The merchant sets out for Asia with all his house-hold. Esop is offered the lightest load, as being a raw recruit. From among the bags, beds, and baskets he chooses a basket full of bread—"a load for two men." They laugh at his folly, but let him have his will, and he staggers under the burden to the wonder of his master. But at the first halt for ariston, or breakfast, the basket is half-emptied, and by the evening wholly so, and then Esop marches triumphantly ahead, all commending his wit. At Ephesus the merchant sells all his slaves, excepting a musician, a scribe, and Esop. Thence he goes to Samos, where he puts new garments on the two former (he had none left for Esop), and sets them out for sale, Esop between them. Xanthus, the philospher, lived at Samos. He goes to the slave market, and, seeing the three, praises the dealer's cunning in making the two look handsomer than they were by contrast with the ugly one. Asking the scribe and the musician what they know, their answer is, "Everything," upon which Esop laughs. The price of the musician (1000 obols, or six guineas) and of the scribe (three times that sum) prevents the philosopher from buying them, and he turns to Esop to see what he is made of. He gives him the customary salutation, "Khaire!" (Rejoice). "I wasn't grieving," retorts Esop. "I greet thee," says Xanthus. "And I thee," replies Esop. "What are thou?" "Black." "I don't mean that, but in what sort of place wast thou born?" "My mother didn't tell me whether in the second floor or the cellar." "What can you do?" "Nothing." "How?" "Why, these fellows here say they know how to do everything, and they haven't left me a single thing." "By Jove," cries Xanthus, "he has answered right well; for there is no man who knows everything. That was why he laughed, it is clear." In the end, Xanthus buys Esop for sixty obols (about 7s. 6d.) and takes him home, where his wife (who is "very cleanly") receives him only on sufferance.

One day Xanthus, meeting friends at the bath, sends Esop home to boil pease (idiomatically using the word in the singular), for his friends are coming to eat with him. Esop boils one pea and sets it before Xanthus, who tastes it and bids him serve up. The water is then placed on the table, and Esop justifies himself to his distracted master, who then sends him for four pig's feet. While they boil, Xanthus slyly abstracts one, and when Esop discovers this he takes it for a plot against him of the other slaves. He runs into the yard, cuts a foot from the pig feeding there, and tosses it into the pot. Presently the other foot is put back, and Esop is confounded to see five trotters on the boil. He serves them up, however, and when Xanthus asks him what the five mean he replies: "How many feet have two pigs?" Xanthus saying, "Eight," quoth Esop: "Then here are five, and the porker feeding below goes on three." On being reproached he urges: "But, master, there is no harm in doing a sum in addition and subtraction, is there?" For very shame Xanthus forbears whipping him.

One morning Xanthus gives a breakfast, for which Esop is sent to buy "the best and most useful." He buys tongues, and the guests (philosophers all) have nothing else. "What could be better for man than tongue?" quoth Esop. Another time he is ordered to get "the worst and most worthless"; again he brings tongues, and again is ready with a similar defence.[132] A guest reviles him, and Esop retorts that he is "malicious and a busybody." On hearing this Xanthus commands him to find some one who is not a busybody. In the road Esop finds a simple soul and brings him home to his master, who persuades his wife to bear with him in anything he should pretend to do to her; if the guest is a busybody (or one who meddles) Esop will get a beating. The plan fails; for the good man continues eating and takes no notice of the wife-cuffing going on, and when his host seems about to burn her, he only asks leave to bring his own wife to be also placed on the pile.

[132] This story is also found in the Liber de Donis of Etienne de Bourbon (No. 246), a Dominican monk of the 14th century; in the Summa Praedicantium of John Bromyard, and several other medieval monkish collections of exempla, or stories designed for the use of preachers: in these the explanation is that nothing can be better and nothing worse than tongue.

At a symposium Xanthus takes too much wine, and in bravado wagers his house and all that it contains that he will drink up the waters of the sea. Out of this scrape Esop rescues him by suggesting that he should demand that all the rivers be stopped from flowing into the sea, for he did not undertake to drink them too, and the other party is satisfied.[133]

[133] This occurs in the several Asiatic versions of the Book of Sindibad (Story of the Sandalwood Merchant); in the Gesta Romanorum; in the old English metrical Tale of Beryn; in one of the Italian Novelle of Sacchetti; and in the exploits of Tyl Eulenspiegel, the German Rogue.

A party of scientific guests are coming to dinner one day, and Esop is set just within the door to keep out "all but the wise." When there is a knock at the door Esop shouts: "What does the dog shake?" and all save one go away in high dudgeon, thinking he means them; but this last answers: "His tail," and is admitted.

At a public festival an eagle carries off the municipal ring, and Esop obtains his freedom by order of the state for his interpretation of this omen—that some king purposes to annex Samos. This, it turns out, is Croesus, who sends to claim tribute. Hereupon Esop relates his first fable, that of the Wolf, the Dog, and the Sheep, and, going on an embassy to Croesus, that of the Grasshopper who was caught by the Locust-gatherer. He brings home "peace with honour." After this Esop travels over the world, showing his wisdom and wit. At Babylon he is made much of by the king. He then visits Egypt and confounds the sages in his monarch's behalf. Once more he returns to Greece, and at Delphi is accused of stealing a sacred golden bowl and condemned to be hurled from a rock. He pleads the fables of the Matron of Ephesus,[134] the Frog and the Mouse, the Beetle and the Eagle, the Old Farmer and his Ass-waggon, and others, but all is of no avail, and the villains break his neck.

[134] Taken from Petronius Arbiter. The story is widely spread. It is found in the Seven Wise Masters, and—mutatis mutandis—is well known to the Chinese. Planudes takes some liberties with his original, substituting for the soldier guarding the suspended corpse of a criminal, who "comforts" the sorrowing widow, a herdsman with his beasts, which he loses in prosecuting his amour.

* * * * *

Such are some of the apocryphal sayings and doings of Esop the fabulist—the manner of his death being the only circumstance for which there is any authority. The idea of his bodily deformity is utterly without foundation, and may have been adopted as a foil to his extraordinary shrewdness and wit, as exhibited in the anecdotes related of him by Planudes. That there was nothing uncouth in the person of Esop is evident from the fact that the Athenians erected a fine statue of him, by the famed sculptor Lysippus.—The Latin collection of the fables ascribed to Esop was first printed at Rome in 1473 and soon afterwards translated into most of the languages of Europe. About the year 1480 the Greek text was printed at Milan. From a French version Caxton printed them in English at Westminster in 1484, with woodcuts: "Here begynneth the Book of the subtyl History and Fables of Esope. Translated out of Frenssche into Englissche, by William Caxton," etc. In this version Planudes' description of Esop's personal appearance is reproduced:[135] He was "deformed and evil shapen, for he had a great head, large visage, long jaws, sharp eyes, a short neck, curb backed, great belly, great legs, and large feet; and yet that which was worse, he was dumb and could not speak; but, notwithstanding all this, he had a great wit and was greatly ingenious, subtle in cavillection and joyous in words"—an inconsistency which is done away in a later edition by the statement that afterwards he found his tongue.—It is curious to find the Scottish poet Robert Henryson (15th century), in one of the prologues to his metrical versions of some of the Fables, draw a very different portrait of Esop.[136] He tells us that one day in the midst of June, "that joly sweit seasoun," he went alone to a wood, where he was charmed with the "noyis of birdis richt delitious," and "sweit was the smell of flowris quhyte and reid," and, sheltering himself under a green hawthorn from the heat of the sun, he fell asleep:

And, in my dreme, methocht come throw the schaw[137] The fairest man that ever befoir I saw.

His gowne wes of ane claith als quhyte as milk, His chymeris[138] wes of chambelote purpour broun; His hude[139] of scarlet, bordourit[140] weill with silk, On hekellit-wyis,[141] untill his girdill doun; His bonat round, and of the auld fassoun,[142] His beird was quhyte, his ene was greit and gray, With lokker[143] hair, quilk ouer his schulderis lay.

Ane roll of paper in his hand he bair, Ane swannis pen stikkand[144] under his eir, Ane inkhorne, with ane prettie gilt pennair,[145] Ane bag of silk, all at his belt can beir: Thus was he gudelie graithit[146] in his geir. Of stature large, and with ane feirfull[147] face; Evin quhair I lay, he came ane sturdie pace.

[135] Mr. Jacobs was obliged to omit the Life of Esop in his reprint of Caxton's text of the Fables, as it would have unduly increased the bulk of his second volume. But those interested in the genealogy of popular tales and fables will be glad to have Mr. Jacobs' all but exhaustive account of the so-called Esopic fables, together with his excellent synopsis of parallels, in preference to the monkish collection of spurious anecdotes of the fabulist, of which the most noteworthy are given in the present paper.

[136] Robert Henryson was a schoolmaster in Dunfermline in the latter part of the 15th century. His Moral Fables, edited by Dr. David Irving, were printed for the Maitland Club in 1832, and his complete works (Poems and Fables) were edited by Dr. David Laing, and published in 1865. His Testament of Cresseid, usually considered as his best performance, is a continuation of Chaucer's Troilus and Cresseide, which was derived from the Latin of an unknown author named Lollius. Henryson was the author of the first pastoral poem composed in the English (or Scottish) language—that of Robin and Makyn. "To his power of poetical conception," Dr. Laing justly remarks, "he unites no inconsiderable skill in versification: his lines, if divested of their uncouth orthography, might be mistaken for those of a more modern poet."

[137] Schaw, a wood, a covert.

[138] Chymeris, a short, light gown.

[139] Hude, hood.

[140] Bordourit, embroidered.

[141] Hekellit-wise, like the feathers in the neck of a cock.

[142] Fassoun, fashion.

[143] Lokker, (?) gray.

[144] Stikkand, sticking.

[145] Pennair, pen-case.

[146] Graithit, apparelled, arrayed.

[147] Feirfull, awe-inspiring, dignified.

