Part 5 (2/2)
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 G.o.dmother.” ”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, ”Leuler! leuler!” and she, spinning, answered, ”Picic! picic!
picici!” And they said not another word. Now there happened to pa.s.s 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 and cut his horse a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but ”Leuler!
leuler!” and his wife ”Picic! picic! picici!” Then the soldier said, ”Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off.” The shoemaker only answered, ”Leuler! leuler!” and his wife ”Picic!
picic! picici!” Then the soldier began to grow angry, 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, ”Leuler! leuler!”
and his wife ”Picic! picic! picici!” Then the soldier got mad in good earnest, seized the shoemaker's head, and was going to cut it off. When his wile 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 G.o.dmother, 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 them, but still no reply. Finally, in anger, he sits down at the table, and eats up all the fish himself.[11]
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 Romanorum_ 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 f.a.ggot 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, wis.h.i.+ng 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. 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 h.e.l.l.”
And now a few more Indian and other stories of the Gothamite cla.s.s to conclude the present section. In Malava there were two Brahman brothers, and the wealth inherited from their father was left jointly between them. And while they were dividing that wealth they quarrelled about one having too little and one 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 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,[12] relates some very amusing noodle-stories, such as of him who, burning his s.h.i.+ns 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. .h.i.t 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 a.n.a.logue in that of the Irishman who was riding on an a.s.s one fine day, when the beast, by kicking at the flies that annoyed him, got one of its hind feet 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 _Katha Sarit Sagara_ of a foolish villager who one day roasted some sesame seeds, and finding them nice to eat, he sowed a large quant.i.ty of roasted seeds, hoping that similar ones would come up. The story also occurs in Coelho's _Contes Portuguezes_, and is probably of Buddhistic origin. And an a.n.a.logous story is told of an Irishman who gave his hens hot water, in order that they should lay boiled eggs!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 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.
[2] _Elf Laylawa Layla_, or, The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night. Translated, with Introduction, 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.
[3] 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.”
[4] In China wine is almost invariably taken hot, according to Davis, in his work on the Chinese.
[5] This and the following specimens of Chinese stories of simpletons are from ”Contes et Bon Mots extraits d'un livre chinois int.i.tule _Siao li Siao_, traduit par M. Stanislas Julien,” (_Journal Asiatique_, tom. iv., 1824).
[6] 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 before the kazi, 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!”
[7] Bang is a preparation of hemp and coa.r.s.e opium.
[8] From Mr. E.J.W. Gibb's translation of the _Forty Vazirs_ (London: 1886).
[9] 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.
[10] _The Orientalist_, 1884, p. 136.
[11] Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, pp. 284-5.
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