Once on a time there was a drunken Governor of Siouri Castle. It happened one day that he lay in a state of drunkenness in the garden; and the Cogia taking a walk in the garden with Amad, came up and found him lying drunk and insensible. The Cogia instantly stripped him of his feradje or upper coat, and putting it on his own back, walked away. On the other hand, the Governor, on getting up, saw that he had lost his feradje, and going to his officers gave them the following command, ‘Whomsoever you find with my feradje upon him, lay hold on and bring him before me.’ The officials seeing the feradje on the back of the Cogia, made him their prisoner, and brought him before the Governor, who said to him, ‘Ho, Cogia, where did you find that feradje?’ ‘As I was taking a walk with Amad,’ said the Cogia, ‘we saw a fellow lying drunk; whereupon Amad twice uncovered his breech, and I, taking off his feradje, went away with it. If it is yours, pray take it.’ ‘Oh no, it does not belong to me,’ said the Governor.
One day the Cogia having lain down to sleep on the bank of a river imagined himself dead. An individual coming up said, ‘I wonder where one could cross this water.’ Said the Cogia, ‘When I was alive I crossed over here, but now I can’t tell you where you should cross.’
One day a Persian barber was shaving the Cogia’s head. At every stroke of his razor he cut his head, and to every place which he cut he applied a piece of cotton. Said the Cogia to the barber, ‘My good fellow, you had better sow half of my head with cotton and let me sow the other half with flax.’
One time the Cogia went to the well to draw water, but seeing the face of the moon reflected in the well, he exclaimed, ‘The moon has fallen into the well, I must pull it out.’ Then going home, he took a rope and hook, and returning, cast it into the well, where the hook became fastened against a stone. The Cogia, exerting all his might, pulled at the rope, once, twice, but at the second pulling the rope snapped, and he fell upon his back, and looking up into the heaven, saw the moon, whereupon he exclaimed, ‘O praise and glory, I have suffered much pain, but the moon has got to its place again.’
One day the Cogia going into a person’s garden climbed up into an apricot-tree and began to eat the apricots. The master coming said, ‘Cogia, what are you doing here?’ ‘Dear me,’ said the Cogia, ‘don’t you see that I am a nightingale sitting in the apricot-tree?’ Said the gardener, ‘Let me hear you sing.’ The Cogia began to warble. Whereupon the other fell to laughing, and said, ‘Do you call that singing?’ ‘I am a Persian nightingale,’ said
the Cogia, ‘and Persian nightingales sing in this manner.’
The Cogia, now with God, was master of all learning, and perfect in every art. If some people should now say, ‘We were in hope of receiving instruction from his sayings, but have read nothing but the ravings of madness’; and if they should require some other book of his utterances, we must tell them that he uttered nothing beyond what is noted here. Some people say that, whilst uttering what seemed madness, he was, in reality, divinely inspired, and that it was not madness but wisdom that he uttered. The mercy of God be upon him, mercy without bounds.