Footnotes

Here we have an example of the redíf, which is common in Turkish and Persian poetry, and “consists of one or more words, always the same, added to the end of every rhyming line in a poem, which word or words, though counting in the scansion, are not regarded as the true rhyme, which must in every case be sought for immediately before them. The lines—

furnish an example of this in English poetry.” In the opening verse of Mesíhí’s ode, as above transliterated in European characters, the redíf is “behár,” or spring, and the word which precedes it is the true rhyme-ending. Sir William Jones has made an elegant paraphrase of this charming ode, in which, however, he diverges considerably from the original, as will be seen from his rendering of the first stanza:

In another form the story is orally current in the North of England. Dr. Fryer tells it to this effect, in his charming English Fairy Tales from the North Country: A grocer kept a parrot that used to cry out to the customers that the sugar was sanded and the butter mixed with lard. For this the bird had her neck wrung and was thrown upon an ash-heap; but reviving and seeing a dead cat beside her she cried: “Poor Puss! have you, too, suffered for telling the truth?”

There is yet another variant of this droll tale, which has been popular for generations throughout England, and was quite recently reproduced in an American journal as a genuine “nigger” story: In olden times there was a roguish baker who made many of his loaves less than the regulation weight, and one day, on observing the government inspector coming along the street, he concealed the light loaves in a closet. The inspector having found the bread on the counter of the proper weight, was about to leave, when a parrot, which the baker kept in his shop, cried out: “Light bread in the closet!” This caused a search to be made, and the baker was heavily fined. Full of fury, the baker seized the parrot, wrung its neck, and threw it in his back yard, near the carcase of a pig that had died of the measles. The parrot, coming to itself again, observed the dead porker and inquired in a tone of sympathy: “O poor piggy, didst thou, too, tell about light bread in the closet?” Return

Zulaykhá was the name of Potiphar’s wife, if we may believe Muhammedan legends, and the daughter of the king of Maghrab (or Marocco), who gave her in marriage to the grand vazír of the king of Egypt, and the beauteous princess was disgusted to find him, not only very old, but, as a modest English writer puts it, very mildly, “belonged to that unhappy class which a practice of immemorial antiquity in the East excluded from the pleasures of love and the hope of posterity.” This device of representing Potiphar as being what Byron styles “a neutral personage” was, of course, adopted by Muslim traditionists and poets in order to “white-wash” the frail Zulaykhá.—There are extant many Persian and Turkish poems on the “loves” of Yúsuf wa Zulaykhá, most of them having a mystical signification, and that by the celebrated Persian poet Jámí is universally considered as by far the best. Return

According to the Hebrew traditionists, nine human beings entered Paradise without having tasted of death, viz.: Enoch; Messiah; Elias; Eliezer, the servant of Abraham; the servant of the king of Kush; Hiram, king of Tyre; Jaabez, the son of the Prince, and the Rabbi, Juda; Serach, the daughter of Asher; and Bathia, the daughter of Pharaoh.

The last of the race of genuine Dublin ballad-singers, who rejoiced in the nom de guerre of “Zozimus” (ob. 1846), used to edify his street patrons with a slightly different reading of the romantic story of the finding of Moses in the bulrushes, which has the merit of striking originality, to say the least:

The story of the finding of Moses has its parallels in almost every country—in the Greek and Roman legends of Perseus, Cyrus, and Romulus—in Indian, Persian, and Arabian tales—and a Babylonian analogue is given, as follows, by the Rev. A. H. Sayce, in the Folk-Lore Journal for 1883: “Sargon, the mighty monarch, the king of Agané, am I. My mother was a princess; my father I knew not. My father’s brother loved the mountain land. In the city of Azipiranu, which on the bank of the Euphrates lies, my mother, the princess, conceived me; in an inacessible spot she brought me forth. She placed me in a basket of rushes; with bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not. The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it brought me. Akki, the irrigator, in the tenderness of his heart, lifted me up. Then Akki, the irrigator, as his gardener appointed me, and in my gardenership the goddess Istar loved me. For forty-five years the kingdom I have ruled, and the black-headed (Akkadian) race have governed.” Return

else, what need for him to consult King Solomon about his paltry domestic troubles? Return

Among the innumerable tales current in Muhammedan countries regarding the extraordinary sagacity of Solomon is the following, which occurs in M. René Basset’s Contes Populaires Berbèrs (Paris, 1887): Complaint was made to Solomon that some one had stolen a quantity of eggs. “I shall discover him,” said Solomon. And when the people were assembled in the mosque (sic), he said: “An egg-thief has come in with you, and he has got feathers on his head.” The thief in great fright raised his hand to his head, which Solomon perceiving, he cried out: “There is the culprit—seize him!” There are many variants of this story in Persian and Indian collections, where a kází, or judge, takes the place of Solomon, and it had found its way into our own jest-books early in the 16th century. Thus in Tales and Quicke Answeres, a man has a goose stolen from him and complains to the priest, who promises to find out the thief. On Sunday the priest tells the congregation to sit down, which they do accordingly. Then says he, “Why are ye not all seated?” Say they, “We are all seated.” “Nay,” quoth Mass John, “but he that stole the goose sitteth not down.” “But I am seated,” says the witless goose-thief. Return

And Kalidása, the Shakspeare of India (6th century B.C.), says:

Amongst ourselves the epithet “moon-faced” is not usually regarded as complimentary, yet Spenser speaks of a beautiful damsel’s “moon-like forehead.”—Be sure, the poets are right! Return

albeit they were none of his to give to anybody. Return