•JNIVERSITY OF CA RIVERSIDE, LIBRARY
3 1210 01709 7252
JV\ A, CLOUSTON
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE
Aa
The Book- Lover's Library.
Edited by Henty B. Wheatley, F.S.A.
THE
BOOK OF NOODLES
STORIES OF SIMPLETONS ; OR, FOOLS AND THEIR FOLLIES.
W.' A. CLOUSTON,
A ulhor of" Poptilar Tales ajid Fictions : their Rligrations ana Transformations."
' Excellent ! Why, this is the best fooling when all
is done." — Twelfth NlgJit.
r
LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW.
j:j
L,^
EDITED BY HENRY B. VVHEATLEY, F.S.A.
THE PRECEDING VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES ARE —
THE DEDICA TION OF BOOKS. To Patron and FriCHii. By IlENRV B. VVHEATLEY, F.S.A.
THF. LITER A TURE 0/ LOCAL LVSTITUTIONS. By G. L. GOMMH, F.S.A.
By WILLIAM By
OLD COOKERY BOOKS AND ANCIENT CUISINE. By W. C. HazlitT,
GLEANINGS IN OLD GARDEN LITER A TURE. By W. C. HAZLITT.
TO MY DEAR FRIEND DAVID ROSS, LL.D., M.A., B.Sc,
PRINCIPAL OF THE
CHURCH OF SCOTLAND TRAINING COLLEGBj
GLASGOW,
THIS COLLECTION OF FACETIA IS DEDICATED.
2040793
P RE FA CE.
^KE popular tales in general^ the original sources of stories of simpletons are for the most part not traceable. The old Greek fests of this class had doubtless been floating about among different peoples long before they were reduced to writing. The only tales and apologues of noodles or stupid folk to zvhich an approximate date can be assigned are those found in the early Buddhist books, especially in the " Jdtakas" or Birth-stories, ivhich are said to have been related to his disciples by Gautama, the illustrious foimdcr of Buddhism, as incidents which occurred to himself and others in former births, and were afterwards put into a literary form by his followers. Many
viii Preface.
oj the '*Jdtakas " relate to silly men and women, and also to stupid animals, the latter being, of course, men re-horn as beasts, birds, or reptiles. But it is not to be supposed that all are of Buddhist invention ; some had doubtless been cur- rent for ages among the Hindus before Gautama promulgated his mild doctrines. Scholars are, however, agreed that these fictions date at latest from a century prior to the Christian era.
Of European noodle-stories, as of other folk-tales, it may be said that, while they are numerous, yet the eletnents of which they are composed are comparatively very few. The versions domiciled in dif- ferent countries exhibit little originality, farther than occasional modifications in accordance with local manners and cus- toms. Thus for the stupid Brahman of Indian stories the blundering, silly son is often substituted in European variants; for the brose in Norse and Highland tales we find polenta or macaroni in Italian and Sicilian versions. The identity of
Preface. ix
tntidents in the noodle-stories of Europe with those in what are for us their oldest forms, the Buddhist and Indian books, is very remarkable, particularly so in the case of Norse popular fictions, which, there is every reason to believe, were largely introduced through the Mon- golians; and the similarity of Italian and West Highland stories to those of Iceland and Norway woidd seem to indicate the influence of the Norsemen in the Western Islands of Scotland and in the south of Europe.
It were utterly futile to attempt to trace the literary history of most of the noodle-stories which appear to have been current throughout European countries for many generations, since they have prac- tically none. Soon after the invention of printing collections of facetice were rapidly multiplied, the compilers taking their material from oral as well as written sources, amongst others, from mediceval collections of " exempla " designed for the use of preachers and the writings
X Preface.
of the classical authors of antiquity. With the exception of those in Buddhist works, it is more than probable that the noodle- stories which are found among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere amusement. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the " witless devices " of the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction ? Only the monkish writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if reproduced in these days, must be *' printed for pri- vate circulation " /
Yet may the typical noodle of popular tales *' point a moral," after a fashion. Poor fellow / he follows his instructions only too literally, and with a firm con- viction that he is thus doing a very clever thing. Bid the consequence is almost always ridiculous. He practically shows the fallacy of the old saw that *' fools learn by experience," for his next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does
Preface. xi
everything, like the man in the play, " with the best intentions." His mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time ; but to that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw : he cannot be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it; and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however, which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to un- expected good fortune. He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet Sddi alludes when he says, in his charming " Gulistdn," or Rose Garden, " The al- chemist died of grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin." Men of intelligence toil pain- fully to acquire a mere " livelihood"; the noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries. In brief, he is — in stories, at least — a standing illustration of the " vanity of human life " I
xii Preface.
And now a few words as to the history and design of the following work. When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the late Mr. W. f. Thorns, who was one of the leading men in its formation, promised to edit for the Society the " Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham," furnishing notes of analogous stories, a task which he was peculiarly qualified to perform. As time passed on, however, the infirmities of old age doubt- less rendered the purposed work less and less attractive to him, and his death, after a long, usefid, and honourable career, left it still undone. What particular plan he had sketched out for himself I do not know ; but there can be no doubt that had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And, since he did not perform his sef-allotted task, his death is surely a great loss, perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of comparative folk-lore.
More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set about the
Preface. xiii
•worh, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape of Oriental noodle- stories ; but from a remark in his reply I feared there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered as a humble substitute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is displaced by a more worthy one.
Since the " Tales of the Men of Gotham " ceased to be reproduced in chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840, with an introduction by Mr. f. O. Halliwell (now Halliwell- Phillipps) ; and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies themselves : the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the " Shakespeare fest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John
xiv Preface.
Ashtotis *' Chap-books oj the Eighteenth Century'' (18S2).
// did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite analogues or variants of the Gothamite Tales ; nor, on the other hand, was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be found in the chapters entitled " Gothamite Drol- leries,'' of which they form, indeed, but a small portion.
My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources, many of which are probably unknown or inaccess- ible to ordinary readers, the best of this class of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been omitted with-
Preface. xv
out great loss ; hut my aim has been tiot only to compile an amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of popular fictions from coun- try to country. In this design I was assisted by Captain R. C. Temple, one of the editors of the *' Indian Antiquary " and one of the authors of " Wide-awake Stories," from the Panjdb and Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some curious Oriental paral- lels to European stories of simpletons.
W. A. C.
*^* While my " Popular Tales and Fictions " was passing through the press, in 1 886, / made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has had unavoidably to defer its publication till now.
W. A. C.
Glasgow, March, 188S.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Ancient Grecian Noodles . . , 1-15
CHAPTER II,
GorHAi.iTE Drolleries :
Reputed communities of stupids in different countries — The noodles of Norfolk: their lord's bond ; the dog and the honey ; the fool and his sack of meal — Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham : Andrew Borde not the author — The two Gothamites at NottsBridge — The hedging of the cuckoo — How the men of Gotham paid their rents — The twelve fishers and the courtier — The Guru Paramarian — The brothers of Bakki — Drowning the eel — The Gothamite and his cheese — The trivet — The buzzard — The gossips at
xviii Contents.
PACE
the alehouse — The cheese on the high- way— The wasp's nest — Casting sheep's eyes — The devil in the meadow — The priest of Gotham — The " boiling " river — The moon a green cheese — The " carles of Austwick " — The Wiltshire farmer and his pigs . , . 16-55
CHAPTER 1:1. GoTHAMiTE Drolleries (continued) t
The men of Schilda : the dark council-house ; the mill-stone ; the cat — Sinhalese noodles : the man who observed Bud- dha's five precepts — The fool and the Rdmdyana — The two Arabian noodles — The alewife and her hens — " Sorry he has gone to heaven " — The man of Hama and the man of Hums — Bizarrnres of the Sieur Gaulard — The rustic and the dog 56-80
CHAPTER IV.
GOTHAMiTE Drolleries (continued) •
The simpleton and the sharpers — The school- master's lady-love — The judge and the thieves — The calf s head — The Kashmiri and his store of rice — The Turkish
Confenis. xlx
PAGE
noodle: the kerchief; the caftan; the wolfs tail ; the right hand and the left ; the stolen cheese ; the moon in the well — The good dreams — Chinese noodles : the lady and her husband ; the stolen spade; the relic-hunter — Indian noodles: the fools and the mosquitoes ; the fools and the palm-trees; the servants and the trunks ; taking care of the door ; the fool and the aloes-wood ; the fool and the cotton ; the cup lost in the sea ; the fool and the thieves ; the simpletons who ate the buffalo ; the princess who was made to grow ; the washerman's ass transformed ; the foolish herdsman — Noodle-stories moralised — The brothers and their heritage — Sowing roasted sesame . . . 81-120
CHAPTER V.
The Silly Son :
Simple Simon — The Norse booby — The Russian booby — The Japanese noodle — ■ The Arabian idiot — The English silly son — The Sinhalese noodle with the robbers — The Italian booby — The Arab simpleton and his cow — The Russian fool and the birch-tree — The silly wife
XX
Contents
deceived by her husband — The Indian fool on the tree-branch — The Indian monk who believed he was dead — The Florentine fool and the joung men — The Indian silly son as a fisher ; as a messenger; killing a mosquito; as a pupil — The best of the family — The doctor's apprentice ... 121-170
|
CHAPTER VI. |
|
|
The Four Simple Brahmans : |
|
|
Introduction .... |
. 171 |
|
Story of the first Brahman . |
, .176 |
|
Story of the second Brahman |
. . 178 |
|
Story of the third Brahman . |
. 181 |
|
Story of the fourth Brahman |
. . 185 |
|
Conclusion . . . . • |
. 190 |
CHAPTER VII. The Three Great NooDLrs
191-218
APPENDIX.
Jack of Dover's Quest of the Fool of ALL Fools .....
219
THE BOOK OF NOODLES.
CHAPTER I
Ancient Grecian Noodles.
^[,LD as the days of Hierokles! " is the ^ exclamation of the "classical" g^ reader on hearing a well-worn jest ; while, on the like occasion, that of the "general " reader — a comprehen- sive term, which, doubtless, signifies one wha knows "small Latin and less Greek" — is, that it is " a Joe Miller ; " both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in jokc-ology to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of Hierokles are old there can be no doubt whatever ; that they were collected by the Alexandrian sage of tliat name is more than doubtful ; while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in which he flourished, namely, the fifth century : it is very possible that some
2 TJie Bock of Noodles.
may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians ! It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which his name is associated ; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, " quips, and cranks, and quiddities," Joe Miller's Jests ; or, The Wits Vade Meciwi. And when one speaks of a jest as being " a Joe Miller," he should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller" are, at least, " as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the man who trained his horse to live on a straw per diem, when it suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about a brick as a specimen of it.
The collection of facetiae ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it v/as made, is composed of very short anecdotes ot the say- ings and doings of pedants, who are repre- sented as noodles, or simpletons. In their existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular facetiae of Europe throu'^h the churchmen of the Middle Ages, and, after having circulated
Ancient Grecian Noodles. 3
long orally, passed into literature, whence, like other kinds of tales, they once more returned to the people. We find in them the indirect originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also, perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type : as brave men lived before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very ancient pedi- gree ! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which utterly fail to tickle our " sense of humour " in these double- distilled days. Of the 'Ao-Teta, or faceticc, of Hierokles, twenty-eight only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, £.nd pub- lished at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with other Greek jests — of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, Cumae, etc. — has been edited by Eberhard, under the title of PJiilogelos Hicradis et Philagrii Facetice, which was published at Berlin in 1869.
In attempting to classify the best of these relics of ancient wit — or witlessness, rather — it is often difficult to decide whether
4 The Book of Noodles.
a particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to place the story of the men of Cumse, who were expecting shortly to be visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.
But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave- boys of fifteen years each, and replied, " If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you one of thirty years ; " and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his father, and said to him, " Don't you know how much injury you have done me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.
Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was tlie hunter who was constantly disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep with him. Another, surely, was the man of Cumse who wished to sell some clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with
Ancient Grecian Noodles. 5
pitch, so that they should not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of Abdera who punished a runa- way ass for having got into the gymnasium and upset the oHve oil. Having brought all the asses of the town together, as a caution, they flogged the delinquent ass before his fellows.
Some of the jests of Hierokles may be con- sidered either as witticisms or witless sayings of noodles ; for example, the story of the man who recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and after- wards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, " He told me I should not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive ; " or that of the pedant who said to the doctor, " Pardon me for not having been sick so long ; " or this, " I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night : " quoth the other, " By the gods, I was so busy, I did not hear you."
But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe, and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like ripe fruit ; again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after stuffing it
6 The Book of Noodles.
full of feathers to render it soft ; again, in the cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, " You may sh^d my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you ; " and again, in the man of Abdera who tried to hang him- self, when the rope broke, and he hurt his head ; but after having the wound dressed by the doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a trace oi them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up ; when he told a friend of his mishap, he said, " Why do you sleep barefooted ? "
The following jest is spread — mutatis mutandis — over all Europe : A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in com- pany, agreed to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, " What a fool is this barber," he cried, " for he has roused the bald man instead of me ! "
A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro. Some coffee-room jokers hav-
Ancient Grecian Noodles. J
ing blackened his face during the night, when he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up, he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a rage, " Tuts, tuts 1 The silly body has waukened the wrang man."
In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a Persian jest- book : A poor wrestler, who had passed all his life in forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, " I shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a pumpkin to his right leg, and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his com- panion's leg, he called to him, " Hey ! get up, for I am perplexed in my mind. Who am I, and who are you ? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin on your leg? And if you are yourself, why -Jthe pumpkin not on my leg?"
Modern counterparts of the following jest
8 TJie Book of Noodles.
are not far to seek : Ouoth a man to a pedant, " The slave I bought of you has died." Re- joined the other, " By the gods, I do assure you that he never once played me such a trick while I had him." The old Greek pedant is transformed into an Irishman, in our collections of facetiae, who applied to a farmer for work. " 111 have nothing to do with you," said the farmer, " for the last five Irishmen I had all died on my hands." Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen I've worked for that I never did such a thing." And the jest is thus told in an old translation of Les Contcs Faceticiix de Sicicr Gaulard : "Speaking of one of his Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said. Truly it was one of the handsomest and best Curtails in all the Country ; he neuer shewed me such a trick before in all his life." '
Equally familiar is the jest of the pedantwho was looking out for a place to prepare a tomb
' Etienne Tabourot, the author of this amusing little book, who was born at Dijon in 1549 and died in 1590, is said to have written the tales in ridicule of the inhabitants of Franche Comte, who were then the subjects of Spain, and reputed to be stupid and illitrrate. From a manuscript translation, entitled Bigarrnrcs ; or, The Pleasant and Withsse and btmplc Speeches of the Lord Gaulard of Burgundy, purporting to be made by
Ancient Grecian Noodles. g
for himself, and on a friend indicating what he thought to be a suitable spot, " Very true," said the pedant, " but it is unhealthy." And we have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the following: A pedant sealed ajar of wine, and his slaves perforated it below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor had not been drawn off from below. "Why, you fool," said he, " it is not the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off."
It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that he might know how he looked when asleep — a jest which reappears in Taylor's IVz'i and Mirth in this form : "A wealthy monsieur in France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his man that he did continually gape
"J. B., of Charterhouse," probably about the year 1660, in the possession of Mr. Frederick William Cosens, London, fifty copies, edited, with a preface, by "A. S." (Alexander Smith), were printed at Glasgow in 1884. I am indebted to the courtesy of my friend Mr. F. T. Barrett, Librarian of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, for directing my attention to this curious work, a copy of which is among the treasures of that already important institution.
I o TJie Book of Noodles.
in his sleepe, at which he was angry with his man, saying he would not beheue it. His man verified it to be true ; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so, except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes ; and therefore I will have a great Looking glasse at my bed's feet for the purpose to try whether thou art a lying knaue or not." '
Not unlike some of our " Joe Millers " is the following : A citizen of Cumae, on an ass, passed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the ass went on, leaving him
' " Wit and Miith. Chargeably collected out of Taverns, Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Allj'es, Alehouses, Tobacco-shops, Highwayes, and Water-passages. Made up and fashioned into Clinches, Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips, and Jerkes. Apothegmatically bundled vp and garbled at the request of John Garrett's Ghost." (1635) — such is the elaborate title of the collec- tion of jests made by John Taylor, the "Water Poet, which owes very little to preceding English jest-books. The above story had, however, been told previously in the B'gaiyures of the Sieur Gaulard : " His cousine Dantressesa reproued him one day that she had found him sleeping in an ill posture with his mouth open, to order which for the tyme to come he commanded his seruant to hang a looking glasse upon the cur- taine at his Bed's feet, that he might henceforth see if he had a good posture in his sleep.".
A ndeni Grecian Noodles. 1 1
suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him what he did there. The man repHed, " I fell off the ass." — An analogue to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, entitled KatJui Manjari : One day a thief climbed up a cocoa-nut tree in a garden to steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the tree. "Why were you up that tree ? " asked the gardener. The thief re- plied, " My brother, I went up to gather grass for my calf." " Ha ! ha ! is there grass, then, on a cocoa-nut tree ? " said the gardener. " No," quoth the thief ; " but I did not know ; therefore I came down again." — And we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom. The gardener, coming sud- denly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said, " What are you seeking here ? " The simple- ton replied, " For some days past a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither." " But who pulled up these vege- tables?" "As the wind blew very violently, it cast me here and there ; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving myself remained in my hands." " Ah," said the gardener,
12 The Book of Noodles.
" but who filled this sack with them ? " " Well, that is the very question I was about to ask myself when you came up."
