Part 7 (1/2)

”When?” ”On the eve before the day we went into the forest to look for fish.” ”What do you say?” ”Yes; it was on the day that it rained cakes; we gathered a basketful of them, and coming home, my husband fished a fine hare out of the river.” My lord declared the woman to be an idiot; nevertheless he caused his servants to search under the labourer's cottage floor, but nothing was found there, and so the shrewd fellow secured his treasure.

The silly son figures frequently in Indian story-books; sometimes a number of fools' exploits are strung together and ascribed to one individual, as in the tale of ”Foolish Sachuli;” but generally they are told as separate stories. The following adventure of Sachuli is also found, in varied form, in Beschi's _Gooroo Paramartan_: One day Sachuli climbed up a tree, and sat on a long branch, and began cutting off the branch between the tree and himself. A man pa.s.sing by called to him, saying, ”What are you doing up there? You will be killed if you cut that branch off.” ”What do you say?” asked the b.o.o.by, coming down. ”When shall I die?” ”How can I tell?” said the man. ”Let me go.” ”I will not let you go until you tell me when I shall die.” At last the man, in order to get rid of him, said, ”When you find a scarlet thread on your jacket, then you will die.” After this Sachuli went to the _bazaar_, and sat down by some tailors, and in throwing away shreds, a scarlet thread fell on his clothes. ”Now I shall die!”

exclaimed the fool. ”How do you know that?” the tailors inquired, when he told them what the man had said about a scarlet thread, at which they all laughed. Nevertheless, Sachuli went and dug a grave in the jungle and lay down in it.

Presently a sepoy comes along, bearing a pot of _ghi_, or clarified b.u.t.ter, which he engages Sachuli to carry for him, and the noodle, of course, lets it fall in the midst of his calculations of the uses to which he should put the money he is promised by the sepoy.

The incident of a blockhead cutting off the branch on which he is seated seems to be almost universal. It occurs in the jests of the typical Turkish noodle, the Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, and there exist German, Saxon, and Lithuanian variants of the same story. It is also known in Ceylon, and the following is a version from a Hindu work ent.i.tled _Bharataka Dwatrinsati_, Thirty-two Tales of Mendicant Monks:

In Elakapura there lived several mendicant monks. One of them, named Dandaka, once went, in the rainy season, into a wood in order to procure a post for his hut. There he saw on a tree a fine branch bent down, and he climbed the tree, sat on the branch, and began to cut it. Then there came that way some travellers, who, seeing what he was doing, said, ”O monk, greatest of all idiots, you should not cut a branch on which you yourself are sitting, for if you do so, when the branch breaks you will fall down and die.” After saying this the travellers went their way. The monk, however, paid no attention to their speech, but continued to cut the branch, remaining in the same posture, until at length the branch broke, and he tumbled down. He then thought within himself, ”Those travellers are indeed wise and truthful, for everything has happened just as they predicted; consequently I must be dead.” So he remained on the ground as if dead; he did not speak, nor did he stand up, nor did he even breathe. People who came there from the neighbourhood raised him up, but he did not stand; they endeavoured to make him speak, but could not succeed. They then sent word to the other monks, saying, ”Your a.s.sociate Dandaka fell down from a tree and died.” Then came the monks in large numbers, and when they saw that he was ”dead,” they lifted him up in order to carry him to the place of cremation. Now when they had gone a short distance they came upon a spot where the road divided itself before them. Then said some, ”We must go to the left,” but others said, ”It is to the right that we must go.” Thus a dispute arose among them, and they were unable to come to any conclusion. The ”dead” monk, who was borne on a bier, said, ”Friends, quarrel not among yourselves; when I was alive, I always went by the left road.” Then said some, ”He always spoke the truth; all that he ever said was nothing but the simple fact. Let us therefore take the left road.” This was agreed upon, and as they were about to proceed towards the left some people who happened to be present said, ”O ye monks, ye are the greatest of all blockheads that ye should proceed to burn this man while he is yet alive.” They answered, ”Nay, but he is dead.” Then the bystanders said, ”He cannot be dead, seeing that he yet speaks.” They then set down the bier on the ground, and Dandaka persistently declared that he was actually dead, and related to them with the most solemn protestations the prediction of the travellers, and how it was fulfilled. Hereupon the other monks remained quite bewildered, unable to arrive at any decision as to whether Dandaka was dead or alive, until at length, after a great deal of trouble, the bystanders succeeded in convincing them that the man was not dead and in inducing them to return to their dwelling. Dandaka also now stood up and went his way, after having been heartily laughed at by the people.[11]

