

Corrected from mutation to mutation;

As ’twere from tithing unto tithing sent,

Pride gives to Pride continuall punishment.

Some (spite their teeth) like thatch’d eves downeward grows,

And some growes upwards in despite their nose.

Some their mustatioes of such length doe keepe,

That very well they may a maunger sweepe:

Which in Beere, Ale, or Wine, they drinking plunge,

And sucke the liquor up, as ’twere a Spunge;

But ’tis a Slovens beastly Pride, I thinke,

To wash his beard where other men must drinke.

And some (because they will not rob the cup),

Their upper chaps like pot hookes are turn’d up;

The Barbers thus (like Taylers) still must be,

Acquainted with each cuts variety—

Yet though with beards thus merrily I play,

’Tis onely against Pride which I inveigh:

For let them weare their haire or their attire,

According as their states or mindes desire,

So as no puff’d up Pride their hearts possesse,

And they use Gods good gifts with thankfulnesse.[¹⁶⁴]

The staunch Puritan Phillip Stubbes, in the second part of his Anatomie of Abuses (1583), thus rails at the beards and the barbers of his day:

“There are no finer fellowes under the sunne, nor experter in their noble science of barbing than they be. And therefore in the fulnes of their overflowing knowledge (oh ingenious heads, and worthie to be dignified with the diademe of follie and vaine curiositie), they have invented such strange fashions and monstrous maners of cuttings, trimings, shavings and washings, that you would wonder to see. They have one maner of cut called the French cut, another the Spanish cut, one called the Dutch cut, another the Italian, one the newe cut, another the old, one of the bravado fashion, another of the meane fashion. One a gentlemans cut, another the common cut, one cut of the court, another of the country, with infinite the like vanities, which I overpasse. They have also other kinds of cuts innumerable; and therefore when you come to be trimed, they will aske you whether you will be cut to looke terrible to your enimie, or amiable to your freend, grime and sterne in countenance, or pleasant and demure (for they have divers kinds of cuts for all these purposes, or else they lie). Then when they have done all their feats, it is a world to consider, how their mowchatowes [i.e., moustaches] must be preserved and laid out, and from one cheke to another, yea, almost from one eare to another, and turned up like two hornes towards the forehead. Besides that, when they come to the cutting of the haire, what snipping and snapping of the cycers is there, what tricking and toying, and all to tawe out mony, you may be sure. And when they come to washing, oh how gingerly they behave themselves therein. For then shall your mouth be bossed with the lather or fome that riseth of the balle (for they have their sweet balles wherewith-all they use to washe), your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also. Then snap go the fingers ful bravely, God wot. Thus this tragedy ended, comes me warme clothes, to wipe and dry him withall; next the eares must be picked and closed againe togither artificially forsooth. The haire of the nostrils cut away, and every thing done in order comely to behold. The last action in this tragedie is the paiment of monie. And least these cunning barbers might seeme unconscionable in asking much for their paines, they are of such a shamefast modestie, as they will aske nothing at all, but standing to the curtisie and liberalitie of the giver, they will receive all that comes, how much soever it be, not giving anie againe, I warrant you: for take a barber with that fault, and strike off his head. No, no, such fellowes are Rarae aves in terris, nigrisque similimi cygnis, Rare birds upon the earth, and as geason as blacke swans. You shall have also your orient perfumes for your nose, your fragrant waters for your face, wherewith you shall bee all to besprinkled, your musicke againe, and pleasant harmonic, shall sound in your eares, and all to tickle the same with vaine delight. And in the end your cloke shall be brushed, and ‘God be with you Gentleman!’”[¹⁶⁵]

A very curious Ballad of the Beard, of the time of Charles I, if not earlier, is reproduced in Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume, edited by F. W. Fairholt, for the Percy Society, in which “the varied forms of beards which characterised the profession of each man are amusingly descanted on”:

The beard, thick or thin, on the lip or the chin,

Doth dwell so near the tongue,

That her silence in the beards defence

May do her neighbour wrong.

Now a beard is a thing that commands in a king,

Be his sceptre ne’er so fair:

Where the beard bears the sway the people obey,

And are subject to a hair.

’Tis a princely sight, and a grave delight,

That adorns both young and old;

A well-thatcht face is a comely grace,

And a shelter from the cold.

When the piercing north comes thundering forth,

Let a barren face beware;

For a trick it will find, with a razor of wind,

To shave a face that’s bare.

But there’s many a nice and strange device

That doth the beard disgrace;

But he that is in such a foolish sin

Is a traitor to his face.

Now of beards there be such company,

And fashions such a throng,

That it is very hard to handle a beard,

Tho’ it be never so long.

The Roman T, in its bravery,

Both first itself disclose,

But so high it turns, that oft it burns

With the flames of a torrid nose.

The stiletto-beard, oh, it makes me afear’d,

It is so sharp beneath,

For he that doth place a dagger in ’s face,

What wears he in his sheath?

But, methinks, I do itch to go thro’ the stitch

The needle-beard to amend,

Which, without any wrong, I may call too long,

For a man can see no end.

The soldier’s beard doth march in shear’d,

In figure like a spade,

With which he’ll make his enemies quake,

And think their graves are made.

What doth invest a bishop’s breast,

But a milk-white spreading hair?

Which an emblem may be of integrity

Which doth inhabit there.

But oh, let us tarry for the beard of King Harry,

That grows about the chin,

With his bushy pride, and a grove on each side,

And a champion ground between.

“Barnes in the defence of the Berde” is another curious piece of verse, or rather of arrant doggrel, printed in the 16th century. It is addressed to Andrew Borde, the learned and facetious physician, in the time of Henry VIII, who seems to have written a tract against the wearing of beards, of which nothing is now known. In the second part Barnes (whoever he was) says:

But, syr, I praye you, yf you tell can,

Declare to me, when God made man,

(I meane by our forefather Adam)

Whyther he had a berde than;

And yf he had, who dyd hym shave,

Syth that a barber he coulde not have.

Well, then, ye prove hym there a knave,

Bicause his berde he dyd so save:

I fere it not.

Sampson, with many thousandes more

Of auncient phylosophers (!), full great store,

Wolde not be shaven, to dye therefore;

Why shulde you, then, repyne so sore?

Admit that men doth imytate

Thynges of antyquité, and noble state,

Such counterfeat thinges oftymes do mytygate

Moche ernest yre and debate:

I fere it not.

Therefore, to cease, I thinke be best;

For berdyd men wolde lyve in rest.

You prove yourselfe a homly gest,

So folysshely to rayle and jest;

For if I wolde go make in ryme,

How new shavyd men loke lyke scraped swyne,

And so rayle forth, from tyme to tyme,

A knavysshe laude then shulde be myne:

I fere it not.

What should this avail him? he asks; and so let us all be good friends, bearded and unbearded.[¹⁶⁶]

But Andrew Borde, if he did ever write a tract against beards, must have formerly held a different opinion on the subject, for in his Breviary of Health, first printed in 1546, he says: “The face may have many impediments. The first impediment is to see a man having no beard, and a woman to have a beard.” It was long a popular notion that the few hairs which are sometimes seen on the chins of very old women signified that they were in league with the arch-enemy of mankind—in plain English, that they were witches. The celebrated Three Witches who figure in Macbeth, “and palter with him in a double sense,” had evidently this distinguishing mark, for says Banquo to the “weird sisters” (Act i, sc. 2):

You should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so.

And in the ever-memorable scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor, when Jack Falstaff, disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, is escaping from Ford’s house, he is cuffed and mauled by Ford, who exclaims, “Hang her, witch!” on which the honest Cambrian Sir Hugh Evans sapiently remarks: “Py yea and no, I think the ‘oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a ‘oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under her muffler!” (Act iv, sc. 2.)

There have been several notable bearded women in different parts of Europe. The Duke of Saxony had the portrait painted of a poor Swiss woman who had a remarkably fine, large beard. Bartel Græfjë, of Stuttgart, who was born in 1562, was another bearded woman. In 1726 there appeared at Vienna a female dancer with a large bushy beard. Charles XII of Sweden had in his army a woman who wore a beard a yard and a half in length. In 1852 Mddle. Bois de Chêne, who was born at Genoa in 1834, was exhibited in London: she had “a profuse head of hair, a strong black beard, and large bushy whiskers.” It is not unusual to see dark beauties in our own country with a moustache which must be the envy of “young shavers.” And, apropos, the poet Rogers is said to have had a great dislike of ladies’ beards, such as this last described; and he happened to be in a circulating library turning over the books on the counter, when a lady, who seemed to cherish her beard with as much affection as the young gentlemen aforesaid, alighted from her carriage, and, entering the shop, asked the librarian for a certain book. The polite man of books replied that he was sorry he had not a copy at present. “But,” said Roger, slily, “you have the Barber of Seville, have you not?” “O yes,” said the bookseller, not seeing the poet’s drift, “I have the Barber of Seville, very much at your ladyship’s service.” The lady drove away, evidently much offended, but the beard afterwards disappeared. Talking of barbers—but they deserve a whole paper to themselves, and they shall have it, from me, some day, if I live a little longer.

In No. 331 of the Spectator, Addison tells us how his friend Sir Roger de Coverley, in Westminster Abbey, pointing to the bust of a venerable old man, asked him whether he did not think “our ancestors looked much wiser in their beards than we without them. For my part,” said he, “when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many patriarchs, and at the same time looking upon myself as an idle, smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings.”

During most part of last century close shaving was general throughout Europe. In France the beard began to appear on the faces of Bonaparte’s “braves,” and the fashion soon extended to civilians, then to Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia, and lastly to England, where, after the gradual enlargement of the side-whiskers, the full beard is now commonly worn—to the comfort and health of the wearers.

Footnotes

One reason, doubtless, for Persian and Turkish poets adopting a takhallus is the custom of the poet introducing his name into every ghazal he composes, generally towards the end; and as his proper name would seldom or never accommodate itself to purposes of verse he selects a more suitable one. [Return]
A dínar is a gold coin, worth about ten shillings of our money. [Return]
Referring to the custom of throwing small coins among crowds in the street on the occasion of a wedding. A dirham is a coin nearly equal in value to sixpence of our money. [Return]
The nightingale. [Return]
In the original Turkish:
Dinleh bulbul kissa sen kim gildi eiyami behár!
Kurdi her bir baghda hengamei hengami behár;
Oldi sim afshan ana ezhari badami behár:
Ysh u nush it kim gicher kalmaz bu eiyami behár.
Here we have an example of the redíf, which is common in Turkish and Persian poetry, and “consists of one or more words, always the same, added to the end of every rhyming line in a poem, which word or words, though counting in the scansion, are not regarded as the true rhyme, which must in every case be sought for immediately before them. The lines—
There shone such truth about thee,
I did not dare to doubt thee—
furnish an example of this in English poetry.” In the opening verse of Mesíhí’s ode, as above transliterated in European characters, the redíf is “behár,” or spring, and the word which precedes it is the true rhyme-ending. Sir William Jones has made an elegant paraphrase of this charming ode, in which, however, he diverges considerably from the original, as will be seen from his rendering of the first stanza:
Hear how the nightingale, on every spray,
Hails in wild notes the sweet return of May!
The gale, that o’er yon waving almond blows,
The verdant bank with silver blossoms strows;
The smiling season decks each flowery glade—
Be gay; too soon the flowers of spring will fade. [Return]
Hátim was chief of the Arabian tribe of Taï, shortly before Muhammed began to promulgate Islám, renowned for his extraordinary liberality. [Return]
Auvaiyár, the celebrated poetess of the Tamils (in Southern India), who is said to have flourished in the ninth century, says, in her poem entitled Nalvali:
Mark this: who lives beyond his means
Forfeits respect, loses his sense;
Where’er he goes through the seven births,
All count him knave; him women scorn. [Return]
“All perishes except learning.”—Auvaiyár. [Return]
“Learning is really the most valuable treasure.—A wise man will never cease to learn.—He who has attained learning by free self-application excels other philosophers.—Let thy learning be thy best friend.—What we have learned in youth is like writing cut in stone.—If all else should be lost, what we have learned will never be lost.—Learn one thing after another, but not hastily.—Though one is of low birth, learning will make him respected.”—Auvaiyár. [Return]
There is a similar story to this in one of our old English jest-books, Tales and Quicke Answeres, 1535, as follows (I have modernised the spelling): As an astronomer [i.e. an astrologer] sat upon a time in the market place, and took upon him to divine and to show what their fortunes and chances should be that came to him, there came a fellow and told him (as it was indeed) that thieves had broken into his house, and had borne away all that he had. These tidings grieved him so sore that, all heavy and sorrowfully, he rose up and went his way. When the fellow saw him do so, he said: “O thou foolish and mad man! goest thou about to divine other men’s matters, and art ignorant of thine own?” [Return]
The sayings of Buzurjmihr, the sagacious prime minister of King Núshírván, are often cited by Persian writers, and a curious story of his precocity when a mere youth is told in the Latá’yif at-Taw’áyif, a Persian collection, made by Al-Káshifí, of which a translation will be found in my “Analogues and Variants” of the Tales in vol. iii of Sir R. F. Burton’s Supplemental Arabian Nights, pp. 567-9—too long for reproduction here. [Return]
Simonides used to say that he never regretted having held his tongue, but very often had he felt sorry for having spoken.—Stobæus: Flor. xxxiii, 12. [Return]
The name of a musical instrument. [Return]
The fancied love of the nightingale for the rose is a favourite theme of Persian poets. [Return]
Cf. the fable of Anianus: After laughing all summer at her toil, the Grasshopper came in winter to borrow part of the Ant’s store of food. “Tell me,” said the Ant, “what you did in the summer?” “I sang,” replied the Grasshopper. “Indeed,” rejoined the Ant. “Then you may dance and keep yourself warm during the winter.” [Return]
Auvaiyár, the celebrated Indian poetess, in her Nalvali, says:
Hark! ye who vainly toil and wealth
Amass—O sinful men, the soul
Will leave its nest; where then will be
The buried treasure that you lose? [Return]
“Comprehensive talkers are apt to be tiresome when we are not athirst for information; but, to be quite fair, we must admit that superior reticence is a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often barren, but silence does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.”—George Eliot’s Felix Holt. [Return]
The cow is sacred among the Hindús. [Return]
Thus also Jámí, in his Baháristán (Second “Garden”): “With regard to a secret divulged and one kept concealed, there is in use an excellent proverb, that the one is an arrow still in our possession, and the other is an arrow sent from the bow.” And another Persian poet, whose name I have not ascertained, eloquently exclaims: “O my heart! if thou desirest ease in this life, keep thy secrets undisclosed, like the modest rose-bud. Take warning from that lovely flower, which, by expanding its hitherto hidden beauties when in full bloom, gives its leaves and its happiness to the winds.” [Return]
Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was if it is not praised?—Marcus Aurelius.
If glass be used to decorate a crown,
While gems are taken to bedeck a foot,
’Tis not that any fault lies in the gem,
But in the want of knowledge of the setter.
—Panchatantra, a famous Indian book of Fables. [Return]
The Súfís are the mystics of Islám, and their poetry, while often externally anacreontic—bacchanalian and erotic—possesses an esoteric, spiritual signification: the sensual world is employed to symbolise that which is to be apprehended only by the inward sense. Most of the great poets of Persia, Afghanistán, and Turkey are generally understood to have been Súfís. [Return]
Sir Gore Ouseley’s Biographical Notices of Persian Poets. [Return]
Cf. these lines, from Herrick’s “Hesperides”:
But you are lovely leaves, where we
May read, how soon things have
Their end, tho’ ne’er so brave;
And after they have shown their pride,
Like you, a while, they glide
Into the grave. [Return]
“In the name of God” is part of the formula employed by pious Muslims in their acts of worship, and on entering upon any enterprise of danger or uncertainty—bi’smi’llahi ar-rahman ar-rahimi, “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!” These words are usually placed at the beginning of Muhammedan books, secular as well as religions; and they form part of the Muslim Confession of Faith, used in the last extremity: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate! There is no strength nor any power save in God, the High, the Mighty. To God we belong, and verily to him we return!” [Return]
“Bear in mind,” says Thorkel to Bork, in the Icelandic saga of Gisli the Outlaw, “bear in mind that a woman’s counsel is always unlucky.”—On the other hand, quoth Panurge, “Truly I have found a great deal of good in the counsel of women, chiefly in that of the old wives among them.” [Return]
The Khoja was contemporary with the renowned conqueror of nations, Tímúr, or Tímúrleng, or, as the name is usually written in this country, Tamarlane, though there does not appear to be any authority that he was the official jester at the court of that monarch, as some writers have asserted. The pleasantries ascribed to the Khoja—the title now generally signifies Teacher, or School-master, but formerly it was somewhat equivalent to our “Mr,” or, more familiarly, “Goodman”—have been completely translated into French. Of course, a large proportion of the jests have been taken from Arabian and Persian collections, though some are doubtless genuine; and they represent the Khoja as a curious compound of shrewdness and simplicity. A number of the foolish sayings and doings fathered on him are given in my Book of Noodles, 1888. [Return]
This is how the same story is told in our oldest English jest-book, entitled A Hundred Mery Talys (1525): A certain merchant and a courtier being upon a time at dinner, having a hot custard, the courtier, being somewhat homely of manner, took part of it and put it in his mouth, which was so hot that it made him shed tears. The merchant, looking on him, thought that he had been weeping, and asked him why he wept. This courtier, not willing it to be known that he had brent his mouth with the hot custard, answered and said, “Sir,” quod he, “I had a brother which did a certain offence, wherefore he was hanged.” The merchant thought the courtier had said true, and anon, after the merchant was disposed to eat of the custard, and put a spoonful of it into his mouth, and brent his mouth also, that his eyes watered. This courtier, that perceiving, spake to the merchant; and said, “Sir,” quod he, “why do ye weep now?” The merchant perceived how he had been deceived, and said, “Marry,” quod he, “I weep because thou wast not hanged when that thy brother was hanged.” [Return]
What may be an older form of this jest is found in the Kathá Manjarí, a Canarese collection, where a wretched singer dwelling next door to a poor woman causes her to weep and wail bitterly whenever he begins to sing, and on his asking her why she wept, she explains that his “golden voice” recalled to her mind her donkey that died a month ago.—The story had found its way to our own country more than three centuries since. In Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres (1535), under the title “Of the Friar that brayde in his Sermon,” the preacher reminds a “poure wydowe” of her ass—all that her husband had left her—which had been devoured by wolves, for so the ass was wont to bray day and night. [Return]
Messrs. W. H. Allen & Co., London, have in the press a new edition of this work, to be entitled “Tales of the Sun; or, Popular Tales of Southern India.” I am confident that the collection will be highly appreciated by many English readers, while its value to story-comparers can hardly be over-rated. [Return]
A similar incident is found in the 8th chapter of the Spanish work, El Conde Lucanor, written, in the 14th century, by Prince Don Juan Manuel, where a pretended alchemist obtains from a king a large sum of money in order that he should procure in his own distant country a certain thing necessary for the transmutation of the baser metals into gold. The impostor, of course, did not return, and so on, much the same as in the above.—Many others of Don Manuel’s tales are traceable to Eastern sources; he was evidently familiar with the Arabic language, and from his long intercourse with the Moors doubtless became acquainted with Asiatic story-books. His manner of telling the stories is, however, wholly his own, and some of them appear to be of his own invention.—There is a variant of the same story in Pasquils Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments, in which a servant enters his master’s name in a list of all the fools of his acquaintance, because he had lately lent his cousin twenty pounds. [Return]
A variant of this occurs in the Heptameron, an uncompleted work in imitation of the Decameron, ascribed to Marguerite, queen of Navarre (16th century), but her valet de chambre Bonaventure des Periers is supposed to have had a hand in its composition. In Novel 55 it is related that a merchant in Saragossa on his death-bed desired his wife to sell a fine Spanish horse for as much as it would fetch and give the money to the mendicant friars. After his death his widow did not approve of such a legacy, but, in order to obey her late husband’s will, she instructed a servant to go to the market and offer the horse for a ducat and her cat for ninety-nine ducats, both, however, to be sold together. A gentleman purchased the horse and the cat, well knowing that the former was fully worth a hundred ducats, and the widow handed over one ducat—for which the horse was nominally sold—to the mendicant friars. [Return]
Cardonne took this story from a Turkish work entitled “Ajá’ib el-ma’ásir wa ghará’ib en-nawádir (the Wonders of Remarkable Incidents and Rarities of Anecdotes),” by Ahmed ibn Hemdem Khetkhody, which was composed for Sultan Murád IV, who reigned from A.D. 1623 to 1640. [Return]
This story has been taken from Arab Sháh into the Breslau printed Arabic text of the Thousand and One Nights, where it is related at great length. The original was rendered into French under the title of “Ruses des Femmes” (in the Arabic Ked-an-Nisa, Stratagems of Women) by Lescallier, and appended to his version of the Voyages of Sindbád, published at Paris in 1814, long before the Breslau text of The Nights was known to exist. It also forms part of one of the Persian Tales (Hazár ú Yek Rúz, 1001 Days) translated by Petis de la Croix, where, however, the trick is played on the kází, not on a young merchant. [Return]
A variant of this story is found in Le Grand’s Fabliaux et Contes, ed. 1781, tome iv, p. 119, and it was probably brought from the East during the Crusades: Maimon was a valet to a count. His master, returning home from a tourney, met him on the way, and asked him where he was going. He replied, with great coolness, that he was going to seek a lodging somewhere. “A lodging!” said the count. “What then has happened at home?” “Nothing, my lord. Only your dog, whom you love so much, is dead.” “How so?” “Your fine palfrey, while being exercised in the court, became frightened, and in running fell into the well.” “Ah, who startled the horse?” “It was your son, Damaiseau, who fell at its feet from the window.” “My son!—O Heaven! Where, then, were his servant and his mother? Is he injured?” “Yes, sire, he has been killed by falling. And when they went to tell it to madame, she was so affected that she fell dead also without speaking.” “Rascal! in place of flying away, why hast thou not gone to seek assistance, or why didst thou not remain at the chateau?” “There is no more need, sire; for Marotte, in watching madame, fell asleep. A light caused the fire, and there remains nothing now.”—Truly a delicate way of “breaking ill news”! [Return]
The Dabistán, or School of Manners. Translated from the original Persian, by David Shea and Anthony Troyer. 3 vols. Published by the Oriental Translation Fund, 1843. Vol. i, 198-200. The author of this work is said to be Moshan Fáni, who flourished at Hyderábád about the end of the 18th century. [Return]
Pedro Alfonso (the Spanish form of his adopted name) was originally a Jewish Rabbi, and was born in 1062, at Huesca, in the kingdom of Arragon. He was reputed a man of very great learning, and on his being baptised (at the age of 44) was appointed by Alfonso XV, king of Castile and Leon, physician to the royal household. His work, above referred to, is written in Latin, and has been translated into French, but not as yet into English. An outline of the tales, by Douce, will be found prefixed to Ellis’ Early English Metrical Romances. [Return]
This is also the subject of one of the Fabliaux.—In a form similar to the story in Alfonsus it is current among the Milanese, and a Sicilian version is as follows: Once upon a time there was a prince who studied and racked his brains so much that he learned magic and the art of finding hidden treasures. One day he discovered a treasure in Daisisa. “O,” he says, “now I am going to get it out.” But to get it out it was necessary that ten million million of ants should cross the river one by one in a bark made of the half-shell of a nut. The prince puts the bark in the river, and makes the ants pass over—one, two, three; and they are still doing it. Here the story-teller pauses and says: “We will finish the story when the ants have finished crossing the river.”—Crane’s Italian Popular Tales, p. 156. [Return]
This last jest reappears in the apocryphal Life of Esop, by Planudes, the only difference being that Esop’s master is invited to a feast, instead of receiving a present of game, upon which Esop exclaims: “Alas! I see two crows, and I am beaten; you see one, and are asked to a feast. What a delusion is augury!” [Return]
This tale is found in the early Italian novelists, slightly varied, and it was doubtless introduced by Venetian merchants from the Levant: A parrot belonging to Count Fiesco was discovered one day stealing some roast meat from the kitchen. The enraged cook, overtaking him, threw a kettle of boiling water at him, which completely scalded all the feathers from his head, and left the poor bird with a bare poll. Some time afterwards, as Count Fiesco was engaged in conversation with an abbot, the parrot, observing the shaven crown of his reverence, hopped up to him and said: “What! do you like roast meat too?”
In another form the story is orally current in the North of England. Dr. Fryer tells it to this effect, in his charming English Fairy Tales from the North Country: A grocer kept a parrot that used to cry out to the customers that the sugar was sanded and the butter mixed with lard. For this the bird had her neck wrung and was thrown upon an ash-heap; but reviving and seeing a dead cat beside her she cried: “Poor Puss! have you, too, suffered for telling the truth?”