The Arabian sage Lokinan is represented by tradition to have been a black slave, and of hideous appearance, from which, and from the identity of the apologues in the Arabian collection that bears his name as the author with the so-called Esopic fables, some writers have supposed that Esop and Lokman are simply different names of one and the same individual. But the fables ascribed to Lokman have been for the most part (if not indeed entirely) derived from the Greek; and there is no authority whatever that Lokman composed any apologues. Various traditions exist regarding Lokman's origin and history. It is said that he was an Ethiopian, and was sold as a slave to the Israelites during the reign of David. According to one version, he was a carpenter; another describes him as having been originally a tailor; while a third account states that he was a shepherd. If the Arabs may be credited, he was nearly related to the patriarch Job. Among the anecdotes which are recounted of his amiable disposition is the following: His master once gave him a bitter lemon to eat. Lokman ate it all, upon which his master, greatly astonished, asked him: "How was it possible for you to eat so unpalatable a fruit?" Lokman replied: "I have received so many favours from you, that it is no wonder I should once in my life eat a bitter melon from your hand." Struck with this generous answer, the master, it is said, immediately gave him his freedom.—A man of eminence among the Jews, observing a great crowd around Lokman, eagerly listening to his discourse, asked him whether he was not the black slave who lately tended the sheep of such a person, to which Lokman replying in the affirmative, "How was it possible," continued his questioner, "for thee to attain so exalted a degree of wisdom and piety?" Lokman answered: "By always speaking the truth; keeping my word; and never intermeddling in affairs that did not concern me."—Being asked from whom he had learned urbanity, he replied: "From men of rude manners, for whatever I saw in them that was disagreeable I avoided doing myself." And when asked from whom he had acquired his philosophy, he said: "From the blind, who never advance a step until they have tried the ground." Lokman is also credited with this apothegm: "Be a learned man, a disciple of the learned, or an auditor of the learned; at least, be a lover of knowledge and desirous of improvement."—In Persian and Turkish tales Lokman sometimes figures as a highly skilled physician, and "wise as Lokman" is proverbial throughout the Muhammedan world.



ADDITIONAL NOTE.

DRINKING THE SEA DRY, p. 306.

The same jest is also found in Aino Folk-Tales, translated by Prof. Basil Hall Chamberlain, and published in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1888, as follows:

There was the Chief of the Mouth of the River and the Chief of the Upper Current of the River. The former was very vain-glorious, and therefore wished to put the latter to shame or to kill him by engaging him in an attempt to perform something impossible. So he sent for him and said: "The sea is a useful thing, in so far as it is the original home of the fish which come up the river. But it is very destructive in stormy weather, when it beats wildly upon the beach. Do you now drink it dry, so that there may be rivers and dry land only. If you cannot do so, then forfeit all your possessions." The other said, greatly to the vain-glorious man's surprise: "I accept the challenge." So, on their going down to the beach, the Chief of the Upper Current of the River took a cup and scooped up a little of the sea-water with it, drank a few drops, and said: "In the sea-water itself there is no harm. It is some of the rivers flowing into it that are poisonous. Do you, therefore, first close the mouths of all the rivers both in Aino-land and in Japan, and prevent them from flowing into the sea, and then I will undertake to drink the sea dry." Hereupon the Chief of the Mouth of the River felt ashamed, acknowledged his error, and gave all his treasures to his rival.

* * * * *

Such an idea as this of first "stopping the rivers" might well have been conceived independently by different peoples, but surely not by such a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos, who must have got the story from the Japanese, who in their turn probably derived it from some Indian-Buddhist source—perhaps a version of the Book of Sindibad. Of course, the several European versions and variants have been copied out of one book into another, and independent invention is out of the question.



IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

Orl. Whom ambles Time withal?

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin; for he sleeps easily, because he cannot study, lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning.—As You Like It.

During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names. Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon of an inscription in these words: "I, ——, have subscribed by the hand of ——, because I cannot write"; and such a bishop having thus confessed that he could not write, there followed: "I, ——, whose name is underwritten, have therefore subscribed for him."

Alfred the Great—who was twelve years of age before a tutor could be found competent to teach him the alphabet—complained, towards the close of the 9th century, that "from the Humber to the Thames there was not a priest who understood the liturgy in his mother-tongue, or could translate the easiest piece of Latin"; and a correspondent of Abelard, about the middle of the 12th century, complimenting him upon a resort to him of pupils from all countries, says that "even Britain, distant as she is, sends her savages to be instructed by you."

Henri Etienne, in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[148] says that "the most brutish and blockish ignorance was to be found in friars' cowls, especially mass-mongering priests, which we are the less to wonder at, considering that which Menot twits them in the teeth withal, that instead of books there was nothing to be found in their chambers but a sword, or a long-bow, or a cross-bow, or some such weapon. But how could they send ad ordos such ignorant asses? You must note, sir, that they which examined them were as wise as woodcocks themselves, and therefore judged of them as penmen of pikemen and blind men of colours. Or were it that they had so much learning in their budgets as that they could make a shift to know their inefficiency, yet to pleasure those that recommended them they suffered them to pass. One is famous among the rest, who being asked by the bishop sitting at the table: 'Es tu dignus?' answered, 'No, my Lord, but I shall dine anon with your men.' For he thought that dignus (that is, worthy) signified to dine."

[148] This is a work distinct from Henri Etienne's Apologia pour Herodote. An English translation of it was published at London in 1807, and at Edinburgh in 1808, under the title of "A World of Wonders; or, an Introduction to a Treatise touching the Conformitie of Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a Preparative Treatise to the Apology for Herodotus," etc. For this book (the "Introduction") Etienne had to quit France, fearing the wrath of the clerics. His Apologie pour Herodote has not been rendered into English—and why not, it would be hard to say.

Etienne gives another example, which, however, belongs rather to the class of simpleton stories: A young man going to the bishop for admission into holy orders, to test his learning, was asked by the prelate, "Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?"[149] and not knowing what answer to make, this promising candidate was refused as inefficient. Returning home, and explaining why he had not been ordained, his father told him that he must be an ass if he could not tell who was the father of the four sons of Aymon. "See, I pray thee," quoth he, "yonder is Great John, the smith, who has four sons; if a man should ask thee who was their father, wouldst thou not say it was Great John, the smith?" "Yes," said the brilliant youth; "now I understand it." Thereupon he went again before the bishop, and being asked a second time, "Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?" he promptly replied: "Great John, the smith."[150]

[149] One of the Charlemagne Romances, translated by Caxton from the French, and printed by him about the year 1489, under the title of The Right Pleasaunt and Goodly Historie of the Four Sonnes of Aymon. It has been reprinted for the Early English Text Society, ably edited by Miss Octavia Richardson.

[150] A slightly different version is found in A Hundred Mery Talys, No. lxix, "Of the franklyns sonne that cam to take orders." The bishop says that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth;—who was the father of Japheth? When the "scholar" returns home and tells his father how he had been puzzled by the bishop, he endeavours to enlighten his son thus: "Here is Colle, my dog, that hath three whelps; must not these three whelps have Colle for their sire?" Going back to the bishop, he informs his lordship that the father of Japheth was "Colle, my father's dogge."

The same author asks who but the churchmen of those days of ignorance corrupted and perverted the text of the New Testament? Thus, in the parable of the lost piece of money, evertit domum, "she overturned the house," was substituted for everrit domum, "she swept the house." And in the Acts of the Apostles, where Saul (or Paul) is described as being let down from the house on the wall of Damascus in a basket, for demissus per sportam was substituted demissus per portam, a correction which called forth a rather witty Latin epigram to this effect:

This way the other day did pass As jolly a carpenter as ever was; So strangely skilful in his trade, That of a basket a door he made.

Among the many curious anecdotes told in illustration of the gross ignorance of the higher orders of the clergy in medieval times the two following are not the least amusing:

About the year 1330 Louis Beaumont was bishop of Durham. He was an extremely illiterate French nobleman, so incapable of reading that he could not, although he had studied them, read the bulls announced to the people at his consecration. During that ceremony the word "metropoliticae" occurred. The bishop paused, and tried in vain to repeat it, and at last remarked: "Suppose that said." Then he came to "enigmate," which also puzzled him. "By St. Louis!" he exclaimed in indignation, "it could be no gentleman who wrote that stuff!"

Our second anecdote is probably more generally known: Andrew Forman, who was bishop of Moray and papal legate for Scotland, at an entertainment given by him at Rome to the Pope and cardinals, blundered so in his Latinity when he said grace that his Holiness and the cardinals lost their gravity. The disconcerted bishop concluded his blessing by giving "a' the fause carles to the de'il," to which the company, not understanding his Scotch Latinity, said "Amen!"

When such was the condition of the bishops, it is not surprising to find that few of the ordinary priests were acquainted with even the rudiments of the Latin tongue, and they consequently mumbled over masses which they did not understand. A rector of a parish, we are told, going to law with his parishioners about paving the church, cited these words, Paveant illi, non paveam ego, which, ascribing them to St. Peter, he thus construed: "They are to pave the church, not I"—and this was allowed to be good law by a judge who was himself an ecclesiastic.

We have an amusing example of the ignorance of the lower orders of churchmen during the "dark ages" in No. xii of A Hundred Mery Talys, as follows: "The archdekyn of Essex, that had ben longe in auctorite, in a tyme of vysytacyon, whan all the prestys apperyd before hym, called aside iii. of the yonge prestys which were acusyd that th[e]y could not wel say theyr dyvyne service, and askyd of them, when they sayd mas, whether they sayd corpus meus or corpum meum. The fyrst prest sayde that he sayd corpus meus. The second sayd that he sayd corpum meum. And than he asked of the thyrd how he sayde; whyche answered and sayd thus: Sir, because it is so great a dout, and dyvers men be in dyvers opynyons, therfore, because I wolde be sure I wolde not offende, whan I come to the place I leve it clene out and say nothynge therfore. Wherfore the bysshoppe than openly rebuked them all thre. But dyvers that were present thought more defaut in hym, because he hym selfe beforetyme had admytted them to be prestys." And assuredly they were right in so thinking, and the worthy archdeacon (or bishop, as he is also styled), who had probably passed the three young men "for value received" from their fathers, should have refrained from publicly examining them afterwards.

The covetousness and irreverence of the churchmen in former times are well exemplified in another tale given in the same old jest-book, No. lxxi, which, with spelling modernised, goes thus: "Sometime there dwelled a priest in Stratford-on-Avon, of small learning, which undevoutly sang mass and oftentimes twice on one day. So it happened on a time, after his second mass was done in short space, not a mile from Stratford there met him divers merchantmen, which would have heard mass, and desired him to sing mass and he should have a groat, which answered them and said: 'Sirs, I will say mass no more this day; but I will say you two gospels for one groat, and that is dog-cheap for a mass in any place in England.'" The story-teller does not inform us whether the pious merchants accepted of the business-like compromise offered by "Mass John."

Hagiolatry was quite as much in vogue among the priesthood in medieval times as mariolatry has since been the special characteristic of the Romish Church, to the subordination (one might almost say, the suppression) of the only true object of worship; in proof of which, here is a droll anecdote from another early English collection, Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant to be readde (No. cxix): "A friar, preaching to the people, extolled Saint Francis above [all] confessors, doctors, virgins, martyrs, prophets—yea, and above one more than prophets, John the Baptist, and finally above the seraphical order of angels; and still he said, 'Yet let us go higher.' So when he could go no farther, except he should put Christ out of his place, which the good man was half afraid to do, he said aloud, 'And yet we have found no fit place for him.' And, staying a little while, he cried out at last, saying, 'Where shall we place the holy father?' A froward fellow standing among the audience,[151] said, 'If thou canst find none other, then set him here in my place, for I am weary,' and so he went his way."—This "froward fellow's" unexpected reply will doubtless remind the reader of the old man's remark in the mosque, about the "calling of Noah," ante, pp. 66, 67.[152]

[151] There were no pews in the churches in those "good old times."

[152] Apropos of saint-worship, quaint old Thomas Fuller relates a droll story in his Church History, ed. 1655, p. 278: A countryman who had lived many years in the Hercinian woods, in Germany, at last came into a populous city, demanding of the people therein, what God they did worship. They answered him, that they worshipped Jesus Christ. Whereupon the wild wood-man asked the names of the several churches in the city, which were all called by sundry saints, to whom they were consecrated. "It is strange," said he, "that you should worship Jesus Christ, and he not have a temple in all the city dedicated to him."

Probably not less than one third of the jests current in Europe in the 16th century turned on the ignorance of the Romish clergy—such, for instance, as that of the illiterate priest who, finding salta per tria (skip over three leaves) written at the foot of a page in his mass-book, deliberately jumped down three of the steps before the altar, to the great astonishment of the congregation; or that of another who, finding the title of the day's service indicated only by the abbreviation Re., read the mass of the Requiem instead of the service of the Resurrection; or that of yet another, who being so illiterate as to be unable to pronounce readily the long words in his ritual always omitted them, and pronounced the word Jesus, which he said was much more devotional.

There is a diverting tale of a foolish cure of Brou, which is well worthy of reproduction, in Les Contes; ou, les Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis, by Bonaventure des Periers—one of the best story-books of the 16th century (Bonaventure succeeded the celebrated poet Clement Marot as valet-de-chambre to Margaret, queen of Navarre):

It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her way to Chateaudun to keep there the festival of Easter, passed through Brou on Good Friday, about ten o'clock in the morning, and, wishing to hear service, she went into the church. When the cure came to the Passion he said it in his own peculiar manner, and made the whole church ring when he said, "Quem, quaeritis?" But when it came to the reply, "Jesum, Nazarenum,"[153] he spoke as low as he possibly could, and in this manner he continued the Passion. The lady, who was very devout and, for a woman, well-informed, in the Holy Scriptures [the reader will understand this was early in the 16th century], and attentive to ecclesiastical ceremonies, felt scandalised at this mode of chanting, and wished that she had never entered the church. She had a mind to speak to the cure, and tell him what she thought of it, and for this purpose sent for him to come to her after service. When he was come, "Monsieur le Cure," she said to him, "I don't know where you have learned to officiate on a day like this, when the people ought to be all humility. But to hear you perform the service is enough to drive away anybody's devotion." "How so, madame?" said the cure. "How so?" responded the lady. "You have said a Passion contrary to all rules of decency. When our Lord speaks you cry as if you were in the town-hall, and when it is Caiaphas, or Pilate, or the Jews, you speak softly like a young bride. Is this becoming in one like you? Are you fit to be a cure? If you had what you deserve, you would be turned out of your benefice, and then you would be made to know your fault." When the cure had very attentively listened to the good lady, "Is this what you have to say to me, madame?" said he. "By my soul! it is very true what you say, and the truth is, there are many people who talk of things which they do not understand. Madame, I believe I know my office as well as another, and beg all the world to know that God is as well served in this parish according to its condition as in any place within a hundred leagues of it. I know very well that the other cures chant the Passion quite differently. I could easily chant it like them if I would; but they don't understand their business at all. I should like to know if it becomes those rogues of Jews to speak as loud as our Lord? No, no, madame; rest assured that in my parish it is my will that God be master, and he shall be as long as I live, and let others do in their parishes according to their understanding."

[153] "Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, 'Whom seek ye?' They answered him, 'Jesus of Nazareth.'"—Gospel of S. John, xviii, 4, 5.

This is another of Des Periers' comical tales at the expense of the clerical orders: There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be because he had seen a little more than his Cato. And this made him set up his feathers and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth in order to make people think him a great doctor. Even at confession he made use of terms which astonished the poor people. One day he was confessing a poor working man, of whom he asked: "Here, now, my friend, tell me, art thou not ambitious?" The poor man said, "No," thinking this was a word which belonged to great lords, and almost repented of having come to confess to this priest; for he had already heard that he was such a great clerk and that he spoke so grandly that nobody understood him, which he knew by the word ambitious; for although he might have heard it somewhere, yet he knew not at all what it meant. The priest went on to ask: "Art thou not a gourmand?" Said the labourer, who understood as little as before: "No." "Art thou not superbe" [proud]? "No." "Art thou not iracund" [passionate]? "No." The priest, seeing the man always answer, "No," was somewhat surprised. "Art thou not concupiscent?" "No." "And what are thou, then?" said the priest. "I am," said he, "a mason—here's my trowel."

* * * * *

Readers acquainted with the fabliaux of the minstrels (the Trouveres) of Northern France know that those light-hearted gentry very often launched their satirical shafts at the churchmen of their day. One of the fabliaux in Barbazan's collection relates how a doltish, thick-headed priest was officiating in his church on Good Friday, and when about to read the service for that day he discovered that he had lost his book-mark ("mais il ot perdu ses festuz.")[154] Then he began to go back and turn over the leaves, but until Ascension Day he found not the Passion service. And the assembled peasants fretted and complained that he made them fast too long, since it was time for the festival. "Had he but said them the service," interjects the fableur, "should I make you a longer story?" So much did they grumble on all sides, that the priest began on them and fell to saying very rapidly, first in a loud and then in a low tone of voice, "Dixit Dominus Domino meo" (the Lord said unto my Lord); "but," says the fableur, "I cannot find here any sequel." The priest having read the text as chance might lead him, read the vespers for Sunday;—and you must know he travailed hard, that the offerings should be worth something to him. Then he fell to crying, "Barabbas!"—no crier could have cried a ban so loud as he cried to them; and everyone began to confess his sins aloud (i.e., struck up "mea culpa") and cried, "Mercy!" The priest, who read on the sequence of his Psalter, once more began to cry out, saying, "Crucify him!" So that both men and women prayed God that he would defend them from torment. But it sorely vexed the clerk, who said to the priest, "Make an end"; but he answered, "Make no end, friend, till 'unto the marvellous works'"—referring to a passage in the Psalter. The clerk then said that a long Passion service boots nothing, and that it is never a gain to keep the people too long. And as soon as the offerings of the people were collected he finished the Passion.—"By this tale," adds the raconteur, "I would show you how—by the faith of Saint Paul!—it as well befits a fool to talk folly and sottishness as it becomes a wise man to speak wisely. And he is a fool who believes me not."[155]—A commentary, this, which recalls the old English saying, that "it is as great marvel to see a woman weep as to see a goose go barefoot."

[154] Festueum, the split straw so used in the Middle Ages.

[155] See Meon's edition of Barbazan's Fabliaux et Contes, ed. 1808, tome ii, p. 442, and a prose extrait in Le Grand d'Aussy's collection, ed. 1781, tome iv, p. 101, "Du Pretre qui dit la Passion."

* * * * *

They were bold fellows, those Trouveres. Not content with making the ignorance and the gross vices of the clerical orders the subjects of their fabliaux, they did not scruple to ridicule their superstitious teachings, as witness the satire on saint-worship, entitled "Du vilain [i.e., peasant] qui conquist Paradis par plait," the substance of which is as follows: A poor peasant dies suddenly, and his soul escapes at a moment when neither angel nor demon was on the watch, so that, unclaimed and left to his own discretion, the peasant follows St. Peter, who happened to be on his way to Paradise, and enters the gate with him unperceived. When the saint finds that the soul of such a low person has found its way into Paradise he is angry, and rudely orders the peasant out. But the latter accuses St. Peter of denying his Saviour, and, conscience-stricken, the gate-keeper of heaven applies to St. Thomas, who undertakes to drive away the intruder. The peasant, however, disconcerts St. Thomas by reminding him of his disbelief, and St. Paul, who comes next, fares no better—he had persecuted the saints. At length Christ hears of what had occurred, and comes himself. The Saviour listens benignantly to the poor soul's pleading, and ends by forgiving the peasant his sins, and allowing him to remain in Paradise.[156]

[156] See Meon's Barbazan, 1808, tome iv, p. 114; also Le Grand, 1781, tome ii, p. 190: "Du Vilain qui gagna Paradis en plaidant."

* * * * *

There exists a very singular English burlesque of the unprofitable sermons of the preaching friars in the Middle Ages, which is worthy of Rabelais himself, and of which this is a modernised extract:

Mollificant olera durissima crusta.—"Friends, this is to say to your ignorant understanding, that hot plants and hard crusts make soft hard plants. The help and the grace of the gray goose that goes on the green, and the wisdom of the water wind-mill, with the good grace of a gallon pitcher, and all the salt sausages that be sodden in Norfolk upon Saturday, be with us now at our beginning, and help us in our ending, and quit you of bliss and both your eyes, that never shall have ending. Amen. My dear curst creatures, there was once a wife whose name was Catherine Fyste, and she was crafty in court, and well could carve. Hence she sent after the four Synods of Rome to know why, wherefore, and for what cause that Alleluja was closed before the cup came once round. Why, believest thou not, forsooth, that there stood once a cock on St. Paul's steeple-top, and drew up the strapples of his breech? How provest thou that tale? By all the four doctors of Wynberryhills—that is to say, Vertas, Gadatryne, Trumpas, and Dadyltrymsert—the which four doctors say there was once an old wife had a cock to her son, and he looked out of an old dove-cot, and warned and charged that no man should be so hardy either to ride or go on St. Paul's steeple-top unless he rode on a three-footed stool, or else that he brought with him a warrant of his neck"—and so on, in this fantastical style.