The propensity with which Irishmen are credited of making ludicrous bulls is said to have its origin, not from any lack of intelli- gence, but rather in the fancy of that lively race, which often does not wait for expression until the ideas have taken proper verbal form. Be this as it may, a considerable portion of the bulls popularly ascribed to Irishmen are certainly " old as the jests of Hierokles," and are, moreover, current throughout Europe. Thus in Hierokles we read that one of twin- brothers having recently died, a pedant, meet- ing the survivor, asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased. — Taylor has this in his Wit and Mirth, and he probably heard it from some one who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard : "A noble- man of France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remem- ber I haue often scene thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore tenants, and my name is T. J. I re- member better now (said my Lord); there were two brothers of you, but one is dead ; I pray, which of you doth remaine aliue ? " — Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the notes to his edition
Ancient Grecian Noodles. 1 3
|of Taylor's collection (Shakespeare Jest Books, Third Series), cites a Scotch parallel from The Laird of Logan : "As the Paisley steamer came alongside the quay' at the city of the Seestus," a denizen of St. Mirren's hailed one of the passengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the old nursery rhyme, —
" Ho, Master Teague, what is your story ? I went to the wood, and killed a tory ; • I went to the wood, and killed another : "Was it the same, or was it his brother?"'*
We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to him, " Don't grieve ; buy some lettuces ; eat them at a corner ; turn
' Only a Liliputian steamer could go up the " river " Cart !
^ " Seestu " is a nickname for Paisley, the gopd folks of that busy town being in the habit of frequently interjecting, " Seestu ? " — i.e., " Seest thou ? " — in their familiar colloquies.
* "Tory "is said to be the Erse term for a robber.
* Hall i well's Nursery Rhymes of England, vol. iv. of Percy Society's publications.
14 Tlie Book of Noodles.
round it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there anything like this in " Joe Miller " ? — Two lazy fellows were sleep- ing together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, " Get up, and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." " You blockhead," replied his companion, " wait till he comes back to steal the bolster, and we two will master him." And has " Joe " got this one ? — A pedant's little bay having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom he said, " I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."
An epigram in the Aniliologia may find a place among noodle stories :
" A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light, And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite ! ' "
This ancient jest has been somewhat im- proved in later times. Two Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mos- quitoes, kept their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the other, observing the light of a firefly in the
Ancient Greciafi Noodles. i 5
room, called to his bedfellow, " Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's one of them looking for us wid a lantern ! "
Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cumae having died at Alexandria, the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol replied, " He had a cough."
CHAPTER II.
Gotham iTE Drolleries, with Variants AND Analogues,
T seems to have been common to most countries, from very ancient times, for the inhabitants of a particular district, town, or village to be popularly regarded as pre-eminently foolish, arrant noodles or simpletons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly sayings and doings of the people of Basotia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs the folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The Kabail, or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad as little better than idiots. The Schildburgers are the noodles of German popular tales. In Switzerland the townsmen of Belmont, near Lausanne, are typical blockheads. And England has her " men of Gotham" — a village in Nottinghamshire — who are credited with most of the /noodle stories which have been current among the people
Gothamite Drolleries. 1 7
for centuries past, though other places share to some extent in their not very enviable reputation : in Yorkshire the " carles " ot Austwick, in Craven ; some villages near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire ; and in the counties of Sutherland and Ross, the people of Assynt.
But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we learn from a curious Latin poem, Dcscripiio NorJolcie?isijim, written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of Peterborough, which is printed in Wright's Early Mysteries and Other Latin Poems. This poem sets out with stating that Caesar having despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other peoples. Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of Norfolk is the following: Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of green wax. To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk. When it became dark, they
2
1 8 TJie Book of Noodles,
had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should use the wax seal of the bond for a candle — they should still have the words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate ; so they made the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their merry-making. This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice, at the same time producing the bond. The lord calls a clerk to examine the document, who pronounces it to be null and void in the absence of the lord's seal, and so their oppression continues.
Another story is of a man of Norfolk who put some honey in a jar, and in his absence his dog came and ate it all up. When he returned home and was told of this, he took the dog and forced him to disgorge the honey, put it back into the jar, and took it to market. A customer having examined the honey, declared it to be putrid. " Well," said the simpleton, " it was in a vessel that was not very clean." — Wright has pointed out that this reappears in an English jest-book of the seventeenth century. " A cleanly woman of Cambridgeshire made a good store of butter, and whilst she went a little way out
Gothamite Drolleries. 1 9
of the town about some earnest occasions, a neighbour's dog came in in the meantime, and eat up half the butter. Being come home, her maid told her what the dog had done, and that she had locked him up in the dairy-house. So she took the dog and hang'd him up by the heels till she had squeez'd all the butter out of his throat again, whilst she, pretty, cleanly soul, took and put it to the rest of the butter, and made it up for Cam- bridge market. But her maid told her she was ashamed to see such a nasty trick done. ' Hold your peace, you fool I ' says she ; ' 'tis good enough for schollards. Away with it to market ! ' " ' — Perhaps the original form is found in the Philogelos Hicraclis et Philagrii Facet is, edited by Eberhard. A citizen of Cumse was selling honey. Some one came up and tasted it, and said that it was all bad. He replied, " If a mouse had not fallen into it, I would not sell it."
The well-known Gothamite jest of the man who put a sack of meal on his own shoulders to save his horse, and then got on the animal's back and rode home, had been previously told of a man of Norfolk, thus:
' Coffee House Jests. Fifth edition. London. 16S8. P. T,6.
20 The Book of Noodles.
"Ad foram ambulant diebus singulis; Saccum de lolio portant in humeris, Jumentis ne noccant : bene fatuis, Ut prolocutiis sum acquantur bestiis."
It reappears in the Bigamires of the Sieur Gaulard : ' " Seeing one day his mule charged with a verie great Portmantle, [he] said to his groome that was vpon the back of the mule, thou lasie fellowe, hast thou no pitie vpon that poore Beast ? Take that port- mantle vpon thine ovvne shoulders to ease the poore Beast." And in our own time it is told of an Irish exciseman with a keg of smuggled whisky.
How such stories came to be transferred to the men of Gotham, it were fruitless to inquire.^ Similar jests have been long current in other countries of Europe and throughout Asia, and accident or malice may have fixed the stigma of stupidity on any particular spot. There is probably no ground whatever for crediting the tale of the origin of the proverb, " As wise as the men
' See ante, p. 8, note.
- Fuller, while admitting that "an hundred fopperies are forged and fathered on the towns- folk of Gotham," maintains that " Gotham doth breed as wise people as any which laugh at their simplicity."
GotJiamitc Drolleries. 2 1
of Gotham," although it is reproduced in Thoroton's Nottinghamshire, i. 42-3 :
" King John, intending to pass through this place, towards Nottingham, was prevented by the inhabitants, they apprehending that the ground over which a king passed was for ever after to become a public road. The King, incensed at their proceedings, sent from his court soon afterwards some of his servants to inquire of them the reason of their incivility and ill-treatment, that he might punish them. The villagers, hearing of the approach of the King's servants, thought of an expedient to turn away his Majesty's displeasure from them. When the messengers arrived at Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts upon a large barn to shade the wood from the sun ; and others were engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush. In short, they were all employed in some foolish way or other, which convinced the King's servants that it was a village of fools."
The fooleries asciibed to the men of Gotham were probably first collected and printed in the sixteenth century ; but that jests of the " fools of Gotham " were current among the people long before that period is
22 The Book of Noodles.
evident from a reference to them in the Wid- kirk Miracle Plays, the only existing MS. of which was written about the reign of Henry VI. :
" Foles al sam ; Sagh I never none so fare Bote the foles of Gotham "
The. oldest known copy of the Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam was printed in 1630, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Warton, in his History of English Poetry, mentions an edition, which he says was printed about 1568, by Henry Wikes, but he had never seen it. But Mr. Halliwell (now Hallivvell-Phillipps). in his Notices of Popular English Histories, cites one still earlier, which he thinks was probably printed between 1556 and 1566: "Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A. B., of Phisike Doctour. [colo- phon:] Imprinted at London, in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n. d. 12°, black letter." The book is mentioned in A Btiefe and Necessary Introduction, etc., by E. D. (8vo, 1572), among a number of other folk-books : " Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, Anliur of the Round Table, Huon of Bourdeaux, Oliver of the Castle»
Got/iamite Drolleries. 23
The Four Sonnes of Amend, The Witles Devices of Gargantua, Howleglas, Esop, Robyn Hoode, Adam Bell, Frier Rushe, The Fooles of Gotham, and a thousand such other."' And Anthony a Wood, in his AihencB Oxonienses ('1691-2), says it was "printed at London in the time of K. Hen. 8, in whose reign and after it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by scholars and gentlemen. Afterwards being often printed, [it] is now sold only on the stalls of ballad-singers." It is likely that the estimation in which the book was held " by scholars and gentlemen " was not a little due to the supposition that "A. B., of Phisike Doctour," by whom the tales were said to have been " gathered together," was none other than Andrew Borde, or Boorde, a Carthusian friar before the Reformation, one of the physicians to Henry VIII., a great traveller, even beyond the bounds of Christen- dom, " a thousand or two and more myles," a man of great learning, withal " of fame facete." For to Borde have the Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Colhavi been generally ascribed down to our own times. There is, however, as Dr. F. J. Furnivall justly remarks, " no good external evidence that the book
' Collier's Bibliographical Account, etc., vol. i., ,P. 327.
24 TJie Book of Noodles,
was written by Borde, while the internal evidence is against his authorship." ' In short, the ascription of its compilation to "A. B., ot Phisike Doctour," was clearly a device of the printer to sell the book.-
The Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham con- tinued to be printed as a chap-book down to the close of the first quarter of the present century ; and much harmless mirth they must have caused at cottage firesides in remote rural districts occasionally visited by the ubiquitous pedlar, in whose well-filled pack of all kinds of petty merchandise such drol- leries were sure to be found. Unlike other old collections of facetiae, the little work is re- markably free from objectionable stories; some are certainly not very brilliant, having, indeed, nothing in them particularly " Gothamite," and one or two seem to have been adapted from the Italian novelists. Of the twenty tales comprised in the collection, the first is certainly one of the most humorous :
There were two men of Gotham, and one
' Forewords to Horde's Introduction of Know- ledge, etc., edited, for the Early English Text Society, by F. J. Furnivall.
^ It is equally certain that Borde had no hand either in the Jests of Scogin or The Mylner of Abyngton, the Utter an imitation of Chaucer's Reve's Tale.
GotJiamite Drolleries. 25
of them was going to the market at Notting- ham to buy sheep, and the other was coming from the market, and both met on Nottingham bridge. " Well met ! " said the one to the other. " Whither are you a-going ? " said he that came from Nottingham. " Marry," said he that was going thither, " I am going to the market to buy sheep." " Buy sheep ! " said the other. "And which way will you bring them home?" "Marry," said the other, "I will bring them over this bridge." " By Robin Hood," said he that came from Nottingham, " but thou shalt not." " By Maid Marian," said he that was going thither, " but I will." " Thou shalt not," said the one. " I will," said the other. Then they beat their staves against the ground, one against the other, as if there had been a hundred sheep betwixt them. " Hold them there," said the one. " Beware of the leaping over the bridge of my sheep," said the other. " They shall all come this way," said one. " But they shall not," said the other. And as they were in contention, another wise man that belonged to Gotham came from the market, with a sack of meal upon his horse ; and seeing and hearing his neighbours at strife about sheep, and none betwixt them, said he, "Ah, fools, will you never learn wit? Then help me," said he that had the meal,
20 The Book of Noodles.
" and lay this sack upon my shoulder." They did so, and he went to the one side of the bridge and unloosed the mouth of the sack, and did shake out all the meal into the river. Then said he, " How much meal is there in the sack, neighbours ? " " Marry," answered they, " none." " Now, by my faith," answered this wise man, " even so much wit is there in your two heads to strive for the thing which you have not." Now which was the wisest of these three persons, I leave you to judge.
Allusions to these tales are of trequent occurrence in our literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dekker, in his Gtirs Horn Book (1609), says, " It is now high time for me to have a blow at thy head, which I will not cut off with sharp docu- ments, but rather set it on faster, bestowing •upon it such excellent serving that if all the wise men of Gotham should lay their heads together, their jobbernowls should not be able to compare with thine ; " and Wither, in his Abuses, says,
" And he that tryes to doe it might have bin One of the crew that hedged the cuckoo in,"
alluding to one of the most famous exploits of the wittols :
On a time the men of Gotham would have
Gothamite Drolleries. 27
pinned in the cuckoo, whereby she should sing all the year, and in the midst of the town they made a hedge round in compass, and they had got a cuckoo, and had put her into it, and said, " Sing here all the year, and thou shalt lack neither meat nor drink." The cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself encompassed within the hedge, flew away. " A vengeance on her ! " said they. " We made not our hedge high enough."
The tales had, however, attained popular favour much earlier. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has pointed out that in P/nlotiniiis (15S3) the men of Gotham are remembered as having " tied their rentes in a purse about an hare's necke, and bade her to carrie it to their landlord," an excellent plan, which is thus described :
On a time the men of Gotham had forgotten to pay their rent to their landlord. The one said to the other, " To-morrow is our pay- day, and what remedy shall we find to send our money to our lord ? " The one said, " This day I have taken a quick [i.e., live] hare, and she bnail carry it, for she is light of foot." " Be it so," said all. "She shall have a letter and a purse to put in our money, and we shall direct her the ready way." And when the letters were written, and the money
2 8 The Book of Noodles.
put in a purse, they did tie them about the hare's neck, saying, " First thou must go to Loughborough, and then to Leicester ; and at Newark there is our lord, and commend us to him, and there is his duty {i.e., due]." The hare, as soon as she was out of their hands, she did run a clean contrary way. Some cried to her, saying, " Thou must go to Lough- borough first.'' Some said, " Let the hare alone ; she can tell a nearer way than the best of us all do : let her go." Another said, " It is a noble hare ; let her alone ; she will not keep the highway for fear of the dogs."
The well-worn "Joe Miller" of the Irish- man who tried to count the party to which he belonged, and always forgot to count him- self, which is also known in Russia and in the West Highlands of Scotland, is simply a variant of this drollery :
On a certain day there were twelve men of Gotham that went to fish, and some stood on dry land ; and in going home one said to the other, " We have ventured wonderfully in wading : I pray God that none of us come home and be drowned." I' Nay, marry," said one to the other, " let us see that ; for there did twelve of us come out." Then they told {i.e., counted) themselves, and every one told eleven. Said one to the other, "There is
Gothamite Drolleries. 29
one of us drowned." They went Dack to the brook where they had been fishing, and sought up and down for him that was wanting, making great lamentation. A courtier, coming by, asked what it was they sought for, and why they were sorrowful. " Oh," said they, "this day we went to fish in the brook twelve of us came out together, and one is drowned." Said the courtier, "Tell [count] how many there be of you." One of them said, " Eleven," and he did not tell himself. "Well," said the courtier, "what will you give me, and 1 will find the twelfth man?" "Sir," said they, "all the money we have got." " Give me the money," said the courtier, and began with the first, and gave him a stroke over the shoulders with his whip, which made him groan, saying, " Here is one," and so served them all, and they all groaned at the matter. When he came to the last, he paid him well, saying, " Here is the twelfth man." "God's blessing on thy heart," said they, "for thus finding our dear brother ! "
This droll adventure is also found in the Gooroo Pa?'a??iar/afi, a most amusing work, written in the Tamil language by Beschi, an Italian Jesuit, who was missionary in India from 1700 till his death, in 1742. The Gooroo (teacher) and his five disciples, who are,
3 O The Book of Noodles.
like himself, noodles, come to a river which they have to cross, and which, as the Gooroo informs them, is a very dangerous stream. To ascertain whether it is at present "asleep," one of them dips his lighted cheroot in the water, which, of course, extinguishes it, upon which he returns to the Gooroo and reports that the river is still in a dangerous mood. So they all sit down, and begin to tell stories of the destructive nature of this river. One relates how his grandfather and another man were journeying together, driving two asses laden with bags of salt, and coming to this river, they resolved to bathe in it, and the asses, tempted by the coolness of the water, at the same time knelt down in it. When the men found that their salt had disappeared, they congratulated themselves on their wonderful escape from the devouring stream, which had eaten up all their salt without even opening the bags. Another disciple relates a story similar to the so-called ^Esopian fable of the dog and his shadow, this river being supposed to have devoured a piece of meat which the dog had dropped into it. At length the river is found to be quiescent, a piece of charred wood having been plunged into it without producing any effect like that of the former experiment ; find they determine to ford it, but with great caution. Arrived on the other side, they count
Gothamite Drolleries. 3 1
ttieir number, like the men of Gotham, and discover that one is not present. A traveller, coming up, finds the missing man by whack- ing each of them over the shoulder. The Gooroo, while gratified that the lost one was found, was grumbling at his sore bones — for the traveller had struck pretty hard — when an old woman, on learning of their adventure, told them that, in her young da3^s, she and her female companions were once returning home from a grand festival, and adopted another plan for ascertaining if they were all together. Gathering some of the cattle- droppings, they kneaded them into a cake, in 'which they each made a mark with the tip of the nose, and then counted the marks — a plan which the Gooroo and his disciples should make use of on future occasions.
The Abbe Dubois has given a French translation of the Adventures of the Gooroo Paramartan among the Contes Divers ap- pended to his not very valuable selection of tales and apologues from Tamil, Telegu, and Cannada versions of the Panchatantra (Five Chapters, not " Cinq Ruses," as he renders it), a Sanskrit form of the celebrated Fables of Bidpa'i, or Pilpay. An English rendering of Beschi's work, by Babington, forms one of the publications of the Oriental Transla- tion Fund. Dubois states that he found
3 2 The Book of Noodles.
the tales ot the Gooroo current in Indian countries where Beschi's name was unknown, and he had no doubt of their Indian origin. However this may be, the work was probably designed, as Babington thinks, to satirise the Br^hmans, as well as to furnish a pleasing vehicle of instruction to those Jesuits in India whose duties required a knowledge of the Tamil language.
