Volume 22 — UNWRITTEN LITERATURE OF THE CAUCASIAN MOUNTAINEERS.

TWO PAPERS.—I.

In the south-eastern corner of European Russia, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, in about the latitude of New York City, there rises abruptly from the dead level of the Tatar steppes a huge broken wall of snowy alpine mountains which has been known to the world for more than two thousand years as the great range of the Caucasus. It is in some respects one of the most remarkable mountain-masses on the globe. Its peaks outrank those of Switzerland both in height and in rugged grandeur of outline; its glaciers, ice-falls and avalanches are second in extent and magnitude only to those of the Himalayas: the diversity of its climates is only paralleled by the diversity of the races which inhabit it; and its history—beginning with the Argonautic expedition and ending with the Russian conquest—is more romantic and eventful than that of any other mountain-range in the world.

Geographically, the Caucasus forms a boundary-line between South-eastern Europe and Western Asia, but it is not simply a geographical boundary, marked on the map with a red line and having no other existence: it is a huge natural barrier seven hundred miles in length and ten thousand feet in average height, across which, in the course of unnumbered centuries, man has never been able to find more than two practicable passes, the Gorge of Dariel and the Iron Gate of Derbend. Beginning at the Straits of Kertch, opposite the Crimea on the Black Sea, the range trends in a south-easterly direction across the whole Caucasian isthmus, terminating on the coast of the Caspian near the half-Russian, half-Persian city of Baku. Its entire length, measured along the crest of the central ridge, does not probably exceed seven hundred miles, but for that distance it is literally one unbroken wall of rock, never falling below eight thousand feet, and rising in places to heights of sixteen and eighteen thousand, crowned with glaciers and eternal snow. No other country which I have ever seen presents in an equally limited area such diversities of climate, scenery and vegetation as does the isthmus of the Caucasus. On the northern side of its white jagged backbone lies the barren wandering-ground of the Nogai Tatars—illimitable steppes, where for hundreds of miles the weary eye sees in summer only a parched waste of dry steppe-grass, and in winter an ocean of snow, dotted here and there by the herds and the black tents of nomadic Mongols. But cross the range from north to south and the whole face of Nature is changed. From a boundless steppe you come suddenly into a series of shallow fertile valleys blossoming with flowers, green with vine-tangled forests, sunny and warm as the south of France. Sheltered by its rampart of mountains from the cold northern winds, vegetation here assumes an almost tropical luxuriance. Prunes, figs, olives and pomegranates grow almost without cultivation in the open air; the magnificent forests of elm, oak, laurel, Colchian poplar and walnut are festooned with blossoming vines; and in autumn the sunny hillsides of Georgia and Mingrelia are fairly purple with vineyards of ripening grapes. But climate is here only a question of altitude. Out of these semi-tropical valleys you may climb in a few hours to the limit of vegetable life, and eat your supper, if you feel so disposed, on the slow-moving ice of a glacier.

