“Nothing can be done without the mercy and grace of God. And this has been my punishment.”
These were the locusts (Pachytylus migratorius) which God sends upon men when they forget the true God.
The rôle assigned here to the official priests, the “popa” of the orthodox religion, is in perfect harmony with that sectarian teaching which could not find words strong and opprobrious enough against the “official” Church and its ministers. The belief is still alive in Rumania that to meet a “popa,” as he is called, is an evil omen, and the people will often desist from some enterprise if a popa has met them. There are practices by which the evil consequences of such a meeting could be averted; but they belong to those of primitive society. This story seems also to have been originally a satire against these popas. They were the original locusts who descended upon the tables of the rich and mighty, but now the point has been blunted and the lesson deliberately turned round, making the locusts the means of punishment for ignoring the priests. The man who told this tale must have had a mischievous twinkle in his eye, not lost on his hearers, but evidently lost upon him who wrote it down afterwards.
The Emperor Por is none else than the Indian King Porus who plays so important a part in the legendary history of Alexander the Great. This is one of the most popular Rumanian chap-books—probably the oldest in Rumanian folk-lore. There are a number of traces of this legendary history in the Rumanian popular literature. We shall meet another reference to it in the history of the cricket, No. 65, and of the cuckoo, No. 91.
This story evidently belongs to the cycle of legends in which an emperor tries to invite God and his host to dine with him, boasting that he would be able to feed them. He decks tables along the sea shore and waits for God to come to the banquet. But a wind rises and blows everything into the sea. A sage explains to the emperor that thus far only one of the servants of God—the wind—has partaken of his banquet. (v. Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 12.)
XXIV.
WHY DOES THE GRASSHOPPER RUN TO AND FRO?
The Story of Jesus and the Unkind Reaper.