A diverting story in the _Facetiae_ of Poggius, ent.i.tled ”Mortuus Loqueus,” from which it was reproduced in the Italian novels of Grazzini and in our old collection _Tales and Quicke Answeres_, has a near affinity with jests of this cla.s.s, and also with the wide cycle of stories in which a number of rogues combine to cheat a simpleton out of his property. In the early English jest-book,[12] it is, in effect, as follows:

There once dwelt in Florence a noodle called Nigniaca, upon whom a party of young men resolved to play a practical joke. Having arranged their plans, one of them met him early one morning, and asked him if he was not ill. ”No,” says the wittol. ”I am well enough.” ”By my faith,” quoth the joker, ”but you have a pale, sickly colour,” and went his way.

Presently a second of the complotters came up to him, and asked him if he was not suffering from an ague, for he certainly looked very ill. The poor fellow now began to think that he was really sick, and was convinced of this when a third man in pa.s.sing told him that he should be in his bed--he had evidently not an hour to live. Hearing this, Nigniaca stood stock-still, saying to himself, ”Verily, I have some sharp ague,”

when a fourth man came and bade him go home at once, for he was a dying man. So the simpleton begged this fourth man to help him home, which he did very willingly, and after laying him in his bed, the other jokers came to see him, and one of them, pretending to be a physician, felt his pulse and declared the patient would die within an hour.[13] Then, standing all about his bed, they said to each other, ”Now he is sinking fast; his speech and sight have failed him; he will soon give up the ghost. Let us therefore close his eyes, cross his hands on his breast, and carry him forth to be buried.” The simpleton lay as still as though he was really dead, so they laid him on a bier and carried him through the city. A great crowd soon gathered, when it was known that they were carrying the corpse of Nigniaca to his grave. And among the crowd was a taverner's boy, who cried out, ”What a rascal and thief is dead! By the ma.s.s, he should have been hanged long ago.” When the wittol heard himself thus vilified, he lifted up his head and exclaimed, ”I wish, you scoundrel, I were alive now, as I am dead, and I would prove thee a false liar to thy face;” upon which the jokers burst into laughter, set down the ”body” and ran away--leaving Nigniaca to explain the whole affair to the marvelling mult.i.tude.[14]

We read of another silly son, in the _Katha Manjari_, whose father said to him one day, ”My boy, you are now grown big, yet you don't seem to have much sense. You must, however, do something for your living. Go, therefore, to the tank, and catch fish and bring them home.” The lad accordingly went to the tank, and having caused all the water--which was required for the irrigation of his father's fields--to run to waste, he picked up from the mud all the fishes he could find, and took them to his father, not a little proud of his exploit.--In the _Katha Sarit Sagara_ it is related that a Brahman told his foolish son one evening that he must send him to the village early on the morrow, and thither the lad went, without asking what he was to do. Returning home at night very tired, he said to his father, ”I have been to the village.” ”Yes,”

said the Brahman, ”you went thither without an object, and have done no good by it.”--And in the Buddhist _Jatakas_ we find what is probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely.

Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, ”My boy, there is a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear--drive it off.”

”Wait a bit, father,” said the boy, ”and I will kill him with one blow.”

Then he took up an axe and stood behind his father's back; and thinking to kill the mosquito with the axe, he only killed his father.

Among numerous variants is the story of the Sicilian b.o.o.by, Giufa, who was annoyed by the flies, and complained of them to the judge, who told him that he was at liberty to kill a fly wherever he saw it: just then a fly happened to alight on the judge's nose, which Giufa observing, he immediately aimed at it so furious a blow with his fist, that he smashed his wors.h.i.+p's nose!

The hopelessness of attempting to impart instruction to the silly son is farther ill.u.s.trated by the story in a Sinhalese collection: A guru was engaged in teaching one of his disciples, but whilst he was teaching the youth was watching the movements of a rat which was entering its hole.

