Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter shaking both his sides.--_L' Allegro_.
I
MAN A LAUGHING ANIMAL--ANTIQUITY OF POPULAR JESTS--"NIGHT AND DAY"--THE
PLAIN-FEATURED BRIDE--THE HOUSE OF CONDOLENCE--THE BLIND MAN'S WIFE--TWO
WITTY PERSIAN LADIES--WOMAN'S COUNSEL--THE TURKISH JESTER: IN THE
PULPIT; THE CAULDRON; THE BEGGAR; THE DRUNKEN GOVERNOR; THE ROBBER; THE
HOT BROTH--MUSLIM PREACHERS AND MUSLIM MISERS.
Certain philosophers have described man as a cooking animal, others as a
tool-making animal, others, again, as a laughing animal. No creature
save man, say the advocates of the last definition, seems to have any
"sense of humour." However this may be, there can be little doubt that
man in all ages of which we have any knowledge has possessed that
faculty which perceives ridiculous incongruities in the relative
positions of certain objects, and in the actions and sayings of
individuals, which we term the "sense of the ludicrous." It is not to be
supposed that a dog or a cat--albeit intelligent creatures, in their own
ways--would see anything funny or laughable in a man whose sole attire
consisted in a general's hat and sash and a pair of spurs! Yet _that_
should be enough to "make even a cat laugh"! Certainly laughter is
peculiar to our species; and gravity is as certainly not always a token
of profound wisdom; for
The gravest beast's an ass;
The gravest bird's an owl;
The gravest fish's an oyster;
And the gravest man's a _fool_.
Many of the great sages of antiquity were also great humorists, and
laughed long and heartily at a good jest. And, indeed, as the Sage of
Chelsea affirms, "no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be
altogether, irreclaimably bad. How much lies in laughter!--the cipher
key wherewith we decipher the whole man!... The man who cannot laugh is
not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is
already a treason and a stratagem." Let us, then, laugh at what is
laughable while we are yet clothed in "this muddy vesture of decay,"
for, as delightful Elia asks, "Can a ghost laugh? Can he shake his gaunt
sides if we be merry with him?"
It is a remarkable fact that a considerable proportion of the familiar
jests of almost any country, which are by its natives fondly believed to
be "racy of the soil," are in reality common to other peoples widely
differing in language and customs. Not a few of these jests had their
origin ages upon ages since--in Greece, in Persia, in India. Yet they
must have set out upon their travels westward at a comparatively early
period, for they have been long domiciled in almost every country of
Europe. Nevertheless, as we ourselves possess a goodly number of droll
witticisms, repartees, and jests, which are most undoubtedly and beyond
cavil our own--such as many of those which are ascribed to Sam Foote,
Harry Erskine, Douglas Jerrold, and Sydney Smith; though they have been
credited with some that are as old as the jests of Hierokles--so there
exist in what may be termed the lower strata of Oriental fiction,
humorous and witty stories, characteristic of the different peoples
amongst whom they originated, which, for the most part, have not yet
been appropriated by the European compilers of books of facetiæ, and a
selection of such jests--choice specimens of Oriental Wit and
Humour--gleaned from a great variety of sources, will, I trust, amuse
readers in general, and lovers of funny anecdotes in particular.
* * * * *
To begin, then--_place aux dames_! In most Asiatic countries the ladies
are at a sad discount in the estimation of their lords and masters,
however much the latter may expatiate on their personal charms, and in
Eastern jests this is abundantly shown. For instance, a Persian poet,
through the importunity of his friends, had married an old and very ugly
woman, who turned out also of a very bad temper, and they had constant
quarrels. Once, in a dispute, the poet made some comparisons between his
aged wife and himself and between Night and Day. "Cease your nonsense,"
said she; "night and day were created long before us." "Hold a little,"
said the husband. "I know they were created long before me, but whether
before _you_, admits of great doubt!" Again, a Persian married, and, as
is customary with Muslims, on the marriage night saw his bride's face
for the first time, when she proved to be very ugly--perhaps
"plain-looking" were the more respectful expression. A few days after
the nuptials, she said to him: "My life! as you have many relatives, I
wish you would inform me before which of them I may unveil." (Women of
rank in Muslim countries appear unveiled only before very near
relations.) "My soul!" responded the husband, "if thou wilt but conceal
thy face from _me_, I care not to whom thou showest it." And there is a
grim sort of humour in the story of the poor Arab whose wife was going
on a visit of condolence, when he said to her: "My dear, if you go, who
is to take care of the children, and what have you left for them to
eat?" She replied: "As I have neither flour, nor milk, nor butter, nor
oil, nor anything else, what can I leave?" "You had better stay at home,
then," said the poor man; "for assuredly _this_ is the true house of
condolence." And also in the following: A citizen of Tawris, in
comfortable circumstances, had a daughter so very ugly that nothing
could induce any one to marry her. At length he resolved to bestow her
on a blind man, hoping that, not seeing her personal defects, he would
be kind to her. His plan succeeded, and the blind man lived very happily
with his wife. By-and-by, there arrived in the city a doctor who was
celebrated for restoring sight to many people, and the girl's father was
urged by his friends to engage this skilled man to operate upon his
son-in-law, but he replied: "I will take care to do nothing of the kind;
for if this doctor should restore my son-in-law's eyesight, _he_ would
very soon restore my daughter to me!"