There is yet another variant of this droll tale, which has been popular for generations throughout England, and was quite recently reproduced in an American journal as a genuine “nigger” story: In olden times there was a roguish baker who made many of his loaves less than the regulation weight, and one day, on observing the government inspector coming along the street, he concealed the light loaves in a closet. The inspector having found the bread on the counter of the proper weight, was about to leave, when a parrot, which the baker kept in his shop, cried out: “Light bread in the closet!” This caused a search to be made, and the baker was heavily fined. Full of fury, the baker seized the parrot, wrung its neck, and threw it in his back yard, near the carcase of a pig that had died of the measles. The parrot, coming to itself again, observed the dead porker and inquired in a tone of sympathy: “O poor piggy, didst thou, too, tell about light bread in the closet?” [Return]
In the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles’ Folk-Tales of Kashmír a merchant gives his stupid son a small coin with which he is to purchase something to eat, something to drink, something to gnaw, something to sow in the garden, and some food for the cow. A clever young girl advises him to buy a water-melon, which would answer all the purposes required.—P. 145. [Return]
Ziyáu-’d-Dín Nakhshabí, so called from Nakhshab, or Nasaf, the modern Kashí, a town situated between Samarkand and the Oxus, led a secluded life in Badá’um, and died, as stated by ’Abdal-Hakk, A.H. 751 (A.D. 1350-1).—Dr. Rieu’s Catalogue of Persian MSS. in the British Museum.—In 1792 the Rev. B. Gerrans published an English translation of twelve of the fifty-two tales comprised in the Tútí Náma, but the work is now best known in Persia and India from an abridgment made by Kádirí in the last century, which was printed, with a translation, at London in 1801. [Return]
“He that has money in the scales,” says Saádí, “has strength in his arms, and he who has not the command of money is destitute of friends in the world.”—Hundreds of similar sarcastic observations on the power of wealth might be cited from the Hindú writers, such as: “He who has riches has friends; he who has riches has relations; he who has riches is even a sage!” The following verses in praise of money are, I think, worth reproducing, if only for their whimsical arrangement:
Honey,
Our Money
We find in the end
Both relation and friend;
’Tis a helpmate for better, for worse.
Neither father nor mother,
Nor sister nor brother,
Nor uncles nor aunts,
Nor dozens
Of cousins,
Are like a friend in the purse.
Still regard the main chance;
’Tis the clink
Of the chink
Is the music to make the heart dance. [Return]
In a Telúgú MS., entitled Patti Vrútti Mahima (the Value of Chaste Wives), the minister of Chandra Pratápa assumes the form of a bird owing to a curse pronounced against him by Siva, and is sold to a merchant named Dhanadatta, whose son, Kuvéradatta, is vicious. The bird by moral lessons reformed him for a time. They went to a town called Pushpamayuri, where the king’s son saw the wife of Kuveradatta when he was absent from home. An illicit amour was about to begin, when the bird interposed by relating tales of chaste wives, and detained the wanton lady at home till her husband returned. [Return]
Many Asiatic stories relate to the concealing of treasure—generally at the foot of a tree, to mark the spot—by two or more companions, and its being secretly stolen by one of them. The device of the carpenter in the foregoing tale of abducting the rascally goldsmith’s two sons, and so on, finds an analogue in the Panchatantra, the celebrated Sanskrit collection of fables (Book I, Fab. 21, of Benfey’s German translation), where we read that a young man, who had spent the wealth left to him by his father, had only a heavy iron balance remaining of all his possessions, and depositing it with a merchant went to another country. When he returned, after some time, he went to the merchant and demanded back his balance. The merchant told him it had been eaten by rats; adding: “The iron of which it was composed was particularly sweet, and so the rats ate it.” The young man, knowing that the merchant spoke falsely, formed a plan for the recovery of his balance. One day he took the merchant’s young son, unknown to his father, to bathe, and left him in the care of a friend. When the merchant missed his son he accused the young man of having stolen him, and summoned him to appear in the king’s judgment-hall. In answer to the merchant’s accusation, the young man asserted that a kite had carried away the boy; and when the officers of the court declared this to be impossible, he said: “In a country where an iron balance was eaten by rats, a kite might well carry off an elephant, much more a boy.” The merchant, having lost his cause, returned the balance to the young man and received back his boy. [Return]
So, too, Bœthius, in his De Consolatione Philosophiæ, says, according to Chaucer’s translation: “All thynges seken ayen to hir [i.e. their] propre course, and all thynges rejoysen on hir retournynge agayne to hir nature.”—A tale current in Oude, and given in Indian Notes and Queries for Sept. 1887, is an illustration of the maxim that “everything returns to its first principles”: A certain prince chose his friends out of the lowest class, and naturally imbibed their principles and habits. When the death of his father placed him on the throne, he soon made his former associates his courtiers, and exacted the most servile homage from the nobles. The old vazír, however, despised the young king and would render none. This so exasperated him that he called his counsellors together to advise the most excruciating of tortures for the old man. Said one: “Let him be flayed alive and let shoes be made of his skin.” The vazír ejaculated on this but one word, “Origin.” Said the next: “Let him be hacked into pieces and his limbs cast to the dogs.” The vazír said, “Origin.” Another advised: “Let him be forthwith executed, and his house be levelled to the ground.” Once more the vazír simply said, “Origin.” Then the king turned to the rest, who declared each according to his opinion, the vazír noticing each with the same word. At last a young man, who had not spoken hitherto, was asked. “May it please your Majesty,” said he, “if you ask my opinion, it is this: Here is an aged man, and honourable from his years, family, and position; moreover, he served in the king your father’s court, and nursed you as a boy. It were well, considering all these matters, to pay him respect, and render his old age comfortable.” Again the vazír uttered the word “Origin.” The king now demanded what he meant by it. “Simply this, your Majesty,” responded the vazír: “You have here the sons of shoemakers, butchers, executioners, and so forth, and each has expressed himself according to his father’s trade. There is but one noble-born among them, and he has made himself conspicuous by speaking according to the manner of his race.” The king was ashamed, and released the vazír.—A parallel to this is found in the Turkish Qirq Vezír Taríkhí, or History of the Forty Vezírs (Lady’s 4th Story): according to Mr. Gibb’s translation, “All things return to their origin.” [Return]
Originally, Rúmelia (Rúm Eyli) was only implied by the word Rúm, but in course of time it was employed to designate the whole Turkish empire. [Return]
If the members severed from the golden image were to be instantly replaced by others, what need was there for the daily appearance of the “fakír,” as promised?—But n’importe! [Return]
Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 224, note. [Return]
The same story is given by the Comte de Caylus—but, like Noble, without stating where the original is to be found—in his Contes Orientaux, first published in 1745, under the title of “Histoire de Dervich Abounadar.” These entertaining tales are reproduced in Le Cabinet des Fées, ed. 1786, tome xxv.—It will be observed that the first part of the story bears a close resemblance to that of our childhood’s favourite, the Arabian tale of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” of which many analogues and variants, both European and Asiatic, are cited in the first volume of my Popular Tales and Fictions, 1887;—see also a supplementary note by me on Aladdin’s Lamp in Notes and Queries, Jan. 5, 1889, p. 1. [Return]
That is, hell. Properly, it is Je-Hinnon, near Jerusalem, which seems to have been in ancient times the cremation ground for human corpses. [Return]
The italicised passages which occur in this tale are verses in the original Persian text. [Return]
There is a very similar story in the Tamil Alakésa Kathá, a tale of a King and his Four Ministers, but the conclusion is different: the rájá permits all his subjects to partake of the youth-bestowing fruit;—I wonder whether they are yet alive! A translation of the romance of the King and his Four Ministers—the first that has been made into English—will be found in my Group of Eastern Romances and Stories, 1889. [Return]
In one Telúgú version, entitled Totí Náma Cat’halú, the lady kills the bird after hearing all its tales; and in another the husband, on returning home and learning of his wife’s intended intrigue, cuts off her head and becomes a devotee. [Return]
Captain R. C. Temple’s Legends of the Panjáb, vol. i, p. 52 ff.; and “Four Legends of Rájá Rasálú,” by the Rev. C. Swynnerton, in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1883, p. 141 ff. [Return]
In midsummer, 1244, twenty waggon loads of copies of the Talmud were burnt in France. This was in consequence of, and four years after, a public dispute between a certain Donin (afterwards called Nicolaus), a converted Jew, with Rabbi Yehiel, of Paris, on the contents of the Talmud.—See Journal of Philology, vol. xvi, p. 133.—In the year 1569, the famous Jewish library in Cremona was plundered, and 12,000 copies of the Talmud and other Jewish works were committed to the flames.—The Talmud, by Joseph Barclay, LL. D., London, 1875, p. 14. [Return]
Introductory Essay to Hebrew Tales, by Hyman Hurwitz; published at London in 1826. [Return]
Commentators on the Kurán say that Adam’s beard did not grow till after his fall, and it was the result of his excessive sorrow and penitence. Strange to say, he was ashamed of his beard, till he heard a voice from heaven calling to him and saying: “The beard is man’s ornament on earth; it distinguishes him from the feeble woman.” Thus we ought to—should we not?—regard our beards as the offshoots of what divines term “original sin”; and cherish them as mementoes of the Fall of Man. Think of this, ye effeminate ones who use the razor! [Return]
The notion of man being at first androgynous, or man-woman, was prevalent in most of the countries of antiquity. Mr. Baring-Gould says that “the idea, that man without woman and woman without man are imperfect beings, was the cause of the great repugnance with which the Jews and other nations of the East regarded celibacy.” (Legends of the Old Testament, vol. i, p. 22.) But this, I think, is not very probable. The aversion of Asiatics from celibacy is rather to be ascribed to their surroundings in primitive times, when neighbouring clans were almost constantly at war with each other, and those chiefs and notables who had the greatest number of sturdy and valiant sons and grandsons would naturally be best able to hold their own against an enemy. The system of concubinage, which seems to have existed in the East from very remote times, is not matrimony, and undoubtedly had its origin in the passionate desire which, even at the present day, every Asiatic has for male offspring. By far the most common opening of an Eastern tale is the statement that there was a certain king, wise, wealthy, and powerful, but though he had many beautiful wives and handmaidens, Heaven had not yet blest him with a son, and in consequence of this all his life was embittered, and he knew no peace day or night. [Return]
Professor Charles Marelle, of Berlin, in an interesting little collection, Affenschwanz, &c.; Variants orales de Contes Populaires, Français et Etrangers (Braunschweig, 1888), gives an amusing story, based evidently on this rabbinical legend: The woman formed from Adam’s tail proved to be as mischievous as a monkey, and gave her spouse no peace; whereupon another was formed from a part of his breast, and she was a decided improvement on her sister. All the giddy girls in the world are descended from the woman who was made from Adam’s tail. [Return]
You and I, good reader, must therefore have been seen by the Father of Mankind. [Return]
Legends of Old Testament Characters, by S. Baring-Gould, vol. i, pp. 78, 79. [Return]
The Muhammedan legend informs us that Cain was afterwards slain by the blood-avenging angel. But the Jewish traditionists say that God was at length moved by Cain’s contrition and placed on his brow a seal, which indicated that the fratricide was fully pardoned. Adam happened to meet him, and observing the seal on his forehead, asked him how he had turned aside the wrath of God. He replied: “By confession of my sin and sincere repentance.” On hearing this Adam exclaimed, beating his breast: “Woe is me! Is the virtue of repentance so great and I knew it not?” [Return]
A garbled version of this legend is found in the Latin Gesta Romanorum (it does not occur in the Anglican versions edited by Sir F. Madden for the Roxburghe Club, and by Mr. S. J. Herrtage for the Early English Text Society), Tale 179, as follows: “Josephus, in his work on ‘The Causes of Things,’ says that Noah discovered the vine in a wood, and because it was bitter he took the blood of four animals, viz., of a lion, a lamb, a pig, and a monkey. This mixture he united with earth and made a kind of manure, which he deposited at the roots of the trees. Thus the blood sweetened the fruit, with the juice of which he afterwards intoxicated himself, and lying naked was derided by his youngest son.” [Return]
Luminous jewels figure frequently in Eastern tales, and within recent years, from experiments and observations, the phosphorescence of the diamond, sapphire, ruby, and topaz has been fully established. [Return]
Did the Talmudist borrow this story from the Greek legend of the famous robber of Attica, Procrustes, who is said to have treated unlucky travellers after the same barbarous fashion? [Return]
There are two Italian stories which bear some resemblance to this queer legend: In the fourth novel of Arienti an advocate is fined for striking his opponent in court, and “takes his change” by repeating the offence; and in the second novel of Sozzini, Scacazzone, after dining sumptuously at an inn, and learning from the waiter that the law of that town imposed a fine of ten livres for a blow on the face, provokes the landlord so that he gets a slap from him on the cheek, upon which he tells Boniface to pay himself out of the fine he should have had to pay for the blow if charged before the magistrate, and give the rest of the money to the waiter.—A similar story is told in an Arabian collection, of a half-witted fellow and the kází. [Return]
The commentators on the Kurán have adopted this legend. But according to the Kurán it was not Isaac, but Ishmael, the great progenitor of the Arabs, who was to be sacrificed by Abraham. [Return]
Commentators on the Kurán inform us that when Joseph was released from prison, after so satisfactorily interpreting Pharaoh’s two dreams, Potiphar was degraded from his high office. One day, while Joseph was riding out to inspect a granary beyond the city, he observed a beggar-woman in the street, whose whole appearance, though most distressing, bore distinct traces of former greatness. Joseph approached her compassionately, and held out to her a handful of gold. But she refused it, and said aloud: “Great prophet of Allah, I am unworthy of this gift, although my transgression has been the stepping-stone to thy present fortune.” At these words Joseph regarded her more closely, and, behold, it was Zulaykhá, the wife of his lord. He inquired after her husband, and was told that he had died of sorrow and poverty soon after his deposition. On hearing this, Joseph led Zulaykhá to a relative of the king, by whom she was treated like a sister, and she soon appeared to him as blooming as at the time of his entrance into her house. He asked her hand of the king, and married her, with his permission.
Zulaykhá was the name of Potiphar’s wife, if we may believe Muhammedan legends, and the daughter of the king of Maghrab (or Marocco), who gave her in marriage to the grand vazír of the king of Egypt, and the beauteous princess was disgusted to find him, not only very old, but, as a modest English writer puts it, very mildly, “belonged to that unhappy class which a practice of immemorial antiquity in the East excluded from the pleasures of love and the hope of posterity.” This device of representing Potiphar as being what Byron styles “a neutral personage” was, of course, adopted by Muslim traditionists and poets in order to “white-wash” the frail Zulaykhá.—There are extant many Persian and Turkish poems on the “loves” of Yúsuf wa Zulaykhá, most of them having a mystical signification, and that by the celebrated Persian poet Jámí is universally considered as by far the best. [Return]