High up among the peaks of this great Caucasian range lives, and has lived for centuries, one of the most interesting and remarkable peoples of modern times—a people which is interesting and remarkable not only on account of the indomitable bravery with which it defended its mountain-home for two thousand years against all comers, but on account of its originality, its peculiar social and political organization and its innate intellectual capacity. I call it a "people" rather than a race, because it comprises representatives of many races, and yet belongs, as a whole, to none of them. It is a collection of miscellaneous elements. The Caucasian range may be regarded for all ethnological purposes as a great mountainous island in the sea of human history, and on that island now live together the surviving Robinson Crusoes of a score of shipwrecked states and nationalities, the fugitive mutineers of a hundred tribal Bountys. Army after army has gone to pieces in the course of the last four thousand years upon that Titanic reef; people after people has been driven up into its wild ravines by successive waves of migration from the south and east; band after band of deserters, fugitives and mutineers has sought shelter there from the storms, perils and hardships of war. Almost every nation in Europe has at one time or another crossed, passed by or dwelt near this great Caucasian range, and each has contributed in turn its quota to the heterogeneous population of the mountain-valleys. The Indo-Germanic tribes as they migrated westward from Central Asia left there a few wearied and dissatisfied stragglers; their number was increased by deserters from the Greek and Roman armies of Alexander the Great and Pompey; the Mongols under Tamerlane, as they marched through Daghestan, added a few more; the Arabs who overran the country in the eighth century established military colonies in the mountains, which gradually blended with the previous inhabitants; European crusaders, wandering back from the Holy Land, stopped there to rest, and never resumed their journey; and finally, the oppressed and persecuted of all the neighboring nations—Jews, Georgians, Armenians and Tatars—fled to these rugged, inaccessible mountains as to a city of refuge where they might live and worship their gods in peace. In course of time these innumerable fragments of perhaps a hundred different tribes and nationalities, united only by the bond of a common interest, blended into one people and became known to their lowland neighbors as Gortze, or "mountaineers." From a mere assemblage of stragglers, fugitives and vagabonds they developed in the course of four or five hundred years into a brave, hardy, self-reliant people, and as early as the eighth century they had established in the mountains of Daghestan a large number of so-called volnea obshesve, or "free societies," governed by elective franchise, without any distinction of birth or rank. After this time they were never conquered. Both the Turks and the Persians at different periods held the nominal sovereignty of the country, but, so far as the mountaineers were concerned, it was only nominal. Army after army was sent against them, only to return broken and defeated, until at last among the Persians it passed into a proverb, "If the shah becomes too proud, let him make war on the mountaineers of the Caucasus." In 1801 these hitherto unconquered highlanders came into conflict with the resistless power of Russia, and after a desperate struggle of fifty-eight years they were finally subdued and the Caucasus became a Russian province.

At the present time the mountaineers as a class, from the Circassians of the Black Sea coast to the Lesghians of the Caspian, may be roughly described as a fierce, hardy, liberty-loving people, whose component members have descended from ancestors of widely different origin, and are separable into tribes or clans of very different outward appearance, but nevertheless alike in all the characteristics which grow out of and depend upon topographical environment. They number altogether about a million and a half, and are settled in little isolated stone villages throughout the whole extent of the range from the Black Sea to the Caspian at heights varying from three to nine thousand feet. They maintain themselves chiefly by pasturing sheep upon the mountains and cultivating a little wheat, millet and Indian corn in the valleys; and before the Russian conquest they were in the habit of eking out this scanty subsistence from time to time by plundering raids into the rich neighboring lowlands of Kakhetia and Georgia. In religion they are nearly all Mohammedans, the Arabs having overrun the country and introduced the faith of Islam as early as the eighth century. In the more remote and inaccessible parts of the Eastern Caucasus there still remain a few isolated aouls ("villages") of idolaters; in Daghestan there are four or five thousand Jews, who, although they have lost their language and their national character, still cling to their religion; and among the high peaks of Toochetia is settled a tribe of Christians said to be the descendants of a band of mediæval crusaders. But these are exceptions: ninety-nine one-hundredths of the mountaineers are Mohammedans of the fiercest, most intolerant type.

The languages and dialects spoken by the different tribes of this heterogeneous population are more than thirty in number, two-thirds of them being in the eastern end of the range, where the ethnological diversity of the people is most marked. So circumscribed and clearly defined are the limits of many of these languages that in some parts of the Eastern Caucasus it is possible to ride through three or four widely-different linguistic areas in a single day. Languages spoken by only twelve or fifteen settlements are comparatively common; and in South-western Daghestan there is an isolated village of less than fifty houses—the aoul of Innookh—which has a dialect of its own not spoken or understood, so far as has yet been ascertained, by any other portion of the whole Caucasian population. None of these mountain-languages have ever been written, but the early introduction of the Arabic supplied to a great extent this deficiency. Almost every settlement has its mullah or kadi, whose religious or judicial duties make it necessary for him to know how to read and write the language of the Koran, and when called upon to do so he acts for his fellow-townsmen in the capacity of amanuensis or scribe. Since 1860 the eminent Russian philologist General Usler has invented alphabets and compiled grammars for six of the principal Caucasian languages, and the latter are now taught in all the government schools established under the auspices of the Russian mountain administration at Vladi Kavkaz, Timour Khan, Shoura and Groznoi.