But occasionally ladies are represented as giving witty retorts, as in
the story of the Persian lady who, walking in the street, observed a man
following her, and turning round enquired of him: "Why do you follow me,
sir?" He answered: "Because I am in love with you." "Why are you in love
with me?" said the lady. "My sister is much handsomer than I; she is
coming after me--go and make love to her." The fellow went back and saw
a woman with an exceedingly ugly face, upon which he at once went after
the lady, and said to her: "Why did you tell me what was not true?"
"Neither did you speak the truth," answered she; "for if you were really
in love with me, you would not have turned to see another woman." And
the Persian poet Jámí, in his _Baháristán_, relates that a man with a
very long nose asked a woman in marriage, saying: "I am no way given to
sloth, or long sleeping, and I am very patient in bearing vexations." To
which she replied: "Yes, truly: hadst thou not been patient in bearing
vexations thou hadst not carried that nose of thine these forty years."
The low estimation in which women are so unjustly held among Muhammedans
is perhaps to be ascribed partly to the teachings of the Kurán in one or
two passages, and to the traditional sayings of the Apostle Muhammad,
who has been credited (or rather _discredited_) with many things which
he probably never said. But this is not peculiar to the followers of the
Prophet of Mecca: a very considerable proportion of the Indian fictions
represent women in an unfavourable light--fictions, too, which were
composed long before the Hindús came in contact with the Muhammedans.
Even in Europe, during mediæval times, _maugre_ the "lady fair" of
chivalric romance, it was quite as much the custom to decry women, and
to relate stories of their profligacy, levity, and perversity, as ever
it has been in the East. But we have changed all that in modern times:
it is only to be hoped that we have not gone to the other
extreme!--According to an Arabian writer, cited by Lane, "it is
desirable, before a man enters upon any important undertaking, to
consult ten intelligent persons among his particular friends; or if he
have not more than five such friends let him consult each twice; or if
he have not more than one friend he should consult him ten times, at ten
different visits [he would be 'a friend indeed,' to submit to so many
consultations on the same subject]; if he have not one to consult let
him return to his wife and consult her, and whatever she advises him to
do let him do the contrary, so shall he proceed rightly in his affair
and attain his object."[25] We may suppose this Turkish story, from the
_History of the Forty Vezírs_, to be illustrative of the wisdom of such
teaching: A man went on the roof of his house to repair it, and when he
was about to come down he called to his wife, "How should I come down?"
The woman answered, "The roof is free; what would happen? You are a
young man--jump down." The man jumped down, and his ankle was
dislocated, and for a whole year he was bedridden, and his ankle came
not back to its place. Next year the man again went on the roof of his
house and repaired it. Then he called to his wife, "Ho! wife, how shall
I come down?" The woman said, "Jump not; thine ankle has not yet come to
its place--come down gently." The man replied, "The other time, for that
I followed thy words, and not those of the Apostle [i.e., Muhammed], was
my ankle dislocated, and it is not yet come to its place; now shall I
follow the words of the Apostle, and do the contrary of what thou sayest
[Kurán, iii, 29.]" And he jumped down, and straightway his ankle came to
its place.
[25] "Bear in mind," says Thorkel to Bork, in the Icelandic
saga of Gisli the Outlaw, "bear in mind that a woman's
counsel is always unlucky."--On the other hand, quoth
Panurge, "Truly I have found a great deal of good in the
counsel of women, chiefly in that of the old wives among
them."
* * * * *
In the Turkish collection of jests ascribed to Khoja Nasrú 'd-Dín
Efendi[26] is the following, which has been reproduced amongst ourselves
within comparatively recent years, and credited to an Irish priest:
One day the Khoja went into the pulpit of a mosque to preach to the
people. "O men!" said he, "do you know what I should say unto you?" They
answered: "We know not, Efendi." "When you do know," said the Khoja, "I
shall take the trouble of addressing you." The next day he again
ascended into the pulpit, and said, as before: "O men! do you know what
I should say unto you?" "We do know," exclaimed they all with one voice.