Gen. xlii, 24.—It does not appear from the sacred narrative why Joseph selected his brother Simeon as hostage. Possibly Simeon was most eager for his death, before he was cast into the dry well and then sold to the Ishmaelites; and indeed both he and his brother Levi seem to have been “a bad lot,” judging from the dying Jacob’s description of them, Gen. xlix, 5-7. [Return]
“Jacob’s grief” is proverbial in Muslim countries. In the Kurán, sura xii, it is stated that the patriarch became totally blind through constant weeping for the loss of Joseph, and that his sight was restored by means of Joseph’s garment, which the governor of Egypt sent by his brethren.—In the Makamat of Al-Harírí, the celebrated Arabian poet (A.D. 1054-1122), Harith bin Hamman is represented as saying that he passed a night of “Jacobean sorrow,” and another imaginary character is said to have “wept more than Jacob when he lost his son.” [Return]
Muslims say that Pharaoh’s seven daughters were all lepers, and that Bathia’s sisters, as well as herself, were cured through her saving the infant Moses.
According to the Hebrew traditionists, nine human beings entered Paradise without having tasted of death, viz.: Enoch; Messiah; Elias; Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; the servant of the king of Kush; Hiram, king of Tyre; Jaabez, the son of the Prince, and the Rabbi, Juda; Serach, the daughter of Asher; and Bathia, the daughter of Pharaoh.
The last of the race of genuine Dublin ballad-singers, who rejoiced in the nom de guerre of “Zozimus” (ob. 1846), used to edify his street patrons with a slightly different reading of the romantic story of the finding of Moses in the bulrushes, which has the merit of striking originality, to say the least:
In Egypt’s land, upon the banks of Nile,
King Pharaoh’s daughter went to bathe in style;
She tuk her dip, then went unto the land,
And, to dry her royal pelt, she ran along the strand.
A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
A smiling babby in a wad of straw;
She tuk it up, and said, in accents mild,
“Tare an’ agers, gyurls, which av yez owns this child?”
The story of the finding of Moses has its parallels in almost every country—in the Greek and Roman legends of Perseus, Cyrus, and Romulus—in Indian, Persian, and Arabian tales—and a Babylonian analogue is given, as follows, by the Rev. A. H. Sayce, in the Folk-Lore Journal for 1883: “Sargon, the mighty monarch, the king of Agané, am I. My mother was a princess; my father I knew not. My father’s brother loved the mountain land. In the city of Azipiranu, which on the bank of the Euphrates lies, my mother, the princess, conceived me; in an inacessible spot she brought me forth. She placed me in a basket of rushes; with bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not. The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it brought me. Akki, the irrigator, in the tenderness of his heart, lifted me up. Then Akki, the irrigator, as his gardener appointed me, and in my gardenership the goddess Istar loved me. For forty-five years the kingdom I have ruled, and the black-headed (Akkadian) race have governed.” [Return]
That the arch-fiend could, and often did, assume various forms to lure men to their destruction was universally believed throughout Europe during mediæval times and even much later; generally he appeared in the form of a most beautiful young woman; and there are still current in obscure parts of Scotland wild legends of his having thus tempted even godly men to sin.—In Asiatic tales rákshasas, ghúls (ghouls), and such-like demons frequently assume the appearance of heart-ravishing damsels in order to delude and devour the unwary traveller. In many of our old European romances fairies are represented as transforming themselves into the semblance of deer, to decoy into sequestered places noble hunters of whom they had become enamoured. [Return]
The “Great Name” (in Arabic, El-Ism el-Aazam, “the Most Great Name”), by means of which King David was saved from a cruel death, as above, is often employed in Eastern romances for the rescue of the hero from deadly peril, as well as to enable him to perform supernatural exploits. It was generally engraved on a signet-ring, but sometimes it was communicated orally to the fortunate hero by a holy man, or by a king of the genii—who was, of course, a good Muslim. [Return]
At the “mill” the man who was plagued with a bad wife doubtless saw some labourers threshing corn, since grinding corn would hardly suggest the idea of beating his provoking spouse.—By the way, this man had evidently never heard the barbarous sentiment, expressed in the equally barbarous English popular rhyme—composed, probably, by some beer-sodden bacon-chewer, and therefore, in those ancient times, non inventus—
A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat ’em, the better they be—
else, what need for him to consult King Solomon about his paltry domestic troubles? [Return]
A variant of this occurs in the Decameron of Boccaccio, Day ix, Nov. 9, of which Dunlop gives the following outline: Two young men repair to Jerusalem to consult Solomon. One asks how he may be well liked, the other how he may best manage a froward wife. Solomon advised the first to “love others,” and the second to “repair to the mill.” From this last counsel neither can extract any meaning; but it is explained on their road home, for when they came to the bridge of that name they meet a number of mules, and one of these animals being restive its master forced it on with a stick. The advice of Solomon, being now understood, is followed, with complete success.
Among the innumerable tales current in Muhammedan countries regarding the extraordinary sagacity of Solomon is the following, which occurs in M. René Basset’s Contes Populaires Berbèrs (Paris, 1887): Complaint was made to Solomon that some one had stolen a quantity of eggs. “I shall discover him,” said Solomon. And when the people were assembled in the mosque (sic), he said: “An egg-thief has come in with you, and he has got feathers on his head.” The thief in great fright raised his hand to his head, which Solomon perceiving, he cried out: “There is the culprit—seize him!” There are many variants of this story in Persian and Indian collections, where a kází, or judge, takes the place of Solomon, and it had found its way into our own jest-books early in the 16th century. Thus in Tales and Quicke Answeres, a man has a goose stolen from him and complains to the priest, who promises to find out the thief. On Sunday the priest tells the congregation to sit down, which they do accordingly. Then says he, “Why are ye not all seated?” Say they, “We are all seated.” “Nay,” quoth Mass John, “but he that stole the goose sitteth not down.” “But I am seated,” says the witless goose-thief. [Return]
Among the Muhammedan legends concerning Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, it is related that, after he had satisfactorily answered all her questions and solved her riddles, “before he would enter into more intimate relations with her, he desired to clear up a certain point respecting her, and to see whether she actually had cloven feet, as several of his demons would have him to believe; or whether they had only invented the defect from fear lest he should marry her, and beget children, who, as descendants of the genii [the mother of Bilkís is said to have been of that race of beings], would be even more mighty than himself. He therefore caused her to be conducted through a hall, whose floor was of crystal, and under which water tenanted by every variety of fish was flowing. Bilkís, who had never seen a crystal floor, supposed that there was water to be passed through, and therefore raised her robe slightly, when the king discovered to his great joy a beautifully shaped female foot. When his eye was satisfied, he called to her: ‘Come hither; there is no water here, but only a crystal floor; and confess thyself to the faith in the one only God.’ Bilkís approached the throne, which stood at the end of the hall, and in Solomon’s presence abjured the worship of the sun. Solomon then married Bilkís, but reinstated her as Queen of Sába, and spent three days in every month with her.” [Return]
According to the Muslim legend, eight angels appeared before Solomon in a vision, saying that Allah had sent them to surrender to him power over them and the eight winds which were at their command. The chief of the angels then presented him with a jewel bearing the inscription: “To Allah belong greatness and might.” Solomon had merely to raise this stone towards the heavens and these angels would appear, to serve him. Four other angels next appeared, lords of all creatures living on the earth and in the waters. The angel representing the kingdom of birds gave him a jewel on which were inscribed the words: “All created things praise the Lord.” Then came an angel who gave him a jewel conferring on the possessor power over earth and sea, having inscribed on it: “Heaven and earth are servants of Allah.” Lastly, another angel appeared and presented him with a jewel bearing these words (the formula of the Muslim Confession of Faith): “There is no God but the God, and Muhammed is his messenger.” This jewel gave Solomon power over the spirit-world. Solomon caused these four jewels to be set in a ring, and the first use to which he applied its magical power was to subdue the demons and genii.—It is perhaps hardly necessary to remark here, with reference to the fundamental doctrine of Islám, said to have been engraved on the fourth jewel of Solomon’s ring, that according to the Kurán, David, Solomon, and all the Biblical patriarchs and prophets were good Muslims, for Muhammed did not profess to introduce a new religion, but simply to restore the original and only true faith, which had become corrupt. [Return]
We are not told here how the demon came to part with this safeguard of his power. The Muslim form of the legend, as will be seen presently, is much more consistent, and corresponds generally with another rabbinical version, which follows the present one. [Return]
According to the Muslim version, Solomon’s temporary degradation was in punishment for his taking as a concubine the daughter of an idolatrous king whom he had vanquished in battle, and, through her influence, bowing himself to “strange gods.” Before going to the bath, one day, he gave this heathen beauty his signet to take care of, and in his absence the rebellious genie Sakhr, assuming the form of Solomon, obtained the ring. The king was driven forth and Sakhr ruled (or rather, misruled) in his stead; till the wise men of the palace, suspecting him to be a demon, began to read the Book of the Law in his presence, whereupon he flew away and cast the signet into the sea. In the meantime Solomon hired himself to some fishermen in a distant country, his wages being two fishes each day. He finds his signet in the maw of one of the fish, and so forth. [Return]
Is it possible that this “story” of the unicorn was borrowed and garbled from the ancient Hindú legend of the Deluge? “When the flood rose Manu embarked in the ship, and the fish swam towards him, and he fastened the ship’s cable to its horn.” But in the Hindú legend the fish (that is, Brahma in the form of a great fish) tows the vessel, while in the Talmudic legend the ark of Noah takes the unicorn in tow. [Return]
In a manuscript preserved in the Lambeth Palace Library, of the time of Edward IV, the height of Moses is said to have been “xiij. fote and viij. ynches and half”; and the reader may possibly find some amusement in the “longitude of men folowyng,” from the same veracious work: “Cryste, vj. fote and iij. ynches. Our Lady, vj. fote and viij. ynches. Crystoferus, xvij. fote and viij. ynches. King Alysaunder, iiij. fote and v. ynches. Colbronde, xvij. fote and ij. ynches and half. Syr Ey., x. fote iij. ynches and half. Seynt Thomas of Caunterbery, vij. fote, save a ynche. Long Mores, a man of Yrelonde borne, and servaunt to Kyng Edward the iiijth., vj. fote and x. ynches and half.”—Reliquæ Antiquæ, vol i, p. 200. [Return]
The Friend, ed. 1850, vol. ii, p. 247. [Return]
Book of Job, i, 21. [Return]
Prov. xxxi, 10, 26. [Return]
The droll incident of dividing the capon, besides being found in Sacchetti, forms part of a popular story current in Sicily, and is thus related in Professor Crane’s Italian Popular Tales, p. 311 ff., taken from Prof. Comparetti’s Fiabe, Novelle, e Racconti (Palermo, 1875), No. 43, “La Ragazza astuta”: Once upon a time there was a huntsman who had a wife and two children, a son and a daughter; and all lived together in a wood where no one ever came, and so they knew nothing about the world. The father alone sometimes went to the city, and brought back the news. The king’s son once went hunting, and lost himself in that wood, and while he was seeking his way it became night. He was weary and hungry. Imagine how he felt. But all at once he saw a light shining in the distance. He followed it and reached the huntsman’s house, and asked for lodging and something to eat. The huntsman recognised him at once and said: “Highness, we have already supped on our best; but if we can find anything for you, you must be satisfied with it. What can we do? We are so far from the towns that we cannot procure what we need every day.” Meanwhile he had a capon cooked for him. The prince did not wish to eat it alone, so he called all the huntsman’s family, and gave the head of the capon to the father, the back to the mother, the legs to the son, and the wings to the daughter, and ate the rest himself. In the house there were only two beds, in the same room. In one the husband and wife slept, in the other the brother and sister. The old people went and slept in the stable, giving up their bed to the prince. When the girl saw that the prince was asleep, she said to her brother: “I will wager that you do not know why the prince divided the capon among us in the manner he did.” “Do you know? Tell me why.” “He gave the head to our father, because he is the head of the family; the back to our mother, because she has on her shoulders all the affairs of the house; the legs to you, because you must be quick in performing the errands which are given you; and the wings to me, to fly away and catch a husband.” The prince pretended to be asleep, but he was awake and heard these words, and perceived that the girl had much judgment, and as she was also pretty, he fell in love with her [and ultimately married this clever girl]. [Return]
This story seems to be the original of a French popular tale, in which a gentleman secures his estate for his son by a similar device. The gentleman, dying at Paris while his son was on his travels, bequeathed all his wealth to a convent, on condition that they should give his son “whatever they chose.” On the son’s return he received from the holy fathers a very trifling portion of the paternal estate. He complained to his friends of this injustice, but they all agreed that there was no help for it, according to the terms of his father’s will. In his distress he laid his case before an eminent lawyer, who told him that his father had adopted this plan of leaving his estate in the hands of the churchmen in order to prevent its misappropriation during his absence. “For,” said the man of law, “your father, by will, has left you the share of his estate which the convent should choose (le partie qui leur plairoit), and it is plain that what they chose was that which they kept for themselves. All you have to do, therefore, is to enter an action at law against the convent for recovery of that portion of your father’s property which they have retained, and, take my word for it, you will be successful.” The young man accordingly sued the churchmen and gained his cause. [Return]
But the Book of Judges was probably edited after the time of Hesiod, whose fable of the Hawk and the Nightingale (Works and Days, B. i, v. 260) must be considered as the oldest extant fable. [Return]
This theory, though perhaps somewhat ingenious, is generally considered as utterly untenable. [Return]
Ezekiel, xviii, 2. [Return]
This wide-spread fable is found in the Disciplina Clericalis (No. 21) and in the collection of Marie de France, of the 13th century; and it is one of the many spurious Esopic fables. [Return]
This is similar to the 10th parable in the spiritual romance of Barlaam and Joasaph, written in Greek, probably in the first half of the 7th century, and ascribed to a monk called John of Damascus. Most of the matter comprised in this interesting work (which has not been translated into English) was taken from well-known Buddhist sources, and M. Zotenberg and other eminent scholars are of the opinion that it was first composed, probably in Egypt, before the promulgation of Islám. The 10th parable is to this effect: The citizens of a certain great city had an ancient custom, to take a stranger and obscure man, who knew nothing of the city’s laws and traditions, and to make him king with absolute power for a year’s space; then to rise against him all unawares, while he, all thoughtless, was revelling and squandering and deeming the kingdom his for ever; and stripping off his royal robes, lead him naked in procession through the city, and banish him to a long-uninhabited and great island, where, worn down for want of food and raiment, he bewailed this unexpected change. Now, according to this custom, a man was chosen whose mind was furnished with much understanding, who was not led away by sudden prosperity, and was thoughtful and earnest in soul as to how he should best order his affairs. By close questioning, he learned from a wise counsellor the citizens’ custom, and the place of exile, and was instructed how he might secure himself. When he knew this, and that he must soon go to the island and leave his acquired and alien kingdom to others, he opened the treasures of which he had for the time free and unrestricted use, and took an abundant quantity of gold and silver and precious stones, and giving them to some trusty servants sent them before him to the island. At the appointed year’s end the citizens rose and sent him naked into exile, like those before him. But the other foolish and flitting kings had perished miserably of hunger, while he who had laid up that treasure beforehand lived in lusty abundance and delight, fearless of the turbulent citizens, and felicitating himself on his wise forethought. Think, then, the city this vain and deceitful world, the citizens the principalities and powers of the demons, who lure us with the bait of pleasure, and make us believe enjoyment will last for ever, till the sudden peril of death is upon us.—This parable (which seems to be of purely Hebrew origin) is also found in the old Spanish story-book El Conde Lucanor. [Return]
