Part 3 (1/2)

[14] Tawney's translation, which is used throughout this work.

CHAPTER III.

GOTHAMITE DROLLERIES (_continued_).

The Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gothamites 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”

(_Foreign Quarterly Review_, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms 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 circ.u.mstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity, and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their a.s.sumed character as to prove 'plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this strange tale, which a.s.sumes even somewhat of serious interest when the Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on which some of 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 hold a council upon the subject on the following day. At the time appointed they a.s.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 removed the roof, by the advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion. This plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, 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.

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 themselves the trouble of carrying it down by letting it roll down.

”Verily,” said he, ”we are the stupidest of fools to take these extraordinary 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 itself, 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.” 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 become 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 ”if 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!

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 whatsoever 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, carrying 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 bargain 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 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. 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 counselled 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, was.h.i.+ng 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 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 of the Schildburgers as a community, according to the veracious chronicle of their marvellous exploits, the first of which, their carrying suns.h.i.+ne into the council-house, is a favourite incident in the noodle-stories of many countries, 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 comforted 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 suns.h.i.+ne was brightest, they began to carry the darkness out of the house in their caps, and emptied it out when they came into the suns.h.i.+ne, 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 disappointed to find that it was as dark as before, so much so that they could not tell one hand from the other.[1]

There is a Kashmiri story which bears a slight resemblance to the exploit of the Schildburgers 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 the cat'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 procured 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 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.[2]

An older form of this incident is found in the introduction to a Persian poetical version of the Book of Sindibad (_Sindibad Nama_), of which a unique MS. copy, very finely illuminated, but imperfect, is preserved in the Library of the India Office:[3] In a village called Buzina-Gird (i.e., Monkey Town) there was a goat that was in the habit of b.u.t.ting at a certain 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 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 concern at present.[4]

In Ceylon whole districts, such as Tumpane, 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 Tumpane 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 stones at the moon to frighten her off one fine moonlight night when they thought she was coming too near, and that there was danger 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;[5] 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 trespa.s.sed in the fields at night; and of the man who performed the five precepts--all these are popular stories of foolish people which have pa.s.sed into proverbs.”[6]

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 replied, ”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 he 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.”[7]

To this last may be added a story in the _Katha Manjari_, a Canarese collection, of the stupid fellow and the _Ramayana_, one of the two great Hindu epics: One day a man was reading the _Ramayana_ in the bazaar, and a woman, thinking her husband might be instructed 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 _Ramayana_. ”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: