The Book of Noodles Part 1

The Book of Noodles.

by W. A. Clouston.

_PREFACE_.

_Like popular tales in general, the original sources of stories of simpletons are for the most part not traceable. The old Greek jests of this cla.s.s had doubtless been floating about among different peoples long before they were reduced to writing. The only tales and apologues of noodles or stupid folk to which an approximate date can be a.s.signed are those found in the early Buddhist books, especially in the "Jatakas," or Birth-stories, which are said to have been related to his disciples by Gautama, the ill.u.s.trious founder of Buddhism, as incidents which occurred to himself and others in former births, and were afterwards put into a literary form by his followers. Many of the "Jatakas" relate to silly men and women, and also to stupid animals, the latter being, of course, men re-born as beasts, birds, or reptiles. But it is not to be supposed that all are of Buddhist invention; some had doubtless been current for ages among the Hindus before Gautama promulgated his mild doctrines. Scholars are, however, agreed that these fictions date at latest from a century prior to the Christian era._

_Of European noodle-stories, as of other folk-tales, it may be said that, while they are numerous, yet the elements of which they are composed are comparatively very few. The versions domiciled in different countries exhibit little originality, farther than occasional modifications in accordance with local manners and customs. Thus for the stupid Brahman of Indian stories the blundering, silly son is often subst.i.tuted in European variants; for the brose in Norse and Highland tales we find polenta or macaroni in Italian and Sicilian versions. The ident.i.ty of incidents in the noodle-stories of Europe with those in what are for us their oldest forms, the Buddhist and Indian books, is very remarkable, particularly so in the case of Norse popular fictions, which, there is every reason to believe, were largely introduced through the Mongolians; and the similarity of Italian and West Highland stories to those of Iceland and Norway would seem to indicate the influence of the Nors.e.m.e.n in the Western Islands of Scotland and in the south of Europe._

_It were utterly futile to attempt to trace the literary history of most of the noodle-stories which appear to have been current throughout European countries for many generations, since they have practically none. Soon after the invention of printing collections of facetiae were rapidly multiplied, the compilers taking their material from oral as well as written sources, amongst others, from mediaeval collections of "exempla" designed for the use of preachers and the writings of the cla.s.sical authors of antiquity. With the exception of those in Buddhist works, it is more than probable that the noodle-stories which are found among all peoples never had any other purpose than that of mere amus.e.m.e.nt. Who, indeed, could possibly convert the "witless devices" of the men of Gotham into vehicles of moral instruction? Only the monkish writers of the Middle Ages, who even "spiritualised" tales which, if reproduced in these days, must be "printed for private circulation"!_

_Yet may the typical noodle of popular tales "point a moral," after a fashion. Poor fellow! he follows his instructions only too literally, and with a firm conviction that he is thus doing a very clever thing.

But the consequence is almost always ridiculous. He practically shows the fallacy of the old saw that "fools learn by experience," for his next folly is sure to be greater than the last, in spite of every caution to the contrary. He is generally very honest, and does everything, like the man in the play, "with the best intentions." His mind is incapable of entertaining more than one idea at a time; but to that he holds fast, with the tenacity of the lobster's claw: he cannot be diverted from it until, by some accident, a fresh idea displaces it; and so on he goes from one blunder to another. His blunders, however, which in the case of an ordinary man would infallibly result in disaster to himself or to others, sometimes lead him to unexpected good fortune.

He it is, in fact, to whom the great Persian poet Sadi alludes when he says, in his charming "Gulistan," or Rose Garden, "The alchemist died of grief and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin."

Men of intelligence toil painfully to acquire a mere "livelihood"'; the noodle stumbles upon great wealth in the midst of his wildest vagaries.

In brief, he is--in stories, at least--a standing ill.u.s.tration of the "vanity of human life"!_

_And now a few words as to the history and design of the following work. When the Folk-lore Society was formed, some nine years since, the late Mr. W.J. Thoms, who was one of the leading men in its formation, promised to edit for the Society the "Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham," furnishing notes of a.n.a.logous stories, a task which he was peculiarly qualified to perform. As time pa.s.sed on, however, the infirmities of old age doubtless rendered the purposed work less and less attractive to him, and his death, after a long, useful, and honourable career, left it still undone. What particular plan he had sketched out for himself I do not know; but there can be no doubt that had he carried it out the results would have been most valuable. And, since he did not perform his self-allotted task, his death is surely a great loss, perhaps an irreparable loss, to English students of comparative folk-lore._