* * * * *

The meaning of the phrase "benefit of clergy" is not perhaps very generally understood. The phrase had its origin in those days of intellectual darkness, when the state of letters was so low that anyone found guilty in a court of justice of a crime which was punishable with death, if he could prove himself able to read a verse in a Latin Bible he was pardoned, as being a man of learning, and therefore likely to be useful to the state; but if he could not read he was sure to be hanged. This privilege, it is said, was granted to all offences, excepting high treason and sacrilege, till after the year 1350. At first it was extended not only to the clergy but to any person that could read, who, however, had to vow that he would enter into holy orders; but with the increase of learning this "benefit to clergy" was restricted by several Acts of Parliament, and it was finally abolished only so late as the reign of George IV.

In Pasquils Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments, a book of facetiae very popular in the 16th century, a story is told of a criminal at the Oxford Assizes who "prayed his clergy," and a Bible was accordingly handed to him that he might read a verse. He could not read a word, however, which a scholar who chanced to be present observing, he stood behind him and prompted him with the verse he was to read; but coming towards the end, the man's thumb happened to cover the remaining words, and so the scholar, in a low voice, said: "Take away thy thumb," which words the man, supposing them to form part of the verse he was reading, repeated aloud, "Take away thy thumb"—whereupon the judge ordered him to be taken away and hanged. And in Taylor's Wit and Mirth (1630): "A fellow having his book [that is, having read a verse in the Bible] at the sessions, was burnt in the hand, and was commanded to say: 'May God save the King.' 'The King!' said he, 'God save my grandam, that taught me to read; I am sure I had been hanged else.'"

The verse in the Bible which a criminal was required to read, in order to entitle him to the "benefit of clergy" (the beginning of the 51st Psalm, "Miserere mei"), was called the "neck-verse," because his doing so saved his neck from the gallows. It is sometimes jestingly alluded to in old plays. For example, in Massinger's Great Duke of Florence, Act iii, sc. 1:

Cataminta.—How the fool stares!

Fiorinda.—And looks as if he were conning his neck-verse;

and in the same dramatist's play of The Picture:

Twang it perfectly, As if it were your neck-verse.

In the anonymous Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissell (1603), Act ii, sc. 1, we find this custom again referred to:

Farnese.—Ha, hah! Emulo not write and read?

Rice.—Not a letter, an you would hang him.

Urcenze.—Then he'll never be saved by his book.

In Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, the moss-trooper, William of Deloraine, assures the lady, who had warned him not to look into what he should receive from the Monk of St. Mary's Aisle, "be it scroll or be it book," that

"Letter nor line know I never a one, Were't my neck-verse at Haribee"—

the place where such Border rascals were usually executed.

It was formerly the custom to sing a psalm at the gallows before a criminal was "turned off." And there is a good story, in Zachary Gray's notes to Hudibras, told of one of the chaplains of the famous Montrose; how, being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his expeditions, and being upon the ladder and ordered to select a psalm to be sung, expecting a reprieve, he named the 119th Psalm, with which the officer attending the execution complied (the Scottish Presbyterians were great psalm-singers in those days), and it was well for him he did so, for they had sung it half through before the reprieve came. Any other psalm would certainly have hanged him! Cotton, in his Virgil Travestie, thus alludes to the custom of psalm-singing at the foot of the gallows:

Ready, when Dido gave the word, To be advanced into the halter, Without the benefit on's Psalter.

* * * * *

Then 'cause she would, to part the sweeter, A portion have of Hopkins' metre, As people use at execution, For the decorum of conclusion, Being too sad to sing, she says.[157]

[157] Scarronides; or, Virgil Travestie, etc., by Charles Cotton, Book iv. Poetical Works, 5th edition, London, 1765, pp. 122, 140.

If the clergy in medieval times had, as they are said to have had, all the learning among themselves, what a blessed state of ignorance must the laity have been in! And so, indeed, it appears, for there is extant an old Act of Parliament which provides that a nobleman shall be entitled to the "benefit of clergy," even though he could not read. And another law sets forth that "the command of the sheriff to his officer by word of mouth, and without writing is good; for it may be that neither the sheriff nor his officer can write or read!" Many charters are preserved to which persons of great dignity, even kings, have affixed the sign of the cross, because they were not able to write their names, and hence the term of signing, instead of subscribing. In this respect a ten-year-old Board School boy in these "double-distilled" days is vastly superior to the most renowned of the "barons bold."



THE BEARDS OF OUR FATHERS.

'Tis merry in the hall when beards wag all.—Old Song.

Among the harmless foibles of adolescence which contribute to the quiet amusement of folks of mature years is the eager desire of youths to have their smooth faces adorned with that "noble" distinction of manhood—a beard. And no wonder. For, should a clever lad, getting out of his "teens," venture to express opinions contrary to those of his elders present, is he not at once snubbed by being called "a beardless boy"? A boy! Bitter taunt! He very naturally feels that he is grossly insulted, and all because his "dimpled chin never has known the barber's shear." Full well does our ingenuous youth know that a man is not wise in consequence of his beard—that, as the Orientals say of women's long hair, it often happens that men with long beards have short wits; nevertheless, had he but a beard himself, he should then be free from such a wretched "argument"—such an implied accusation of his lack of wit, as that he is beardless. The young Roman watched the first appearance of the downy precursor of his beard with no little solicitude, and applied the household oil to his face—there were no patent specifics in those days for "infallibly producing luxuriant whiskers and moustaches in a few weeks"—to promote its tardy growth, and entitle him, from the incipient fringe, to be styled "barbatulus." When his beard was full-grown he was called "barbatus."

It would seem that the beard was held in the highest esteem, especially in Asiatic countries, from the earliest period of which any records have been preserved. The Hebrew priests are commanded in the Book of Leviticus, ch. xix, not to shave off the corners of their beards; and the first High Priest, Aaron, probably wore a magnificent beard, since the amicable relations between brethren are compared, in the 133rd Psalm, to "the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard; that went down to the skirts of his garments." The Assyrian kings intertwined gold thread with their fine beards—and, judging from mural sculptures, curling tongs must have been in considerable demand with them. In ancient Greece the beard was universally worn, and it is related of Zoilus, the founder of the anti-Homeric school, that he shaved the crown of his head, in order that all the virtue should go to the nourishment of his beard. Persius could not think of a more complimentary epithet to apply to Socrates than that of "Magistrum Barbatum," or Bearded Master—the notion being that the beard was the symbol of profound sagacity.[158] Alexander the Great, however, caused his soldiers to shave off their beards, because they furnished their enemies with handles whereby to seize hold of them in battle. The beard was often consecrated to the deities, as the most precious offering. Chaucer, in his Knight's Tale, represents Arcite as offering his beard to Mars:

And evermore, unto that day I dye, Eterne fyr I wol bifore the fynde, And eek to this avow I wol me bynde, My berd, myn heer, that hangeth long a doun, That neuer yit ne felt offensioun Of rasour ne of schere, I wol ye giue, And be thy trewe seruaunt whiles I lyue.[159]

[158] The notion that a beard indicated wisdom on the part of the wearer is often referred to in early European literature. For example, in Lib. v of Caxton's Esop, the Fox, to induce the sick King Lion to kill the Wolf, says he has travelled far and wide, seeking a good medicine for his Majesty, and "certaynly I have found no better counceylle than the counceylle of an auncyent Greke, with a grete and long berd, a man of grete wysdom, sage, and worthy to be praysed." And when the Fox, in another fable, leaves the too-credulous Goat in the well, Reynard adds insult to injury by saying to him, "O maystre goote, yf thow haddest be [i.e. been] wel wyse, with thy fayre berde," and so forth. (Pp. 153 and 196 of Mr. Jacobs' new edition.)—A story is told of a close-shaven French ambassador to the court of some Eastern potentate, that on presenting his credentials his Majesty made sneering remarks on his smooth face (doubtless he was himself "bearded to the eyes"), to which the envoy boldly replied: "Sire, had my master supposed that you esteem a beard so highly, instead of me, he would have sent your Majesty a goat as his ambassador."

[159] Harleian MS. No. 7334, lines 2412-2418. Printed for the Early English Text Society.

Selim I was the first Turkish sultan who shaved his beard after his accession to the throne; and when his muftis remonstrated with him for this dangerous innovation, he facetiously replied that he had removed his beard in order that his vazirs should not have wherewith to lead him. The beards of modern Persian soldiers were abolished in consequence of a singular accident, which Morier thus relates in his Second Journey: When European discipline was introduced into the Persian army, Lieutenant Lindsay raised a corps of artillery. His zeal was only equalled by the encouragement of the king, who liberally adopted every method proposed. It was only upon the article of shaving off the beards of the Persian soldiers that the king was inexorable; nor would the sacrifice have ever taken place had it not happened that, in discharging the guns before the prince, a powder-horn exploded in the hand of a gunner who had been gifted with a very long beard, which in an instant was blown away from his chin. Lieutenant Lindsay, availing himself of this lucky opportunity to prove his argument on the inconvenience of beards to soldiers, immediately produced the scorched gunner before the prince, who was so much struck with his woeful appearance that the abolition of military beards was at once decided upon.

It was customary for the early French monarchs to place three hairs of their beard under the seal attached to important documents; and there is still extant a charter of the year 1121, which concludes with these words: "Quod ut ratum et stabile perseveret in posterum, praesentis scripto sigilli mei robur apposui cum tribus pilis barbae meae."—In obedience to his spiritual advisers, Louis VII of France had his hair cut close and his beard shaved off. But his consort Eleanor was so disgusted with his smooth face and cropped head that she took her own measures to be revenged, and the poor king was compelled to obtain a divorce from her. She subsequently gave her hand to the Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II of England, and the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne were her dowry. From this sprang those terrible wars which continued for three centuries, and cost France untold treasure and three millions of men—and all because Louis did not consult his consort before shaving off his beard!