In government the Caucasian highlanders acknowledged previous to the Russian conquest no general head, each separate tribe or community having developed for itself such system of polity as was most in accordance with the needs and temperament of its component members. These systems were of almost all conceivable kinds, from the absolute hereditary monarchies of the Arab khans to the free communities or simple republics of Southern Daghestan. In the former the ruler could take the life of a subject with impunity to gratify a mere caprice, while in the latter a subject who considered himself aggrieved by a decision of the ruler could appeal to the general assembly, which had power to annul the decree and even to change the chief magistrate. Since the Russian conquest the mountaineers have altered to some extent both their forms of government and their mode of life. Blood-revenge and plundering raids into the valley of Georgia have nearly ceased; tribal rulers in most parts of the mountains have given place to Russian ispravniks; and the rude and archaic systems of customary law which prevailed everywhere previous to 1860 are being slowly supplanted by the less summary but juster processes of European jurisprudence. Such, in rapid and general outline, are the past history and the present condition of the Caucasian mountaineers.

Of course, the life, customs and social organization of a people who originated in the peculiar way which I have described, and who have lived for centuries in almost complete isolation from all the rest of the world, must present many strange and archaic features. In the secluded valleys of the Eastern Caucasus the modern traveller may study a state of society which existed in England before the Norman Conquest, and see in full operation customs and legal observances which have been obsolete everywhere else in Europe for a thousand years. But it is to the literature of these people rather than to their life or their customs that I wish now particularly to call attention. I have said that they are remarkable for originality and innate intellectual capacity, and I shall endeavor to make good my assertion by presenting some specimens of their songs, fables, riddles, proverbs, burlesques and popular tales. Living as they do on the boundary-line between Europe and Asia, made up as they are of many diverse races, Aryan, Turanian and Semitic, they inherit all the traditionary lore of two continents, and hand down from generation to generation the fanciful tales of the East mingled with the humorous stories, the witty anecdotes and the practical proverbs of the West. You may hear to-day in almost any Caucasian aoul didactic fables from the Sanscrit of the Hitopadesa, anecdotes from the Gulistan of the Persian poet Saadi, old jokes from the Grecian jest-book of Hierocles, and humorous exaggerations which you would feel certain must have originated west of the Mississippi River. I heard one night in a lonely mountain-village in the Eastern Caucasus from the lips of a Daghestan mountaineer a humorous story which had been told me less than a year before by a student of the Western Reserve College at Hudson, Ohio, and which I had supposed to be an invention of the mirth-loving sophomores of that institution.

But the literature which the Caucasian mountaineers have inherited, and which they share with all the Semitic and Indo-European races, is not so deserving of notice as the literature which they have themselves invented—the stories, songs, anecdotes and burlesques which bear the peculiar impress of their own character. I shall endeavor, therefore, in giving specimens of Caucasian folk-lore, to confine myself to stories, songs and proverbs which are peculiar to the mountaineers themselves, or which have been worked over and modified to accord with Caucasian tastes and standards. It will be seen that I use the word "literature" in the widest possible sense, to include not only what is commonly called folk-lore, but also oaths, greetings, speeches, prayers and all other forms of mental expression which in anyway illustrate character.

The translations which I shall give have all been made from the original tongues through the Russian. Although I visited the Caucasus in 1870, and rode hundreds of miles on horseback through its wild gloomy ravines, familiarizing myself with the life and customs of its people, I did not acquire any of the mountain-languages so that I could translate from them directly; neither did I personally collect the proverbs, stories and songs which I here present. I am indebted for most of them to General Usler, to Prince Djordjadze—with whom I crossed Daghestan—and to the Russian mountain administration at Tiflis. All that I have done is to translate them from the Russian, and set them in order, with such comments and explanatory notes as they seem to require and as my Caucasian experience enables me to furnish.

I will begin with Caucasian greetings and curses. The etiquette of salutation in the Caucasus is extremely elaborate and ceremonious. It does not by any means satisfy all the requirements of perfect courtesy to ask a mountaineer how he is, or how his health is, or how he does. You must inquire minutely into the details of his domestic economy, manifest the liveliest interest in the growth of his crops and the welfare of his sheep, and even express a cordial hope that his house is in a good state of repair and his horses and cattle properly protected from any possible inclemency of weather. Furthermore, you must always adapt your greeting to time, place and circumstances, and be prepared to improvise a new, graceful and appropriate salutation to meet any extraordinary exigence. In the morning a mountaineer greets another with "May your morning be bright!" to which the prompt rejoinder is, "And may a sunny day never pass you by!" A guest he welcomes with "May your coming bring joy!" and the guest replies, "May a blessing rest on your house!" To one about to travel the appropriate greeting is, "May God make straight your road!" to one returning from a journey, "May health and strength come back with rest!" to a newly-married couple, "May you have sons like the father and daughters like the mother!" and to one who has lost a friend, "May God give you what he did not live to enjoy!" Among other salutations in frequent use are, "May God make you glad!" "May your sheep be multiplied!" "May you blossom like a garden!" "May your hearth-fire never be put out!" and "May God give you the good that you expect not!"