A story akin to that of the Gothamite fishers, if not, indeed, an older form of it, is told in Iceland of the Three Brothers of Bakki, who came upon one of the hot springs which abound in that volcanic island, and taking off their boots and stockings, put their feet into the water and began to bathe them. When they would rise up, they were per- plexed to know each his own feet, and so they sat disconsolate, until a wayfarer chanced to pass by, to whom they told their case, when he soon relieved their minds by striking the feet of each, for which important service they gave him many thanks. ' This story reappears, slightly modified, in Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands : A party of masons, engaged in building a dyke, take shelter during a heavy shower, and when it has passed, they continue sitting, because
' Powell and Magnussoa's Legends of Iceland, Second Series.
Gothamite Drolleries. 33
their legs had got mixed together, and none knew his own, until they were put right by a traveller with a big stick. We have here an evident relic of the Norsemen's occupation of the Hebrides.
Several of the tales of the Gothamites are found almost unaltered in Gaelic. That of the twelve fishers has been already men- tioned, and here is the story of the attempt to drown an eel, which Campbell gives in similar terms in his Tales 0/ the West High- lands :
When that Good Friday was come, the men of Gotham did cast their heads together what to do with their white herring, their red herring, their sprats, and salt fish. One con- sulted with the other, and a^'reed that such fish should be cast into a pond or pool (the which was in the middle of the town), that it might increase the next year ; and every man did cast them into the pool. The one said, " I have thus many white heriings ; " another said, " I have thus many sprats ; " another said, " I have thus many sa»lt fishes ; let us all go together into the pool, and we shall fare like lords the next Lent." At the begin- ning of next Lent the men did draw the pond, to have their fish, and there was nothing but a great eel. " Ah," said they all, " a mischief
3
34 I^Ji-^ Book of Noodles.
on this eel, for he hath eat up all our fish ! " " What shall we do with him ?" said the one to hte other. "Kill him!" said one of them. "Chop him all to pieces!" said another. " Nay, not so," said the other ; "let us drown him." " Be it so," said all. They went to another pool, and did cast the eel into the water. " Lie there," said they, "and shift for thyself, for no help thou shalt have of us;" and there they left the eel to be drowned.
Campbell's Gaelic story differs so little from the above that we must suppose it to have been derived directly from the English chap-book. Oral tradition always produces local variations from a written story, of which we have an example in a Gaelic version of this choice exploit :
There was a man of Gotham who went to the market of Nottingham to sell cheese ; and as he was going down the hill to Nottingham Bridge, one of his cheeses fell out of his wallet and ran down the hill. " Ah," said the fellow, " can you run to the market alone ? I will now send one after the other ; " then laying down the wallet and taking out the cheeses, he tumbled them down the hill one after the other ; and some ran into one bush, and some into another ; so at last he said, " I do charge you to meet me in the market-place."
Gothamite Drolleries 35
And when the man came into the market to meet the cheeses, he stayed until the market was almost done, then went and inquired of his neighbours and other men if they did see his cheeses come to market. " Why, who should bring them ? " said one of the neigh- bours. " Marry, themselves," said the fellow ; " they knew the way well enough," said he : " a vengeance on them ! For I was afraid to see my cheeses run so fast, that they would run beyond the market. I am persuaded that they are at this time almost as far as York." So he immediately takes a horse and rides after them to York ; but to this day no man has ever heard of the cheeses.
In one Gaelic variant a woman is going to Inverness with a basket filled with balls of worsted of her own spinning, and going down a hill, one of the balls tumbles out and rolls along briskly, upon which she sends the others after it, holding the ends of each in her hand ; and when she reaches the town, she finds a " ravelled hank " instead of her neat balls of worsted. In another version a man goes to market with two bags of cheese, and sends them downhill, like the Gothamite. Alter waiting at the market all day in vain, he returns home, and tells his wife of his mis- fortune. She goes to the foot of the hill and finds all the cheese.
36 TJie Book of Noodles.
The next Gothamite tale also finds its counterpart in the Gaelic stories : There was a man of Gotham who bought at Nottingham a trivet, or brandiron, and as he was going home his shoulders grew sore with the carriage thereof, and he set it down ; and seeing that it had three feet, he said, " Ha I hast thou three feet, and I but two ? Thou shalt bear me home, if thou wilt," and set himself down thereupon, and said to the trivet, " Bear me as long as I have borne thee ; but if thou do not, thou shalt stand still for me." The man of Gotham did see that his trivet would not go farther. " Stand still, in the mayor's name," said he, " and follow me if thou wilt. I will tell thee right the way to my home." When he did come to his house, his wife said, " Where is my trivet ? " The man said, " He hath three legs, and I have but two ; and I did teach him the way to my house. Let him come home if he will." " Where left ye the trivet ? " said the woman. " At Gotham hill," said the man. His wife did run and fetch home the trivet her own self, or else she had lost it through her husband's Vv^it.
In Campbell's version a man having been sent by his wife with her spinning-wheel to get mended, as he was returning home with it the wind set the wheel in motion, so he put it down, and bidding it go straight to his house,
Gothamite Drolleries. 37
set off himself. When he reached home, he asked his wife if the spinning-wheel had arrived yet, and on her replying that it had not, " I thought as much," quoth he, " for I took the shorter way."
A somewhat similar story is found in Riviere's French collection of tales of the Kabail, Algeria, to this effect : The mother ot a youth of the Beni-Jennad clan gave him a hundred reals to buy a mule ; so he went to market, and on his way met a man carrying a water-melon for sale. " How much for the melon?" he asks. "What will you give?"' says the man. " I have only got a hundred reals," answered the booby ; " had I more, you should have it." " Well," rejoined the man, " I'll take them." Then the youth took the melon and handed over the money. " But tell me," says he, " will its young one be as green as it is ? " " Doubtless," answered the man, " it will be green." As the booby was going home, he allowed the melon to roll down a slope before him. It burst on its way, when up started a frightened hare. " Go to my house, young one," he shouted. "Surely a green animal has come out of it." And when he got home, he inquired of his mother if the young one had arrived.
In the Gooroo Parajnartan there is a parallel incident to this last. The noodles are desirous
3 8 TJie Book of Noodles.
of providing their Gooroo with a horse, and a man sells them a pumpkin, telling them it is a mare's egg, which only requires to be sat upon for a certain time to produce a fine young horse. The Gooroo himself under- takes to hatch the mare's egg, since his dis- ciples have all other matters to attend to ; but as they are carrying it through a jungle, it falls down and splits into pieces ; just then a frightened hare runs before them ; and they inform the Gooroo that a fine young colt came out of the mare's egg, with very long ears, and ran off with the speed of the wind. It would have proved a fine horse for their revered Gooroo, they add ; but he con- soles himself for the loss by reflecting that such an animal would probably have run away with him.
A number of the Gothamite tales in the printed collection are not only inferior to those which are preserved orally, but can be considered in no sense examples of pre- eminent folly. Three consist of tricks played by women upon their husbands, such as are found in the ordinary jest-books of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries. In one a man, who had taken a buzzard, invites some friends to dine with him. His wife, with two of her gossips, having secretly eaten the buzzard,
Gothamite Drolleries. 39
kills and cooks an old goose, and sets it before him and his guests ; the latter call him a knave to mock them thus with an old goose, and go off in great anger. The husband, resolved to put himself right with his friends, stuffs the buzzard's feathers into a sack, in order to show them that they were mistaken in thinking he had tried to deceive them with an old goose instead of a fine fat buzzard. But before he started on this business, his wife contrived to substitute the goose's feathers, which he exhibited to his friends ai those of the buzzard, and was soundly cud- gelled for what they believed to be a second attempt to mock them. — Two other stories seem to be derived from the Italian novelists : of the man who intended cutting off his wife's hair' and of the man who defied his wife to cuckold him. Two others turn upon wrong responses at a christening and a marriage, which have certainly nothing Gothamite in them. Another is a dull story of a Scotchman who employed a carver to make him as a sign of his inn a boar's head, the tradesman supposing from his northern pronunciation
' An imitation of Boccaccio, Decameron, Day vii., nov. 8, who perhaps borrowed the story from Guerin's fabliau " De la Dame qui fit accroire a son Mari qu'il avait reve ; alias, Les Cheveux Coupes " (Le Grand's Fabliaux, ed. 1781, tome ii., 280).
40 TJie Book of Noodles.
that he meant a bare head. — In the nine- teenth tale, a party of gossips are assembled at the alehouse, and each relates in what manner she is profitable to her husband : one saves candles by sending all her household to bed in daylight ; another, like the old fellow and Tib his wife in Jolly Good Ale and Old, eats little meat, but can swig a gallon or two of ale, and so forth.
We have, however, our Gothamite once more in the story of him who, seeing a fine cheese on the ground as he rode along the highway, tried to pick it up with his sword, and finding his sword too short, rode back to fetch a longer one for his purpose, but when he returned, he found the cheese was gone. "A murrain take it ! " quoth he. " If I had had this sword, I had had this cheese myself, and now another hath got it ! " Also in the smith who took a red-hot iron bar and thrust it into the thatch of his smithy to destroy a colony of wasps, and, of course, burned down the smithy — a story which has done duty in modern days to " point a moral " in the form of a teetotal tract, with a drunken smith in place of the honest Gothamite ! '
' A slightly different version occurs in the Tale of Beryn, which is found in a unique iMS. of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and which forms the first part of the old French romance of the
GotJianiite Drolleries. 41
The following properly belongs to stories ot the " silly son " class : There was a young man of Gotham the which should go wooing to a fair maid. His mother did warn him beforehand, saying, " When thou dost look upon her, cast a sheep's-eye, and say, ' How do ye, sweet pigsnie ? ' " The fellow went to the butcher's and bought seven or eight sheep's eyes ; and when this lusty wooer did sit at dinner, he would cast in her face a sheep's eye, saying, "How dost thou, my pretty pigsnie?" "How do I?" said the wench. " Swine's-face, why dost thou cast the sheep's eye upon me ? " " O sweet pigsnie, have at thee another!" " I defy thee, Swine's-face," said the wench. The fellow, being abashed, said, " What, sweet pigsnie ! Be content, for if thou do live until the next year, thou wilt be a foul sow." " Walk, knave, walk ! " said she ; " for if thou live till the
Chevalier Berinus. In the English poem Beryn, lamenting his misfortunes, and that he had dis- inherited himself, says :
" But I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes \_i.e. ilies] He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies, And jjoith.a-bout with a brcnn3'ng wase, Tyll it was atte last tliat the leam and blase Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was, And Kissid so the evese, that brent was al the plase."
It is certain that the author of the French original of the Tale of Beryn did not get this tory out of our jests of the men of Gotham.
42 The Book of Noodles.
next year, thou wilt be a stark knave, a lubber, and a fool."
It is very evident that the men ot Gotham were of " honest " Jack Falstaffs opinion that the better part of valour is discretion : On a time there was a man of Gotham a-mowing in the meads and found a great grasshopper. He cast down his scythe, and did run home to his neighbours, and said that there was a devil in the field that hopped in the grass. Then there was every man ready with clubs and staves, with halberts, and with other weapons, to go and kill the grasshopper. When they did come to the place where the grasshopper should be, said the one to the other, "Let every man cross himself from the devil, or we will not meddle with him." And so they returned again, and said, " We were all blessed this day that we went no farther." " Ah, cowards," said he that had his scythe in the mead, " help me to fetch my scj'the." "No," said they; "it is good to sleep in a whole skin : better it is to lose thy scythe than to mar us all."
There is some spice of humour in the con- cluding tale of the printed collection, although it has no business there: On Ash Wednes- day the priest said to the men of Gotham, " If I should enjoin you to prayer, there is none of you that can say your paternoster ;
GotJiamitc Drolleries. 43
and you be now too old to learn. And to enjoin you to fast were foolishness, for you do not eat a good meal's meat in a year. Wherefore do I enjoin thee to labour all the week, that thou mayest fare well to dine on Sunday, and I will come to dinner and see it to be so, and take my dinner." Another man he did enjoin to fare well on Monday, and another on Tuesday, and one after another that one or other should fare well once a week, that he might have part of his meat. " And as for alms," said the priest, " ye be beggars all, except one or two ; therefore bestow alms on yourselves."
Among the numerous stories of the Gotham- ites preserved orally, but not found in the collection of " A. B., of Phisicke Doctour," is the following, which seems to be of Indian extraction :
One day some men of Gotham were walk- ing by the riverside, and came to a place where the contrary currents caused the water to boil as in a whirlpool. " See how the water boils ! " says one. " If we had plenty of oatmeal," says another, "we might make enough porridge to serve all the village for a month." So it was resolved that part of them should go to the village and fetch their oatmeal, which was soon brought and thrown
44 TJ^^ Book of Noodles.
into the river. But there presently arose the question of how they were to know when the porridge was ready. This difficulty was over- come by the offer of one of the company to jump in, and it was agreed that if he found it ready for use, he should signify the same to his companions. The man jumped in, and found the water deeper than he expected. Thrice he rose to the surface, but said nothing. The others, impatient at his remaining so long silent, and seeing him smack his lips, took this for an avowal that the porridge was good, and so they all jumped in after him and were drowned.
Another traditional Gothamite story is re- lated of a villager coming home at a late hour, and, seeing the reflection of the moon in a horse-pond, believed it to be a green cheese, and roused all his neighbours to help him to draw it out. They raked and raked away until a passing cloud sank the cheese, when they returned to their homes grievously dis- appointed.'— This is also related of the
' There is an analogous Indian story of a youth who went to a tank to drink, and observing the reflection of a golden-crested bird that was sitting on a tree, he thought it was gold in the water, and entered the tank to take it up, but he could not lay hold of it as it appeared and dis- appeared in the water. But as often as he ascended the bank he again saw it in the water
Gothamite Drolleries. 45
villagers near the Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire, and the sobriquet of " moon- rakers," applied to Wiltshire folk in general, is said to have had its origin in the incident ; but they assert that it was a keg of smuggled brandy, which had been sunk in a pond, that the villagers were attempting to fish up, when the exciseman coming suddenly upon the scene, they made him believe they were raking the reflection of the moon, thinking it a green cheese, an explanation which is on
and again he entered the tank to lay hold of it, and still he got nothing. At length his father saw and questioned him, then drove away the bird, and explaining the matter to him, took the foolish fellow home.
We have already seen that the men of Abdera (p. 5) flogged an ass before its fellows for upsetting a jar of olive oil, but what is that com- pared with the story of the ass that drank up the moon ? According to Ludovicus Vives, a learned Spanish writer, certain townspeople imprisoned an ass for drinking up the moon, whose reflec- tion, appearing in the water, was covered with a cloud while the ass was drinking. Next day the poor beast was brought to the bar to be sen- tenced according to his deserts. After the grave burghers had discussed the affair for some time, one at length rose up and declared that it was not fit the town should lose its moon, but rather that the ass should be cut open and the moon he had swallowed taken out of him, which, being cordially approved by the others, was done ac- cordingly.
4-6 TJie Book of Noodles.
a par with the apocryphal tale of the Gotham- ites and the messengers of King John.
The absurd notion of the moon being a fine cheese is of very respectable antiquity, and occurs in the noodle-stories of many countries. It is referred to by Rabelais, and was doubt- less the subject of a popular French tale in his time. In the twenty-second story of the Disciplina Clericalis of Peter Alfonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was baptised in 1106, a fox leaves a wolf in a well, looking after a supposed cheese, made by the image of the moon in the water ; and the same fable had been told by the Talmudists in the fifth cen- tury.' The well-known "Joe Miller" of the party of Irishmen who endeavoured to reach a " green cheese " in the river by hanging one by another's legs finds its parallel in a Meck- lenburg story, in which some men by the same contrivance tried to get a stone from the bottom of a well, and the incident is thus related in the old English jest-book entitled 77/1? Sacke Full of Newes :
There were three young men going to Lam- beth along by the waterside, and one played with the other, and they cast each other's caps into the water in such sort as they could not get their caps again. But over the place
' This is also one of the Fables of Marie de France (thirteenth century).
Gothamite Drolleries. 47
where their caps were did grow a great old tree, the which did cover a great deal of the water. One of them said to the rest, " Sirs, I have found a notable way to come by them. First I will make myself fast by the middle with one of your girdles unto the tree, and he that is with you shall hang fast upon my girdle, and he that is last shall take hold on him that holds fast on my girdle, and so with one of his hands he may take up all our caps, and cast them on the sand." And so they did ; but when they thought that they had been most secure and fast, he that was above felt his girdle slack, and said, " Soft, sirs ! My girdle slacketh." " Make it fast quickly," said they. But as he was untying it to make it faster they fell all three into the water, and were well washed for their pains.
Closely allied to these tales is the Russian story of the old man who planted a cabbage- head in the cellar, under the floor of his cottage, and, strange to say, it grew right up to the sky. He climbs up the cabbage-stalk till he reaches the sky. There he sees a mill, which gives a turn, and out come a pie and a cake, with a pot of stewed grain on the top. The old man eats his fill and drinks his fill ; then he lies down to sleep. By-and-bye he awakes, and slides down to earth again.
4 8 The Book of Noodles.
He tells his wife of the good things up in the sky, and she induces him to take her with him. She slips into a sack, and the old man takes it in his teeth and begins to climb up. The old woman, becoming tired, asked him if it was much farther, and just as he was about to say, " Not much farther," the sack slipped from between his teeth, and the old woman fell to the ground and was smashed to pieces.
There are many variants of this last story (which is found in Mr. Ralston's most valuable and entertaining collection of Russian folk-tales), but observe the very close resem- blance which it bears to the following Indian tale of the fools and the bull of Siva, from the Kathd Sarit Sdgara (Ocean of the Streams of Story), the grand collection, composed in Sanskrit verse by Somadeva in the eleventh century, from a similar work entitled Vrihat Kathd (Great Story), written in Sanskrit prose by Gunadhya, in the sixth century : '
In a certain convent, which was full of fools, there was a man who was the greatest
' A complete translation of the Kathd Sarit Sdgara, by Professor C. H. Tawney, with notes of variants, which exhibit his wide acquaintance with the popular fictions of all lands, has been recently published at Calcutta (London agents, Messrs, Triibner and Co.), a work which must prove invaluable to every English student of comparative folk-lore.