Charles the Fifth of Spain ascending the throne while yet a mere boy, his courtiers shaved their beards in compliment to the king's smooth face. But some of the shaven Dons were wont to say bitterly, "Since we have lost our beards, we have lost our souls!" Sully, the eminent statesman and soldier, scorned, however, to follow the fashion, and, being one day summoned to Court on urgent business of State, his beard was made the subject of ridicule by the foppish courtiers. The veteran thus gravely addressed the king: "Sire, when your father, of glorious memory, did me the honour to consult me in grave State matters, he first dismissed the buffoons and stage-dancers from the presence-chamber." It may be readily supposed that after this well-merited rebuke the grinning courtiers at once disappeared.

Julius II, one of the most warlike of all the Roman Pontiffs, was the first Pope who permitted his beard to grow, to inspire the faithful with still greater respect for his august person. Kings and their courtiers were not slow to follow the example of the Head of the Church and the ruler of kings, and the fashion soon spread among people of all ranks.

So highly prized was the beard in former times that Baldwin, Prince of Edessa, as Nicephorus relates in his Chronicle, pawned his beard for a large sum of money, which was redeemed by his father Gabriel, Prince of Melitene, to prevent the ignominy which his son must have suffered by its loss. And when Juan de Castro, the Portuguese admiral, borrowed a thousand pistoles from the citizens of Goa he pledged one of his whiskers, saying, "All the gold in the world cannot equal this natural ornament of my valour." And it is said the people of Goa were so much affected by the noble message that they remitted the money and returned the whisker—though of what earthly use it could prove to the gallant admiral, unless, perhaps, to stuff a tennis ball, it is not easy to say.

To deprive a man of his beard was a token of ignominious subjection, and is still a common mode of punishment in some Asiatic countries. And such was the treatment that the conjuror Pinch received at the hands of Antipholus of Ephesus and his man, in the Comedy of Errors, according to the servant's account of the outrage, who states that not only had they "beaten the maids a-row," but they

bound the doctor, Whose beard they have singed off with brands of fire; And ever as it blazed they threw on him Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair (v, 1).

In Persia and India when a wife is found to have been unfaithful, her hair—the distinguishing ornament of woman, as the beard is considered to be that of man—is shaved off, among other indignities.

Don Sebastian Cobbarruvius gravely relates the following marvellous legend to show that nothing so much disgraced a Spaniard as pulling his beard: "A noble of that nation dying (his name Cid Lai Dios), a Jew, who hated him much in his lifetime, stole privately into the room where his body was laid out, and, thinking to do what he never durst while living, stooped down and plucked his beard; at which the body started up, and drawing out half way his sword, which lay beside him, put the Jew in such a fright that he ran out of the room as if a thousand devils had been behind him. This done, the body lay down as before to rest; and," adds the veracious chronicler, "the Jew after that turned Christian."—In the third of Don Quevedo's Visions of the Last Judgment, we read that a Spaniard, after receiving sentence, was taken into custody by a pair of demons who happened to disorder the set of his moustache, and they had to re-compose them with a pair of curling-tongs before they could get him to proceed with them!

By the rules of the Church of Rome, lay monks were compelled to wear their beards, and only the priests were permitted to shave.[160] The clergy at length became so corrupt and immoral, and lived such scandalous lives, that they could not be distinguished from the laity except by their close-shaven faces. The first Reformers, therefore, to mark their separation from the Romish Church, allowed their beards to grow. Calvin, Fox, Cranmer, and other leaders of the Reformation are all represented in their portraits with long flowing beards. John Knox, the great Scottish Reformer, wore, as is well known, a beard of prodigious length.

[160] In a scarce old poem, entitled, The Pilgrymage and the Wayes of Jerusalem, we read:

The thyrd Seyte beyn prestis of oure lawe, That synge masse at the Sepulcore; At the same grave there oure lorde laye, They synge the leteny every daye. In oure manner is her [i.e. their] songe, Saffe, here [i.e. their] berdys be ryght longe, That is the geyse of that contre, The lenger the berde the bettyr is he; The order of hem [i.e. them] be barfote freeres.

The ancient Britons shaved the chin and cheeks, but wore their moustaches down to the breast. Our Saxon ancestors wore forked beards. The Normans at the Conquest shaved not only the chin, but also the back of the head. But they soon began to grow very long beards. During the Wars of the Roses beards grew "small by degrees and beautifully less."

Queen Mary of England, in the year 1555, sent to Moscow four accredited agents, who were all bearded; but one of them, George Killingworth, was particularly distinguished by a beard five feet two inches long, at the sight of which, it is said, a smile crossed the grim features of Ivan the Terrible himself; and no wonder. But the longest beard known out of fairy tales was that of Johann Mayo, the German painter, commonly called "John the Bearded." His beard actually trailed on the ground when he stood upright, and for convenience he usually kept it tucked in his girdle. The emperor Charles V, it is said, was often pleased to cause Mayo to unfasten his beard and allow it to blow in the faces of his courtiers.—A worthy clergyman in the time of Queen Elizabeth gave as the best reason he had for wearing a beard of enormous length, "that no act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance."

Queen Elizabeth, in the first year of her reign, made an abortive attempt to abolish her subjects' beards by an impost of 3s. 4d. a year (equivalent to four times that sum in these "dear" days) on every beard of more than a fortnight's growth. And Peter the Great also laid a tax upon beards in Russia: nobles' beards were assessed at a rouble, and those of commoners at a copeck each. "But such veneration," says Giles Fletcher, "had this people for these ensigns of gravity that many of them carefully preserved their beards in their cabinets to be buried with them, imagining perhaps that they should make but an odd figure in their grave with their naked chins."

The beard of the renowned Hudibras was portentous, as we learn from Butler, who thus describes the Knight's hirsute honours:

His tawny beard was th' equal grace Both of his wisdom and his face; In cut and dye so like a tile, A sadden view it would beguile: The upper part whereof was whey, The nether orange mixt with grey. This hairy meteor did denounce The fall of sceptres and of crowns; With grisly type did represent Declining age of government, And tell, with hieroglyphic spade, Its own grave and the state's were made.

Philip Nye, an Independent minister in the time of the Commonwealth, and one of the famous Assembly of Divines, was remarkable for the singularity of his beard. Hudibras, in his Heroical Epistle to the lady of his "love," speaks of

Amorous intrigues In towers, and curls, and periwigs, With greater art and cunning reared Than Philip Nye's thanksgiving beard.

Nye opposed Lilly the astrologer with no little virulence, for which he was rewarded with the privilege of holding forth upon Thanksgiving Day, and so, as Butler says, in some MS. verses,

He thought upon it and resolved to put His beard into as wonderful a cut.

Butler even honoured Nye's beard with a whole poem, entitled "On Philip Nye's Thanksgiving Beard," which is printed in his Genuine Remains, edited by Thyer, vol. i, p. 177 ff., and opens thus:

A beard is but the vizard of the face, That nature orders for no other place; The fringe and tassel of a countenance That hides his person from another man's, And, like the Roman habits of their youth, Is never worn until his perfect growth.

And in another set of verses he has again a fling at the obnoxious beard of the same preacher:

This reverend brother, like a goat, Did wear a tail upon his throat; The fringe and tassel of a face That gives it a becoming grace, But set in such a curious frame, As if 'twere wrought in filograin; And cut so even as if 't had been Drawn with a pen upon the chin.

As it was customary among the peoples of antiquity who wore their beards to cut them off, and for those who shaved to allow their beards to grow, in times of mourning, so many of the Presbyterians and Independents vowed not to cut their beards till monarchy and episcopacy were utterly destroyed. Thus in a humorous poem, entitled "The Cobler and the Vicar of Bray," we read:

This worthy knight was one that swore, He would not cut his beard Till this ungodly nation was From kings and bishops cleared.

Which holy vow he firmly kept, And most devoutly wore A grisly meteor on his face, Till they were both no more.

In Pericles, Prince of Tyre, when the royal hero leaves his infant daughter Marina in charge of his friend Cleon, governor of Tharsus, to be brought up in his house, he declares to Cleon's wife (Act iii, sc. 3):

Till she be married, madam, By bright Diana, whom we honour all, Unscissored shall this hair of mine remain, Though I show well in't;

and that he meant his beard is evident from what he says at the close of the play, when his daughter is about to be married to Lysimachus, governor of Mitylene (Act v, sc. 3):

And now This ornament, that makes me look so dismal, Will I, my loved Marina, clip to form; And what these fourteen years no razor touched, To grace thy marriage day, I'll beautify.

Scott, in his Woodstock, represents Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley, whilom Ranger of Woodstock Park (or Chase), as wearing his full beard, to indicate his profound grief for the death of the "Royal Martyr," which indeed was not unusual with elderly and warmly devoted Royalists until the "Happy Restoration"—save the mark!

Another extraordinary beard was that of Van Butchell, the quack doctor, who died at London in 1814, in his 80th year. This singular individual had his first wife's body carefully embalmed and preserved in a glass case in his "study," in order that he might enjoy a handsome annuity to which he was entitled "so long as his wife remained above ground." His person was for many years familiar to loungers in Hyde Park, where he appeared regularly every afternoon, riding on a little pony, and wearing a magnificent beard of twenty years' growth, which an Oriental might well have envied, the more remarkable in an age when shaving was so generally practised.—A jocular epitaph was composed on "Mary Van Butchell," of which these lines may serve as a specimen:

O fortunate and envied man! To keep a wife beyond life's span; Whom you can ne'er have cause to blame, Is ever constant and the same; Who, qualities most rare, inherits A wife that's dumb, yet full of spirits.

The celebrated Dr. John Hunter is said to have embalmed the body of Van Butchell's first wife—for the bearded empiric married again—and the "mummy," in its original glass case, is still to be seen in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeon's, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, London.

It was once the fashion for gallants to dye their beards various colours, such as yellow, red, gray, and even green. Thus in the play of Midsummer Night's Dream, Bottom the weaver asks in what kind of beard he is to play the part of Pyramis—whether "in your straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard, your perfect yellow?" (Act i, sc. 2.) In ancient church pictures, and in the miracle plays performed in medieval times, both Cain and Judas Iscariot were always represented with yellow beards. In the Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Quickly asks Simple whether his master (Slender) does not wear "a great round beard, like a glover's paring-knife," to which he replies: "No, forsooth; he hath but a little wee face, with a little yellow beard—a Cain-coloured beard" (Act i, sc. 4).—Allusions to beards are of very frequent occurrence in Shakspeare's plays, as may be seen by reference to any good Concordance, such as that of the Cowden Clarkes.