The curses of the Caucasus are as bitter and vindictive as its greetings are courteous and kind-hearted. I have often heard it said by the Persians and Tatars who live along the Lower Volga that there is no language to swear in like the Russian; and I must admit that they illustrated and proved their assertion when occasion offered in the most fluent and incontrovertible manner; but I am convinced, after having heard the curses of experts in all parts of the East, that for variety, ingenuity and force the profanity of the Caucasian mountaineers is unsurpassed. They are by no means satisfied with damning their adversary's soul after the vulgar manner of the Anglo-Saxon, but invoke the direst calamities upon his body also; as, for example, "May the flesh be stripped from your face!" "May your heart take fire!" "May eagles drink your eyes!" "May your name be written on a stone!" (i.e. a tombstone); "May the shadow of an owl fall on your house!" (this, owing probably to the rarity of its occurrence, is regarded as a fatal omen); "May your hearth-fire be put out!" "May you be struck with a hot bullet!" "May your mother's milk come with shame!" "May you be laid on a ladder!" (alluding to the Caucasian custom of using a ladder as a bier); "May a black day come upon your house!" "May the earth swallow you!" "May you stand before God with a blackened face!" "Break through into hell!" (i.e. through the bridge of Al Sirat); "May you be drowned in blood!" Besides these curses, all of which are uttered in anger, the mountaineers have a number of milder imprecatory expressions which they use merely to give additional force or emphasis to a statement. A man, for instance, will exclaim to another, "Oh, may your mother die! what a superb horse you have there!" or, "May I eat all your diseases if I didn't pay twenty-five abaz for that kinjal ("dagger") in Tiflis!" The curious expression, "May your mother die!" however malevolent it may sound to Occidental ears, has in the Caucasus no offensive significance. It is a mere rhetorical exclamation-point to express astonishment or to fortify a dubious statement. The graphic curse, "May I eat all your diseases!" is precisely analogous to the American boy's "I hope to die." Generally speaking, the mountaineers use angry imprecations and personal abuse of all kinds sparingly. Instead of standing and cursing one another like enraged Billingsgate fish-women, they promptly cut the Gordian knot of their misunderstanding with their long, double-edged daggers, and presently one of them is carried away on a ladder. When, as a Caucasian proverb asserts, "It is only a step from the bad word to the kinjal," even an angry man is apt to think twice before he curses once.

It is difficult to select from the proverbs of the Caucasian mountaineers, numerous as they are, any which are certainly and peculiarly their own. They inherit the proverbial philosophy of all the Aryan and Semitic races, and for the most part merely repeat with slight variations the well-worn saws of the English, the Germans, the Russians, the Arabs and the French. I will give, however, a few specimens which I have not been able to find in modern collections, and which are probably of native invention. It will be noticed that they are all more remarkable for force and for a peculiar grim, sardonic humor than for delicacy of wit or grace of expression. Instead of neatly running a subject through with the keen flashing rapier of a witty analogy, as a Spaniard would do, the Caucasian mountaineer roughly knocks it down with the first proverbial club which comes to hand; and the knottier and more crooked the weapon the better pleased he seems to be with the result. Whether the work in hand be the smiting of a rock or the crushing of a butterfly, he swings high overhead the Hammer of Thor. Compare, for example, the French and the Caucasian methods of expressing the fact that the consequences of bad advice fall on the advised and not on the adviser. The Frenchman is satisfied to simply state the obvious truism that advisers are not payers, but the mountaineer, with forcible and graphic imagery, declares that "He who instructs how to jump does not tear his mouth, but he who jumps breaks his legs." Again: the German has in his proverbial storehouse no more vivid illustration of the wilfulness of luck than the saying that "A lucky man's hens lay eggs with double yolks;" but this is altogether too common and natural a phenomenon to satisfy the mountaineer's conception of the power of luck; so he coolly knocks the subject flat with the audacious hyperbole, "A lucky man's horse and mare both have colts." Fortune and misfortune present themselves to the German mind as two buckets in a well; but to the Caucasian mountaineer "Fortune is like a cock's tail on a windy day" (i.e., first on one side and then on the other). The Danes assert guardedly that "He loses least in a quarrel who controls his tongue;" but the mountaineer cries out boldly and emphatically, "Hold your tongue and you will save your head;" and in order that the warning may not be forgotten, he inserts it as a sort of proverbial chorus at the end of every paragraph in his oldest code of written law. It is not often that a proverb rises to such dignity and importance as to become part of the legal literature of a country; and the fact that this proverb should have been chosen from a thousand others, and repeated twenty or thirty times in a brief code of criminal law, is very significant of the character of the people.