_More than five years ago, with a view of urging Mr. Thoms to set about the work, I offered to furnish him with some material in the shape of Oriental noodle-stories; but from a remark in his reply I feared there would be no need for such services as I could render him. That fear has been since realised, and the present little book is now offered as a humble subst.i.tute for the intended work of Mr. Thoms, until it is displaced by a more worthy one._

_Since the "Tales of the Men of Gotham" ceased to be reproduced in chap-book form, the first reprint of the collection was made in 1840, with an introduction by Mr. J.O. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillipps); and that brochure is become almost as scarce as the chap-book copies themselves: the only copy I have seen is in the Euing collection in the Glasgow University Library. The tales were next reprinted in the "Shakespeare Jest-books," so ably edited and annotated by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in three volumes (1864). They were again reproduced in Mr. John Ashton's "Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century" (1882)._

_It did not enter into the plan of any of these editors to cite a.n.a.logues or variants of the Gothamite Tales; nor, on the other hand, was it any part of my design in the present little work to reproduce the Tales in the same order as they appear in the printed collection. Yet all that are worth reproducing in a work of this description will be found in the chapters ent.i.tled "Gothamite Drolleries," of which they form, indeed, but a small portion._

_My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources, many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers, the best of this cla.s.s of humorous narratives, in their oldest existing Buddhist and Greek forms as well as in the forms in which they are current among the people in the present day. It will, perhaps, be thought by some that a portion of what is here presented might have been omitted without great loss; but my aim has been not only to compile an amusing story-book, but to ill.u.s.trate to some extent the migrations of popular fictions from country to country. In this design I was a.s.sisted by Captain R.C. Temple, one of the editors of the "Indian Antiquary,"

and one of the authors of "Wide-awake Stories," from the Punjab and Kashmir, who kindly directed me to sources whence I have drawn some curious Oriental parallels to European stories of simpletons._

_W.A.C._

*.* _While my "Popular Tales and Fictions" was pa.s.sing through the press, in 1886, I made reference (in vol. i., p. 65) to the present work, as it was purposed to be published that year, but Mr. Stock has had unavoidably to defer its publication till now._

_W.A.C_.

GLASGOW, _March_, 1888.

THE BOOK OF NOODLES.

CHAPTER I.

ANCIENT GRECIAN NOODLES.

"Old as the days of Hierokles!" is the exclamation of the "cla.s.sical"

reader on hearing a well-worn jest; while, on the like occasion, that of the "general" reader--a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"--is, that it is "a Joe Miller;" both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in _joke-ology_ to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of Hierokles are _old_ there can be no doubt whatever; that they were collected by the Alexandrian sage of that name is more than doubtful; while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in which he flourished, namely, the fifth century: it is very possible that some may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians! It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which his name is a.s.sociated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's trick to ent.i.tle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and cranks, and quiddities," _Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade Mec.u.m_. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Miller," he should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller"

are, at least, "as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the man who trained his horse to live on a straw _per diem_, when it suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about a brick as a specimen of it.

The collection of facetiae ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it was made, is composed of very short anecdotes of the sayings and doings of pedants, who are represented as noodles, or simpletons. In their existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular facetiae of Europe through the churchmen of the Middle Ages, and, after having circulated long orally, pa.s.sed into literature, whence, like other kinds of tales, they once more returned to the people. We find in them the indirect originals of some of the bulls and blunders which have in modern times been credited to Irishmen and Scotch Highlanders, and the germs also, perhaps, of some stories of the Gothamite type: as brave men lived before Agamemnon, so, too, the race of Gothamites can boast of a very ancient pedigree! By far the greater number of them, however, seem now pithless and pointless, whatever they may have been considered in ancient days, when, perhaps, folk found food for mirth in things which utterly fail to tickle our "sense of humour" in these double-distilled days. Of the [Greek: Asteia], or facetiae, of Hierokles, twenty-eight only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, and published at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with other Greek jests--of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, c.u.mae, etc.--has been edited by Eberhard, under the t.i.tle of _Philogelos Hieraclis el Philagrii Facetia_ which was published at Berlin in 1869.

In attempting to cla.s.sify the best of these relics of ancient wit--or witlessness, rather--it is often difficult to decide whether a particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles or simpletons. In the latter cla.s.s, however, one need not hesitate to place the story of the men of c.u.mae, who were expecting shortly to be visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.

But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.