Gothamite Drolleries. 49
fool ot the lot. He once heard in a treatise on law, which was being read aloud, that a man who has a tank made gains a great reward in the next world. Then, as he had a large fortune, he had made a large tank full of water, at no great distance from his own convent. One day this prince of fools went to take a look at that tank of his, and per- ceived that the sand had been scratched up by some creature. The next day too he came, and saw that the bank had been torn up in another part of the tank, and being quite astonished, he said to himself, " I will watch here to-morrow the whole day, beginning in the early morning, and I will find out what creature it is that does this." After he had formed this resolution, he came there early next morning, and watched, until at last he saw a bull descend from heaven and plough up the bank with its horns, He thought, " This is a heavenly bull, so why should I not go to heaven with it ? " And he went up to the bull, and with both his hands laid hold of the tail behind. Then the holy bull lifted up, with the utmost force, the foolish man who was clinging to its tail, and carried him in a moment to its home in KaiMsa.' There
• Siva's paradise, according to Hindu mytho- logy, is on Mount Kailasa, in the Himalyas, uortli of Manasa.
50 The Book of Noodles.
the foolish man lived for some time in great comfort, feasting on heavenly dainties, sweet- meats, and other things which he obtained. And seeing that the bull kept going and returning, that king of fools, bewildered by destiny, thought, " I will go down clinging to the tail of the bull and see my friends, and after I have told them this wonderful tale, I will return in the same way." Having formed this resolution, the fool went and clung to the tail of the bull one day when it was setting out, and so returned to the surface of the earth. When he entered the convent, the other blockheads who were there embraced him, and asked him where he had been, and he told them. Then all these foolish men, having heard the tale of his adventures, made this petition to him : " Be kind, and take us also there ; enable us also to feast on sweet- meats." He consented, and told them his plan for doing it, and next day led them to the border of the tank, and the bull came there. And the principal fool seized the tail ot the bull with his two hands, and another took nold of his feet, and a third in turn took hold of his. So, when they had formed a chain by hanging on to one another's feet, the bull flew rapidly \;p into the air. And while the bull was going along, with all the tools clinging to its tail, it happened that one
GotJiamite Drolleries. 5 i
of the fools said to the principal fool, " Tell us now, to satisfy our curiosity, how large were the sweetmeats which you ate, of which a never-failing supply can be obtained in heaven ? " Then the leader had his attention diverted from the business in hand, and quickly joined his hands together like the cup of a lotus, and exclaimed in answer, " So big." But in so doing he let go the tail of the bull, and accordingly he and all those others fell from heaven, and were killed ; and the bull returned to KaiMsa ; but the people who saw it were much amused.'
" Thus," remarks the story-teller, " fools do themselves injury by asking questions and giving answers without reflection " ; he then proceeds to relate a story in illustration of the apothegm that "association with fools brings prosperity to no man " :
A certain fool, while going to another village, forgot the way. And when he asked the way, the people said to him, " Take the path that goes up by the tree on the bank of the river." Then the fool went and got on the trunk of that tree, and said to himself, " The men told me that my way lay up the trunk of this tree." And as he went on climbing up it, the bough at the end bent
' Tawney's translation, which is used through- out this work.
5 2 The Book of Noodles
with his weight, and it was all he could do to avoid falling by clinging to it. While he was clinging to it, there came that way an elephant that had been drinking water, with his driver on his back. And the fool called to him, saying, "Great sir, take me down." The elephant-driver laid hold of him by the feet with both his hands, to take him down from the tree. Meanwhile the elephant went on, and the driver found himself clinging to the feet of the fool, who was clinging to the end of the tree. Then said the fool to the driver, " Sing something, in order that the people may hear, and come at once and take us down." So the elephant-driver, thus appealed to, began to sing, and he sang so sweetly that the fool was much pleased ; and in his desire to applaud him, he forgot what he was about, let go his hold of the tree, and pre- pared to clap him with both his hands ; and immediately he and the elephant-driver fell into the river and were drowned.
The germ of all stories of this class is perhaps found in the Jdtakas, or Buddhist Birth Stories : A pair of geese resolve to migrate to another country, and agree to carry with them a tortoise, their intimate friend, taking the ends of a stick between their bills, and the tortoise grasping it by the middle with his mouth. As they are flying ovei
Gothamite Drolleries. 5 3
B^nSres, the people exclaim in wonder to one another at such a strange sight, and the tortoise, unable to maintain silence, opens his mouth to rebuke them, and by so doing falls to the ground, and is dashed into pieces. This fable is also found in Babrius (115) ; in the Kathd Sarit Sdgara , in the several ver- sions of the Fables of BidpaT ; and in the Avaddnas, translated into French from the Chinese by Stanislas Julicn.
To return to Gothamite stories. According to one of those which are current orally, the men of Gotham had but one knife among them, which was stuck in a tree in the middle ot the village for their common use, and many amusing incidents, says Mr. Halliwell- Phillipps, arose out of their disputes for the use of this knife. The " carles " of Austwick, in Yorkshire, are said also to have had but one knife, or "whittle," which was deposited under a tree, and if it was not found there when wanted, the " carle " requiring it called out, "Whittle to the tree!" This plan did very well for some years, until it was taken one day by a party of labourers to a neighbouring moor, to be used for cutting their bread and cheese. When the day's labour was done, they resolved to leave the knife at the place,
54 I^Ji-^ Book of Noodles.
to save themselves the trouble of carrying it back, as they should want it again next day ; so they looked about for some object to mark the spot, and stuck it into the ground under a black cloud that happened to be the most remarkable object in sight. But next day, when they returned to the place, the cloud was gone, and the " whittle " was never seen again. When an Austwick " carle " comes into any of the larger towns of Yorkshire, it is said he is greeted with the question, " Who tried to lift the bull over the gate?" in allu- sion to the following story: An Austwick farmer, wishing to get a bull out of a field — how the animal got into it, the story does not inform us — procured the assistance of nine of his neighbours to lift the animal over the gate. After trying in vain for some hours, they sent one of their number to the village for more help. In going out he opened the gate, and after he had gone away, it occurred to one of those who remained that the bull might be allowed to go out in the same manner.
Another Austwick farmer had to take a *vheelbarrow to a certain town, and, to save a hundred yards by going the ordinary road, he went through the fields, and had to lift the barrow over twenty-two stiles.
It was a Wiltshire man, however (if all tales be true), who determined to cure the
Gothamite Drolleries. 55
filthy habits of his hogs by making them roost upon the branches of a tree, like birds. Night after night the pigs were hoisted up to their perch, and every morning one of them was found with its neck broken, until at last there were none left. — And quite as witless, surely, was the device of the men of Belmont, who once desired to move their church three yards farther westward, so they carefully marked the exact distance by leaving their coats on the ground. Then they set to work to push with all their might against the eastern wall. In the meantime a thief had gone round to the west side and stolen their coats. "Diable !" exclaimed they on finding that their coats were gone, " we have pushed too far ! "'
CHAPTER III.
GoTHAMiTE Drolleries {continued).
[jHE Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gotham ites of Germany, and the stories of their stupidity, after being orally current for years among the people, were collected near the close of the sixteenth century, the earliest known edition being that of 1597. In a most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances" {Foreigyi Quarterly Review, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W. J. Thorns has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from which the following particulars and tales are extracted: " There have been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their
Gothamite Drolleries. 57
wives, and then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered affairs, de- termining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity, and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as to prove ' plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the Schildburgers, after performing every con- ceivable piece of folly, and receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and signature of the emperor, by the crown- ing act of their lives turn themselves out ot house and home, whereby they are com- pelled, like the Jews, to become outcasts and wandererr over the face of the earth, by which means it has arisen that there i? no spot, however remote, on which some c their descendants, who may be known by their characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."
Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows. When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, " saw they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a state of things ; and having in vain gone outside and examined the building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to
5 8 The Book of Noodles.
hold a council upon the subject on the follow- ing day. At the time appointed they as- sembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating himself, he stuck in his hat. After much discussion, one genius, brighter than the rest, decided that they could not see for want of daylight, and that they ought on the morrow to carry in as much of it as possible. Accordingly, the next day, when the sun shone, all the sacks, bags, boxes, baskets, tubs, pans, etc. of the village were filled with its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied there, but with no good effect. After this they re- moved the roof, by the advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the sugges- tion. This plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter fell, and they were forced to replace the root, they found the house just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get daylight in by making a window.
Gothamite Drolleries. 59
Another tale relates how the boors of Schilda contrived to get their millstone twice down from a high mountain :
The boors of Schilda had built a mill, and with extraordinary labour they had quarried a millstone for it out of a quarry which lay on the summit of a high mountain ; and when the stone was finished, they carried it with great labour and pain down the hill. When they had got to the bottom, it occurred to one of them that they might have spared them- selves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down. "Verily," said he, "we are the stupidest of fools to take these extra- ordinary pains to do that which we might have done with so little trouble. We will carry it up, and then let it roll down the hill by itcelf, as we did before with the tree which we felled for the council-house."
This advice pleased them all, and with greater labour they carried the stone to the top of the mountain again, and were about to roll it down, when one of them said, "But how shall we know where it runs to ? Who will be able to tell us aught about it?" "Why," said the bailiff, who had advised the stone being carried up again, "this is very easily managed. One of us must stick in the hole [for the millstone, of course, had a hole in the middle], and run down with it."
6o The Book of Noodles
This was agreed to, and one of them, having been chosen for the purpose, thrust his head through the hole, and ran down the hill with the millstone. Now at the bottom of the mountain was a deep fish-pond, into which the stone rolled, and the simpleton with it, so that the Schildburgers lost both stone and man, and not one among them knew what had bfecome of them. And they felt sorely angered against their old companion who had run down the hill with the stone, for they considered that he had carried it off for the purpose of disposing of it. So they published a notice in all the neighbouring boroughs, towns, and villages, calling on them, that " it any one come there with a millstone round his neck, they should treat him as one who had stolen the common goods, and give him to justice." But the poor fellow lay in the pond, dead. Had he been able to speak, he would have been willing to tell them not to worry themselves on his account, for he would give them their own again. But his load pressed so heavily upon him, and he was so deep in the water, that he, after drinking water enough — more, indeed, than was good for him — died; and he is dead at the present day, and dead he will, shall, and must remain !
Gothamite Drolleries. 6 1
The forty-seventh chapter recounts " How the Schildburgers purchased a mouser, and with it their own ruin " :
Now it happened that there were no cats in Schilda, and so many mice that nothing was safe, even in the bread-basket, for what- soever they put there was sure to be gnawed or eaten ; and this grieved them sorely. And upon a time there came a traveller into the village, carrjang a cat in his arms, and he entered the hostel. The host asked him, "What sort of a beast is that?" Said he, " It is a mouser." Now the mice at Schilda were so quiet and so tame that they never fled before the people, but ran about all day long, without the slightest fear. So the traveller let the cat run, who, in the sight of the host, soon caught numbers of mice. Now when the people were told this by the host, they asked the man whether the mouser was to be sold, for they would pay him well for it. He said, " It certainly was not to be sold ; but seeing that it would be so useful to them, he would let them have it if they would pay him what was right," and he asked a hundred florins for it. The boors were glad to find that he asked so little, and concluded a bar- gain with him, he agreeing to take half the money down, and to come again in six months to fetch the rest. As soon as the
62 The Booh of Noodles.
bargain was struck on both sides, they gave the traveller the half of the money, and he carried the mouser into the granary, where they kept their corn, for there were most mice there. The traveller went off with the money at full speed, for he feared greatly lest they should repent them of the bargain, and want their money back again ; and as he went along he kept looking behind him to see that no one was following him. Now the boors had forgotten to ask what the cat was to be fed upon, so they sent one after him in haste to ask him the question. But when he with the gold saw that some one was following him, he hastened so much the more, so that the boor could by no means overtake him, whereupon he called out to him from afar off, "What does it eat?" "What you please! What you please !" quoth the traveller. But the peasant understood him to say, " Men and beasts! Men and beasts!" Therefore he returned home in great affliction, and said as much to his worthy masters.
On learning this they became greatly alarmed, and said, " When it has no more mice to eat, it will eat our cattle ; and when they are gone, it will eat us ! To think that we should lay out our good money in buying such a thing !" And they held counsel together and resolved that the cat should be killed.
Gothamite Drolleries. 63
But no one would venture to lay hold of it for that purpose, whereupon it was determined to burn the granary, and the cat in it, seeing that it was better they should suffer a common loss than all lose life and limb. So they set fire to the granary. But when the cat smelt the fire, it sprang out of a window and fled to another house, and the granary was burned to the ground. Never was there sorrow greater than that of the Schildburgers when they found that they could not kill the cat. They coun- selled with one another, and purchased the house to which the cat had fled, and burned that also. But the cat sprang out upon the roof, and sat there, washing itself and putting its paws behind its ears, after the manner of cats ; and the Schildburgers understood thereby that the cat lifted up its hands and swore an oath that it would not leave their treatment of it unrevenged. Then one of them took a long pole and struck at the cat, but the cat caught hold of the pole, and began to clamber down it, whereupon all the people grew greatly alarmed and ran away, and left the fire to burn as it might. And because no one regarded the fire, nor sought to put it out, the whole village was burned to a house, and notwithstanding that, the cat escaped. And the Schildburgers fled with their wives and children to a neighbouring forest. And at
64 The Book of Noodles.
this time was burned their chancery and all the papers therein, which is the reason why their history is not to be found described in a more regular manner.
Thus ended the career ot the Schild- burgers as a community, according to the veracious chronicle of their marvellous ex- ploits, the first of which, their carrying sun- shine into the council-house, is a favourite incident in the noodle-stories of many coun- tries, and has its parallel in the Icelandic story of the Three Brothers of Bakki : They had observed that in winter the weather was colder than in summer, also that the larger the windows of a house were the colder it was. All frost and sharp cold, therefore, they thought sprang from the fact that houses had windows in them. So they built themselves a house on a new plan, without windows in it at all. It followed, of course, that there was always pitch darkness in it. They found that this was rather a fault in the house, but com- forted themselves with the certainty that in winter it would be very warm ; and as to light, they thought they could contrive some easy means of getting the house lighted. One fine day in the middle of summer, when the sunshine was brightest, they began to carry the darkness out ot the house in their
Gothamite Drolleries. 65
caps, and emptied it out when they came into the sunshine, which they then carried into the dark room. Thus they worked hard the whole day, but in the evening, when they had done all their best, they were not a little disap- pointed to find that it was as dark as before, so much so that they could not tell one hand from the other.'
There is a Kashimir story which bears a slight resemblance to the exploit of the Schild- burgers with the cat. A poor old woman used to beg her food by day and cook it at night. Half of the food she would eat in the morning, and the other half in the evening. After a while a cat got to know of this arrangement, and came and ate the meal for her. The old woman was very patient, but at last could no longer endure thecat's impudence, and so she laid hold of it. She argued with herself as to whether she should kill it or not. " If I slay it," she thought, " it will be a sin ; but if I keep it alive, it will be to my heavy loss." So she determined only to punish it. She pro- cured some cotton wool and some oil, and soaking the one in the other, tied it on to the cat's tail and then set it on fire. Away rushed the cat across the yard, up the side of the
' Powell and Magnusson's Legends of Iceland, Second Series, p. 626.
66 The Book of Noodles.
window, and on to the roof, where its flaming tail ignited the thatch and set the whole house on fire. The flames soon spread to other houses, and the whole village was destroyed.' An older form of this incident is found in the introduction to a Persian poetical version of the Book of Sindibdd (Sindibdd Ndma), of which a unique MS. copy, very finely illuminated, but imperfect, is preserved in the Library of the India Office:^ In a village called Buzina-Gird {i.e., Monkey Town) there was a goat that was in the habit of butting at a cer- tain old woman whenever she came into the street. One day the old woman had been to ask fire from a neighbour, and on her return the goat struck her so violently with his horns when she was off her guard as to draw blood. Enraged at this, she applied the fire which she held to the goat's fleece, which kindled, and the animal ran to the stables of the elephant-keeper, and rubbed his sides against the reeds and willows. They caught fire, which the wind soon spread, and the heads and faces of the warlike elephants were
' Dictionary of Kashniiri Proverbs and Sayings, Explained and illustrated from the rich and in- teresting folk-lore of the Valley. By the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles. Bombay : 1885.
^ This work was composed a.h. 776 (a.d. 1374-5), as the anonymous author takes care to inform us in his opening verses.
Gothmnite Drolleries. 6y
scorched. With the sequel — how the king caused all the monkeys to be slaughtered, as their fat was required to cure the scorched elephants — we have no ccncern at present.'
In Ceylon whole distvicts, such as Tum- pane, in the central province, Morora Korle, in the southern province, and Rayigam Korle, in the western province, are credited with being the abode of fools. A learned writer on the proverbial sayings of the Sinhalese states that these often refer to " popular stories of stupid people to which foolish actions are likened. The stories of the Tum- pane villagers who tried to unearth and carry off a well because they saw a bees' nest reflected in the water ; of the Morora Korle boatmen who mistook a bend in the river for the sea, left their cargo there, and returned home ; of the Rayigam Korle fools who threw
' A still older form of the story occurs in the Pancha Tantra (Five Sections), a Sanskrit ver- sion of the celebrated Fables of Bidpai, in which a gluttonous ram is in the habit of going to the king's kitchen and devouring all food within his reach. One of the cooks beat him with a burn- ing log of wood, and the ram rushed off with his blazing fleece and set the horses' stables en fire, and so forth. The story is most probably of Buddhist extraction.
6S TJic Book of Noodles.
stones at the moon to frighten her off one fine moonlight night when they thought she was coming too near, and that there was dan- ger of her burning their crops, are well known, and it is customary to ask a man if he was born in one of these places if he has done anything particularly foolish. The story of the double-fool — i.e., of the man who tried to lighten the boat by carrying his pingo load over his shoulders ; ' of the man who stretched out his hands to be warmed by the fire on the other side of the river ; of the rustic's wife who had her own head shaved, so as not to lose the barber's services for the day when he came, and her husband was away from home ; of the villagers who tied up their mortars in the village in the belief that the elephant tracks in the rice fields were caused by the mortars wandering about at night ; of the man who would not wash his body in order to spite the river ; of the people who flogged the elk-skin at home to avenge themselves on the deer that trespassed in the fields at night ; and of the man who performed the five pre- cepts— all these are popular stories of foolish people which have passed into proverbs." "^
' A Sinhalese variant of the exploit of the man of Norfolk and of the man of Gotham with the sack of meal. See ante, p. 19.