"Then," said he, "what is the use of my addressing you, since you
already know?" The third day he once more went into the pulpit, and
asked the same question. The people, having consulted together as to the
answer they should make, said: "O Khoja, some of us know, and some of us
do not know." "If that be the case, let those who know tell those who do
not know," said the Khoja, coming down. A poor Arab preacher was once,
however, not quite so successful. Having "given out," as we say, for his
text, these words, from the Kurán, "I have called Noah," and being
unable to collect his thoughts, he repeated, over and over again, "I
have called Noah," and finally came to a dead stop; when one of those
present shouted, "If Noah will not come, call some one else." Akin to
this is our English jest of the deacon of a dissenting chapel in
Yorkshire, who undertook, in the vanity of his heart, to preach on the
Sunday, in place of the pastor, who was ill, or from home. He conducted
the devotional exercises fairly well, but when he came to deliver his
sermon, on the text, "I am the Light of the world," he had forgot what
he intended to say, and continued to repeat these words, until an old
man called out, "If thou be the light o' the world, I think thou needs
snuffin' badly."
[26] The Khoja was contemporary with the renowned conqueror
of nations, Tímúr, or Tímúrleng, or, as the name is
usually written in this country, Tamarlane, though there
does not appear to be any authority that he was the
official jester at the court of that monarch, as some
writers have asserted. The pleasantries ascribed to the
Khoja--the title now generally signifies Teacher, or
School-master, but formerly it was somewhat equivalent
to our "Mr," or, more familiarly, "Goodman"--have been
completely translated into French. Of course, a large
proportion of the jests have been taken from Arabian and
Persian collections, though some are doubtless genuine;
and they represent the Khoja as a curious compound of
shrewdness and simplicity. A number of the foolish
sayings and doings fathered on him are given in my _Book
of Noodles_, 1888.
To return to the Turkish jest-book. One day the Khoja borrowed a
cauldron from a brazier, and returned it with a little saucepan inside.
The owner, seeing the saucepan, asked: "What is this?" Quoth the Khoja:
"Why, the cauldron has had a young one"; whereupon the brazier, well
pleased, took possession of the saucepan. Some time after this the Khoja
again borrowed the cauldron and took it home. At the end of a week the
brazier called at the Khoja's house and asked for his cauldron. "O set
your mind at rest," said the Khoja; "the cauldron is dead." "O Khoja,"
quoth the brazier, "can a cauldron die?" Responded the Khoja: "Since you
believed it could have a young one, why should you not also believe that
it could die?"
The Khoja had a pleasant way of treating beggars. One day a man knocked
at his door. "What do you want?" cried the Khoja from above. "Come
down," said the man. The Khoja accordingly came down, and again said:
"What do you want?" "I want charity," said the man. "Come up stairs,"
said the Khoja. When the beggar had come up, the Khoja said: "God help
you"--the customary reply to a beggar when one will not or cannot give
him anything. "O master," cried the man, "why did you not say so below?"
Quoth the Khoja: "When I was above stairs, why did you bring me down?"
Drunkenness is punished (or punishable) by the infliction of eighty
strokes of the bastinado in Muslim countries, but it is only flagrant
cases that are thus treated, and there is said to be not a little
private drinking of spirits as well as of wine among the higher classes,
especially Turks and Persians. It happened that the governor of
Súricastle lay in a state of profound intoxication in a garden one day,
and was thus discovered by the Khoja, who was taking a walk in the same
garden with his friend Ahmed. The Khoja instantly stripped him of his
_ferage_, or upper garment, and, putting it on his own back, walked
away. When the governor awoke and saw that his ferage had been stolen,
he told his officers to bring before him whomsoever they found wearing
it. The officers, seeing the ferage on the Khoja, seized and brought him
before the governor, who said to him: "Ho! Khoja, where did you obtain
that ferage?" The Khoja responded "As I was taking a walk with my friend
Ahmed we saw a fellow lying drunk, whereupon I took off his ferage and
went away with it. If it be yours, pray take it." "O no," said the
governor, "it does not belong to me."
Even being robbed could not disturb the Khoja's good humour. When he was
lying in bed one night a loud noise was heard in the street before his
house. Said he to his wife: "Get up and light a candle, and I will go
and see what is the matter." "You had much better stay where you are,"
advised his wife. But the Khoja, without heeding her words, put the
counterpane on his shoulders and went out. A fellow, on perceiving him,
immediately snatched the counterpane from off the Khoja's shoulders and
ran away. Shivering with cold, the Khoja returned into the house, and
when his wife asked him the cause of the noise, he said: "It was on
account of our counterpane; when they got that, the noise ceased at
once."