Among Grecian Gothamites, again, was the hunter who was constantly disturbed by dreams of a boar pursuing him, and procured dogs to sleep with him. Another, surely, was the man of c.u.mae who wished to sell some clothes he had stolen, and smeared them with pitch, so that they should not be recognised by the owner. They were Gothamites, too, those men of Abdera who punished a runaway a.s.s for having got into the gymnasium and upset the olive oil. Having brought all the a.s.ses of the town together, as a caution, they flogged the delinquent a.s.s before his fellows.

Some of the jests of Hierokles may be considered either as witticisms or witless sayings of noodles; for example, the story of the man who recovered his health though the doctor had sworn he could not live, and afterwards, being asked by his friends why he seemed to avoid the doctor whenever they were both likely to meet, he replied, "He told me I should not live, and now I am ashamed to be alive;" or that of the pedant who said to the doctor, "Pardon me for not having been sick so long;" or this, "I dreamt that I saw and spoke to you last night:" quoth the other, "By the G.o.ds, I was so busy, I did not hear you."

But our friend the Gothamite reappears in the pedant who saw some sparrows on a tree, and went quietly under it, stretched out his robe, and shook the tree, expecting to catch the sparrows as they fell, like ripe fruit again, in the pedant who lay down to sleep, and, finding he had no pillow, bade his servant place a jar under his head, after stuffing it full of feathers to render it soft; again, in the cross-grained fellow who had some honey for sale, and a man coming up to him and inquiring the price, he upset the jar, and then replied, "You may shed my heart's blood like that before I tell such as you;" and again, in the man of Abdera who tried to hang himself, when the rope broke, and he hurt his head; but after having the wound dressed by the doctor, he went and accomplished his purpose. And we seem to have a trace of them in the story of the pedant who dreamt that a nail had pierced his foot, and in the morning he bound it up; when he told a friend of his mishap, he said, "Why do you sleep barefooted?"

The following jest is spread--_mutatis mutandis_--over all Europe: A pedant, a bald man, and a barber, making a journey in company, agreed to watch in turn during the night. It was the barber's watch first. He propped up the sleeping pedant, and shaved his head, and when his time came, awoke him. When the pedant felt his head bare, "What a fool is this barber," he cried, "for he has roused the bald man instead of me!"

A variant of this story is related of a raw Highlander, fresh from the heather, who put up at an inn in Perth, and shared his bed with a negro.

Some coffee-room jokers having blackened his face during the night, when he was called, as he had desired, very early next morning, and got up, he saw the reflection of his face in the mirror, and exclaimed in a rage, "Tuts, tuts! The silly body has waukened the wrang man."

In connection with these two stories may be cited the following, from a Persian jest-book: A poor wrestler, who had pa.s.sed all his life in forests, resolved to try his fortune in a great city, and as he drew near it he observed with wonder the crowds on the road, and thought, "I shall certainly not be able to know myself among so many people if I have not something about me that the others have not." So he tied a pumpkin to his right leg and, thus decorated, entered the town. A young wag, perceiving the simpleton, made friends with him, and induced him to spend the night at his house. While he was asleep, the joker removed the pumpkin from his leg and tied it to his own, and then lay down again. In the morning, when the poor fellow awoke and found the pumpkin on his companion's leg, he called to him, "Hey! get up, for I am perplexed in my mind. Who am I, and who are you? If I am myself, why is the pumpkin on your leg? And if you are yourself, why is the pumpkin not on my leg?"

Modern counterparts of the following jest are not far to seek: Quoth a man to a pedant, "The slave I bought of you has died." Rejoined the other, "By the G.o.ds, I do a.s.sure you that he never once played me such a trick while I had him." The old Greek pedant is transformed into an Irishman, in our collections of facetiae, who applied to a farmer for work. "I'll have nothing to do with you," said the farmer, "for the last five Irishmen I had all died on my hands." Quoth Pat, "Sure, sir, I can bring you characters from half a dozen gentlemen I've worked for that I never did such a thing." And the jest is thus told in an old translation of _Les Contes Facetieux de Sieur Gaulard_: "Speaking of one of his Horses which broake his Neck at the descent of a Rock, he said, Truly it was one of the handsomest and best Curtails in all the Country; he neuer shewed me such a trick before in all his life."[1]

Equally familiar is the jest of the pedant who was looking out for a place to prepare a tomb for himself, and on a friend indicating what he thought to be a suitable spot, "Very true," said the pedant, "but it is unhealthy." And we have the prototype of a modern "Irish" story in the following: A pedant sealed a jar of wine, and his slaves perforated it below and drew off some of the liquor. He was astonished to find his wine disappear while the seal remained intact. A friend, to whom he had communicated the affair, advised him to look and ascertain if the liquor had not been drawn off from below. "Why, you fool," said he, "it is not the lower, but the upper, portion that is going off."