^ Mr. C. J. R. le Mesuricr in The Orietitalist (Kandy, Ceylon : 1884), pp. 233-4.
Gothaniite Drolleries. 69
The last of the stories referred to in the above extract is as follows : A woman once rebuked her husband for not performing the five (Buddhist) precepts. " I don't know what they are," he replied. " Oh, it's very easy," she said ; "all you have to do is to go to the priest and repeat what he says after him." "Is that all?" he answered. "Then I'll go and do it at once." Off he went, and as he neared the temple the priest saw him and called out, " Who are you ? " to which he re- plied, "Who are you?" "What do you want? " demands the priest. " What do you want ? " the blockhead answers dutifully. "Are you mad?" roared the priest. "Are you mad?" returned the rustic. "Here," said the priest to his attendants, " take and beat him well ; " and notwithstanding that lie carefully repeated the words again, taken and thoroughly well thrashed he was, after which he crawled back to his wife and said, "What a wonderful woman you are! You manage to repeat the five precepts every day, and are strong and healthy, while I, who have only said them once, am nearly dead with fever from the bruises." '
To this last may be added a story in the
' The Orientalist, 1884, p. 234. A much fuller version, with subsequent incidents, is e'v.i in the same excellent periodica), pp. 36—38
70 TJie Book of Noodles.
Kathd Majijari, a Canarese collection, ot the stupid fellow and the Rdmdyana, one ot the two great Hindu epics : One day a man was reading the Rdmdyana in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might be in- structed by hearing it, sent him there. He went, and stood leaning on his crook — for he was a shepherd — when presently a practical joker, seeing his simplicity, jumped upon his shoulders, and he stood with the man on his back until the discourse was concluded. When he reached home, his wife asked him how he liked the Rdmdyana. " Alas ! " said he, " it was not easy ; it was a man's load."
The race of Gothamites is indeed found everywhere — in popular tales, if not in actual life ; and their sayings and doings are not less diverting when husband and wife are well mated, as in the following story :
An Arab observing one morning that his house was ready to tumble about his ears from decay, and being without the means of repairing it, went with a long face to his wife, and informed her of his trouble. She said, " Why, my dear, need you distress yourself about so small a matter ? You have a cow worth thirty dirhams ; take her to the market and sell her for that sum. I have some
Gothamite Drolleries. 7 r
thread, which I will dispose of to-day, and I warrant you that between us both we shall manage very well." The man at once drove the cow to the market, and gave her over for sale to the appraiser of cattle. The sales- man showed her to the bystanders, directed their attention to all her good points, ex- patiated on all her good qualities, and, in short, passed her off as a cow of inestimable value. To all this the simpleton listened with delight and astonishment ; he heard his cow praised for qualities that no other cow ever pos- sessed, and determined in his own mind not to lose so rare a bargain, but purchase her himself and balk the chapmen. He there- fore called out to the appraiser, and asked him what she was going at. The salesman replied, " At fifteen dirhams and upwards." " By the head of the Prophet," exclaimed the wittol, " had I known that my cow was such a prodigy of excellence, you should not have caught me in the market with her for sale." Now it happened that he had just fifteen dirhams, and no more, and these he thrust upon the broker, exclaiming, " The cow is mine ; I have the best claim to her." He then seized the cow and drove her home, exulting all the way as if he had found a treasure. On reaching home he inquired eagerly for his wife, to inform her of his ad-
72 The Book of Noodles.
venture, but was told she was not returned from market. He waited impatiently for her return, when he sprang up to meet her, crying, " Wife, I have done something to-day that will astonish you. I have performed a marvellous exploit ! " " Patience ! " says his wife, " Perhaps I have done something my- self to match it. But hear my story, and then talk of cleverness, if you please." The husband desired her to proceed.
" When I went to market," says she, " I found a man in want of thread. I showed him mine, which he approved of, and having bargained for it, he agreed to pay me accord- ing to the weight. I told him it weighed so much, which he seemed to discredit, and weighed it himself. Observing it to fall short of the weight I had mentioned, and fearing I should lose the price I at first expected, I requested him to weigh it over again, and make certain. In the meantime, taking an opportunity unobserved, I stripped oft my silver bracelets and put them slily into the scale with my thread. The scale, of course, now preponderated, and I received the full price I had demanded." Having finished her story, she cried out, " Now, what do you think of your wife ? " " Amazing ! amazing ! ' said he. " Your capacity is supernatural. And now, if you please, I will give you a
Gothatnite Drolleries, 73
specimen of mine," and he related his ad- venture at the market. " O husband,"' she exclaim.ed when he had told his story, " had we not possessed such consummate wisdom and address, how could we have contrived means to repair our old house? In future vex not yourself about domestic concerns, since by the exercise of our talents we need never want for anything ! "
The exploits ot that precious pair may be compared with the following : An alewife went to the market with a brood of chickens and an old black hen. For the hen and one chicken she could not find a purchaser ; so, before leaving the town, she called upon a surgeon, to try to effect a sale. He bought the chicken, but declined taking the hen. She then asked him if he would draw a tooth for it. The tooth was drawn, and he ex- pressed his surprise on finding it was per- fectly sound. " Oh," said she, " I knew it was sound ; but it was worth while having it drawn for the old hen." She then called upon another surgeon, and had a second tooth drawn, as sound as the other. " What's to pay?" she inquired. "A shilling," said the surgeon. " Very well," rejoined the hostess, with a chuckle ; " you left a shilling due in my house the other night, and now
74 The Book of Noodles.
we are quits." " Certainly we are," responded the perplexed tooth-drawer, and the delighted old woman returned to her hostelry, to ac- quaint all her gossips of how cleverly she had outwitted the doctors.
Ferrier says, in his Illustrations of Sterne, that the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard laid the foundation of some of the jests in our old English collections. A few of them found their way somehow into Taylor's Wit and Mirth, and this is one : A monsieur chanced to meet a lady of his acquaintance, and asked her how she did and how her good husband fared, at which she wept, saying that her husband was in heaven. " In heaven ! " quoth he. " It is the first time that I heard of it, and I am sorry for it with all my heart."
Similar in its point is a story in Archie Armstrotig s Banquet of Jests : ' Sitting over • a cup ot ale in a winter night, two widows entered into discourse of their dead husbands, and after ripping up their good and bad qualities, saith one of them to the maid, " I prithee, wench, reach us another light, for my
' Archie Armstrong was Court jester to James I. of England. It is needless, perhaps, to say that he had no hand in this book of facetiae, which is composed for the most part of jests taken out of earlier collections.
Gothamite Drolleries. 75
husband (God rest his soul !) above all things loved to see good lights about the house, God grant him light everlasting ! " " And I pray you, neighbour," said the other, " let the maid lay on some more coals or stir up the fire, for my husband in his lifetime ever loved to see a good fire. God grant him fire ever- lasting ! "
This seems cousin-german to the Arabian story of two men, one of whom hailed from the town of Hama (ancient Hamath), the other from Hums (ancient Emessa). Those towns are not far apart, but the people of the former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the latter are pro- verbially as stupid. (And for the proper imderstanding of the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb ha7na means to " protect " or " defend," the verb hatnasa to " roast " or " toast.") These men had some business of importance with the nearest magistrate, and set out together on their journey. The man of Hums, conscious of his own ignorance, begged his companion to speak first in the audience, in order that he might get a hint as to how such a formal matter should be conducted. Accordingly, when they came into the pasha's presence, the man of Hama went forward, and the pasha asked him, "Where are you from?"
'jG The Book of Noodles.
" Your servant is from Hama," said he. " May Allah PROTECT (/uima) your excellency ! " The pasha then turned to the other man, and asked, "And where are you from?" to which he answered, " Your servant is from Hums. May Allah roast (Jiamasd) your excellency ! "
Not a lew ot the Bigarrures of the Sieur Gaulard are the prototypes of bulls and foolish sayings of the typical Irishman, which go their ceaseless round in popular periodicals, and are even audaciously reproduced as original in our "comic" journals — save the mark I To cite some examples :
A friend one day told M. Gaulard that the Dean of Besangon was dead. "Believe it not," said he ; " for had it been so he would have told me himself, since he writes to me about everything."
M. Gaulard asked his secretary one even- ing what hour it was. " Sir," replied the secretary, "I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun is set." " Well," quoth M. Gaulard, "and can you not see by the candle ? "
On another occasion the Sieur called from his bed to a servant desiring him to see if it vvasi daylight yet. " There is nosign of day-
Gothamite Drolleries. yy
light," said the servant. " I do not wonder," rejoined the Sieur, "that thou canst not see day, great fool as thou art. Take a candle and look with it out at the window, and thou shalt see whether it be day or not."
In a strange house, the Sieur found the walls of his bedchamber full of great holes. " This," exclaimed he in a rage, " is the cursedest chamber in all the world. One may see day all the night through."
Travelling in the country, his man, to gain the fairest way, rode through a field sowed with pease, upon which M. Gaulard cried to him, " Thou knave, wilt thou burn my horse's feet? Dost thou not know that about six weeks ago I burned my mouth with eating pease, they were so hot ? "
A poor man complained to him that he had had a horse stolen from him. " Why did you not mark his visage," asked M. Gaulard, "and the clothes he wore ? " " Sir," said the man, " I was not there when he was stolen." Quoth the Sieur, "You should have left somebody to ask him his name, and in what place he resided."
M. Gaulard felt the sun so hot in the midst of a field at noontide in August that he asked of those about him, "What means the sun to be so hot? How should it not keep its heat till winter, when it is cold weather?"
/
The Book of Noodles.
A proctor, discoursing with M. Gaulard, told him that a dumb, deaf, or bhnd man could not make a will but with certain additional forms. " I pray you," said the Sieur, " give me that in writing, that I may send it to a cousin of mine who is lame."
One day a friend visited the Sieur and found him asleep in his chair. " I slept," said he, "only to avoid idleness; for I must always be doing something."
The Abbe of Poupet complained to him that the moles had spoiled a hne meadow, and he could find no remedy for them. "Why, oousin," said M. Gaulard, " it is but paving your meadow, and the moles will no more trouble you."
M. Gaulard had a lackey belonging to Auvergne, who robbed him of twelve crowns and ran away, at which he was very angry, and said he would have nothing that came from that country. So he ordered all that was from Auvergne to be cast out of the house, even his mule ; and to make the animal more ashamed, he caused his servants to take off its shoes and its saddle and bridle.
Although Taylor's Wit and Mirth is the most " original " of our old English jest-books
Gothamite Drolleries. 79
— that is to say, it contains very few stories in common with preceding collections — yet some of the diverting tales he relates are traceable to very distant sources, more espe- cially the following :
A country fellow (that had not walked much in streets that were paved) came to London, where a dog came suddenly out of a house, and furiously ran at him. The fellow stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the dog, and finding them all fast rammed or paved in the ground, quoth he, " What a strange country am I in, where the people tie up the stones and let the dogs loose ! "
Three centuries and a half before the Water Poet heard this exquisitely humorous story, the great Persian poet Sa'di related it in his Gtilisidn (or Rose-garden), which was written a.d. 1278 :
A poor poet presented himself before the chief of a gang of robbers, and recited some verses in his praise. The robber-chief, how- ever, instead of rewarding him, as he fondly expected, ordered him to be stripped of his clothes and expelled from the village. The dogs attacking him in the rear, the unlucky bard stooped to pick up a stone to throw at them, and finding the stones frozen in the ground, he exclaimed, "What a vile set of
8o The Book of Noodles.
men are these, who set loose the dogs and fasten the stones ! "
Now here we have a very curious instance of the migration of a popular tale from Persia — perchance it first set out on its travels from India — in the thirteenth century, when grave and reverend seigniors wagged their beards and shook their portly sides at its recital, to London in the days of the Scottish Solomon (more properly dubbed " the wisest fool in Christendom " !), when Taylor, the Water Poet, probably heard it told, in some river-side tavern, amidst the clinking of beer-cans and the fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado, and " put it in his book ! " How it came into England it would be interesting to ascertain. It may have been brought to Europe by the Venetian merchants, who traded largely in the Levant and with the Moors in Northern Africa.
CHAPTER IV.
GoTHAMiTE Drolleries {coiitimi.ed),
afiALES of sharpers' tricks upon simpletons do not quite fall within the scope of the present series of papers, but there is one, in the Arabian Nights — not found, however, in our common English version of that fascinating story-book — which deserves a place among noodle-stories, since it is so diverting, is not very generally known, and is probably the original of the early Italian novel of the Monk Tmns/onned, which is ascribed to Michele Colombo :
A rustic simpleton was walking homeward dragging his ass after him by the halter, which a brace of sharpers observing, one said to his fellow, " Come with me, and I will take the ass from that man." He then quietly advanced to the ass, unloosed it from the halter, and gave the animal to his com- jianion, who went off with it, after which he put the halter over his own head, and allowed
6
8 2 The Book of Noodles.
the rustic to drag him for some little distance, until he with the ass was fairly out of sight, when he suddenly stopped, and the man. having tugged at the halter several times without eftect, looked round, and, amazed to see a human being in place of his beast, exclaimed, "Who art thou?" The sharper answered, " I was thy ass ; but hear my story, for it is wonderful. I had a good and pious mother, and one day I came home intoxicated. Grieved to see me in such a state, she gently reproved me, but I, instead of being pene- trated with remorse, beat her with a stick, whereupon she prayed to Allah, and, in answer to her supplication, lo ! I was trans- formed into an ass. In that shape I have continued until this day, when my mother, as it appears, has interceded for my restoration to human form, as before." The simpleton, believing every word of this strange story, raised his eyes to heaven, saying, " Of a truth there is no power but from Allah ! But, pray, forgive me for having used thee as I have done." The sharper readily granted his forgiveness, and went off to rejoin his com- panion and dispose of the ass ; while the simpleton returned home, and showing his wife the bridle, told her of the marvellous transformation which had occurred. His wife, in hopes of propitiating Heaven, gave
Gothamite Drolleries. 83
alms and offered up many prayers to avert evil from them, on account of their having used a human being as an ass. At length the simpleton, having remained idle at home for some time, went one day to the market co purchase another ass, and on entering the place where all the animals were fastened, he saw with astonishment his old ass offered for sale. Putting his mouth to its ear, he whispered, " Woe to thee, unlucky ! Doubtless thou hast again been intoxicated ; but, by Allah, I will never buy thee ! "
Another noodle-story, of a different class, in the Arabian Nights, may be here cited in full from Sir R. F. Burton's translation of that delightful work, privately printed for the subscribers, and it will serve, moreover, as a fair specimen of the admirable manner in which that ripe scholar has represented in English the quaint style of his original :
[Quoth one of the learned,] I passed once by a school wherein a schoolmaster was teaching children ; so I entered, finding him a good-looking man, and a well-dressed, when he rose to me and made me sit with him. Then I examined him in the Kordn, and in syntax and prosody, and lexicography ; and behold, he was perfect in all required of him ; and I said to him, " Allah strengthen
84 The Book of Noodles.
thy purpose ! Thou art indeed versed in all that is requisite." Thereafter I Irequented him a while, discovering daily some new excellence in him, and quoth I to myself, " This is indeed a wonder in any dominie ; for the wise are agreed upon a lack of wit in children's teachers." ' Then I separated myself from him, and sought him and visited him only every few days, till coming to see him one day, as of wont, I found the school shut, and made inquiry of his neighbours, who replied, " Some one is dead in his house." So I said in my mind, " It behoveth me to pay him a visit of condolence," and going to his house, knocked at the door, when a slave-girl came out to me and asked, " What dost thou want ?" and I answered, " I want thy master." She rephed, "He is sitting alone mourning;" and I rejoined, " Tell him that his friend So-and-so seeketh to console him." She went in and told him ; and he said, " Admit him." So she brought me in to him, and I found him seated alone, and his head bound with
' This notion, that schoolmasters "lack wit," however absurd, seems to have been entertained from ancient times, and to be still prevalent in the East ; the so-called jests of Hierokles are all at the expense of pedants ; and the Turkish typical noodle is Khoja {i.e., Teacher) Nasru-'d- Din, some of whose " witless devices " shall be cited presently.
Gothamite Drolleries. 85
mourning fillets. So I said to him, " Allah requite thee amply ! This is a path all must perforce tread, and it behoveth thee to take patience," adding, " but who is dead unto thee ? " He answered, " One who was dearest of the folk to me, and best beloved." " Perhaps thy father?" "No." "Thy brother ?" "No." " One of thy kindred ? " " No." Then asked I, "What relation was the dead to thee?" and he answered, " My lover." Quoth I to myself, " This is the first proof to swear by of his lack of wit." So I said to him, " As- suredly there be others than she, and fairer ; " and he made answer, " I never saw her that I might judge whether or no there be others fairer than she." Quoth I to myself, " This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, " And how couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied, " Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo ! there passed by a man, singing the following distich :
" ' Umm Amr', thy boons Allah repay !
Give back my heart, be't where it may ! ' "
The schoolmaster continued, " When I heard the man humming these words as he passed along the street, I said to myself, ' Except this Umm Amru were without equal in the world, the poets had not celebrated her in ode and
S6 TJie Book of Noodles.
canzon.' So I fell in love with her ; but two days after, the same man passed, singing the following couplet :
" ' Ass and Umm Amr' went their way, Nor she nor ass returned for aye.'
