So it seems as if we had before us an Oriental tradition or invention, first introduced into French literature at a period when the languages and learning of the East were more cultivated in that country than among ourselves, and finally Anglicised, first with the hedge, and secondly with the bearers and the coffin, as novel and improving ingredients.
But the whimsical anecdote of Martin Elginbrod perhaps even more strikingly exhibits the longevity of certain tales or apologues, the curious phases through which they pass, and the need of approaching them, for their full appreciation, in a critical temper. Here we have, for instance, what appears superficially to be a mere piece of grotesque incongruity and irreverence on the part of a sober-minded Caledonian, who figures as the composer of his own epitaph:—
“Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod:
Have mercy on my saul, Lord God!
As I wad do, were I Lord God,
And ye were Martin Elginbrod,”
which constitutes at first sight a libel on parity of reasoning and the law of proportion, and at the same time a piece of speculative licence unusual among the disciples of the Kirk; but on closer scrutiny the lines present to us perhaps the most successful attempt ever made in the way of a revival. The inscription itself is probably an immediate transfer from the Dutch, in which language it occurs mutato nomine; but the idea was mooted three thousand years ago in the sacred books of the Hindoos. In its modern dress the notion is, of course, a pure extravagance; but such an inversion of established doctrine and belief in the Vedas becomes less startling, when we reflect that the theological system there developed is of a less sublime and immutable type than our own, and does not so entirely forbid this hypothetical or imaginative change of relationship.
These transmitted relics of Elginbrod and of the coffin seem to shew in a pronounced manner how a sentiment or idea which is implanted in our very nature is susceptible of reproduction and adaptation without an obvious betrayal of its original appurtenance to former ages and other creeds.
The story in Merry Tales and Quick Answers of the woman who lifted up her nether garments to conceal her head has the air of having voyaged from Egypt or some other Oriental country, where it would be the instinct of any female, even at the present day, to do exactly the same thing at all risks, the exposure of the face being contrary to religious canons. The author of the Englishwoman in Egypt relates an anecdote to this point.
Shakespear’s witty notion of the black flea on Bardolph’s red nose, to which the modern anecdote of Sambo and the mosquito appears to be under obligations, is circumscribed by the introduction of the doctrine of eternal punishment as to date. I have thought that the same idea might have occurred to any one philosophically contemplating the dark specks in a blazing coal fire.