Jokes ridiculing red beards and heads were common in the old time; probably because a popular tradition declared that Judas, 'the arch rascal,' was so marked by nature. The anecdote of the good clergyman who never laughed but once in church, and that was, when he saw a youth trying to light a cigar, or warm his hands at a certain ruddy poll, finds its prototype in one of the old Latin stories:
'Our country people are wont to say, when they see a red-headed man; 'he would make a bad chimney-sweeper.' And when the reason is asked, they say: 'when his head came out of the chimney the country folks would think it was fire, and would ring the bells, assemble from every direction, and cause all the riot and trouble incident to a conflagration.'
It is worth noting in this connection, that the prejudice against red hair is rapidly being forgotten among cultivated persons, and is far from being what it was within the memory of man. The vulgar, who are the last to abandon an absurdity, still retain a few jokes on the subject; but these will probably be as unintelligible in time, as would be the jests of the middle ages on the rufa tunica, or red frock. The boorishness and cruelty of 'the good old times,' are strongly reflected in the following, which a scholar of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not ashamed to record of himself:
'When lately during Lent, in the year 1506, we had several guests, among them a rustic from Weilsberg, who wore a long red beard. I asked him why he did so? and he replied, 'out of grief for the death of his father-in-law.' To which I replied: 'All wrong, for red is a color suited to rejoicing'—at which remark all the guests present began to laugh immoderately. But he with his rustic simplicity, being made ashamed, answered: 'Yes, sir—that is very true, and yet I assure you that I feel as sorrowful in this red beard as any other man does in his black one.'
The man who does not—though three and a half centuries lie between—sympathize with the sad, honest simplicity of the poor red-bearded mourner, must be as gross and heartless as was the narrator of the incident. It gives one, indeed, strange subject for reflection, to pause among these old trifles of a by-gone day; jotted down for passing time in a rude age, and yet preserved so clearly, cut and freshly colored in the modern time! Conrad Bühel, the free lance, and his enemy—the red-bearded mourner, the Baron von Stoeffel and his prætor, with the simple minded thief, and timid priests, and the genial but coarse scholar, Bebelius himself, were all real men in their day, who might have passed away without the slightest link to bind their names or natures to an after age—and now they live in a jest! Still they live—and it may be that when the page which you now peruse, O reader, shall be as old as the yellow leaves of the sixteenth century volume now before me, some one may revive them again. It is something to be near a scholar now and then, for no one knows who once crosses his path, but that he too may be noted down, to be borne by an anecdote across stormy centuries, into ages all unlike our own. No man ever yet died out of a printed book.
Many a happy thought dashed off by a modern writer, is only the adroit plagiarism of an old joke, 'But oh, the Latin!' says Heinrich Heine, in describing his boyish sorrows to a lady—'Madame, you can really have no idea of what a mess it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world, if they had been first obliged to learn Latin. Lucky dogs! they already knew in their cradles the nouns ending in im.' This is a very adroit theft from the Epistolarum Obscurorum Virorum, attributed to Von Hütten and others, in which a stupid monk, having argued with Erasmus, writes as follows to his master:
'Then our host, who is a good scholar, began to talk of poetry, and greatly praised Julius Caesar in his writings and deeds. Now when I heard this I was specially delighted that I had read so much, and that I had heard you lecture on poetry in Cologne, and I said: 'Since you speak of poetry, I can no longer keep quiet, and I tell you plainly that I do not believe that Caesar wrote those commentaries; and I strengthened my assertion with this argument: 'He who has his business in war and in constant labors, cannot learn Latin. Now, Caesar was always in wars or in great toils, therefore he could not be erudite, or learn Latin.' I think, however, that Suetonius wrote those Commentaries, for I never saw any writer whose style so much resembles that of Caesar, as does that of Suetonius.'
Who has not heard the story of the hackney coachman, who, at the end of the day, was wont to divide his gains into 'half for master and half for me,' when the whole should have been given to the proprietor? Or of the American public functionary, who said that his annual gains were 'one thousand dollars salary, besides the cheatage and stealage?' Both seem to me to be foreshadowed in the following 'Sacerdotis jocus non illepidus';
'A certain priest named Fysilinus who begged for a convent of Saint Sebastian, being asked what his annual salary was, replied: 'Twenty gold crowns!' 'Little enough!' answered the other. To which Fysilinus replied: 'Various, however, are the emoluments of mortals; for I have also what is given to me, and what I steal. And very good is Saint Sebastian, who, whatever division I make with him, is always silent and contented.'
It is worth noting that this story and thousands which bore much more severely on the priests, were current for centuries before the Reformation. There were many anecdotes of this priest, all to his discredit, many of which were attributed, at a later day, to other unworthy monks. Among these, a very dull one is interesting, as connecting him with Eberhard, 'our bearded prince,' already referred to. Having begged of this truly noble man a benefice, Eberhard, who was aware of his character, replied: 'If I had a thousand vacant, you should not have the least of them.'—'Si mille, inquit, mihi beneficia, ego minimum tibi non conferrem.' To which Fysilinus impudently replied: 'And if I should hold divine service a thousand times, I would never bear you in mind, nor pray once for your salvation.'