Harrison, in his Description of England, ed. 1586, p. 172, thus refers to the vagaries of fashion of beards in his time: "I will saie nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like womans lockes, manie times cut off, above or under the eares, round as by a woodden dish. Neither will I meddle with our varietie of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of marques Otto, some made round like a rubbing brush, others with a pique de vant (O fine fashion!), or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being growen to be so cunning in this behalfe as the tailors. And therfore if a man have a leane and streight face, a marquesse Ottons cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter like, a long slender beard will make it seeme the narrower; if he be wesell becked, then much heare left on the cheekes will make the owner looke big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose."[161]

[161] Reprint for the Shakspere Society, 1877, B. ii, ch. vii, p. 169.

Barnaby Rich, in the conclusion of his Farewell to the Military Profession (1581), says that the young gallants sometimes had their beards "cutte rounde, like a Philippes doler; sometymes square, like the kinges hedde in Fishstreate; sometymes so neare the skinne, that a manne might judge by his face the gentlemen had had verie pilde lucke."[162]

[162] Reprint for the (old) Shakspeare Society, 1846, p. 217.

In Taylor's Superbiae Flagellum we find the following amusing description of the different "cuts" of beards:

Now a few lines to paper I will put, Of mens Beards strange and variable cut: In which there's some doe take as vaine a Pride, As almost in all other things beside. Some are reap'd most substantiall, like a brush, Which makes a Nat'rall wit knowne by the bush: (And in my time of some men I have heard, Whose wisedome have bin onely wealth and beard) Many of these the proverbe well doth fit, Which sayes Bush naturall, More haire then wit. Some seeme as they were starched stiffe and fine, Like to the bristles of some angry swine: And some (to set their Loves desire on edge) Are cut and prun'de like to a quickset hedge. Some like a spade, some like a forke, some square, Some round, some mow'd like stubble, some starke bare, Some sharpe Steletto fashion, dagger like, That may with whispering a mans eyes out pike: Some with the hammer cut, or Romane T,[163] Their beards extravagant reform'd must be, Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion, Some circular, some ovall in translation, Some perpendicular in longitude, Some like a thicket for their crassitude, That heights, depths, bredths, triforme, square, ovall, round, And rules Ge'metricall in beards are found. Besides the upper lip's strange variation, Corrected from mutation to mutation; As 'twere from tithing unto tithing sent, Pride gives to Pride continuall punishment. Some (spite their teeth) like thatch'd eves downeward grows, And some growes upwards in despite their nose. Some their mustatioes of such length doe keepe, That very well they may a maunger sweepe: Which in Beere, Ale, or Wine, they drinking plunge, And sucke the liquor up, as 'twere a Spunge; But 'tis a Slovens beastly Pride, I thinke, To wash his beard where other men must drinke. And some (because they will not rob the cup), Their upper chaps like pot hookes are turn'd up; The Barbers thus (like Taylers) still must be, Acquainted with each cuts variety— Yet though with beards thus merrily I play, 'Tis onely against Pride which I inveigh: For let them weare their haire or their attire, According as their states or mindes desire, So as no puff'd up Pride their hearts possesse, And they use Gods good gifts with thankfulnesse.[164]

[163] Formed by the moustache and a chin-tuft, as worn by Louis Napoleon and his imperialist supporters.

[164] Works of John Taylor, the Water Poet, comprised in the Folio edition of 1630. Printed for the Spenser Society, 1869. "Superbiae Flagellum, or the Whip of Pride," p. 34.

The staunch Puritan Phillip Stubbes, in the second part of his Anatomie of Abuses (1583), thus rails at the beards and the barbers of his day:

"There are no finer fellowes under the sunne, nor experter in their noble science of barbing than they be. And therefore in the fulnes of their overflowing knowledge (oh ingenious heads, and worthie to be dignified with the diademe of follie and vaine curiositie), they have invented such strange fashions and monstrous maners of cuttings, trimings, shavings and washings, that you would wonder to see. They have one maner of cut called the French cut, another the Spanish cut, one called the Dutch cut, another the Italian, one the newe cut, another the old, one of the bravado fashion, another of the meane fashion. One a gentlemans cut, another the common cut, one cut of the court, another of the country, with infinite the like vanities, which I overpasse. They have also other kinds of cuts innumerable; and therefore when you come to be trimed, they will aske you whether you will be cut to looke terrible to your enimie, or amiable to your freend, grime and sterne in countenance, or pleasant and demure (for they have divers kinds of cuts for all these purposes, or else they lie). Then when they have done all their feats, it is a world to consider, how their mowchatowes [i.e., moustaches] must be preserved and laid out, and from one cheke to another, yea, almost from one eare to another, and turned up like two hornes towards the forehead. Besides that, when they come to the cutting of the haire, what snipping and snapping of the cycers is there, what tricking and toying, and all to tawe out mony, you may be sure. And when they come to washing, oh how gingerly they behave themselves therein. For then shall your mouth be bossed with the lather or fome that riseth of the balle (for they have their sweet balles wherewith-all they use to washe), your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also. Then snap go the fingers ful bravely, God wot. Thus this tragedy ended, comes me warme clothes, to wipe and dry him withall; next the eares must be picked and closed againe togither artificially forsooth. The haire of the nostrils cut away, and every thing done in order comely to behold. The last action in this tragedie is the paiment of monie. And least these cunning barbers might seeme unconscionable in asking much for their paines, they are of such a shamefast modestie, as they will aske nothing at all, but standing to the curtisie and liberalitie of the giver, they will receive all that comes, how much soever it be, not giving anie againe, I warrant you: for take a barber with that fault, and strike off his head. No, no, such fellowes are Rarae aves in terris, nigrisque similimi cygnis, Rare birds upon the earth, and as geason as blacke swans. You shall have also your orient perfumes for your nose, your fragrant waters for your face, wherewith you shall bee all to besprinkled, your musicke againe, and pleasant harmonic, shall sound in your eares, and all to tickle the same with vaine delight. And in the end your cloke shall be brushed, and 'God be with you Gentleman!'"[165]

[165] Reprint for the Shakspere Society, Part ii (1882), pp. 50, 51.

* * * * *

A very curious Ballad of the Beard, of the time of Charles I, if not earlier, is reproduced in Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume, edited by F. W. Fairholt, for the Percy Society, in which "the varied forms of beards which characterised the profession of each man are amusingly descanted on":

The beard, thick or thin, on the lip or the chin, Doth dwell so near the tongue, That her silence in the beards defence May do her neighbour wrong.

Now a beard is a thing that commands in a king, Be his sceptre ne'er so fair: Where the beard bears the sway the people obey, And are subject to a hair.

'Tis a princely sight, and a grave delight, That adorns both young and old; A well-thatcht face is a comely grace, And a shelter from the cold.

When the piercing north comes thundering forth, Let a barren face beware; For a trick it will find, with a razor of wind, To shave a face that's bare.

But there's many a nice and strange device That doth the beard disgrace; But he that is in such a foolish sin Is a traitor to his face.

Now of beards there be such company, And fashions such a throng, That it is very hard to handle a beard, Tho' it be never so long.

The Roman T, in its bravery, Both first itself disclose, But so high it turns, that oft it burns With the flames of a torrid nose.

The stiletto-beard, oh, it makes me afear'd, It is so sharp beneath, For he that doth place a dagger in 's face, What wears he in his sheath?

But, methinks, I do itch to go thro' the stitch The needle-beard to amend, Which, without any wrong, I may call too long, For a man can see no end.

The soldier's beard doth march in shear'd, In figure like a spade, With which he'll make his enemies quake, And think their graves are made.

* * * * *

What doth invest a bishop's breast, But a milk-white spreading hair? Which an emblem may be of integrity Which doth inhabit there.

* * * * *

But oh, let us tarry for the beard of King Harry, That grows about the chin, With his bushy pride, and a grove on each side, And a champion ground between.

"Barnes in the defence of the Berde" is another curious piece of verse, or rather of arrant doggrel, printed in the 16th century. It is addressed to Andrew Borde, the learned and facetious physician, in the time of Henry VIII, who seems to have written a tract against the wearing of beards, of which nothing is now known. In the second part Barnes (whoever he was) says:

But, syr, I praye you, yf you tell can, Declare to me, when God made man, (I meane by our forefather Adam) Whyther he had a berde than; And yf he had, who dyd hym shave, Syth that a barber he coulde not have. Well, then, ye prove hym there a knave, Bicause his berde he dyd so save: I fere it not.

* * * * *

Sampson, with many thousandes more Of auncient phylosophers (!), full great store, Wolde not be shaven, to dye therefore; Why shulde you, then, repyne so sore? Admit that men doth imytate Thynges of antyquite, and noble state, Such counterfeat thinges oftymes do mytygate Moche ernest yre and debate: I fere it not.

Therefore, to cease, I thinke be best; For berdyd men wolde lyve in rest. You prove yourselfe a homly gest, So folysshely to rayle and jest; For if I wolde go make in ryme, How new shavyd men loke lyke scraped swyne, And so rayle forth, from tyme to tyme, A knavysshe laude then shulde be myne: I fere it not.

What should this avail him? he asks; and so let us all be good friends, bearded and unbearded.[166]

[166] The Treatise answerynge the boke of Berdes, Compyled by Collyn Clowte, dedicated to Barnarde, Barber, dwellyng in Banbury: "Here foloweth a treatyse made, Answerynge the treatyse of doctor Borde upon Berdes."—Appended to reprint of Andrew Borde's Introduction of Knowledge, edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society, 1870—see pp. 314, 315.

But Andrew Borde, if he did ever write a tract against beards, must have formerly held a different opinion on the subject, for in his Breviary of Health, first printed in 1546, he says: "The face may have many impediments. The first impediment is to see a man having no beard, and a woman to have a beard." It was long a popular notion that the few hairs which are sometimes seen on the chins of very old women signified that they were in league with the arch-enemy of mankind—in plain English, that they were witches. The celebrated Three Witches who figure in Macbeth, "and palter with him in a double sense," had evidently this distinguishing mark, for says Banquo to the "weird sisters" (Act i, sc. 2):

You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.