As soon as the guru had finished his teaching, he said, ”Well, my son, has all entered in?” to which the youth replied, ”Yes, all has entered in except the tail.” And from the same work is the following choice example of ”a happy family”: A priest went one day to the house of one of his followers, and amongst other things he said, ”Tell me now, which of your four children is the best-behaved?” The father replied, ”Look, sir, at that boy who has climbed to the top of that thatched building, and is waving aloft a firebrand. Among them all, he is the divinely excellent one.” Whereupon the priest placed his finger on his nose, drew a deep, deep sigh, and said, ”Is it indeed so? What, then, must the other three be?”

The Turkish romance of the Forty Vazirs--the plan of which is similar to that of the Book of Sindibad and its derivatives--furnishes us with two stories of the same cla.s.s, one of which is as follows, according to my friend Mr. Gibb's complete translation (the first that has been made in English), recently published:[15]

They have told that in bygone times there was a king, and he had a skilful minstrel. One day a certain person gave to the latter a little boy, that he might teach him the science of music. The boy abode a long time by him, and though the master instructed him, he succeeded not in learning, and the master could make nothing of him. He arranged a scale, and said, ”Whatsoever thou sayest to me, say in this scale.” So whatsoever the boy said he used to say in that scale. Now one day a spark of fire fell on the master's turban. The boy saw it and chanted, ”O master, I see something; shall I say it or no?” and he went over the whole scale. Then the master chanted, ”O boy, what dost thou see?

Speak!” and he too went over all that the boy had gone over. Then the turn came to the boy, and he chanted, ”O master, a spark has fallen on thy turban, and it is burning.” The master straightway tore off his turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said to the boy, ”What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its own place,” and he admonished him.[16]

The other story tells how a king had a stupid son, and placed him in charge of a cunning master, learned in the sciences, who declared it would be easy for him to teach the boy discretion, and, before dismissing him, the king gave the sage many rich gifts. After the boy has been long under the tuition of his learned master, the latter, conceiving him to be well versed in all the sciences, takes him to the king, his father, who says to him, ”O my son, were I to hold a certain thing hidden in my hand, couldst thou tell me what it is?” ”Yes,”

answers the youth. Upon this the king secretly slips the ring off his finger, and hides it in his hand, and then asks the boy, ”What have I in my hand?” Quoth the clever youth, ”O father, it first came from the hills.” (The king thinks to himself, ”He knows that mines are in the hills.”) ”And it is a round thing,” continues he--”it must be a millstone.” ”Blockhead!” exclaims the irate king, ”could a millstone be hidden in a man's hand?” Then addressing the learned man, ”Take him away,” he says, ”and _teach_ him.”

Lastly, we have a somewhat different specimen of the silly son in the doctor's apprentice, whose attempt to imitate his master was so ludicrously unsuccessful. He used to accompany his master on his visits to patients, and one day the doctor said to a sick man, to whom he had been called, ”I know what is the matter with you, and it is useless to deny it;--you have been eating beans.” On their way home, the apprentice, admiring his master's sagacity, begged to be informed how he knew that the patient had been eating beans. ”Boy,” said the doctor, loftily, ”I drew an inference.” ”An inference!” echoed this youth of inquiring mind; ”and what is an inference?” Quoth the doctor, ”Listen: when we came to the door, I observed the sh.e.l.ls of beans lying about, and I drew the inference that the family had had beans for dinner.”

Another day it chanced that the doctor did not take his apprentice with him when he went his rounds, and in his absence a message came for him to visit a person who had been taken suddenly ill. ”Here,” thought the apprentice, ”is a chance for my putting master's last lesson into practice;” so off he went to the sick man, and a.s.suming as ”knowing” an air as he could, he felt his pulse, and then said to him severely, ”Don't deny it; I see by your pulse that you have been eating a horse. I shall send you some medicine.” When the doctor returned home he inquired of his hopeful pupil, whether any person had called for him, upon which the wittol proudly told him of his own exploit. ”Eaten a horse!”

exclaimed the man of physic. ”In the name of all that's wonderful, what induced you to say such a thing?” Quoth the youth, simpering, ”Why, sir, I did as you did the other day, when we visited the old farmer--I drew an inference.” ”You drew an inference, did you? And how did you draw the inference that the man had eaten a horse?” ”Why, very readily, sir; for as I entered the house I saw a saddle hanging on the wall.”[17]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Abridged from the story of ”Silly Matt” in Sir George W. Dasent's _Tales from the Fjeld_.