This is the 9th parable in the romance of Barlaam and Joasaph, where it is told without any variation. [Return]
Psalm cxix, 92.—By the way, it is probably known to most readers that the twenty-two sections into which this grand poem is divided are named after the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; but from the translation given in our English Bible no one could infer that in the original every one of the eight verses in each section begins with the letter after which it is named, thus forming a very long acrostic. [Return]
After Abraham had walked to and fro unscathed amidst the fierce flames for three days, the faggots were suddenly transformed into a blooming garden of roses and fruit-trees and odoriferous plants.—This legend is introduced into the Kurán, and Muslim writers, when they expatiate on the almighty power of Allah, seldom omit to make reference to Nimrod’s flaming furnace being turned into a bed of roses. [Return]
Eccles., i, 2. The word Vanity (remarks Hurwitz, the translator) occurs twice in the plural, which the Rabbi considered as equivalent to four, and three times in the singular, making altogether seven. [Return]
“Do not,” says Nakhshabí, “try to move by persuasion the soul that is afflicted with grief. The heart that is overwhelmed with the billows of sorrow will, by slow degrees, return to itself.” [Return]
“He who subdueth his temper is a mighty man,” says the Talmudist; and Solomon had said so before him: “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city” (Prov. xvi, 32). A curious parallel to these words is found in an ancient Buddhistic work, entitled Buddha’s Dhammapada, or Path of Virtue, as follows: “If one man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of conquerors.” (Professor Max Müller’s translation, prefixed to Buddhagosha’s Parables, translated by Captain Rogers.) [Return]
Cf. Saádí, ante, page [41], “Life is snow,” etc. [Return]
Locke was anticipated not only by the Talmudist, as above, but long before him by Aristotle, who termed the infant soul tabula rasa, which was in all likelihood borrowed by the author of the Persian work on the practical philosophy of the Muhammedans, entitled Akhlák-i-Jalaly, who says: “The minds of children are like a clear tablet, equally open to all inscriptions.” [Return]
Too many cooks spoil the broth.—English Proverb. [Return]
Two farthings and a thimble
In a tailor’s pocket make a jingle.—English Saying. [Return]
“Don’t speak ill of the bridge that bore you safe over the stream” seems to be the European equivalent. [Return]
Python, of Byzantium, was a very corpulent man. He once said to the citizens, in addressing them to make friends after a political dispute: “Gentlemen, you see how stout I am. Well, I have a wife at home who is still stouter. Now, when we are good friends, we can sit together on a very small couch; but when we quarrel, I do assure you, the whole house cannot contain us.”—Athenæus, xii. [Return]
Compare Burns:
O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us! [Return]
See the Persian aphorisms on revealing secrets, ante, p. [48].—Burns, in his “Epistle to a Young Friend,” says:
Aye free aff hand your story tell
When wi’ a bosom crony,
But still keep something to yoursel’
Ye scarcely tell to ony. [Return]
The very reverse of our English proverb, “Better to be the head of the commonalty than the tail of the gentry.” [Return]
Saádí has the same sentiment in his Gulistán—see ante, p. [49]. [Return]
See also Saádí’s aphorisms on precept and practice, ante, p. [47]. [Return]
Here we have a variant of Thomas Carlyle’s favourite maxim, “Speech is silvern; silence is golden.” [Return]
“Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he were sensible of this he would not be ignorant.”—Saádí. [Return]
The Friend, ed. 1850, vol. ii, p. 249. [Return]
The number Forty occurs very frequently in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) in connection with important events, and also in Asiatic tales. It is, in fact, regarded with peculiar veneration alike by Jews and Muhammedans. See notes to my Group of Eastern Romances and Stories (1889), pp. 140 and 456. [Return]
The “fruit of the forbidden tree” was not an apple, as we Westerns fondly believe, but wheat, say the Muslim doctors. [Return]
Fables de La Fontaine, Livre xi^e, fable v^e: “Le Loup et le Renard.” [Return]
Recueil de Contes Populaires de la Sénégambie, recueillis par L.-J.-B.-Bérenger-Féraud. Paris, 1885. Page 51. [Return]
I have to thank my friend Dr. David Ross, Principal, E. C. Training College, Glasgow, for kindly drawing my attention to this diverting tale. [Return]
Nothing is more hackneyed in Asiatic poetry than the comparison of a pretty girl’s face to the moon, and not seldom to the disparagement of that luminary. Solomon, in his love-songs, exclaims: “Who is she that looketh forth in the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun?” The greatest of Persian poets, Firdausí, says of a damsel:
“Love ye the moon? Behold her face,
And there the lucid planet trace.”
And Kalidása, the Shakspeare of India (6th century B.C.), says:
“Her countenance is brighter than the moon.”
Amongst ourselves the epithet “moon-faced” is not usually regarded as complimentary, yet Spenser speaks of a beautiful damsel’s “moon-like forehead.”—Be sure, the poets are right! [Return]
The lithe figure of a pretty girl is often likened by Eastern poets to the waving cypress, a tree which we associate with the grave-yard.—“Who is walking there?” asks a Persian poet. “Thou, or a tall cypress?” [Return]
“Nocturnal.” [Return]
The sacred well in the Kaába at Mecca, which, according to Muslim legends, miraculously sprang up when Hagar and her son Ishmael were perishing in the desert from thirst. [Return]
According to Muslim law, four months and ten days must elapse before a widow can marry again. [Return]
An attendant, who had always befriended Majnún. [Return]
“The moon,” to wit, the unhappy Laylá. See the [note], p. [284]. [Return]
See [Note] on ‘Wamik and Asra’ at the end of this paper. [Return]
A mole on the fair face of Beauty is not regarded as a blemish, but the very contrary, by Asiatics—or by Europeans either, else why did the ladies of the last century patch their faces, if not (originally) to set off the clearness of their complexion by contrast with the little black wafer?—though (afterwards) often to hide a pimple! Eastern poets are for ever raving over the mole on a pretty face. Háfíz goes the length of declaring:
“For the mole on the cheek of that girl of Shíráz
I would give away Samarkand and Bukhárá”—
albeit they were none of his to give to anybody. [Return]
Cf. Shelley, in the fine opening of that wonderful poetical offspring of his adolescence, Queen Mab:
“Hath, then, the gloomy Power
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres
Seized on her sinless soul?” [Return]
The reader may with advantage consult the article ‘Beast-Fable,’ by Mr. Thos. Davidson, in Chambers’s Encylopædia, new edition. [Return]
But this papyrus might be of as late a period as the second century of our era. [Return]
For the most complete history of the Esopic Fable, see vol. i of Mr. Joseph Jacobs’ edition of The Fables of Aesop, as first printed by Caxton in 1484, with those of Avian, Alfonso, and Poggio, recently published by Mr. David Nutt; where a vast amount of erudite information will be found on the subject in all its ramifications. Mr. Jacobs, indeed, seems to have left little for future gleaners: he has done his work in a thorough, Benfey-like manner, and students of comparative folk-lore are under great obligations to him for the indefatigable industry he has devoted to the valuable outcome of his wide-reaching learning. [Return]
Fabulae Romanenses Graece conscriptae ex recensione et cum adnotationibus, Alfredi Eberhard (Leipzig, 1872), vol. i, p. 226 ff. [Return]
It would have been well had the sultan Bayazíd compelled his soldier to adopt this plan when accused by an old woman of having drunk up all her supply of goat’s milk. The soldier declared his innocence, upon which Bayazíd ordered his stomach to be cut open, and finding the milk not yet digested, quoth he to the woman: “Thou didst not complain without reason.” And, having caused her to be recompensed for her loss, “Now go thy way,” he added, “for thou hast had justice for the wrong done thee.” [Return]
This story is also found in the Liber de Donis of Etienne de Bourbon (No. 246), a Dominican monk of the 14th century; in the Summa Praedicantium of John Bromyard, and several other medieval monkish collections of exempla, or stories designed for the use of preachers: in these the explanation is that nothing can be better and nothing worse than tongue. [Return]
This occurs in the several Asiatic versions of the Book of Sindibád (Story of the Sandalwood Merchant); in the Gesta Romanorum; in the old English metrical Tale of Beryn; in one of the Italian Novelle of Sacchetti; and in the exploits of Tyl Eulenspiegel, the German Rogue. [Return]
Taken from Petronius Arbiter. The story is widely spread. It is found in the Seven Wise Masters, and—mutatis mutandis—is well known to the Chinese. Planudes takes some liberties with his original, substituting for the soldier guarding the suspended corpse of a criminal, who “comforts” the sorrowing widow, a herdsman with his beasts, which he loses in prosecuting his amour. [Return]
Mr. Jacobs was obliged to omit the Life of Esop in his reprint of Caxton’s text of the Fables, as it would have unduly increased the bulk of his second volume. But those interested in the genealogy of popular tales and fables will be glad to have Mr. Jacobs’ all but exhaustive account of the so-called Esopic fables, together with his excellent synopsis of parallels, in preference to the monkish collection of spurious anecdotes of the fabulist, of which the most noteworthy are given in the present paper. [Return]
Robert Henryson was a schoolmaster in Dunfermline in the latter part of the 15th century. His Moral Fables, edited by Dr. David Irving, were printed for the Maitland Club in 1832, and his complete works (Poems and Fables) were edited by Dr. David Laing, and published in 1865. His Testament of Cresseid, usually considered as his best performance, is a continuation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cresseide, which was derived from the Latin of an unknown author named Lollius. Henryson was the author of the first pastoral poem composed in the English (or Scottish) language—that of Robin and Makyn. “To his power of poetical conception,” Dr. Laing justly remarks, “he unites no inconsiderable skill in versification: his lines, if divested of their uncouth orthography, might be mistaken for those of a more modern poet.” [Return]
Schaw, a wood, a covert. [Return]
Chymeris, a short, light gown. [Return]
Hude, hood. [Return]
Bordourit, embroidered. [Return]
Hekellit-wise, like the feathers in the neck of a cock. [Return]
Fassoun, fashion. [Return]
Lokker, (?) gray. [Return]
Stikkand, sticking. [Return]
Pennair, pen-case. [Return]
Graithit, apparelled, arrayed. [Return]
Feirfull, awe-inspiring, dignified. [Return]
This is a work distinct from Henri Etienne’s Apologia pour Herodote. An English translation of it was published at London in 1807, and at Edinburgh in 1808, under the title of “A World of Wonders; or, an Introduction to a Treatise touching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a Preparative Treatise to the Apology for Herodotus,” etc. For this book (the “Introduction”) Etienne had to quit France, fearing the wrath of the clerics. His Apologie pour Herodote has not been rendered into English—and why not, it would be hard to say. [Return]
One of the Charlemagne Romances, translated by Caxton from the French, and printed by him about the year 1489, under the title of The Right Pleasaunt and Goodly Historie of the Four Sonnes of Aymon. It has been reprinted for the Early English Text Society, ably edited by Miss Octavia Richardson. [Return]
A slightly different version is found in A Hundred Mery Talys, No. lxix, “Of the franklyns sonne that cam to take orders.” The bishop says that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth;—who was the father of Japheth? When the “scholar” returns home and tells his father how he had been puzzled by the bishop, he endeavours to enlighten his son thus: “Here is Colle, my dog, that hath three whelps; must not these three whelps have Colle for their sire?” Going back to the bishop, he informs his lordship that the father of Japheth was “Colle, my father’s dogge.” [Return]
There were no pews in the churches in those “good old times.” [Return]
Apropos of saint-worship, quaint old Thomas Fuller relates a droll story in his Church History, ed. 1655, p. 278: A countryman who had lived many years in the Hercinian woods, in Germany, at last came into a populous city, demanding of the people therein, what God they did worship. They answered him, that they worshipped Jesus Christ. Whereupon the wild wood-man asked the names of the several churches in the city, which were all called by sundry saints, to whom they were consecrated. “It is strange,” said he, “that you should worship Jesus Christ, and he not have a temple in all the city dedicated to him.” [Return]
“Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, ‘Whom seek ye?’ They answered him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’”—Gospel of S. John, xviii, 4, 5. [Return]
Festueum, the split straw so used in the Middle Ages. [Return]
See Méon’s edition of Barbazan’s Fabliaux et Contes, ed. 1808, tome ii, p. 442, and a prose extrait in Le Grand d’Aussy’s collection, ed. 1781, tome iv, p. 101, “Du Prêtre qui dit la Passion.” [Return]
See Méon’s Barbazan, 1808, tome iv, p. 114; also Le Grand, 1781, tome ii, p. 190: “Du Vilain qui gagna Paradis en plaidant.” [Return]
Scarronides; or, Virgil Travestie, etc., by Charles Cotton, Book iv. Poetical Works, 5th edition, London, 1765, pp. 122, 140. [Return]
The notion that a beard indicated wisdom on the part of the wearer is often referred to in early European literature. For example, in Lib. v of Caxton’s Esop, the Fox, to induce the sick King Lion to kill the Wolf, says he has travelled far and wide, seeking a good medicine for his Majesty, and “certaynly I have found no better counceylle than the counceylle of an auncyent Greke, with a grete and long berd, a man of grete wysdom, sage, and worthy to be praysed.” And when the Fox, in another fable, leaves the too-credulous Goat in the well, Reynard adds insult to injury by saying to him, “O maystre goote, yf thow haddest be [i.e. been] wel wyse, with thy fayre berde,” and so forth. (Pp. 153 and 196 of Mr. Jacobs’ new edition.)—A story is told of a close-shaven French ambassador to the court of some Eastern potentate, that on presenting his credentials his Majesty made sneering remarks on his smooth face (doubtless he was himself “bearded to the eyes”), to which the envoy boldly replied: “Sire, had my master supposed that you esteem a beard so highly, instead of me, he would have sent your Majesty a goat as his ambassador.” [Return]
Harleian MS. No. 7334, lines 2412-2418. Printed for the Early English Text Society. [Return]
In a scarce old poem, entitled, The Pilgrymage and the Wayes of Jerusalem, we read:
The thyrd Seyte beyn prestis of oure lawe,
That synge masse at the Sepulcore;
At the same grave there oure lorde laye,
They synge the leteny every daye.
In oure manner is her [i.e. their] songe,
Saffe, here [i.e. their] berdys be ryght longe,
That is the geyse of that contre,
The lenger the berde the bettyr is he;
The order of hem [i.e. them] be barfote freeres. [Return]
Reprint for the Shakspere Society, 1877, B. ii, ch. vii, p. 169. [Return]
Reprint for the (old) Shakspeare Society, 1846, p. 217. [Return]
Formed by the moustache and a chin-tuft, as worn by Louis Napoleon and his imperialist supporters. [Return]
Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet, comprised in the Folio edition of 1630. Printed for the Spenser Society, 1869. “Superbiae Flagellum, or the Whip of Pride,” p. 34. [Return]
Reprint for the Shakspere Society, Part ii (1882), pp. 50, 51. [Return]
The Treatise answerynge the boke of Berdes, Compyled by Collyn Clowte, dedicated to Barnarde, Barber, dwellyng in Banbury: “Here foloweth a treatyse made, Answerynge the treatyse of doctor Borde upon Berdes.”—Appended to reprint of Andrew Borde’s Introduction of Knowledge, edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society, 1870—see pp. 314, 315. [Return]

INDEX.

Transcriber's Note: Index items in [brackets] indicate a reference to a footnote and not a page number.

[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L] [M] [N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [Y] [Z]

Abbas the Great, [107].
Abraham: jealous of his wives, [197];
- arrival in Egypt, [197];
- his servant in Sodom, [202];
- Ishmael’s wives, [203];
- the ‘ram caught in a thicket,’ [205];
- the idols, [251].
Abstinence, advantages of, [20].
Acrostic in the Bible, [93].
Adam and Eve, [191], [267], [268].
Addison’s Spectator, [359].
Advice to a conceited man, [44];
- gratuitous, [261].
Aesop—see [Esop].
Affenschwanz, etc., [59].
Aino Folk-Tales, [312].
Akhlák-i Jalaly, [23], [99].
Aladdin’s Lamp, [49].
Alakésa Kathá, [52].
Alexander the Great, [253], [254].
Alfonsus, Petrus, [99], [36], [227], [231], [90].
Alfred the Great, [315].
Ali, Mrs. Meer Hassan, [270].
Ambition, vanity of, [254].
Amír Khusrú, [18].
Ancestry, pride of, [22].
Androgynous nature of Adam, [191], [58].
Ant and Nightingale, [41].
Antar, the Arabian poet-hero, [46].
Anthologia, [259].
Anwarí, the Persian poet, [106].
Aphorisms of Saádí, [7], [41], [44], [42];
- of the Jewish Fathers, [260].
Apparition, the golden, [136].
Arab and his camel, [82].
Arab Sháh, [87].
Arabian lovers, [283], [294].
Arabian Nights, [33], [123], [178], [196], [212].
Archery feat, [20].
Arienti, [66].
Ashaab the covetous, [93].
Ass, the singing, [149].
Astrologer’s faithless wife, [36].
Attár, Farídu ’d-Dín, [51].
Athenæus, [103].
Athenians and Jewish boys, [117], [118].
Auvaiyár, Tamil poetess, [7], [8], [9], [16].
Avarice, [44].
Avianus, [15].
Aymon, Four Sons of, [317].