And in the ever-memorable scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor, when Jack Falstaff, disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, is escaping from Ford's house, he is cuffed and mauled by Ford, who exclaims, "Hang her, witch!" on which the honest Cambrian Sir Hugh Evans sapiently remarks: "Py yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed. I like not when a 'oman has a great peard. I spy a great peard under her muffler!" (Act iv, sc. 2.)

There have been several notable bearded women in different parts of Europe. The Duke of Saxony had the portrait painted of a poor Swiss woman who had a remarkably fine, large beard. Bartel Graefje, of Stuttgart, who was born in 1562, was another bearded woman. In 1726 there appeared at Vienna a female dancer with a large bushy beard. Charles XII of Sweden had in his army a woman who wore a beard a yard and a half in length. In 1852 Mddle. Bois de Chene, who was born at Genoa in 1834, was exhibited in London: she had "a profuse head of hair, a strong black beard, and large bushy whiskers." It is not unusual to see dark beauties in our own country with a moustache which must be the envy of "young shavers." And, apropos, the poet Rogers is said to have had a great dislike of ladies' beards, such as this last described; and he happened to be in a circulating library turning over the books on the counter, when a lady, who seemed to cherish her beard with as much affection as the young gentlemen aforesaid, alighted from her carriage, and, entering the shop, asked the librarian for a certain book. The polite man of books replied that he was sorry he had not a copy at present. "But," said Roger, slily, "you have the Barber of Seville, have you not?" "O yes," said the bookseller, not seeing the poet's drift, "I have the Barber of Seville, very much at your ladyship's service." The lady drove away, evidently much offended, but the beard afterwards disappeared. Talking of barbers—but they deserve a whole paper to themselves, and they shall have it, from me, some day, if I live a little longer.

* * * * *

In No. 331 of the Spectator, Addison tells us how his friend Sir Roger de Coverley, in Westminster Abbey, pointing to the bust of a venerable old man, asked him whether he did not think "our ancestors looked much wiser in their beards than we without them. For my part," said he, "when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many patriarchs, and at the same time looking upon myself as an idle, smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings."

* * * * *

During most part of last century close shaving was general throughout Europe. In France the beard began to appear on the faces of Bonaparte's "braves," and the fashion soon extended to civilians, then to Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia, and lastly to England, where, after the gradual enlargement of the side-whiskers, the full beard is now commonly worn—to the comfort and health of the wearers.



INDEX.

Abbas the Great, 107. Abraham: jealous of his wives, 197; arrival in Egypt, 197; his servant in Sodom, 202; Ishmael's wives, 203; the 'ram caught in a thicket,' 205; the idols, 251. Abstinence, advantages of, 20. Acrostic in the Bible, 251. Adam and Eve, 191, 267, 268. Addison's Spectator, 359. Advice to a conceited man, 44; gratuitous, 261. Aesop—see Esop. Affenschwanz, etc., 192. Aino Folk-Tales, 312. Akhlak-i Jalaly, 23, 261. Aladdin's Lamp, 144. Alakesa Katha, 176. Alexander the Great, 253, 254. Alfonsus, Petrus, 99, 100, 227, 231, 241. Alfred the Great, 315. Ali, Mrs. Meer Hassan, 270. Ambition, vanity of, 254. Amir Khusru, 18. Ancestry, pride of, 22. Androgynous nature of Adam, 191, 192. Ant and Nightingale, 41. Antar, the Arabian poet-hero, 46. Anthologia, 259. Anwari, the Persian poet, 106. Aphorisms of Saadi, 7, 41, 44, 125; of the Jewish Fathers, 260. Apparition, the golden, 136. Arab and his camel, 82. Arab Shah, 87. Arabian lovers, 283, 294. Arabian Nights, 93, 123, 178, 196, 212. Archery feat, 20. Arienti, 203. Ashaab the covetous, 93. Ass, the singing, 149. Astrologer's faithless wife, 36. Attar, Faridu 'd-Din, 51. Athenaeus, 262. Athenians and Jewish boys, 117, 118. Auvaiyar, Tamil poetess, 25, 27, 44. Avarice, 44. Avianus, 44. Aymon, Four Sons of, 317.

Babrius, 300. Babylonian tale, 210. Bacon on aphorisms, 259. Baghdadi, witty, 83. Baharistan, 40, 48, 63, 109. Bakhtyar Nama, 124, 172. Barbary Tales, 218. Barbazan's Fabliaux, 327, 328. Baring-Gould, 142, 192, 194. Barlaam and Joasaph, 246, 248. Basset's Tales of Barbary, 218. Basket made into a door, 318. Bayazid and the old woman, 302. Beal, Samuel, 147. Beards: Asiatics', 338; Ballad of the Beard, 355; Barnes in defence of the Beard, 356; Britons' and Normans', 344; Coverley (Sir Roger de), on his ancestors', 359; dedicated to deities, 339; dyeing the beard, 349; famous beards, 344, 346; French kings', 346; Greeks', 338; Monks', 343; Pope Julius II, 341; pledged for loans, 342; pulling beard, 343; reformers', 344; Roman youths', 337; Sully's beard, 341; shapes of, 350, 351, 352, 355; taxes on, 345; tokens of wisdom, 338; Turkish sultans', 339; vowing not to cut or shave, 342, 347; witches', 358; women, bearded, 358. Beast-fables, origin of, 239, 299. Beaumont, bp. of Durham, 318. Beauty unadorned, 46. Beggar and Khoja, 68. Bendall, Cecil, 159. Beneficence, 24, 44, 48. Berenger-Feraud, 278. Berkeley's 'ideal' theory, 97. Beryn, Tale of, 212, 306. Bhartrihari, 258. Bible, 191, 193, 205, 207, 229, 231, 239, 240, 249, 251, 254, 257, 261, 270, 323, 331, 332. Bidpai's Fables, 39. Birth, pride of, 22. Bishop and ignorant priest, 316; and the simple youth, 317. 'Bi'smi'llahi,' etc., 53. Bi-sexual nature of Adam, 191. Blemont, Emile, 274. Blind man's wife, 62. Blockheads, list of, 80. Boccaccio's Decameron, 82, 217, 231. Boethius' Consol. Phil., 131. Bonaventure des Periers, 82, 323, 325. Borde, Andrew, 356, 357. Boy in terror at sea, 22. Bride and Bridegroom, 250. Bromyard, John, 305. Broth, Hot, 69. Buddha, Rom. Hist, of, 147. Buddha's Dhammapada, 261. Buddhaghosha's Parables, 163, 261. Burns, the Scottish poet, 262, 263. Butler's Hudibras, etc., 332, 345, 346. Burton, Sir R. F., 38, 274. Buthayna and Jamil, 294. Buzurjmihr on silence, 38.

Cabinet des Fees, 144. Cain and Abel, 194. Camel and cat, 82. Capon-carver, 231, 276. Cardonne's Mel. de Litterature Orientale, 83. Carlyle, Thos., 60, 263. Cat and its master, 80. Cauldron, the, 67. Caution with friends, 46, 263. Caxton's Dictes, 38; Esop's Fables, 300, 308, 339. Caylus, Comte de, 144. Cento Novelle Antiche, 231. Chamberlain, B. H., 312. Chaste Wives, Value of, 127. Chaucer, 196, 279, 339. Chess, game of, 240. Chinese Humour: rich man and smiths, 77; to keep plants alive, 78; criticising a portrait, 78. Clergy, Benefit of, 329. Clouston's Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 279; Book of Noodles, 66, 111; Book of Sindibad, 280; Eastern Romances, 176, 268, 279; Popular Tales and Fictions, 144, 157, 178, 279. Coleridge, the poet, 229, 264. Comparetti, Prof., 235. Conceited man, 44. Conde Lucanor, 81, 247. Condolence, house of, 62. Conjugal quarrels, 262. Contes Orientaux, 144. Cooks, too many, 262. 'Corpus meum,' 320. Cotton's Virgil Travestie, 332. Courtier and old friend, 79. Coverley, Sir Roger de, 359. Covetous man, 93; goldsmith, 128, 160. Covetousness, 45. Crane's Italian Tales, 100, 235, 279. Cup-bearer and Saadi, 28. Cypress, 284.

Dabistan, 97, 99. Daulat Shah, 294. David, legends of King, 213. Davidson, Thos., 299. Deaf men, 73, 75. Death, rest to the poor, 51. Decameron, 82, 217. Deluge, 225. Demon, Tales of a, 124, 162, 179. Dervish and magic candlestick, 141. Dervish who became king, 32. Dervishes, Three, 113. Desolate Island, 243, 279. Des Periers, Bonaventure, 82, 323, 325. Devotee and learned man, 40. Dictes, or the sayings of philosophers, 38. Disciplina Clericalis, 99, 100, 227, 231, 241. Domestics, lazy, 76. Don Quixote, 11, 99. Dreams of fair women, 133, 134. Drinking the sea dry, 312. Drunken governor, 68. Dublin ballad-singer, 209. Dutiful son, 236.

Eastern story-books, general plan of, 123. Eberhard's ed. of Planudes' Life of Esop, 301. Education, advantages of, 27. Egg-stealer and Solomon, 218. Eliezer in Sodom, 202. Eliot, George, 45. Ellis' Metrical Romances, 100. Emperor's dream, 134. Esop: unlucky omens, 108; wise saying of, 264; apocryphal Life, by Planudes, 301; Jacobs on the Esopic Fable, 300; the figs, 302; how Esop became eloquent, 303; his choice of load, 303; offered for sale, 304; boiling peas, 304; the missing pig's foot, 305; dish of tongues, 305; the man who was no busy-body, 306; drinking the sea dry, 306, 312; the dog's tail, 306; as ambassador, 307; his death, 307; Henryson's description of Esop, 309. Etienne de Bourbon, 305. Etienne, Henri, 316. Eulenspiegel, Tyl, 306. Expectation, 7.

