Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers

by W. A. Clouston

THE MAGIC BOWL, pp. [152]-[156]; [157], [158].

In our tale of the Faggot-maker, the fairies warn him to guard the Magic Bowl with the utmost care, “for it will break by the most trifling blow,” and he is to use it only when absolutely necessary; and in the notes of variants appended, reference is made (p. 158) to a Meklenburg story where the beer in an inexhaustible can disappears the moment its possessor reveals the secret. The gifts made by fairies and other superhuman beings have indeed generally some condition attached (most commonly, perhaps, that they are not to be examined until the recipients have reached home), as is shown pretty conclusively by my friend Mr. E. Sidney Hartland in a most interesting paper on “Fairy Births and Human Midwives,” which enriches the pages of the Archæological Review for December, 1889, and at the close of which he cites, from Poestion’s Lappländische Märchen, p. 119, a curious example, which may be fairly regarded as an analogue of the tale of the Poor Faggot-maker—“far cry” though it be from India to Swedish Lappmark:

“A peasant who had one day been unlucky at the chase was returning disgusted, when he met a fine gentleman, who begged him to come and cure his wife. The peasant protested in vain that he was no doctor. The other would take no denial, insisting that it was no matter, for if he would only put his hands on the lady she would be healed. Accordingly, the stranger led him to the very top of a mountain where was perched a castle he had never seen before. On entering, he found the walls were mirrors, the roof overhead of silver, the carpets of gold-embroidered silk, and the furniture of the purest gold and jewels. The stranger took him into a room where lay the loveliest of princesses on a golden bed, screaming with pain. As soon as she saw the peasant, she begged him to come and put his hands upon her. Almost stupified with astonishment, he hesitated to lay his coarse hands upon so fair a dame. But at length he yielded, and in a moment her pain ceased, and she was made whole. She stood up and thanked him, begging him to tarry awhile and eat with them. This, however, he declined to do, for he feared that if he tasted the food which was offered him he must remain there.

“The stranger whom he had followed then took a leathern purse, filled it with small round pieces of wood, and gave it to the peasant with these words: ‘So long as thou art in possession of this purse, money will never fail thee. But if thou shouldst ever see me again, beware of speaking to me; for if thou speak thy luck will depart.’ When the man got home he found the purse filled with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full, whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner, and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat there he beheld the stranger, with a bottle in his hand, going round and gathering the drops which the guests shook from time to time out of their glasses. The rich peasant was surprised that one who had given him so much did not seem able to buy himself a single dram, but was reduced to this means of getting a drink. Thereupon he went up to him and said: ‘Thou hast shown me more kindness than any other man ever did, and willingly I will treat thee to a little.’ The words were scarce out of his mouth when he received such a blow on his head that he fell stunned to the ground; and when again he came to himself the stranger and his purse were both gone. From that day forward he became poorer and poorer, until he was reduced to absolute beggary.”

Among other examples adduced by Mr. Hartland is a Bohemian legend in which “the Frau von Hahnen receives for her services to a water-nix three pieces of gold, with the injunction to take care of them, and never to let them go out of the hands of her own lineage, else the whole family would fall into poverty. She bequeathed the treasures to her three sons; but the youngest son took a wife who with a light heart gave the fairy gold away. Misery, of course, resulted from her folly, and the race of Hahnen speedily came to an end.”—But those who are interested in the study of comparative folk-lore would do well to read for themselves the whole paper, which is assuredly by far the most (if not indeed the only) comprehensive attempt that has yet been made in our language to treat scientifically the subject of fairy gifts to human beings.

RABBINICAL LEGENDS, TALES, FABLES, AND APHORISMS.

I

INTRODUCTORY.

In the Talmud are embodied those rules and institutions—interpretations of the civil and canonical laws contained in the Old Testament—which were transmitted orally to succeeding generations of the Jewish priesthood until the general dispersion of the Hebrew race. According to the Rabbis, Moses received the oral as well as the written law at Mount Sinai, and it was by him communicated to Joshua, from whom it was transmitted through forty successive Receivers. So long as the Temple stood, it was deemed not only unnecessary, but absolutely unlawful, to commit these ancient and carefully-preserved traditions to writing; but after the second destruction of Jerusalem, under Hadrian, when the Jewish people were scattered over the world, the system of oral transmission of these traditions from generation to generation became impracticable, and, to prevent their being lost, they were formed into a permanent record about A.D. 190, by Rabbi Jehudah the Holy, who called his work Mishna, or the Secondary Laws. About a hundred years later a commentary on it was written by Rabbi Jochonan, called Gemara, or the Completion, and these two works joined together are known as the (Jerusalem) Talmud, or Directory. But this commentary being written in an obscure style, and omitting many traditions known farther east, another was begun by Rabbi Asche, who died A.D. 427, and completed by his disciples and followers about the year 500, which together with the Mishna formed the Babylonian Talmud. Both versions were first printed at Venice in the 16th century—the Jerusalem Talmud, in one folio volume, about the year 1523; and the Babylonian Talmud, in twelve folio volumes, 1520-30. In the 12th century Moses Maimonides, a Spanish Rabbi, made an epitome, or digest, of all the laws and institutions of the Talmud. Such, in brief, is the origin and history of this famed compilation, which has been aptly described as an extraordinary monument of human industry, human wisdom, and human folly.