Part 4 (2/2)
”'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 pa.s.sed 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 canzon.' So I fell in love with her; but two days after, the same man pa.s.sed, singing the following couplet:
”'a.s.s and Umm Amr' went their way, Nor she nor a.s.s 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 a.s.sured myself of the weakness of the gerund-grinder's wit[2].
Here, surely, was the very Father of Folly, but what shall we say of judges and magistrates being sometimes (represented as) equally witless?
Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish Kazi, that two men came before him one of whom complained 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, 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 mortar 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 pa.s.sing at the time he was making the chattie, and had so riveted his attention, that he forgot all about the work.
When the woman appeared, 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 all 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 arrangement would be very satisfactory, gave judgment accordingly.
If some of 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 following: 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 calf's 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 whose capital, Konya, he resided, and he is represented as a contemporary of Timur (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 Khoja's 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 affirmative 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 garden 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!”
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 of 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, ”O Khoja, what have you come here to look for in such a hurry?” The Khoja replied, ”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 cla.s.s: 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 exceedingly 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 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[3].”
But the Chinese relate the very counterpart 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[4], that he should better enjoy the flavour of it; but just as he was about to drink off the delicious draught he awoke. ”Fool that I am,” he cried, ”why was I not content to drink it cold?”[5]
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! pardon!” 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, the younger went back to the field, and looked for his spade, but could not find it; so he ran to his brother and _whispered_ mysteriously in his ear, ”My spade is stolen!”--The pa.s.sion 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 purchasing 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 Ta-Koung.”
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