Thereupon I knew that she was dead, and mourned for her. This was three days ago, and I have been mourning ever since." So I left him and fared forth, having assured my- self of the weakness of the gerund-grinder's wit. '
Here, surely, was the very Father of Folly, but what shall we say of judges and magis- trates being sometimes (represented as) equally witless? Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish Kdzi, that two men came before him one of whom com- plained that the other had almost bit his ear off. The accused denied this, and declared that the fellow had bit his own ear. After pondering the matter for some time, the judge told them to come again two hours later. Then he went into his private room,
' ElfLaylawa Layla, or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night. Translated, with Introduc- lion. Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men, and a Terminal Essay on the History of The Nights, by R. F. Burton. Vol, v.
Gothamite Drolleries. 8/
and attempted to bring his ear and his mouth together ; but all he did was to fall backwards and break his head. Wrapping a cloth round his head, he returned to court, and the two men coming in again presently, he thus decided the question : " No man can bite his own ear, but in trying to do so he may fall down and break his head."
A Sinhalese story, which is also well known in various forms in India, furnishes a still more remarkable example of forensic sagacity. It is thus related by the able editor of The Orientalist, vol. i., p. 191 :
One night some thieves broke into the house of a rich man, and carried away all his valuables. The man complained to the justice of the peace, who had the robbers captured, and when brought before him, inquired of them whether they had anything to say in their defence. " Sir," said they, "we are not to blame in this matter; the robbery was entirely due to the mason who built the house ; for the walls were so badly made, and gave way so easily, that we were quite unable to resist the temptation of breaking in." Orders were then given to bring the mason to the court-house. On his arrival he was informed of the charge brought against him. " Ah," said he, " the fault is not mine, but that of the coolie, who made moi tar
8 8 The Book of Noodles
badly." When the coolie was brought, he laid the blame on the potter, who, he said, had sold him a cracked chattie, in which he could not carry sufficient water to mix the mortar properly. Then the potter was brought before the judge, and he explained that the blame should not be laid upon him, but upon a very pretty woman, who, in a! beautiful dress, was passing at the time he was making the chattie, and had so riveted his attention, that he forgot all about the work. When the woman ap- peared, she protested that the fault was not hers, for she would not have been in that neighbourhood at all had the goldsmith sent home her earrings at the proper time ; the charge, she argued, should properly be brought against him. The goldsmith was brought, and as he was unable to offer any reasonable excuse, he was condemned to be hanged. Those in the court, however, begged the judge to spare the goldsmith's life ; " for," said they, " he is very sick and ill-favoured, and would not make at aU a pretty spectacle." "But," said the judge, "somebody must be hanged." Then they drew the attention of the court to the fact that there was a fat Moorman in a shop opposite, who was a much fitter subject for an execution, and asked that he might be hanged in the goldsmith's stead. The learned judge, considering that this
Gothamiie Drolleries. 89
arrangement would be very satisfactory, gave judgment accordingly.
It some ot the last-cited stories are not precisely Gothamite drolleries, though all are droll enough in their way, there can be no doubt whatever that we have a Sinhalese brother to the men of Gotham in the follow- ing : A villager in Ceylon, whose calf had got its head into a pot and could not get it out again, sent for a friend, celebrated for his wisdom, to release the poor animal. The sagacious friend, taking in the situation at a glance, cut off the calfs head, broke the pot, and then delivered the head to the owner of the calf, saying, " What will you do when I am dead and gone ? " — And we have another Gothamite in the Kashmiri who bought as much rice as he thought would suffice for a year's food, and finding he had only enough for eleven months, concluded it was better to fast the other month right off, which he did accordingly; but he died just before the month was completed, leaving eleven months' rice in his house.
The typical noodle of the Turks, the Khoja Nasru-'d-Din, is said to have been a subject of the independent prince of Karaman, at
90 The Book of Noodles.
whose capital, Konya, he resided, and he is represented as a contemporary of TimGr (Tamerlane), in the middle of the fourteenth century. The pleasantries which are ascribed to him are for the most part common to all countries, but some are probably of genuine Turkish origin. To cite a few specimens: The Khojas wife said to him one day, " Make me a present of a kerchief of red Yemen silk, to put on my head." The Khoja stretched out his arms and said, "Like that? Is that large enough ? " On her replying in the affir- mative he ran off to the bazaar, with his arms still stretched out, and meeting a man on the road, he bawled to him, "Look where you are going, O man, or you will cause me to lose my measure ! "
Another day the Khoja's wife washed his caftan and spread it upon a tree in the gar- den of the house. That night the Khoja goes out, and thinks he sees in the moonlight a man motionless upon a tree in the garden. " Give me my bow and arrows," said he to his wife, and having received them, he shot the caftan, piercing it through and through, and then returned into the house. Next morning, when he discovered that it was his own caftan he had shot at, he exclaimed, " By Allah, had I happened to be in it, I should have killed myself ! "
Gothandte Drolleries 91
The Ettrick Shepherd's well-known story of the two Highlanders and the wild boar has its exact parallel in the Turkish jest-book, as follows : One day the Khoja went with his friend Sheragh Ahmed to the den ot a wolf, in order to take the cubs. Said the Khoja to Ahmed, " Do you go in, and I will watch without ; " and Ahmed went in, to take the cubs in the absence of the old wolf. But she came back presently, and had got half-way into her den when the Khoja seized hold of her tail. The wolf in her struggles cast up a great dust into the eyes of Ahmed, who called out to the Khoja, " Hallo ! what does all this dust mean?" The Khoja replied, "If the wolf's tail breaks, you will soon know what the dust means ! "
Several of the jests closely resemble " Joe Millers " told of Irishmen, such as this : It happened one night, after the Khoja and a guest had lain down to sleep, that the taper went out. " O Khoja Effendi," said the guest, "the taper is gone out. But there is a taper at your right side. Pray bring it and let us light it." Quoth the Khoja, " You must surely be a fool to think that I should know my right hand in the dark." And this: A thief having stolen a piece of salted cheese from the Khoja, he ran immediately and seated himself on the border of a fountain. Said the people to him,
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" O Khoja, what have you come here to look for in such a hurry?" The Khoja repKed, " The thief will certainly come here to drink as soon as he has eaten my salted cheese ; I always do so myself."
And here is one of the Gothamite class : One evening the Khoja went to the well to draw water, and seeing the moon reflected in the water, he exclaimed, " The moon has fallen into the well ; I must pull it out." So he let down the rope and hook, and the hook became fastened to a stone, whereupon he exerted all his strength, and the rope broke, and he fell upon his back. Looking into the sky, he saw the moon, and cried out joyfully, " Praise be to Allah ! I am sorely bruised, but the moon has got into its place again."
There is a well-worn jest of an Irishman who, being observed by a friend to look ex- ceedingly blank and perplexed, was asked what ailed him. He replied that he had had a dream. " Was it a good or a bad dream ? " " Faith," said he, " it was a little of both ; but I'll tell ye. I dreamt that I was with the Pope, who was the finest gentleman in the whole district ; and after we had conversed a while, his Holiness axed me. Would I drink ? Thinks I to myself, ' Would a duck swim ? ' So, seeing the whisky and the lemons and the
Gotha7nite Drolleries. 93
sugar on the side-board, I said, I didn't mind if I took a drop of punch. ' Cold or hot ? ' says his Holiness. ' Hot, your Holiness,' says I. So on that he steps down to the kitchen for the boiling water, but, bedad, before he came back, I woke straight up ; and now it's distressing me that I didn't take it cold!"
We have somewhat of a parallel to this in a Turkish jest : The Khoja dreamt that some one gave him nine pieces of money, but he was not content, and said, " Make it ten." Then he awoke and found his hands empty. Instantly closing his eyes again, and holding out his hand, he said, " I repent ; give me the nine pieces."'
But the Chinese relate the very counter- part of our Irishman's story. A confirmed drunkard dreamt that he had been presented with a cup of excellent wine, and set it by the fire to warm,^ that he should better enjoy the flavour of it ; but just as he was about to drink off the delicious draught he awoke.
' The Khoja, however, was not such a fool as we might conclude from the foregoing examples of his sayings and doings; for, being asked one day what musical instrument he liked best, he answered, " I am very fond of the music of plates and saucepans."
^ In China wine is ahnost invariably taken hot. Irishmen generally drink their whisky "nate."
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"Fool that I am,"' he cried, "why was I not content to drink it cold ? " '
The Chinese seem to have as keen a sense of humour as any other people. They tell a story, for instance, of a lady who had been recently married, and on the third day saw her husband returning home, so she slipped quietly behind him and gave him a hearty kiss. The husband was annoyed, and said she offended all propriety. " Pardon ! par- don ! " said she. " I did not know it was you." Thus the excuse'may sometimes be worse than the offence. There is exquisite humour in the following noodle-story : Two brothers were tilling the ground together. The elder, having prepared dinner, called his brother, who replied in a loud voice, " Wait till I have hidden my spade, and I shall at once be with you." When he joined his elder brother, the latter mildly reproached him, saying, "When one hides anything, one should keep silence, or at least should not cry aloud about it, for it lays one open to be robbed." Dinner over,
* This and the following specimens of Chinese stories of simpletons are from " Contes at Bon Mots extraits d'un livre chinois intitule Siao It Siao, traduit par M. Stanislas Julian," (Journal Asiatique, torn, iv., 1824).
Gothamite Drolleries. 95
the younger went back to the field, and looked for his spade, but could not find it ; so he ran to his brother and whisperedvays\.&i\oM€^y in his ear, " My spade is stolen ! " — The passion for collecting antique relics is thus ridiculed : A man who was fond of old curiosities, though he knew not the true from the false, expended all his wealth in purchas- ing mere imitations of the lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor Cheun, and the mat of Confucius ; and being reduced to beggary, he carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in the streets, " Sirs, I pray you, give me some coins struck by Tai-Koung."
Indian fiction abounds in stories of simple- tons, and probably the oldest extant drolleries of the Gothamite type are found in the Jdtakas, or Buddhist Birth-stories. Assuredly they were own brothers to our mad men of Gotham, the Indian villagers who, being pestered by mosquitoes when at work in the forest, bravely resolved, according to Jdtaka 44, to take their bows and arrows and other weapons and make war upon the troublesome insects until they had shot dead or cut in pieces every one ; but in trying to shoot the mosquitoes they only shot, struck, and injured
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one another. And nothing more foolish is recorded of the Sohildburgers than Somadeva relates, in his Kathd Sarit Sdgara, of the simpletons who cut down the palm-trees : Being required to furnish the king with a certain quantity of dates, and perceiving that it was very easy to gather the dates of a palm which had fallen down of itself, they set to work and cut down all the date-palms in their village, and having gathered from them their whole crop of dates, they raised them up and planted them again, thinking they would grow. In illustration of the apothegm that "fools who attend only to the words of an order, and do not understand the meaning, cause much detriment," is the story of the servants who kept the rain off the trunks : The camel of a merchant gave way under its load on a journey. He said to his servants, " I will go and buy another camel to carry the half of this camel's load. And you must remain here, and take particular care that if it clouds over the rain does not wet the leather of these trunks, which are full of clothes." With these words the merchant left the servants by the side of the camel and went off, and sud- denly a cloud came up and began to discharge rain. Then the fools said, " Our master told us to take care that the rain did not touch the leather of the trunks ; " and after they had
Gothamite Drolleries. 97
made this sage reflection they dragged the clothes out of the trunks and wrapped them round the leather. The consequence was that the rain spoiled the clothes. Then the merchant returned, and in a rage said to his servants, " You rascals ! Talk of water ! Why, the whole stock of clothes is spoiled by the rain ! " And they answered him, " You told us to keep the rain off the leather of the trunks. What fault have we committed ? " He answered, " I told you that if the leather got wet the clothes would be spoiled. I told you so in order to save the clothes, not the leather."
The story of the servant who looked after the door is a farther illustration of the same maxim. A merchant said to his foolish ser- vant, " Take care of the door of my shop ; I im going home for a short time." After his naster was gone, the fool took the shop-door m his shoulder and went off to see an actor erform. As he was returning his master let him, and gave him a scolding, and he nswered, " I have taken care of this door, as )u told me."
This jest had found its way into Europe ree centuries ago. It is related of Giufa, e typical Sicilian booby, and probably came England from Italy. This is how it is told the Sacke Full of Newes, a jest-book
98 The Book of Noodles.
originally printed in the sixteenth century: " In the countrey dwelt a Gentlewoman who had a French man dwelling with her, and he did ever use to go to Church with her ; and upon a time he and his mistresse were going to church, and she bad him pull the doore after him and follow her to the church ; and so he took the doore betweene his armes, and lifted it from the hooks, and followed his mistresse with it. But when she looked behinde her and saw him bring the doore upon his back, ' Why, thou foolish knave,' qd she, ' what wilt thou do with the door ? * ' Marry, mistresse,' qd he, ' you bad me pull the doore after me.' ' Why, fool,' qd she, ' I did command thee that thou shouldest make fast the doore after thee, and not bring it upon thy back after me.' But after this there was much good sport and laughing at his sim- plicity and foolishnesse therein."
In the capacity of a merchant the simpleton does very wonderful things, and plumes him- self on his sagacity, as we have already seen in the case of the Arab and his cow. And here are a brace of similar stories : A foolish man once went to the island of Katlha to trade, and among his wares was a quantity of fragrant aloes-wood. After he had sold his other goods, he could not find any one to take the alres-wood off his hands, for the people
Gothamite Drolleries. 99
who live there are not acquainted with that article of commerce. Then seeing people buying charcoal from the woodmen, he burnt his stock of aloes-wood and reduced it to charcoal. He sold it for the price which charcoal usually fetched, and returning home, boasted of his cleverness, and became the laughing-stock of everybody. — Another block- head went to the market to sell cotton, but no one would buy it from him, because it was not properly cleaned. In the meanwhile he sav/ in the bazaar a goldsmith selling gold which he had purified by heating it, and he saw it taken by a customer. Seeing that, he threw his cotton into the fire in order to purify it, and it was all burned to ashes.
There must be few who have not heard of " the Irishman who was hired by a Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship. As the vessel was about to sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, " Captain, I lost your shovel overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern, just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back." — A similar story is told of an Indian simpleton. He was sailing in a ship when he let a silver cup fall from his hand into the water. Having taken notes of the spot by observing the eddies and other signs in the
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water, he said to himself, " I will bring it up from the bottom when I return." As he was recrossing the sea, he saw the eddies and other signs, and thinking he recognised the spot, he plunged into the water again and again, to recover his cup, but he only got well laughed at for his pains.
We have an amusing commentary on the maxim that " distress is sure to come from being in the company of fools " in the follow- ing, from the Canarese story-book entitled Kathd Manjari: A foolish fellow travelled with a shopkeeper. When it became dark, the fool lay down in the road to sleep, but the shopkeeper took shelter in a hollow tree. Presently some thieves came along the road, and one struck his feet against the fool's legs, upon which he exclaimed to his companions, " What is this ? Is it a piece of wood ?" The fool was angry, and said, " Go away! go away ! Is there a knot, well tied, containing five annas, in the loins of a plank in j'our house ?" The thieves then seized him, and took away his annas. As they were moving off, they asked if the money was good or bad, to which the noodle replied, " Ha ! ha ! is it of my money you speak in that way, and want to know whether it is good or bad ? Look — there is a shopkeeper in that tree,"' pointing with his Cnger — "show it to him." Then the thieves
Gothamite Drolleries. loi
went up to the shopkeeper and robbed him of two hundred pagodas.
In our next story, of the villagers who ate the buffalo, is exemplified the fact that " fools, in the conceit of their folly, while they deny what need not be denied, reveal what it is their interest to suppress, in order to get themselves believed." Some villagers took a buffalo belonging to a certain man, and killed it in an enclosure outside the village, under a banyan tree, and dividing the flesh, ate it up. The owner of the buffalo went and complained to the king, and he had the villagers who had eaten the animal brought before him. The proprietor of the buffalo said before the king, in their presence, " These men took my buffalo under a banyan tree near the tank, and killed and ate it before my eyes," whereupon an old fool among the villagers said, " There is no tank or banyan tree in our village. He says what is not true ; where did we kill his buffalo or eat it?" When the man heard this, he replied, "What! are there not a banyan tree and a tank on the east side of the village ? Moreover, you ate my buffalo on the eighth day of the lunar month." The old fool then said, " There is no east side or eighth day in our village." On hearing this, the king laughed, and said, to encourage the fool, "You are a truthful person ; you never say anything false ;
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so tell me the truth: did you eat that buffalo, or did you not ?" The old fool answered, " I was born three years after my father died, and he taught me skill in speaking. So I never say what is untrue, my king. It is true that we ate his buffalo, but all the rest that he alleges is false." When the king heard this, he and his courtiers could not restrain their laughter ; but he restored the price of the buffalo to the man, and fined the villagers.
But sometimes even kings have been arrant noodles, and their credulity quite as amusing — or amazing — as that of their subjects. Once on a time there was a king who had a hand- some daughter, and he summoned his physi- cians, and said to them, " Make some prepa- ration of salutary drugs, which will cause my daughter to grow up quickly, so that she may be married to a good husband." The physi- cians, wishing to get a living out ot this royal fool, replied, " There is a medicine which will do this, but it can only be procured in a distant country ; and while we are sending for it, we must shut up your daughter in concealment, for this is the treatment laid down in such cases." The king having consented, they placed his daughter in concealment for several years, pretending that they were engaged in procuring the medicine ; and when she was grown up, they presented her to the king, say-
Gothamite Drolleries. 103
ing that she had been made to grov.' by the preparation ; so the king was highly pleased, and gave them much wealth.
Between an Indian rSjd and an Indian dhobie, or washerman, there is the greatest possible difference socially, but individually ■ — when both are noodles — there may be sometimes very little to choose; indeed, of the two, all things considered, the difference, if any, is perhaps in favour of the humble cleanser of body-clothes. A favourite story in various parts of India, near akin to that last cited, is of a poor washerman and his young ass. This simpleton one day, passing a school kept by a mullah, or Muhammedan doctor of laws, heard him scolding his pupils, exclaiming that they were still asses, although he had done so much to make them men. The washerman thought that here was a rare chance, for he happened to have the foal of the ass that carried his bundles of clothes, which, since he had no child, he should get the learned mullah to change into a boy. Thus thinking, he goes next day to the mullah, and asks him to admit his foal into his school, in order that it should be changed into the human form and nature. The pre- ceptor, seeing the poor fellow's simplicity, answered that the task was very laborious,
1 04 The Book of Noodles.
and he must have a fee of a hundred rupis. So the washerman went home, and soon returned leading his foal, which, with the money, he handed over to the teacher, who told him to come again on such a day and hour, when he should find that the change he desired had been effected. But the washer- man was so impatient that he went to the teacher several times before the day ap- pointed, and was informed that the foal was beginning to learn manners, that its ears were already become very much shorter, and, in short, that it was making satisfactory progress.
It happened, when the day came on which he was to receive his young ass transformed into a fine, well-educated boy, the simpleton was kept busy with his customers' clothes, but on the day following he found time to go to the teacher, who told him it was most un- fortunate he had not come at the appointed hour, since the youth had quitted the school yesterday, refusing to submit any longer to authority ; but the teacher had just learned that he had been made k^zi (or judge) in Cawnpore. At first the washerman was dis- posed to be angiy, but reflecting that, after all, the business was better even than he anticipated, he thanked the preceptor for all his care and trouble, and returned home.
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Having informed his wife of his good luck, they resolved to visit their quondam young foal, and get him to make them some allow- ance out of his now ample means. So, shutting up their house, they travelled to Cawnpore, which they reached in safety. Being directed to the kazi's court, the washer- man, leaving his wife outside, entered, and discovered the kazi seated in great dignity, and before him were the pleaders, litigants, and officers of the court. He had brought a bridle in one hand and a wisp of hay in the other ; but being unable, on account of the crowd, to approach the k^zi, he got tired of waiting, so, holding up the bridle and the hay, he cried out, " Khoor ! khoor ! khoor!" as he used to do in calling his donkeys, thinking this would induce the k^zi to come to him. But, instead of this, he was seized by the kazi's order and locked up for creating a dis- turbance.
When the business of the court was over, the kazi, pitying the supposed madman, sent for him to learn the reason of his strange be- haviour, and in answer to his inquiries the simpleton said, "You don't seem to know me, sir, nor recognise this bridle, which has been in your mouth so often. You appear to forget that you are the foal of one of my asses, that I got changed into a man, for the
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fee of a hundred rupis, by a learned mullah who transforms asses into educated men. You forget what you were, and, I suppose, will be as little submissive to me as you were to the mullah when you ran away from him." All present were convulsed with laughter: such a "case" was never heard of before. But the kazi, seeing how the mullah had taken advantage of the poor lellow's sim- plicity, gave him a present of a hundred rupis, besides sufficient for the expenses of his journey home, and so dismissed him.
A party of rogues once found as great a blockhead in a rich Indian herdsman, to whom they said, " We have asked the daughter of a wealthy inhabitant of the town in marriage for you, and her father has pro- mised to give her." He was much pleased to hear this, and gave them an ample reward for their trouble. After a few days they came again and told him that his marriage had taken place. Again he gave them rich presents for their good news. Some more days having passed, they said to him, "A son has been born to you," at which he was in ecstacies and gave them all his remaining wealth ; but the next day, when he began to lament, saying, " I am longing to see my son," the people laughed at him on account of his
Gothamite Drolleries. 107
having been cheated by the rogues, as if he had acquired the stupidity of cattle from having so much to do with them.
It is not generally known that the incident which forms the subject of the droll Scotch song " The Barring of the Door," which also occurs in the Nights of Straparola, is of Eastern origin. In an Arabian tale, a block- head, having married his pretty cousin, gave the customary least to their relations and friends. When the festivities were over, he conducted his guests to the door, and from absence of mind neglected to shut it before returning to his wife. "Dear cousin," said his wife to him when they were alone, " go and shut the street door." " It would be strange indeed," he replied, " if I did such a thing. Am I just made a bridegroom, clothed in silk, wearing a shawl and a dagger set with diamonds, and am I to go and shut the door? Why, my dear, you are crazy. Go and shut it yourself." " Oh, indeed ! " exclaimed the wife. " Am I, young, robed in a dress, with lace and precious stones — am I to go and shut the street door ? No, indeed ! It is you who are become crazy, and not I. Come, let us make a bargain," she continued ; " and let the first who speaks go and fasten the door." " Agreed," said the husband, and im- mediately he became mute, and the wife too
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was silent, while they both sat down, dressed as they were in their nuptial attire, looking at each other and seated on opposite sofas. Thus they remained for two hours. Some thieves happened to pass by, and seeing the door open, entered and laid hold of whatever came to their hands. The silent couple heard footsteps in the house, but opened not their mouths. The thieves came into the room and saw them seated motionless and ap- parently indifferent to all that might take place. They continued their pillage, there- fore, collecting together everything valuable, and even dragging away the carpets from be- neath them ; they laid hands on the noodle and his wife, taking from their persons every article of jewellery, while they, in fear of losing the wager, said not a word. Having thus cleared the house, the thieves departed quietly, but the pair continued to sit, uttering not a syllable. Towards morning a police officer came past on his tour of inspection, and seeing the door open, walked in. After searching all the rooms and finding no person, he entered their apartment, and inquired the meaning of what he saw. Neither of them would condescend to reply. The officer be- came angry, and ordered their heads to be cut off. The executioner's sword was about to perform its office, when the wife cried out,
Gothamite Drolleries. 109
"Sir, he is my husband. Do not kill him!" " Oh, oh," exclaimed the husband, overjoyed and clapping his hands, " you have lost the wager ; go and shut the door." He then ex- plained the whole affair to the police officer, who shrugged his shoulders and went away.'
A party of noodles are substituted for the husband and wife in a Turkish version of the tale, in the History of the Forty Vazirs. Some bang-eaters,* while out walking, found a sequin. They said, " Let us go to a cook, and buy food and eat." So they went and entered a cook's shop and said, " Master, give us a sequin's worth of food." The cook prepared all kinds of food, and loaded a porter with it ; and the bang-eaters
' In another Arabian version, the man desires his wife to moisten some stale bread she has set before him for supper, and she refuses. After an altercation it is agreed that the one who speaks first shall get up and moisten the bread. A neighbour comes in, and, to his surprise, finds the couple dumb ; he kisses the wife, but the man says nothing; he gives the man a blow, but still he says nothing; he has the man taken beibre thekazi, but even yet he says nothing; the kazi orders him to be hanged, and he is led off to execution, when the wife rushes up and cries out, "Oh, save my poor husband!" "You wretch," says the man, "go home and moisten the bread!"
* Bang is a preparation of hemp and coarse opium.
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took him without the city, where there was a ruined tomb, which they entered and sat down in, and the porter deposited the food and went away. The bang-eaters began to partake of the food, when suddenly one of them said, "The door is open ; do one of you shut it, else some other bang-eaters will come in and annoy us : even though they be friends, they will do the deeds of foes." One of them replied, " Go thou and shut the door," and they fell a-quarrelling. At length one said, " Come, let us agree that whichever of us speaks or laughs shall rise and fasten the door." They all agreed to this proposal, and left the food and sat quite still. Suddenly a great number of dogs came in ; not one of the bang-eaters stirred or spoke, for it one spoke he would have to rise and shut the door, so they spoke not. The dogs made an end of the food, and ate it all up. Just then another dog leapt in from without, but no food re- mained. Now one of the bang-eaters had partaken of everything, and some of the food remained about his mouth and on his beard. That newly come dog licked up the particles of food that were on the bang-eater's breast, and while he was licking up those about his mouth, he took his lip for a piece of meat and bit it. The bang-eater did not stir, for he said within himself, " They will tell me to
Gothamite Drolleries. 1 1 1
shut the door." But to ease his soul he cried, " Ough ! " inwardly cursing the dog. When the other bang-eaters heard him make that noise, they said, " Rise, fasten the door." He replied, "After loss, attention ! Now that the food is gone, and my lip is wounded, what is the use of shutting that door ? " and crying, " Woe ! alas ! " they each went in a different direction.'
A similar story is known in Kashmir : Five friends chanced to meet, and all having leisure, they decided to go to the bazaar and purchase a sheep's head, and have a great feast in the house of one of the party, each of whom subscribed four annas. The head was bought, but while they were returning to the house it was remembered that there was not any butter. On this one of the five pro- posed that the first of them that should break silence by speaking should go for the butter. Now it was no light matter to have to retrace one's steps back to the butter-shop, as the way was long and the day was very hot. So they all five kept strict silence. Pots were cleaned, the fire was prepared, and the head laid thereon. Now and then one would cough, and another would groan, but never a tongue uttered a word, though the fire was
' From Mr. E. J. W. Gibb's translation of the Forty Vazirs (London : i8S6).
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fast going out, and the head was getting burnt, owing to there being no fat or butter where- with to grease the pot. Thus matters were when a poUceman passed by, and, attracted by the smell of cooking, looked in at the win- dow, and saw these five men perfectly silent and sitting around a burnt sheep's head. Not knowing the arrangement, he supposed that these men were either mad or were thieves, and so he inquired how they came there, and how they obtained the head. Not a word was uttered in reply. " Why are you squat- ting there in that stupid fashion?" shouted the policeman. Still no reply. Then the policeman, full of rage that these wretched men should thus mock at his authority, took them all off straight to the police inspec- tor's office. On arrival the inspector asked them the reason of their strange behaviour, but he also got no reply. This rather tried the patience and temper of the man of authority, who was generally feared, and flattered, and bribed. So he ordered one of the five to be immediately flogged. The poor fool bore it bravely, and uttered never a sound ; but when the blows repeatedly fell on the same wounded parts, he could endure no longer, and cried out, " Oh ! oh I Why do you beat me ? Enough, enough ! Is it not enough that the sheep's head has been spoiled ? '
Gothamite Drolleries. 113
His four associates now cried out, " Go to the bazaar and fetch the butter." '
There is quite as droll a version current among the people of Ceylon, to the following effect : A gentleman once had in his employ- ment twenty-five idiots. In the old times it was customary with Sinhalese high families not to allow their servants to eat trom plates, but every day they were supplied with plantain leaves, from which they took their food. After eating, they were accus- tomed to shape the leaf into the form of a cup and drink out of it. Now in this gentle- man's house the duty of providing the leaves devolved upon the twenty-five idiots, who were scarcely fit for any other work. One day, when they had gone into the garden to cut the leaves, they spoke among themselves and said, " Why should we, every one of us, trouble ourselves to fetch plantain leaves, wlien one only could very easily do it ? Let us therefore lie down on the ground and sleep
' Knowles' Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings, pp. 197-8. The article bought by the five men is called a hir, which Mr. Knowles says " is the head of any animal used for food," and a sheep's head were surely fitting food for such noodles. Mr. Knowles makes it appear that the whole affair of keeping silence was a mere jest, but we have before seen that it is decidedly meant for a noodle-story.
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like dead men, and let him who first utters a sound or opens his eyes undertake the work." It was no sooner said than done. The men lay in a heap like so many logs. At break- fast-time that day the hungry servants went to the kitchen for their rice, only to be disappointed. No leaves were forthcoming on which to distribute the food, and a com- plaint was made to the master that the twenty-five idiots had not returned to the house since they went out in the morning. Search was at once made, and they were found fast asleep in the garden. After vainly endeavouring to rouse them, the master concluded that they were dead, and ordered his servants to dig a deep hole and bury them. A grave was then dug, and the idiots were, one by one, thrown into it, but still there was no noise or motion on their part. At length, when they were all put into the grave, and were being covered up, a tool employed by one of the servants hit sharply by accident against the leg of one of the idiots, who then involuntarily moaned. There- upon all the others exclaimed, " You were the first to utter a sound ; therefore from henceforth you must take upon yourself the duty of providing the plantain leaves." ' It has already been remarked that a literary ' The Orientalist, 18S4, p. 136,
Gothamite Drolleries. 115
Italian version of the Silent Couple is found in the Nights of Straparola, but there are other variants orally current among the com mon people in different parts of Italy. This is one from Venice : There were once a husband and a wife. The former said one day to the latter, " Let us have some fritters. " She replied, " What shall we do for a frying- pan ? " " Go and borrow one from my god- mother." " You go and get it ; it is only a little way off." " Go yourself, and I will take it back when we are done with it." So she went and borrowed the pan, and when she returned said to her husband, " Here is the pan, but you must carry it back." So they cooked the fritters, and after they had eaten, the husband said, " Now let us go to work, both of us, and the one who speaks first shall carry back the pan." Then she began to spin, and he to draw his thread — for he was a shoemaker — and all the time keeping silence, except that when he drew his thread he said, "Leulero! leulero ! " and she, spin- ning, answered, " Picici ! picici ! picicio ! " And they said not another word. Now there happened to pass that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any shoemaker in that street. She said there was one near by, and took him to the house. The, soldier asked the shoemaker to come
1 1 6 TJie Book of Noodles.
and cut his horse a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but " Leu- lero I leulerd ! " and his wife " Picici I picici ! picicio 1 " Then the soldier said, " Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." The shoemaker "only answered, " Leu- lerb ! leulero ! " and his wife " Picici ! picici ! picicio 1 " Then the soldier began to grow angi-y, and seized his sword, and said to the shoemaker, " Either come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." But to no purpose. The shoemaker did not wish to be the first one to speak, and only replied, " Leulero ! Ieuler6 ! " and his wife " Picici ! picici ! picicio ! " Then the soldier got mad in good earnest, seized the shoemaker's head, and was going to cut it off. When his wife saw that, she cried out, "Ah, don't, for mercy's sake ! " " Good ! " exclaimed her husband, " good ! Now you go and carry the pan back to my godmother, and I will go and cut the horse's girth."
In a Sicilian version the man and wife fry some fish, and then set about their respective work — shoemaking and spinning — and the one who finishes first the piece of work begun is to eat the fish. While they are singing and whistling at their work, a friend comes along, who knocks at the door, but receives no answer. Then he enters and speaks to
Gothamite Drolleries. iiy
them, but still no reply. Finally, in anger, he sits down at the table, and eats up all the fish himself.'
Thus, it will be observed, the droll incident which forms the subject of the old Scotch song of "The Barring of the Door" is of world-wide celebrity.
Gothamite stories appear to have been familiar throughout Europe during the later Middle Ages, if we may judge from a chapter of the Gesta Romanoruni, in which the monkish compiler has curiously " moralised " the actions of three noodles :
We read in the " Lives of the Fathers " that an angel showed to a certain holy man three men labouring under a triple fatuity. The first made a faggot of wood, and because it was too heavy for him to carry, he added to it more wood, hoping by such means to make it light. The second drew water with great labour from a very deep well with a sieve, which he incessantly filled. The third carried a beam in his chariot, and, wishing to enter his house, whereof the gate was so narrow and low that it would not admit him, he violently whipped his horse until they both fell together into a deep well.
' Crane's Italian Popular Tales, pp. 284-5.
1 1 8 The Book of Noodles.
Having shown this to the holy man, the angel said, "What think you of these three men?" "That they are fools," answered he. " Understand, however," returned the angel, " that they represent the sinners of this world. The first describes that kind of men who from day to day do add new sins to the old, because they cannot bear the weight of those which they already have. The second man represents those who do good, but do it sinfully, and therefore it is of no benefit. And the third person is he who would enter the kingdom of heaven with all his world of vanities, but is cast down into hell."
And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite class to conclude the present section. In M^lava there were two Brahman brothers, and the wealth in- herited from their father was left jointly between them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one having too little and the other having too much, and they made a teacher learned in the Vedas arbitrator, and he said to them, "You must divide everything your father left into two halves, so that you may not quarrel about the inequality of the division." When the two fools heard this, they divided every single
Gothmnite Drolleries. 119
thing into two equal parts — house, beds, in fact, all their property, including their cattle. Henry Stephens (Henri Estienne), in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,' relates some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his shins before the fire, and not having wit enough to go back from it, sent for masons to remove the chimney; of the fool who ate the doctor's prescription, because he was told to "take it ; " of another wittol who, having seen one spit upon iron to try whether it was hot, did likewise with his porridge ; and, best of all, he tells of a fellow who was hit on the back with a stone as he rode upon his mule, and cursed the animal for kicking him. This last exquisite jest has its analogue in that of the Irishman who was riding on an ass one fine day, when the beast, by kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet
' A separate work from the Apologie pour Herodote. Such was the exasperation of the French clerics at the bitter truths set forth in it, that the author had to flee the country. An English translation, entitled "A World of Won- ders; or, an Introdvction to a Treatise tovch- ing the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders ; or, a Preparative Treatise to the 'Apologie for Herodotus,' " etc., was published at London in 1607, folio, and at Edinburgh 1608, also folio. The Apologie tour Herodote was printed at the Hague,
I20 The Book oj Noodles.
entangled in the stirrup, whereupon the rider dismounted, saying, " Faith, if you're going to get up, it's time I was getting down."
The poet Ovid alludes to the story of Ino persuading the women of the country to roast the wheat before it was sown, which may have come to India through the Greeks, since we are told in the Kathd Sarit Sdgara of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds, and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quantity of roasted seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in Coelho's Cotites Porttiguezes, and is probably of Buddhistic origin. And an analogous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs !
CHAPTER V. The Silly Son.
MONG the favourite jests of all peoples, Irom Iceland to Japan, from India to England, are the droll adventures and mishaps ot the silly son, who contrives to muddle every- thing he is set to do. In vain does his poor mother try to direct him in " the way he should go " : she gets him a wife, as a last resource ; but a fool he is still, and a fool he will always be. His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny chap-books and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how
Simple Simon went a-fishing For to catch a whale, lit all the water he had got Was in his mother's pail ?
an adventure which recalls another nursery rhyme regarding Simon's still more celebrated prototypes :
122 The Book of Noodles.
Three men of Gotham Went to sea in a bowl ; If the bowl had been stronger, My tale had been longer.