Caucasian proverbs rarely deal with verbal abstractions, personified virtues or vague intellectual generalizations. They present their ideas in hard, sharp-edged crystals rather than in weak verbal solutions, and their similes, metaphors and analogies are as distinct, clear-cut and tangible as it is possible to make them. The German proverb, "He who grasps too much lets much fall," would die a natural death in the Caucasus in a week, because it defies what Tyndall calls "mental presentation:" it is not pictorial enough; but let its spirit take on a Caucasian body, introduce it to the world as "You can't hold two watermelons in one hand," and it becomes immortal. Vivid imagery is perhaps the most marked characteristic of Caucasian proverbs. Wit, wisdom and grace may all occasionally be dispensed with, but pictorial effect, the possibility of clear mental presentation, is a sine qua non. Aiming primarily at this, the mountaineer says of an impudent man, "He has as much shame as an egg has hair;" of a garrulous one, "He has no bone in his tongue" or "His tongue is always wet;" of a spendthrift, "Water does not stand on a hillside;" and of a noble family in reduced circumstances, "It is a decayed rag, but it is silk." All these metaphors are clear, vivid and forcible, and the list of such proverbs might be almost indefinitely extended. With all their vividness of imagery, however, Caucasian sayings are sometimes as mysterious and unintelligible as the darkest utterances of the Delphian Oracle. Take, by way of illustration, the enigmatical proverb, "He lets his hasty-pudding stand over night, hoping that it will learn to talk." Only the rarest penetration would discover in this seemingly absurd statement a satire upon the man who has a disagreeable confession to make or an unpleasant message to deliver, and who puts it off until to-morrow, hoping that the duty will then be easier of performance. Again: what would a West European make of such a proverb as the following: "If I had known that my father was going to die, I would have traded him off for a cucumber"? Our English cousins, with their characteristic adherence to facts as literally stated, would very likely cite it as a shocking illustration of the filial irreverence and ingratitude of Caucasian children; but an American, more accustomed to the rough humor of grotesque statement, would see at once that it was not to be "taken for cash," and would understand and appreciate its force when he found its meaning to be that it is better to dispose of a perishable article at half price than to lose it altogether—better to sell your father for a cucumber than have him die on your hands.

The cruel, cynical, revengeful side of the mountaineer's character finds expression in the proverbs, "A cut-off head will never ache;" "Crush the head, and the tail will die of itself;" "If you can't find a Lak [a member of a generally-detested tribe], hammer the place where one sat;" "What business has a blind man with a beautiful wife?" "The serpent never forgets who cut off his tail, nor the father who killed his son." The lights and shades of polygamous life appear in the sharply-contrasted proverbs, "He who has two wives enjoys a perpetual honeymoon," and "He who has two wives doesn't need cats and dogs;" the bad consequences of divided responsibility are indicated by the proverb, "If there are too many shepherds the sheep die;" and the value of a good shepherd is stated as tersely and forcibly as it well could be in the declaration that "A good shepherd will get cheese from a he-goat."