Babrius, [300].
Babylonian tale, [71].
Bacon on aphorisms, [259].
Baghdádí, witty, [83].
Baháristán, [19], [48], [63], [109].
Bakhtyár Náma, [124], [172].
Barbary Tales, [75].
Barbazan’s Fabliaux, [155], [156].
Baring-Gould, [142], [58], [61].
Barlaam and Joasaph, [91], [92].
Basset’s Tales of Barbary, [75].
Basket made into a door, [318].
Bayazíd and the old woman, [131].
Beal, Samuel, [147].
Beards: Asiatics’, [338];
- Ballad of the Beard, [355];
- Barnes in defence of the Beard, [356];
- Britons’ and Normans’, [344];
- Coverley (Sir Roger de), on his ancestors’, [359];
- dedicated to deities, [339];
- dyeing the beard, [349];
- famous beards, [344], [346];
- French kings’, [346];
- Greeks’, [338];
- Monks’, [343];
- Pope Julius II, [341];
- pledged for loans, [342];
- pulling beard, [343];
- reformers’, [344];
- Roman youths’, [337];
- Sully’s beard, [341];
- shapes of, [350], [351], [352], [355];
- taxes on, [345];
- tokens of wisdom, [338], [158];
- Turkish sultans’, [339];
- vowing not to cut or shave, [342], [347];
- witches’, [358];
- women, bearded, [358].
Beast-fables, origin of, [239], [299].
Beaumont, bp. of Durham, [318].
Beauty unadorned, [46].
Beggar and Khoja, [68].
Bendall, Cecil, [159].
Beneficence, [24], [44], [48].
Bérenger-Féraud, [278].
Berkeley’s ‘ideal’ theory, [97].
Beryn, Tale of, [212], [133].
Bhartrihari, [258].
Bible, [191], [193], [205], [207], [229], [231], [239], [240], [249], [251], [254], [257], [97], [270], [153], [331], [332].
Bidpaï’s Fables, [39].
Birth, pride of, [22].
Bishop and ignorant priest, [316];
- and the simple youth, [317].
‘Bi’smi’llahi,’ etc., [24].
Bi-sexual nature of Adam, [191].
Blémont, Emile, [274].
Blind man’s wife, [62].
Blockheads, list of, [80].
Boccaccio’s Decameron, [31], [75], [231].
Bœthius’ Consol. Phil., [45].
Bonaventure des Periers, [31], [323], [325].
Borde, Andrew, [356], [166].
Boy in terror at sea, [22].
Bride and Bridegroom, [250].
Bromyard, John, [132].
Broth, Hot, [69].
Buddha, Rom. Hist, of, [147].
Buddha’s Dhammapada, [97].
Buddhaghosha’s Parables, [163], [97].
Burns, the Scottish poet, [104], [105].
Butler’s Hudibras, etc., [332], [345], [346].
Burton, Sir R. F., [11], [274].
Buthayna and Jamíl, [294].
Buzurjmihr on silence, [38].

Cabinet des Fées, [49].
Cain and Abel, [194].
Camel and cat, [82].
Capon-carver, [231], [276].
Cardonne’s Mél. de Littèrature Orientale, [83].
Carlyle, Thos., [60], [109].
Cat and its master, [80].
Cauldron, the, [67].
Caution with friends, [46], [263].
Caxton’s Dictes, [38];
- Esop’s Fables, [129], [135], [158].
Caylus, Comte de, [49].
Cento Novelle Antiche, [231].
Chamberlain, B. H., [312].
Chaste Wives, Value of, [127].
Chaucer, [196], [279], [339].
Chess, game of, [240].
Chinese Humour: rich man and smiths, [77];
- to keep plants alive, [78];
- criticising a portrait, [78].
Clergy, Benefit of, [329].
Clouston’s Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, [279];
- Book of Noodles, [26], [111];
- Book of Sindibád, [280];
- Eastern Romances, [52], [112], [279];
- Popular Tales and Fictions, [49], [157], [178], [279].
Coleridge, the poet, [229], [264].
Comparetti, Prof., [85].
Conceited man, [44].
Conde Lucanor, [30], [91].
Condolence, house of, [62].
Conjugal quarrels, [262].
Contes Orientaux, [49].
Cooks, too many, [262].
‘Corpus meum,’ [320].
Cotton’s Virgil Travestie, [332].
Courtier and old friend, [79].
Coverley, Sir Roger de, [359].
Covetous man, [93];
- goldsmith, [128], [160].
Covetousness, [45].
Crane’s Italian Tales, [37], [85], [279].
Cup-bearer and Saádí, [28].
Cypress, [284].

Dabistán, [97], [35].
Daulat Sháh, [294].
David, legends of King, [213].
Davidson, Thos., [127].
Deaf men, [73], [75].
Death, rest to the poor, [51].
Decameron, [31], [75].
Deluge, [80].
Demon, Tales of a, [124], [162], [179].
Dervish and magic candlestick, [141].
Dervish who became king, [32].
Dervishes, Three, [113].
Desolate Island, [243], [279].
Des Periers, Bonaventure, [31], [323], [325].
Devotee and learned man, [40].
Dictes, or the sayings of philosophers, [38].
Disciplina Clericalis, [99], [100], [227], [231], [90].
Domestics, lazy, [76].
Don Quixote, [11], [99].
Dreams of fair women, [133], [134].
Drinking the sea dry, [312].
Drunken governor, [68].
Dublin ballad-singer, [71].
Dutiful son, [236].

Eastern story-books, general plan of, [123].
Eberhard’s ed. of Planudes’ Life of Esop, [130].
Education, advantages of, [27].
Egg-stealer and Solomon, [75].
Eliezer in Sodom, [202].
Eliot, George, [17].
Ellis’ Metrical Romances, [36].
Emperor’s dream, [134].
Esop: unlucky omens, [38];
- wise saying of, [264];
- apocryphal Life, by Planudes, [301];
- Jacobs on the Esopic Fable, [129];
- the figs, [302];
- how Esop became eloquent, [303];
- his choice of load, [303];
- offered for sale, [304];
- boiling peas, [304];
- the missing pig’s foot, [305];
- dish of tongues, [305];
- the man who was no busy-body, [306];
- drinking the sea dry, [306], [312];
- the dog’s tail, [306];
- as ambassador, [307];
- his death, [307];
- Henryson’s description of Esop, [309].
Etienne de Bourbon, [132].
Etienne, Henri, [316].
Eulenspiegel, Tyl, [133].
Expectation, [7].

Fabliaux, [34], [37], [327], [328].
Fables, origin of, [239], [300].
Facetiæ, Jewish, [117].
Faggot-maker, [152].
Fairholt, F. W., [355].
Fairies’ gifts, [153], [157], [181].
Fate, decrees of, [99].
Faults, [7], [44], [262].
Féraud, Bérenger, [278].
Firdausí, [50], [117].
Fitnet Khánim, Turkish poetess, [17].
Flood, [225].
Flowers, hymn to the, [54].
Folk-Lore of S. India, [73].
Fool, greatest, [279].
Fools, list of, [80].
Foolish peasants, [111];
- thieves, [151].
Forbidden tree, [268].
Forman, bp. of Moray, [319].
Fortitude and liberality, [24].
Fortune capricious, [45].
Forty, the number, [112].
Forty Vezírs, History of, [65], [110], [45].
Fox and Bear, [240], [278];
- Fox in the garden, [241].
Friends: caution with, [46], [263];
- man with three, [247];
- misfortunes of, [23].
Fryer’s Eng. Fairy Tales, [39].
Fuller’s Church History, [152].
Furnivall, F. J., [166].

Garments, the, [248].
Garrick and Dr. Johnson, [52].
Gemara, authors of the, [186].
Generosity, [24], [44], [48].
Gerrans, [41], [126], [136].
Gesta Romanorum, [187], [63], [227], [231], [279], [133].
Gibb, E. J. W., [15], [110], [45], [283].
Gisli the Outlaw, [25].
Gladwin’s Persian Moonshee, [71].
Goat, the dead, [71].
God, a jealous God, [264].
God, for the sake of, [9].
Good or evil genius, [140], [141].
‘God, the merciful,’ etc., [24].
Golden apparition, [136].
Goldsmith, the covetous, [128], [160].
Goliath’s brother, [213].
Goose, Tales of a, [124].
Goose-thief, [75].
Gospels, two, for a groat, [320].
Governor and the Khoja, [68];
- and the poor poet, [104];
- and the shopkeeper, [39].
Gratitude for benefits, [262].
Great Name, [214].
Greek Popular Tales, [276].
Grey, Zachary, [332].
Grief and anger, times of, [260].
Grissell, Patient, [331].
Gulistán, or rose-garden, [9].

Hafíz, the Persian poet, [125].
Hagiolatry, [321], [327].
Hamsa Vinsati, [124].
Harírí, the Arabian poet, [70].
Harrison on beards, [350].
Hartland, E. Sidney, [181].
Hátim Taï, [24].
Hazár ú Yek Rúz, [33].
Hebrew facetiæ, [117].
Henryson, Robert, [309].
Heptameron, [31].
Herrick’s Hesperides, [23].
Herodotus, Apology for, [316].
Herrtage, S. J., [63].
Hershon’s Talmudic Miscel., [191].
Hesiod’s fables, [87].
Hitopadesa, [140], [240].
Horse-dealers and the king, [81].
Hudibras, etc., [332], [345], [346].
Hundred Mery Talys, [27], [150], [320].
Hurwitz, Hyman, [117], [56], [218], [95].

’Idda: compulsory widowhood, [287].
Ideal, not the real, [97].
Idleness and industry, [41], [261].
Ignorance, [262].
Ill news, breaking, [95];
- telling, [45].
Images, the stolen, [128].
Indian poetess, [7], [8], [9], [16].
Inferiors and superiors, [260].
Ingratitude, [47].
Intolerance, religious, [188], [190].
Investment, safe, [228].
Irving, David, [136].
Isfahání and the governor, [116].
Ishmael’s wives, [203].
Island, Desolate, [243], [279].
Israel likened to a bride, [250].
Italian Tales, [37], [39], [66], [231], [85], [279], [133].

Jacob’s sorrow, [208].
Jacobs, Joseph, on the Esopic Fables, [129], [135].
Jámí, [40], [19], [63], [109].
Jamíl and Buthayna, [294].
‘January and May,’ [29].
Jehennan, [145].
Jehoshua, Rabbi, [205].
Jehudah, Rabbi, [186].
Jests, antiquity of, [60].
Jewels, the, [229];
- luminous, [196].
Jewish facetiæ, [117]
Jochonan, Rabbi, [186];
- and the poor woman, [227].
Johnson and Garrick, [52].
Johnson, Dr., on springtide, [14].
Jones, Sir William, [5].
Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, [205];
- and his brethren, [206].
Josephus on Solomon’s fables, [239].
Jotham’s fable, [239].
Julien, Stanislas, [77].

Kádirí’s Tútí Náma, [41].
Kah-gyur, [159].
Kalíla wa Dimna, [39].
Kalidása, [117].
Káma Sutra, [126].
Kámarupa, [133].
Káshifí, [11].
Kashmírí Folk-Tales, [111], [40].
Kathá Manjarí, [28], [100], [175].
Kathá Sarit Ságara, [157], [163], [179].
Khalíf and poet, [101], [105].
Khizar and the Water of Life, [177].
Khoja Nasr-ed-Dín, [65], [70].
King and his Four Ministers, [52];
- and the horse-dealers, [81];
- and the Seven Vazírs, [173];
- and the story-teller, [99], [100];
- who died of love, [161].
Knowles, J. H., [111], [40].
Kurán, [65].