But in the following story we have a very old acquaintance in a new
dress: One day the Khoja's wife, in order to plague him, served up some
exceedingly hot broth, and, forgetting what she had done, put a spoonful
of it in her mouth, which so scalded her that the tears came into her
eyes. "O wife," said the Khoja, "what is the matter with you--is the
broth hot?" "Dear Efendi," said she, "my mother, who is now dead, loved
broth very much; I thought of that, and wept on her account." The Khoja,
thinking that what she said was truth, took a spoonful of the broth,
and, it burning his mouth, he began to bellow. "What is the matter with
you?" said his wife. "Why do you cry?" Quoth the Khoja: "You cry because
your mother is gone, but I cry because her daughter is here."[27]
[27] This is how the same story is told in our oldest English
jest-book, entitled _A Hundred Mery Talys_ (1525): A
certain merchant and a courtier being upon a time at
dinner, having a hot custard, the courtier, being
somewhat homely of manner, took part of it and put it in
his mouth, which was so hot that it made him shed tears.
The merchant, looking on him, thought that he had been
weeping, and asked him why he wept. This courtier, not
willing it to be known that he had brent his mouth with
the hot custard, answered and said, "Sir," quod he, "I
had a brother which did a certain offence, wherefore he
was hanged." The merchant thought the courtier had said
true, and anon, after the merchant was disposed to eat
of the custard, and put a spoonful of it into his mouth,
and brent his mouth also, that his eyes watered. This
courtier, that perceiving, spake to the merchant; and
said, "Sir," quod he, "why do ye weep now?" The merchant
perceived how he had been deceived, and said, "Marry,"
quod he, "I weep because thou wast not hanged when that
thy brother was hanged."
* * * * *
Many of the Muslim jests, like some our of own, are at the expense of
poor preachers. Thus: there was in Baghdád a preacher whom no one
attended after hearing him but once. One Friday when he came down from
the pulpit he discovered that the only one who remained in the mosque
was the muezzin--all his hearers had left him to finish his discourse
as, and when, he pleased--and, still worse, his slippers had also
disappeared. Accusing the muezzin of having stolen them, "I am rightly
served by your suspicion," retorted he, "for being the only one that
remained to hear you."--In Gladwin's _Persian Moonshee_ we read that
whenever a certain learned man preached in the mosque, one of the
congregation wept constantly, and the preacher, observing this,
concluded that his words made a great impression on the man's heart. One
day some of the people said to the man: "That learned man makes no
impression on our minds;--what kind of a heart have you, to be thus
always in tears?" He answered: "I do not weep at his discourse, O
Muslims. But I had a goat of which I was very fond, and when he grew old
he died. Now, whenever the learned man speaks and wags his beard I am
reminded of my goat, for he had just such a voice and beard."[28] But
they are not always represented as mere dullards; for example: A miserly
old fellow once sent a Muslim preacher a gold ring without a stone,
requesting him to put up a prayer for him from the pulpit. The holy man
prayed that he should have in Paradise a golden palace without a roof.
When he descended from the pulpit, the man went to him, and, taking him
by the hand, said: "O preacher, what manner of prayer is that thou hast
made for me?" "If thy ring had had a stone," replied the preacher, "thy
palace should also have had a roof."
[28] What may be an older form of this jest is found in the
_Kathá Manjarí_, a Canarese collection, where a wretched
singer dwelling next door to a poor woman causes her to
weep and wail bitterly whenever he begins to sing, and
on his asking her why she wept, she explains that his
"golden voice" recalled to her mind her donkey that died
a month ago.--The story had found its way to our own
country more than three centuries since. In _Mery Tales
and Quicke Answeres_ (1535), under the title "Of the
Friar that brayde in his Sermon," the preacher reminds a
"poure wydowe" of her ass--all that her husband had left
her--which had been devoured by wolves, for so the ass
was wont to bray day and night.
_Apropos_ of misers, our English facetiæ books furnish many examples of
their ingenuity in excusing themselves from granting favours asked of
them by their acquaintances; and, human nature being much the same
everywhere, the misers in the East are represented as being equally
adroit, as well as witty, in parrying such objectionable requests. A
Persian who had a very miserly friend went to him one day, and said: "I
am going on a journey; give me your ring, which I will constantly wear,
and whenever I look on it, I shall remember you." The other answered:
"If you wish to remember me, whenever you see your finger _without_ my
ring upon it, always think of me, that I did not give you my ring." And
quite as good is the story of the dervish who said to the miser that he
wanted something of him; to which he replied: "If you will consent to a
request of mine, I will consent to whatever else you may require"; and
when the dervish desired to know what it was, he said: "Never ask me for
anything and whatever else you say I will perform."