Caucasian proverbs, however, are not all as rude, unpolished and grotesque as most of those above quoted. Some of them are simple, noble and dignified, the undistorted outcome of the higher and better traits of the mountaineer's character. Among such are, "Dogs bark at the moon, but the moon does not therefore fall upon the earth;" "Blind eyes are a misfortune, but a blind heart is worse;" "He who weeps from the soul weeps not tears, but blood;" "Generous words are often better than a generous hand;" "A guest, a man from God;" and finally the really noble proverb, "Heroism is patience for one moment more:" no words could better express the steady courage, the unconquerable fortitude, the proud, silent endurance of a true Caucasian Highlander. At all times and under all circumstances, in pain, in peril and in the hour of death, he holds with unshakable courage to his manhood and his purpose. Die he will, but yield never. The desperate fifty years' struggle of the Caucasian mountaineers with the bravest armies and ablest commanders of Russia is only a long, blood-illuminated commentary upon this one proverb.

In order that the reader may get a clear idea of the scope and general character of Caucasian proverbial literature, I will give without further comment a few selections from the current sayings of the Laks, the Chechenses, the Abkhazians, the Koorintzes and the Avars: "Don't spit into a well: you may have to drink out of it;" "A fish would talk if his mouth were not full of water;" "Bread doesn't run after the belly, but the belly after bread;" "A rich man wherever he goes finds a feast—a poor fellow, although he goes to a feast, finds trouble;" "Stick to the old road and your father's friends;" "Your body is pledged to pay for your sins;" "Burial is the only medicine for the dead;" "Swift water never gets to the sea;" "With good neighbors you can marry off even your blind daughter;" "You can't get sugar out of every stone;" "Out of a hawk's nest comes a hawk;" "A fat ox and a rotten shroud are good for nothing;" "There are seven tastes as to a man's dress, but only one as to his stature" (i.e., his own); "A good head will find itself a hat;" "At the attack of the wolf the ass shuts his eyes;" "If you are sweet to others, they will swallow you—if bitter, they will spit you out;" "Go where you will, lift up any stone and you will find a Lak under it;" "He is like a hen that wants to lay an egg, and can't;" "He who is sated cannot understand the hungry;" "A barking dog soon grows old;" "A quiet cat eats a big lump of fat;" "If water bars your road, be a fish—if cliffs, a mountain-goat."

Closely allied to Caucasian proverbs in spirit and in rough, grotesque humor are Caucasian anecdotes, of which I have space for only a few characteristic specimens. They are almost invariably short, terse and pithy, and would prove, even in the absence of all other evidence, that these fierce, stern, unyielding mountaineers have the keenest possible appreciation of humor, and that in the quick perception and hearty enjoyment of pure absurdity they come nearer to Americans than do perhaps any of the West European races. One of the following anecdotes, "The Big Turnip," I have seen in American newspapers within a year, and all of them bear a greater or less resemblance, both in spirit and form, to American stories. I will begin with an anecdote of the mullah Nazr-Eddin, a mythical, or at any rate an historically unknown, individual, whose personality the mountaineers use as a sort of peg upon which to hang all the floating jokes and absurd stories which they from time to time hear or invent, just as Americans use the traditional Irishman to give a modern stamp to a joke which perhaps is as old as the Pyramids. The mountaineers originally borrowed this lay figure of Nazr-Eddin from the Turks, but they have clothed it in an entirely new suit of blunders, witticisms and absurdities of their own manufacture.

Nazr-Eddin's Greetings.—Nazr-Eddin once upon a time, while travelling, came upon some people digging a grave. "May peace be with you!" said he as he stopped before them, "and may the blessing of God be upon your labor!" The gravediggers, enraged, seized shovels and picks and fell upon Nazr-Eddin and began to beat him. "What have I done to you?" he asked in affright: "what do you beat me for?"—"When you saw us," replied the gravediggers, "you should have held up your arms and prayed for the deceased."—"The instruction which you have given me I will remember," said Nazr-Eddin, and went on his way. Presently he met a large company of young people returning in great merriment from a wedding, dancing and playing on drums and fifes. As he approached them he raised his hands toward heaven and began to pray for the soul of the deceased. At this all the young men fell upon him in great anger and gave him another awful beating. "Can't you see," they cried, "that the prince's son has just been married, and that this is the wedding-party? Under such circumstances you should have put your hat under your arm and begun to shout and dance."—"The next time I will remember," said Nazr-Eddin, and went on. Suddenly and unexpectedly he came upon a hunter who was creeping cautiously and silently up to a hare. Putting his hat under his arm, Nazr-Eddin began to dance, jump and shout so furiously that of course the hare was frightened away. The hunter, enraged at this interference, pounded Nazr-Eddin with his gun until he could hardly walk. "What would you have me do?" cried the mullah.—"Under such circumstances," replied the hunter, "you should have taken off your hat and crept up cautiously, now stooping down, now rising up."—"That I will remember," said Nazr-Eddin, and went on. At a little distance he came upon a flock of sheep, and, according to his last instructions, he crept cautiously up to them, now stooping down out of sight, and then rising up, and so frightened the sheep that they all ran away. Upon this the shepherds gave him another tremendous beating. There was not a misfortune that did not come upon Nazr-Eddin on account of his miserable blunders.