Then there is the prose history of Simple Simon's Misfortunes ; or, his Wife Marjory's Outrageous Cruelty, which tells (i) of Simon's wedding, and how his wife Marjory scolded him for putting on his roast-meat clothes (i.e., Sunday clothes) the very next morning after he was married ; (2) how she dragged him up the chimney in a basket, a-smoke-drying, wherein they used to dry bacon, which made him look like a red herring ; (3) how Simon lost a sack of corn as he was going to the mill to have it ground ; (4) how Simon went to market with a basket of eggs, but broke them by the way : also how he was put into the stocks ; (5) how Simon's wife cudgelled him for not bringing her money for the eggs ; (6) how Simon lost his wife's pail and burnt the bottom of her kettle ; (7) how Simon's wife sent him to buy two pounds of soap, but going over the bridge, he let his money fall in the river: also how a ragman ran away with his clothes. No wonder if, after this crowning misfortune, poor Simon " drank a bottle of sack, to poison himself, as being weary of his life" ! Again, we have The Unfortunate Son; or,
TJie Silly Son. 123
a Kind Wife is worth Gold, being full of Mirth and Pastime, which commences thus :
There was a man but one son had,
And he was all his joy ; But still his fortune was but bad,
Though he was a pretty boy.
His father sent him forth one day
To feed a flock of sheep, And half of them were stole away
While he lay down asleep !
Next day he went with one Tom Goff
To reap as he was seen, When he did cut his fingers off,
The sickle was so keen 1
Another of the chap-book histories of noodles is that of Simple John and his Twelve Misfortunes, an imitation of Simple Simon ; it was still popular amongst the rustics of Scotland fifty years ago.
The adventures of Silly Matt, the Nor- wegian counterpart of our typical English booby, as related in Asbjornson's collection of Norse folk-tales, furnish some curious examples of the transmission of popular fictions :
The mother of Silly Matt tells him one day that he should build a bridge across the river
124 TJie Book of Noodles,
and take toll of every one who wished to go over it ; so he sets to work with a will, and when the bridge is finished, stands at one end — " at the receipt of custom." Three men come up with loads of hay, and Matt demands toll of them, so they each give him a wisp of hay. Next comes a pedlar, with all sorts ot small wares in his pack, and Matt gets from hira two needles. On his return home his mother asks him what he has got that day. " Hay and needles," says Matt. Well ! and what had he done with the hay? " I put some of it in my mouth," quoth he, " and as it tasted like grass, I threw it into the river." She says he ought to have spread it on the byre-floor. " Very good," replies the dutiful Matt; "I'll remember that next time." And what had he done with the needles ? He stuck them into the hay. " Ah," says the mother, " you should rather have stuck them in and out of your cap, and brought them home to me." Well I well ! Matt will not forget to do so next time. The following day a man comes to the bridge with a sack of meal and gives Matt a pound of it ; then comes a smith, who gives him a gimlet: the meal he spread on the byre-floor, and the gimlet he stuck in and out of his cap. His mother tells him he should have come home for a bucket to hold the meal, and the gimlet he should have put up his sleeve. Very good !
The Silly Son. 125
Matt will not forget next time. Another day some men come to the bridge with kegs of brandy, of which Matt gets a pint, and pours it into his sleeve ; next comes a man driving some goats and their young ones, and gives Matt a kid, which he treads down into a bucket. His mother says he should have led the goat home with a cord round its neck, and put the brandy in a pail. Next day he gets a pat of butter and drags it home with a string. After this his mother despairs of his improve- ment, till it occurs to her that he might not be such a noodle if he had a wife. So she bids him go and see whether he cannot find some lass who will take him for a husband. Should he meet any folk on his way, he ought to say to them, " God's peace I " PJatt accordingly sets off in quest of a wife, and meets a she-wolf and her seven cubs. " God's peace ! " says Matt, and then returns home. When his mother learns of this, she tells him he should have cried, "Huf! huf! you jade wolfl" Next day he goes off again, and meeting a bridal party, he cries, "Huf! huf! you jade wolf! " and goes back to his mother and ac- quaints her of this fresh adventure. " O you great silly ! " says she ; " you should have said, ' Ride happily, bride and bridegroom !'" Once more Matt sets out to seek a wife, and seeing on the road a bear taking a ride on a horse,
126 TJie Book of Noodles,
he exclaims joyfully, " Ride happily, bride and bridegroom 1 " and then returns home. His mother, on hearing of this new piece of folly, tells him he should have cried, " To the devil with you 1 " Again he sets out, and meeting a funeral procession, he roars, "To the devil with you ! " His mother says he should have cried, "May your poor soul have mercy 1" and sends him off for the fifth time to look for a lass. On the road he sees some gipsies busy skinning a dead dog, upon which he piously exclaims, " May your poor soul have mercy 1 " His mother now goes herself to get him a wife, finds a lass that is willing to marry him, and invites her to dinner. She privately tells Matt how he should comport himself in the presence of his sweetheart ; he should cast an eye at her now and then. Matt understands her instruction most literally : stealing into the sheepfold, he plucks out the eyes of all the sheep and goats, and puts them in his pocket. When he is seated beside his sweetheart, he casts a " sheep's eye " at her, which hits her on the nose.'
This last incident, as we have seen, occurs in the Tales of the Men of Gotham (ante, p. 41), and it is also found in a Venetian
' Abridged from the story of " Silly Matt " in Sir George W. Dasent's Tales from the Fjeld.
The Silly Son. 127
story (Bernoni, Fiabe, No. 11), entitled "The Fool," of which the following is the first part:
Once upon a time there was a mother who had a son with little brains. One morning she said, "We must get up early, for we have to make bread." So they both rose early, and began to make bread. The mother made the loaves, but took no pains to make them the same size. Her son said to her finally, "How small you have made this loaf, mother." " Oh," said she, " it does not matter whether they are big or little, for the proverb says, ' Large and small, all must go to mass.'" " Good I good I " said her son. When the bread was made, instead of taking it to the baker's, the son took it to the church, for it was the hour for mass, saying, " My mother said that, 'large and small, all must go to mass.'" So he threw the loaves down in the middle of the church. Then he went home to his mother, and said, " I have done what you told me to do." " Good 1 Did you take the bread to the baker's?" "O mother, if you had seen how they all looked at me 1 '* " You might also have cast an eye on them in return," said his mother. " Wait ; wait. I will cast an eye at them too," he exclaimed, and went to the stable and cut out the eyes of all the animals, and putting them in a handker-
12 8 The Book of Noodles.
chief, went to the church, and when any man or woman looked at him, he threw an eye at them.'
Silly Matt has a brother in Russia, accord- ing to M. Leger's Conies Populaires Slaves, published at Paris in 1882 : An old man and his wife had a son, who was about as great a noodle as could be. One day his mother said to hirri, " My son, thou shouldst go about among people, to get thyself sharpened and rubbed down a little." " Yes, mother," says he ; " I'm off this moment." So he went to the village, and saw two men threshing pease. He ran up to them, and rubbed himself now on one and then on the other. "No non- sense!" cried the men. " Get away." But he continued to rub himself on them, till at last they would stand it no longer, and beat him with their flails so lustily that he could hardly crawl home. " What art thou crying about, child?" asked his mother. He related his misfortune. "Ah, my child," said she, "how silly thou art! Thou shouldst have said to them, ' God aid you, good men ! Do you wish me to help you to thresh?' and then they would have given thee some pease for thy
' Professor Crane's Italian Popular Tales, p. 302. This actual throwing of ej-es occurs in the folk-tales of Europe generally.
TJie Silly Son. 129
trouble, and we should have had them to cook and eat." On another occasion the noodle again went through the village, and met some people carrying a dead man. " May God aid you, good men ! " he exclaimed. " Do you wish me to help you to thresh ? " But he got himself well thrashed once more for this ill- timed speech. When he reached home, he howled, "They've felled me to the ground, beaten me, and plucked my beard and hair ! " and told of his new mishap. " Ah, noodle ! " said his mother, " thou shouldst have said, * God give peace to his soul ! ' Thou shouldst have taken off thy bonnet, wept, and fallen upon thy knees. They would then have given thee meat and drink." Again he went to the village, and met a marriage procession. So he took off his bonnet, and cried with all his might, " God grant peace to his soul ! " and then burst into tears. " What brute is this ? " said the wedding company. " We laugh and amuse ourselves, and he laments as if he were at a funeral." So they leaped out of the car- riages, and beat him soundly on the ribs. Home he returned, crying, " They've beaten me, thrashed me, and torn my beard and hair!" and related what had happened. " IMy son," said his mother, " thou shouldst have leaped and danced with them." The next time he went to the village he took his bag-
9
i 30 TJie Book of Noodles,
pipe under his arm. At the end of the street a cart-shed was on fire. The noodle ran to the spot, and began to play on his bagpipe and to dance and caper about, for which he was abused as before. Going back to his mother in tears, he told her how he had fared. " My son," said she, " thou shouldst have carried water and thrown it on the lire, like the other folks," Three days later, when his ribs were well again, the noodle went through the village once more, and seeing a man roast- ing a little pig, he seized a vessel of water, ran up with it, and threw the water on the fire. This time also he was beaten, and when he got home, and told his mother of his ill- luck, she resolved never again to allow him to go abroad ; so he remains by the fireside, as great a fool as ever.
This species of noodle is also known in Japan. He is the hero of a farce entitled Hone Kaha, or Ribs and Skin, which has been done into English by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in his Classical Poetry of the Japanese. The rector of a Buddhisttemple tells his curate that he feels he is now getting too old for the duties of his office, and means to resign the benefice in his favour. Before re- tiring to his private chamber, he desires the curate to let him know if any persons visit
The Silly Son. 131
the temple, and bids him, should he be in want of information regarding any matter, to come to him. A parishioner calls to borrow an umbrella. The curate lends him a new one, and then goes to the rector and informs him of this visitor. "You have donewrong,"saystherector. "You ought to have said that you should have been happy to comply with such a small request, but, unfortunately, the rector was walking out with it the other day, when, at a place where four roads meet, a sudden gust of wind blew the skin to one side and the ribs to another; we have tied the ribs and skin together in the middle, and hung it from the ceiling. Something like that," adds the rector, " something with an air of truth about it, is what you should have said." Next comes another parishioner, who wishes to borrow a horse. The curate replies with great polite- ness, "The request with which you honour me is a mere trifle, but the rector took it out with him a few days since, and coming to the junction of four cross roads, a gust of wind blew the ribs to one side and the skin to another, and we have tied them together, and hung them from the ceiling ; so I fear it would not suit your purpose." " It is a horse I want," said the man. "Precisely — a horse: 1 am aware of it," quoth the curate, and the man went off, not a little perplexed, after wliich
132 The Book of Noodles.
the curate reports this new affair to the rector, who sa3^s it was to an umbrella, not to a horse, that such a story was applicable. Should any one come again to borrow a horse, he ought to say, " I much regret that I cannot comply with your request. The fact is, we lately turned him out to grass, and becoming frolic- some, he dislocated his thigh, and is now lying, covered with straw, in a corner of the stable." " Something like that,"adds the rector, "something with an air of truth about it, is what you should say." A third parishioner comes to invite the rector and the curate to a feast at his hous-i. " For myself," says the curate, " I promise to come ; but I fear it will not be convenient for the rector to accompany me." "I presume then," says the man, "that he has some particular business on hand?" " No, not any particular business," answers the curate ; " but the truth is, we lately turned him out to grass, and becoming frisky, he dis- located his thigh, and now lies in a corner of the stable, covered with straw." " I spoke of the rector," says the parishioner. "Yes, of the rector. I quite understand," responds the curate, very complaisantly, upon which the man goes away, not knowing what to make of such a strange account of the rector's condition. This last affair puts the rector into a fury, and he cuffs his intended successor, exclaiming,
The Silly Son. 133
"When was I ever frisky, I should Hke to know ? "
As great a jolterhead as any of the fore- going was the hero of a story »in Gazette's "Continuation" of the Arabian Nights, entitled " L'Imbecille ; ou, L'Histoire de Xailoun." This noodle's wife said to him one day, " Go and buy some pease, and don't forget that it is pease you are to buy ; continually repeat * Pease ! ' till you reach the market-place." So he went off, with " Pease ! pease ! " always in his mouth. He passed the corner of a street where a merchant who had pearls for sale was proclaiming his wares in a loud voice, saying, " In the name of the Prophet, pearls 1 " Xailoun's attention was at once attracted by the display of pearls, and at the same time he was occupied 'ji retaining the lesson his wife had taught him, and putting his hand in
' In Le Cabinet des Fees, 1788 (tome xxxviii., p. 337 ff.). — There can be no such name as Xailoun in Arabic; thatof the noodle's wife, Oitba, majf be intended for " Utba." Cazotte has so Frenchified the names of the characters in his. tales as to render their identification with the Arabic originals (where he had any such) often impos- sible. Although this story is not found in any known Arabian text of the Book of the Thousand and One Nights, yet the incidents for the most part occur in several Eastern story-books.
134 The Book of Noodles.
the box of pearls, he cried out, "Pease! pease!" The merchant, supposing Xailoun played upon him and depreciated his pearls by wishing to make them pass for false ones, struck him a severe blow. " Why do you strike me?" said Xailoun. "Because you insult me," answered the merchant. " Do you suppose I am trying to deceive people?" " No," said the noodle. " But what must I saj-, then?" "If you will cry properly, say as I do, 'Pearls, in the name of the Prophet!'" He next passed by the shop of a merchant from whom some pearls had been stolen, and his manner of crying, " Pearls ! " etc., which was not nearly so loud as usual, appeared to the merchant very suspicious. "The man who has stolen my pearls," thought he, "has probably recognised me, and when he passes my shop lowers his voice in crying the goods." Upon this suspicion he ran after Xailoun, and stop- ping him, said, " Show me your pearls." The poor fool was in great confusion, and the merchant thought he had got the thief. The supposed seller of pearls was soon surrounded by a great crowd, and the merchant at last discovered that he was a perfect simpleton. " Why," said he, " do you cry that you sell pearls ? " " What should I say, then ? " asked Xailoun. " It is not true," said the merchant, not listening to him. " It is not true,"
The Silly Son. 135
exclaimed the noodle. " Let me repeat, ' It ig not true,' that I may not forget it ; " and as he went on he kept crying, " It is not true." His way led him towards a place where a man was proclaiming, " In the name of the Pro- phet, lentils ! " Xailoun, induced by curiosity, went up to the man, his mouth full of the last words he remembered, and putting his hand into the sack, cried, "It is not true." The sturdy villager gave him a blow that caused him to stagger, saying, "What d'ye mean by giving me the lie about my goods, which I both sowed and reaped myself ? " Quoth the noodle, " I have only tried to say what I ought to say." "Well, then," rejoined the dealer, "you ought to say, as I do, 'Lentils, in the nam-e of the Prophet!' " So our noodle at once took up this new cry, and proceeded on his way till he came to the bank of the river, where a fisherman had been casting his net for hours, and had frequently changed his place, without getting any fish. Xailoun, who was amused with every new thing he saw, began to follow the fisherman, and, that he should not forget his lesson, continued to repeat, " Lentils, in the name of the Pro- phet ! " Suddenly the fisherman made a pre- tence of spreading his net, in order to wring and dry it, and having folded in his hand the rope to which it was fastened, he took hold
136 The Book of Noodles.
of the simpleton and struck him some furious blows with it, saying, " Vile sorcerer 1 cease to curse my fishing." Xailoun struggled, and at length disengaged himself. " I am no sorcerer,'' said he. "Well, if you are not," answered the fisherman, "why do you cause me bad luck by your words every time I throw my net?" "1 didn't mean to bring you bad luck," said the noodle. " I only repeat what I was told to repeat." The fisherman then concluded that some of his enemies, who wished to do him an ill turn without expos- ing themselves, had prevailed upon this poor fellow to come and curse his fishing, so he said, " I am sorry, brother, for having beaten you, but you were wrong to pronounce the words you did, thereby bringing bad luck to me, who never did you any harm." Quoth the simpleton, " I only tried to say the words my wife told me not to forget." " Do you know them?" "Yes." ""Well, place your- self beside me, and each time I cast my net you must say, ' In the name of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best ! ' " But Xailoun thought what his wife had said was not so long as that. " Oh, yes, it was," said the fisherman; "and take care you don't miss a single word, and I shall give you some of the liih to take home with you." That he jnight not forget, Xailoun repeated it
Tlie Silly Son. 137
very loud, but as he was afraid of the cord whenever he saw the fisherman drawing in his net, he ran away as fast as he could, but still repeating, " In the name of the Prophet, instead of one, seven of the greatest and best ! " These words he pronounced in the midst of a crowd of people, through which the corpse of the kazi (magistrate, or judge) was being carried to the burying ground, and the mullahs who surrounded the bier, scandal- ised by what they thought a horrible impre- cation, exclaimed, " How darest thou, wicked wretch, thus blaspheme? Is it not enough that Death has taken one of the greatest men of Baghdad ? " The poor simpleton was skulk- ing off in fear and trembling, when his sleeve was pulled by an aged slave, who told him that he ought to say, " May Allah preserve his body and save his soul ! " So our noodle went on, repeating this new cry till he came to a street where a dead ass was being carted away. " May Allah preserve his body and save his soul ! " he exclaimed. " How he blasphemes I " said the folk, and they set upon him with their fists and sticks, and gave him a sound drubbing. At length he got clear of them, and by chance came to the house of his wife's mother, but he only ventured to stand at the door and peep within. He was recognised, however, and asked what he
138 The Book of Noodles.
would have to eat — goat's flesh ? nee? pease ? Yes, it was pease he wanted, and having got some, he hastened home, and after relating all his mishaps, informed his wife, that her sister was very sick. His wife, having pre- pared herself to go to her mother's house, tells the simpleton to rock the baby should it awake and cry ; feed the hen that was sitting ; if the ass was thirsty, give her to drink ; shut the door, and take care not to go to sleep, lest robbers should come and plunder the house. The baby awakes, and Xailoun rocks it to sleep again ; so far, well. The hen seems uneasy ; he concludes she is troubled with insects, like himself.