It was a Greek pedant who stood before a mirror and shut his eyes that he might know how he looked when asleep--a jest which reappears in Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ in this form: "A wealthy monsieur in France (hauing profound reuenues and a shallow braine) was told by his man that he did continually gape in his sleepe, at which he was angry with his man, saying he would not belieue it. His man verified it to be true; his master said that he would neuer belieue any that told him so, except (quoth hee) I chance to see it with mine owne eyes; and therefore I will have a great Looking gla.s.se at my bed's feet for the purpose to try whether thou art a lying knaue or not."[2]

Not unlike some of our "Joe Millers" is the following: A citizen of c.u.mae, on an a.s.s, pa.s.sed by an orchard, and seeing a branch of a fig-tree loaded with delicious fruit, he laid hold of it, but the a.s.s went on, leaving him suspended. Just then the gardener came up, and asked him what he did there. The man replied, "I fell off the a.s.s."--An a.n.a.logue to this drollery is found in an Indian story-book, ent.i.tled _Katha Manjari_: One day a thief climbed up a cocoa-nut tree in a garden to steal the fruit. The gardener heard the noise, and while he was running from his house, giving the alarm, the thief hastily descended from the tree. "Why were you up that tree?" asked the gardener. The thief replied, "My brother, I went up to gather gra.s.s for my calf." "Ha! ha!

is there gra.s.s, then, on a cocoa-nut tree?" said the gardener. "No,"

quoth the thief; "but I did not know; therefore I came down again."--And we have a variant of this in the Turkish jest of the fellow who went into a garden and pulled up carrots, turnips, and other kinds of vegetables, some of which he put into a sack, and some into his bosom.

The gardener, coming suddenly on the spot, laid hold of him, and said, "What are you seeking here?" The simpleton replied, "For some days past a great wind has been blowing, and that wind blew me hither." "But who pulled up these vegetables?" "As the wind blew very violently, it cast me here and there; and whatever I laid hold of in the hope of saving myself remained in my hands." "Ah," said the gardener, "but who filled this sack with them?" "Well, that is the very question I was about to ask myself when you came up."

The propensity with which Irishmen are credited of making ludicrous bulls is said to have its origin, not from any lack of intelligence, but rather in the fancy of that lively race, which often does not wait for expression until the ideas have taken proper verbal form. Be this as it may, a considerable portion of the bulls popularly ascribed to Irishmen are certainly "old as the jests of Hierokles," and are, moreover, current throughout Europe. Thus in Hierokles we read that one of twin-brothers having recently died, a pedant, meeting the survivor, asked him whether it was he or his brother who had deceased.--Taylor has this in his _Wit and Mirth_, and he probably heard it from some one who had read the facetious tales of the Sieur Gaulard: "A n.o.bleman of France (as he was riding) met with a yeoman of the Country, to whom he said, My friend, I should know thee. I doe remember I haue often seene thee. My good Lord, said the countriman, I am one of your Honers poore tenants, and my name is T.J. I remember better now (said my Lord); there were two brothers of you, but one is dead; I pray, which of you doth remaine alive?"--Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the notes to his edition of Taylor's collection _(Shakespeare Jest Books_, Third Series), cites a Scotch parallel from _The Laird of Logan_: "As the Paisley steamer came alongside the quay[3] at the city of the Seestus,[4] a denizen of St. Mirren's hailed one of the pa.s.sengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the old nursery rhyme,--

"Ho, Master Teague, what is your story?

I went to the wood, and killed a tory;[5]

I went to the wood, and killed another: Was it the same, or was it his brother?"[6]

We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to him, "Don't grieve; buy some lettuces; eat them at a corner; turn round it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there anything like this in "Joe Miller"?--Two lazy fellows were sleeping together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up, and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead,"

replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster, and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?--A pedant's little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."

An epigram in the _Anthologia_ may find a place among noodle stories:

"A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light, And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"

This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"

Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the old Greek jokes. The father of a man of c.u.mae having died at Alexandria, the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol replied, "He had a cough."