The Kettle that Died.—The mullah Nazr-Eddin once went to a neighbor to borrow a kettle. In the course of a week he returned, bringing the large kettle which he had borrowed, and another, a small one. "What is this?" inquired the owner, pointing to the small kettle.—"Your kettle has given birth," replied the mullah, "and that is its offspring." Without any further question or explanation the owner took both kettles, and the mullah returned to his home. In course of time the mullah again appeared, and again borrowed his neighbor's kettle, which the latter gave him this time with great readiness. A week passed, a month, two months, three months, but no kettle; and at last the owner went to the mullah and asked for it. "Your kettle is dead," said the mullah.—"Dead!" exclaimed the owner: "do kettles die?"—"Certainly," replied the mullah. "If your kettle could give birth, it could also die; and, what is more," he added, "it died in giving birth." The owner, not wishing to make himself a laughing-stock among the people, closed up the kettle business and left.

The Big Turnip.—Two men were once walking together and talking. One said, "My father raised such an enormous turnip once that he used the top of it to thresh wheat upon, and when it was ripe had to dig it out of the ground."—"My father," said the other, "ordered such an enormous kettle made once that the forty workmen who made it all had room to sit on the inside and work at the same time; and they were a year in finishing it."—"Yes," said the first, "but what did your father want such a big kettle for?"—"Probably to boil your father's turnip in," was the reply.

Nazr-Eddin's One-Legged Goose.—The mullah Nazr-Eddin was once carrying to the khan as a gift a roasted goose. Becoming hungry on the road, he pulled off one of the goose's legs and ate it. "Where is the other leg?" inquired the khan when the goose was presented.—"Our geese have only one leg," answered the mullah.—"How so?" demanded the khan.—"If you don't believe it, look there," said the mullah, pointing to a flock of geese which had just come out of the water, and were all standing on one leg. The khan threw a stick at them and they all ran away. "There!" exclaimed the khan, "they all have two legs."—"That's not surprising," said the mullah: "if somebody should throw such a club as that at you, you might get four legs." The khan gave the mullah a new coat and sent him home.

Why Blind Men should Carry Lanterns at Night.—A blind man in Khoota (an East Caucasian village) came back from the river one night bringing a pitcher of water and carrying in one hand a lighted lantern. Some one, meeting him, said, "You're blind: it's all the same to you whether it's day or night. Of what use to you is a lantern?"—"I don't carry the lantern in order to see the road," replied the blind man, "but to keep some fool like you from running against me and breaking my pitcher."

The Woman who was Afraid of being Kissed.—A man was once walking along one road and a woman along another. The roads finally united, and the man and woman, reaching the junction at the same time, walked on from there together. The man was carrying a large iron kettle on his back; in one hand he held by the legs a live chicken, in the other a cane; and he was leading a goat. Just as they were coming to a deep dark ravine, the woman said to the man, "I am afraid to go through that ravine with you: it is a lonely place, and you might overpower me and kiss me by force."—"If you were afraid of that," said the man, "you shouldn't have walked with me at all: how can I possibly overpower you and kiss you by force when I have this great iron kettle on my back, a cane in one hand and a live chicken in the other, and am leading this goat? I might as well be tied hand and foot."—"Yes," replied the woman, "but if you should stick your cane into the ground and tie the goat to it, and turn the kettle bottom side up, and put the chicken under it, then you might wickedly kiss me in spite of my resistance."—"Success to thy ingenuity, O woman!" said the rejoicing man to himself: "I should never have thought of such expedients." And when they came to the ravine he stuck his cane into the ground and tied the goat to it, gave the chicken to the woman, saying, "Hold it while I cut some grass for the goat," and then, lowering the kettle from his shoulders, imprisoned the fowl under it, and wickedly kissed the woman, as she was afraid he would.