Ladies, witty Persian, [63].
Laing, David, [136].
La Fontaine, [278].
Landsberger on Fables, [239].
Langlès (not Lescallier), [33].
La Rochefoucauld, [23].
Lappländische Märchen, [181].
Laughter, [59], [60].
Laylá and Majnún, [283].
Lazy servants, [76].
Learned man and blockhead, [49];
- youth, modesty of, [27].
Learning the best treasure, [9];
- and virtue, [47].
Le Grand’s Fabliaux, [34], [155], [156].
Legrand’s Popular Greek Tales, [276].
Lescallier, [173]—see also [Langlès].
Liars, [261].
Liber de Donis, [132].
Liberality to the poor, [24], [44], [48],
Liberality and fortitude, [24].
Life, Tree of, [174];
- Water of, [174], [177].
Lions, tail of the, [263].
Liwá’í, Persian poet, [95].
Lokman, sayings of, [310].
Luminous Jewels, [196].
Love, dying for, [161], [163].
Lovers, Arabian, [283], [294].

Madden, Sir F., [63].
Magic Bowl, etc., [153], [157], [181].
Maiden and Saádí, [28].
Maimonides, [186].
Majnún and Laylá, [273].
Makamat of El-Harírí, [70].
Malcolm’s Sketches of Persia, [107], [116].
Man, a laughing animal, [59];
- and his three friends, [247];
- and the place, [262];
- the mighty man, [261].
Manna, daily, [266].
Manuel, Don Juan, [30].
Marcus Aurelius, [20].
Mare kicked by a horse, [132].
Marelle, Charles, [59].
Marguerite, queen of Navarre, [31], [323].
Marie de France, [90].
Massinger’s plays, [331].
Mazarin, Cardinal, [52].
Meir’s (Rabbi) fables, [240].
Mélanges de Litt. Orient., [83].
Merchant and lady, [87];
- and poor Bedouin, [95].
Merchandise, [262].
Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres, [10], [28], [75], [321].
Mesíhí’s ode on spring, [15].
Metempsychosis, [179], [301].
Mihra-i Iskandar, [18].
Milton’s Paradise Lost, [270].
Mind, the infant, [261].
Miser, [262].
Misers, Muslim, [71], [72].
Mishlé Sandabar, [173].
Misfortunes of friends, [23].
Mishna, authors of the, [186].
Mole on the face, [291].
Money, in praise of, [42];
- sound of two coins, [262].
Monsters, unheard of, [224].
Moon, a type of female beauty, [117].
Moses and Pharaoh, [208];
- height of Moses, [225];
- Moses and the Poor Woodcutter, [270].
Muezzin with harsh voice, [33].
Muhammedan legends, [62], [68], [71], [75], [76], [77], [79], [268], [270].
Mukhlis of Isfahán, [135].
Music, discovery of, [163];
- effects of, [7].
Musician, bad, [7].
Muslim confession of Faith, [24].

Nakhshabí, [46], [124], [96].
Name, the Great, [214].
Nasr-ed-Dín, Khoja, [65].
Natésa Sastrí, [73].
Nathan of Babylon, [260].
‘Neck-verse,’ [331].
Neighbour, objectionable, [37].
‘Night and Day,’ [61].
Nightingale and Ant, [41];
- and Rose, [42].
Nimrod and Abraham, [253].
Noah, [194], [196], [225], [270].
Noble’s Orientalist, [141].
‘No rule without exception,’ [119].
Numerals, Arabic, [240].
Núshírván the Just, [21], [37].
Nye, Philip, [346].

Og, king of Bashan, [225], [226].
Old man and young wife, [29].
Old man’s prayer, [109];
- reason for not marrying, [31].
Old woman in mosque, [109].
Omens, unlucky, [107], [108].
Opportunity, [263].
Oriental story-books, general plan of, [123].
Orientalist, or Letters of a Rabbi, [141].
Origin, all things return to their, [131].
Ouseley, Sir Gore, [6], [22].

Painter and critics, [78].
Panchatantra, [20], [44], [140], [146], [147], [159], [240].
Panjábí Legends, [179].
Paradise, persons translated to, [71].
Parents, reverence for, [236].
Parrot and maina, [178];
- oilman’s parrot, [114];
- Moghul’s parrot, [116].
Parrot-Book, [124];
- frame-story of, [125], [178].
Parrot, Seventy Tales of a, [124].
Parrots in Hindú fictions, [179].
Passion-service, [323], [326].
Pasquil’s Jests, [30], [330].
Patient Grissell, [331].
‘Paveant illi,’ etc., [319].
Payne’s Arabian Nights, [274].
Peasant in Paradise, [327].
Peasants, Foolish, [111].
Persian and his cat, [80];
- and the governor, [116];
- courtier and old friend, [79];
- ladies, witty, [63];
- Moonshee, [71];
- poet and the impostor, [106];
- Tales of a Thousand and one Days, [33], [135].
Petis de la Croix, [33].
Petronius Arbiter, [134].
Phædrus, [300].
Pharaoh and Moses, [208].
Pharaoh’s daughters, [209].
Pirke Aboth, [260].
Plants, to keep alive, [78].
Planudes’ Life of Esop, [38], [301].
Poets in praise of springtide, [14].
Poet, rich man and, [107].
Poet’s meaning, [104].
Poetry, ‘stealing,’ [106].
Poets, royal gifts to, [101], [104], [105].
Poverty, [263].
Prayers, odd, [71], [109].
Preachers, Muslim, [34], [66], [70], [71].
Precept and Practice, [47], [263].
Prefaces to books, [11].
Priest confessing poor man, [325].
Pride, [261].
Princess of Rúm and her son, [166].
Procrustes, bed of, [65].
Prodigality, [24].
Psalm-singing at gallows, [331].

Quevedo’s Visions, [343].

Rabbi and the poor woman, [227];
- and the emperor Trajan, [265];
- and the cup of wine, [119].
Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, [141];
- Tibetan Tales, [159].
‘Ram caught in a thicket,’ [205].
Rasálú, Legend of Rájá, [178].
Rats that ate iron, [44].
Richardson, Octavia, [149].
Rich, Barnaby, [350].
Riches, [44], [50], [261].
Rieu, Charles, [41].
Robber and the Khoja, [69].
Rogers, the poet, [359].
Rose and Nightingale, [42].
Ross, David, [278].
Rúm, country of, [46].
Russian Folk-Tales, [141].

Saádí: sketch of his life, [3];
- character of his writings, [6];
- on a bad musician, [7];
- his ‘Gulistán,’ [9];
- prefaces to books, [11];
- preface to the ‘Gulistán,’ [12];
- the fair cup-bearer, [28];
- assured of lasting fame, [55];
- on money, [125].
Sacchetti, [231], [133].
Saint-worship, [321], [327].
Samradians, sect of the, [97].
Satan in form of a deer, [213].
Satiety and hunger, [45].
Sayce, A. H., [71].
Scarronides, [157].
Schoolmaster and wit, [79].
Scornfulness, [260].
Scott’s ‘Lay,’ [331].
Scribe’s excuse, [79].
Secrets, [48], [263].
Seneca on aphorisms, [259].
Senegambian Tales, [278].
Sermon, burlesque, [328].
Servant, wakeful, [112].
Servants, lazy, [76].
Seven stages of human life, [257].
Seven Vazírs, [173]
- see also [Sindibád, Book of].
Seven Wise Masters, [133], [173], [178], [134].
Shakspeare, [53], [163], [257], [342], [347], [349], [350].
Sheba, Queen of, [218].
Shelley’s Queen Mab, [126].
Signing with ×, [333].
Silence, on keeping, [38], [39], [45], [263].
Simonides, [12].
Sindibád, Book of, [123], [159], [173], [176], [178], [306].
Singing Ass, [149].
Sinhásana Dwatrinsati, [124].
Shopkeeper and governor, [116].
Sindbán, [173].
‘Skip over three leaves,’ [322].
Slander, [44].
Slave, witty, [35].
Slippers, the unlucky, [83].
Smith, Horace, [53].
Smiths and rich man, [77].
Socrates, [300], [338].
Sodom, the citizens of, [198].
Solomon: advice to three men, [215];
- the Queen of Sheba, [218];
- the egg-stealer, [75];
- his signet-ring, [220];
- his lost fables, [239];
- his precocious sagacity, [73];
- his choice of wisdom, [249];
- the serpent’s prey, [274].
Son, dutiful, [236].
Sorrow, times of, [260].
Spectator, Addison’s, [359].
Spenser, Edmund, [117].
Springtide, in praise of, [14].
Stingy merchant and poor Bedouin, [95].
Story-teller and the King, [100].
Stubbes on beards and barbers, [352].
Stupidity, [26].
Súfís, [21].
Suka Saptati, [124].
Sully and the courtiers, [341].
Summa Praedicantium, [132].
Superiors and inferiors, [260].
Swynnerton, Charles, [54].
Syntipas, [173].

Tales and Quicke Answeres, [10], [28], [75], [321].
Talkers, comprehensive, [17].
Talmud, authors of the, [185], [186];
- traducers of the, [187];
- teachings of the, [188].
Tantrákhyána, [159].
Taylor’s Wit and Mirth, [330];
- Superbiae Flagellum, [351].
Teaching and learning, [262].
Temple’s Panjábí Legends, [179].
Thálebí and the Khalíf, [105].
Thief, self-convicted, [75];
- without opportunity, [263].
Thieves, Foolish, [151].
Thomson’s Seasons, [46].
Three Dervishes, [113].
Throne, Tales of a, [124].
Tibetan Tales, [159].
Tongue, the key of wisdom, [46].
Tongues, dish of, [305].
‘Tongues in Trees,’ [53].
Trajan and the Rabbi, [265].
Treasure, concealed, [44].
Treasure-seekers, the Four, [144].
Tree of Life, [174], [177].
Trouvères, [327].
Turkish Jester: in the pulpit, [66];
- the cauldron, [67];
- the beggar, [68];
- the drunken governor, [68];
- the robber, [69];
- the hot broth, [69].
Turkish poetess, [17].
Turkmans, weeping, [110].
Tútí Náma, [124];
- frame story, [125], [178].
Tyl Eulenspiegel, [133].

Ugly wife, [61], [62].
Uncle Remus, [279].
Unicorn, [225].
Unlucky omens, [107], [108].
Unlucky slippers, [83].

Van Butchell, [348].
Vasayadatta, [133].
Vase, use thy, [263].
Vatsyayana’s Káma Sutra, [126].
Vazírs, the Seven, [173].
Vetála Panchavinsati, [124], [162], [179].
Vicious hate the virtuous, [44].
Vine, planting of the, [196].
Virgil Travestie, [332].
Virtue cannot come out of vice, [50].
Visitors, troublesome, [40].
Von Hammer, [293].
Vrihat Kathá, [158].

Wakeful servant, [112].
Wamik and Azra, [293].
Want: moderation, [7].
Warton’s Hist. of Eng. Poetry, [163].
Water of Life, [174], [177].
Weil’s Bible, Korán, and Talmud, [273].
Weeping Turkmans, [110].
Wheel on man’s head, [146], [147].
Wicked rich man, [44].
Widowhood, compulsory, [287].
Wife, choosing a, [263].
Williams, Sir Monier, [259].
Will, Ingenious, [237].
Wisdom, who gains, [261].
Wise man in mean company, [49].
Witches’ beards, [358].
Witty Baghdádí, [83];
- Isfahání, [116];
- Jewish boys, [117], [118];
- Persian ladies, [63];
- slave, [35].
Woman: carved out of wood, [130];
- seven requisites of, [165].
Woman’s counsel, [64], [65];
- wiles, [87].
Women, bearded, [358].
Woodcutter and Moses, [270].
World of Wonders, [148].
Wright’s Latin Stories, [76].

Young’s Night Thoughts, [46].
Youth, modest and learned, [27].

Zemzem, [285].
Zotenberg, Hermann, [91].
Zozimus, the ballad-singer, [71].
Zulaykhá, Potiphar’s wife, [68].