Fabliaux, 96, 100, 327, 328. Fables, origin of, 239, 300. Facetiae, Jewish, 117. Faggot-maker, 152. Fairholt, F. W., 355. Fairies' gifts, 153, 157, 181. Fate, decrees of, 99. Faults, 7, 44, 262. Feraud, Berenger, 278. Firdausi, 50, 284. Fitnet Khanim, Turkish poetess, 17. Flood, 225. Flowers, hymn to the, 54. Folk-Lore of S. India, 73. Fool, greatest, 279. Fools, list of, 80. Foolish peasants, 111; thieves, 151. Forbidden tree, 268. Forman, bp. of Moray, 319. Fortitude and liberality, 24. Fortune capricious, 45. Forty, the number, 268. Forty Vezirs, History of, 65, 110, 132. Fox and Bear, 240, 278; Fox in the garden, 241. Friends: caution with, 46, 263; man with three, 247; misfortunes of, 23. Fryer's Eng. Fairy Tales, 115. Fuller's Church History, 322. Furnivall, F. J., 357.

Garments, the, 248. Garrick and Dr. Johnson, 52. Gemara, authors of the, 186. Generosity, 24, 44, 48. Gerrans, 124, 126, 136. Gesta Romanorum, 187, 196, 227, 231, 279, 306. Gibb, E. J. W., 15, 110, 132, 283. Gisli the Outlaw, 65. Gladwin's Persian Moonshee, 71. Goat, the dead, 71. God, a jealous God, 264. God, for the sake of, 9. Good or evil genius, 140, 141. 'God, the merciful,' etc., 53. Golden apparition, 136. Goldsmith, the covetous, 128, 160. Goliath's brother, 213. Goose, Tales of a, 124. Goose-thief, 218. Gospels, two, for a groat, 320. Governor and the Khoja, 68; and the poor poet, 104; and the shopkeeper, 116. Gratitude for benefits, 262. Great Name, 214. Greek Popular Tales, 276. Grey, Zachary, 332. Grief and anger, times of, 260. Grissell, Patient, 331. Gulistan, or rose-garden, 9.

Hafiz, the Persian poet, 291. Hagiolatry, 321, 327. Hamsa Vinsati, 124. Hariri, the Arabian poet, 208. Harrison on beards, 350. Hartland, E. Sidney, 181. Hatim Tai, 24. Hazar u Yek Ruz, 93. Hebrew facetiae, 117. Henryson, Robert, 309. Heptameron, 82. Herrick's Hesperides, 53. Herodotus, Apology for, 316. Herrtage, S. J., 196. Hershon's Talmudic Miscel., 191. Hesiod's fables, 239. Hitopadesa, 140, 240. Horse-dealers and the king, 81. Hudibras, etc., 332, 345, 346. Hundred Mery Talys, 70, 317, 320. Hurwitz, Hyman, 117, 189, 218, 257.

'Idda: compulsory widowhood, 287. Ideal, not the real, 97. Idleness and industry, 41, 261. Ignorance, 262. Ill news, breaking, 95; telling, 45. Images, the stolen, 128. Indian poetess, 25, 27, 44. Inferiors and superiors, 260. Ingratitude, 47. Intolerance, religious, 188, 190. Investment, safe, 228. Irving, David, 309. Isfahani and the governor, 116. Ishmael's wives, 203. Island, Desolate, 243, 279. Israel likened to a bride, 250. Italian Tales, 100, 115, 203, 231, 235, 279, 306.

Jacob's sorrow, 208. Jacobs, Joseph, on the Esopic Fables, 300, 308. Jami, 40, 48, 63, 109. Jamil and Buthayna, 294. 'January and May,' 29. Jehennan, 145. Jehoshua, Rabbi, 205. Jehudah, Rabbi, 186. Jests, antiquity of, 60. Jewels, the, 229; luminous, 196. Jewish facetiae, 117 Jochonan, Rabbi, 186; and the poor woman, 227. Johnson and Garrick, 52. Johnson, Dr., on springtide, 14. Jones, Sir William, 15. Joseph and Potiphar's wife, 205; and his brethren, 206. Josephus on Solomon's fables, 239. Jotham's fable, 239. Julien, Stanislas, 77.

Kadiri's Tuti Nama, 124. Kah-gyur, 159. Kalila wa Dimna, 39. Kalidasa, 284. Kama Sutra, 126. Kamarupa, 133. Kashifi, 38. Kashmiri Folk-Tales, 111, 118. Katha Manjari, 71, 100, 175. Katha Sarit Sagara, 157, 163, 179. Khalif and poet, 101, 105. Khizar and the Water of Life, 177. Khoja Nasr-ed-Din, 65, 70. King and his Four Ministers, 176; and the horse-dealers, 81; and the Seven Vazirs, 173; and the story-teller, 99, 100; who died of love, 161. Knowles, J. H., 111, 118. Kuran, 65.

Ladies, witty Persian, 63. Laing, David, 309. La Fontaine, 278. Landsberger on Fables, 239. Langles (not Lescallier), 93. La Rochefoucauld, 23. Lapplaendische Maerchen, 181. Laughter, 59, 60. Layla and Majnun, 283. Lazy servants, 76. Learned man and blockhead, 49; youth, modesty of, 27. Learning the best treasure, 27; and virtue, 47. Le Grand's Fabliaux, 96, 327, 328. Legrand's Popular Greek Tales, 276. Lescallier, 173—see also Langles. Liars, 261. Liber de Donis, 305. Liberality to the poor, 24, 44, 48, Liberality and fortitude, 24. Life, Tree of, 174; Water of, 174, 177. Lions, tail of the, 263. Liwa'i, Persian poet, 95. Lokman, sayings of, 310. Luminous Jewels, 196. Love, dying for, 161, 163. Lovers, Arabian, 283, 294.

Madden, Sir F., 196. Magic Bowl, etc., 153, 157, 181. Maiden and Saadi, 28. Maimonides, 186. Majnun and Layla, 273. Makamat of El-Hariri, 208. Malcolm's Sketches of Persia, 107, 116. Man, a laughing animal, 59; and his three friends, 247; and the place, 262; the mighty man, 261. Manna, daily, 266. Manuel, Don Juan, 81. Marcus Aurelius, 49. Mare kicked by a horse, 132. Marelle, Charles, 192. Marguerite, queen of Navarre, 82, 323. Marie de France, 241. Massinger's plays, 331. Mazarin, Cardinal, 52. Meir's (Rabbi) fables, 240. Melanges de Litt. Orient., 83. Merchant and lady, 87; and poor Bedouin, 95. Merchandise, 262. Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres, 37, 71, 218, 321. Mesihi's ode on spring, 15. Metempsychosis, 179, 301. Mihra-i Iskandar, 18. Milton's Paradise Lost, 270. Mind, the infant, 261. Miser, 262. Misers, Muslim, 71, 72. Mishle Sandabar, 173. Misfortunes of friends, 23. Mishna, authors of the, 186. Mole on the face, 291. Money, in praise of, 125; sound of two coins, 262. Monsters, unheard of, 224. Moon, a type of female beauty, 284. Moses and Pharaoh, 208; height of Moses, 225; Moses and the Poor Woodcutter, 270. Muezzin with harsh voice, 33. Muhammedan legends, 195, 206, 209, 218, 219, 223, 268, 270. Mukhlis of Isfahan, 135. Music, discovery of, 163; effects of, 7. Musician, bad, 7. Muslim confession of Faith, 53.

Nakhshabi, 46, 124, 260. Name, the Great, 214. Nasr-ed-Din, Khoja, 65. Natesa Sastri, 73. Nathan of Babylon, 260. 'Neck-verse,' 331. Neighbour, objectionable, 37. 'Night and Day,' 61. Nightingale and Ant, 41; and Rose, 42. Nimrod and Abraham, 253. Noah, 194, 196, 225, 270. Noble's Orientalist, 141. 'No rule without exception,' 119. Numerals, Arabic, 240. Nushirvan the Just, 21, 37. Nye, Philip, 346.

Og, king of Bashan, 225, 226. Old man and young wife, 29. Old man's prayer, 109; reason for not marrying, 31. Old woman in mosque, 109. Omens, unlucky, 107, 108. Opportunity, 263. Oriental story-books, general plan of, 123. Orientalist, or Letters of a Rabbi, 141. Origin, all things return to their, 131. Ouseley, Sir Gore, 6, 52.

Painter and critics, 78. Panchatantra, 49, 129, 140, 146, 147, 159, 240. Panjabi Legends, 179. Paradise, persons translated to, 209. Parents, reverence for, 236. Parrot and maina, 178; oilman's parrot, 114; Moghul's parrot, 116. Parrot-Book, 124; frame-story of, 125, 178. Parrot, Seventy Tales of a, 124. Parrots in Hindu fictions, 179. Passion-service, 323, 326. Pasquil's Jests, 81, 330. Patient Grissell, 331. 'Paveant illi,' etc., 319. Payne's Arabian Nights, 274. Peasant in Paradise, 327. Peasants, Foolish, 111. Persian and his cat, 80; and the governor, 116; courtier and old friend, 79; ladies, witty, 63; Moonshee, 71; poet and the impostor, 106; Tales of a Thousand and one Days, 93, 135. Petis de la Croix, 93. Petronius Arbiter, 307. Phaedrus, 300. Pharaoh and Moses, 208. Pharaoh's daughters, 209. Pirke Aboth, 260. Plants, to keep alive, 78. Planudes' Life of Esop, 108, 301. Poets in praise of springtide, 14. Poet, rich man and, 107. Poet's meaning, 104. Poetry, 'stealing,' 106. Poets, royal gifts to, 101, 104, 105. Poverty, 263. Prayers, odd, 71, 109. Preachers, Muslim, 34, 66, 70, 71. Precept and Practice, 47, 263. Prefaces to books, 11. Priest confessing poor man, 325. Pride, 261. Princess of Rum and her son, 166. Procrustes, bed of, 199. Prodigality, 24. Psalm-singing at gallows, 331.

Quevedo's Visions, 343.

Rabbi and the poor woman, 227; and the emperor Trajan, 265; and the cup of wine, 119. Ralston's Russian Folk-Tales, 141; Tibetan Tales, 159. 'Ram caught in a thicket,' 205. Rasalu, Legend of Raja, 178. Rats that ate iron, 129. Richardson, Octavia, 317. Rich, Barnaby, 350. Riches, 44, 50, 261. Rieu, Charles, 124. Robber and the Khoja, 69. Rogers, the poet, 359. Rose and Nightingale, 42. Ross, David, 278. Rum, country of, 134. Russian Folk-Tales, 141.