It would be easy to multiply illustrations of Caucasian wit and humor, but the above anecdotes are fairly representative, and must suffice. I will close this paper with two specimens of mountain satire—"The Stingy Mullah" and "An Eye for an Eye."

The Stingy Mullah.—The mullah of a certain village, who was noted for his avarice and stinginess, happened one day in crossing a narrow bridge to fall into the river. As he could not swim, he sank for a moment out of sight, and then coming to the surface floated down the stream, struggling and yelling for help. A passer-by ran to the bank, and stretching out his arm shouted to the mullah, "Give me your hand! give me your hand!" but the mullah thrust both hands as far as possible under water and continued to yell. Another man, who knew the mullah better, ran to the bank lower down and leaning over the water cried to him, "Here! take my hand! take my hand!" And the mullah, grasping it eagerly, was drawn out of the river. He was always ready to take, but would not give even so much as his hand to save his life.

The following clever bit of satire was probably invented by an inhabitant of one of the Arab khanates as a means of getting even with a ruler who had wronged him by an absurdly unjust decision. The khans of the Eastern Caucasus previous to the Russian conquest had almost unlimited power over the lives and persons of their subjects, and their decrees, however unreasonable and unfair they might be, were enforced without appeal and with inexorable severity. A mountaineer therefore in Avaria or Koomookha who considered himself aggrieved by a decision of his khan, and who dared not complain openly, could relieve his outraged feelings only by inventing and setting afloat an anonymous pasquinade. Some of these short personal satires are very clever pieces of literary vengeance.

An Eye for an Eye.—A robber one night broke into the house of a poor Lesghian in search of plunder. While groping around in the dark he accidentally put out one of his eyes by running against a nail which the Lesghian had driven into the wall to hang clothes upon. On the following morning the robber went to the khan and complained that this Lesghian had driven a nail into the wall of his house in such a manner as to put out one of his (the robber's) eyes, and for this injury he demanded redress. The khan sent for the Lesghian and inquired why he had driven this nail, and if he had not done it on purpose to put out the robber's eye. The Lesghian explained that he needed the nail to hang clothes upon, and that he had driven it into the wall for that purpose and no other. The khan, however, declared that the law demanded an eye for an eye; and since he had been instrumental in putting out the robber's eye, it would be necessary to put out one of his eyes to satisfy the claims of justice. "Your Excellency," replied the poor Lesghian, "I am a tailor. I need both my eyes in order to carry on my business and obtain the necessaries of life; but I know a man who is a gunsmith: he uses only one eye to squint along his gun-barrels, so that the other is of no particular service to him. Be so just, O khan! as to order one of his eyes to be put out and spare mine." The khan said, "Very well," and, sending for the gunsmith, explained to him the situation of affairs. "I also need both eyes," objected the gunsmith, "because I have to look on both sides of a gun-barrel in order to tell whether it is straight or not; but near me there lives a man who is a musician. When he plays on the zoorna [a Caucasian fife] he shuts both eyes; so his trade won't suffer even if he lose his eyesight entirely. Be so just, O khan! as to order one of his eyes to be put out and spare mine." To this the khan also agreed, and sent for the musician. The fifer admitted that he shut both eyes when he played his fife; whereupon the khan ordered one of them to be put out, and declared that he only left him the other as a proof of the great mercy, justice and forbearance of khans.

This little bit of burlesque, short as it is, is full of delicate satirical touches. The prompt attention given to the complaint of the robber, who of course has no rights whatever in the premises; the readiness of the khan to infer malice on the part of the plundered Lesghian; his unique conception of the lex talionis as a law which may be satisfied with anybody's eye; the cool assumption that because the unfortunate fifer occasionally shuts both eyes he ought in strict justice to lose both eyes, and should be duly grateful to the merciful khan for permitting him to keep one of them,—are all the fine and skilful touches of a bright wit and a humorous fancy.

George Kennan.