The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran

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СКАЧАТЬ me,” said the fool; “I am not ambitious enough to desire to rule all your holiness’s subjects.”

      Bahalul one day, finding no one in the throne-room of the sovereign father of the faithful, seated himself on the cushions of the priest-monarch. The guards near were horror-stricken at beholding the jester on the sacred couch of authority, imitating the manners of Haroon himself; just as Chicot, long after, used to mimic those of Henri III. They speedily dragged him from the throne of cushions, and began bastinadoing him with such violence that the Caliph, hearing his cries, entered the hall and demanded the reason of the outcry. “Uncle,” said Bahalul, “I am not screaming on my own account, but on yours. I pity you. I have only tried royalty for five minutes, and I am already in a fever with pain inflicted by these fellows. What must you endure, then, who occupy the same distinguished seat every day!”

      Bahalul seems to have been a dissipated fellow, and the Caliph enjoined him to marry and live discreetly, loving his wife, and bringing up his family in honour. The jester so far obeyed as to go through the nuptial ceremony; but as he was conducting his wife to her apartment, the uncourteous bridegroom suddenly paused, looked as if he were petrified, and declaring that he had never heard such a tumult in his life, took to his heels, and did not re-appear for months. Meanwhile, the deserted bride had procured a divorce, and then Bahalul made his rentrée at Court.

      “So!” exclaimed the Caliph, with an inquiring air.

      “Ay, ay!” cried the fool, “you would have done as I did. The tumult scared me away beyond the hills.”

      “What tumult?” asked Haroon.

      “Why,” said Bahalul, “as my wife was entering her room, there came from her, sounds as of a thousand voices. Amid them, I could distinguish the cries of ‘rent! taxes! doctors! sons! daughters! schooling! dress! silks! satins! muslins! drawers! slippers! money! more money! debt! imprisonment! and Bahalul has drowned himself in the Caliph’s bath!—therewith,” added the jester, “terrified at the solemn warning, and wishing to avoid the profanity of plunging my person into your brightness’s bath, I fled, till the danger was over, and—here I am; owing nothing, and disinclined to drown myself.”

      Bahalul, however, was not the most favourite jester of this Caliph. There is no doubt that the most renowned of these was Ebn Oaz. We have indeed but one sample of his quality, but that is excellent. Unfortunately, it is also well known; but it must not be omitted in this record of the fraternity. Haroon, it is said, desired to exhibit the best qualities of the wit in presence of the young Sultana and her brilliant court; and he suddenly ordered Ebn Oaz to make some excuse which should be more offensive than the crime it was to extenuate. After considerable thought, Oaz slunk away, and the disappointed spectators were speaking of him as “incapable,” when the Caliph, suddenly starting up from his seat, with a roar and a look of exquisite anguish, set the whole court in confusion. The fact was, that Ebn Oaz had gone behind the curtains of the throne, and, opening them gently, had given the Caliph so astounding a pinch in the rear, that he sprang up as if a javelin had pierced him. Looking on the offender with rage and anguish, he ordered him to be slain for the treasonable and intolerable assault. “Stay!” said Oaz to the too-ready officials, who were already fingering their bow-strings. “Hear my excuse,” added he, turning to the Caliph; “I declare, by way of apology, that when I pinched your Holiness behind, I thought I was pinching the Sultana, your wife.” Haroon saw at once that the excuse was worse than the crime, and that he ought to be delighted; but he only laughed in a forced way, remarking to the Sultana, before he resumed his seat, that he felt he should not forget the joke for some time to come.

      This story has been made wonderful use of, and has been dished up in a hundred different ways in a hundred different localities. It belongs, however, originally to the East, as do so many other of our most ancient and accepted anecdotes. I believe that all the facetiæ of Hierocles were old Indian, before they were new Greek stories, and that the “simpleton” who clung to the anchor when the ship was sinking—who stood before a mirror with his eyes closed, to see how he looked when asleep—who carried about with him a brick of his house, as a specimen of the building—who made the experiment of keeping a horse alive without food, only failing to succeed by the premature death of the steed;—all these, and some dozens of others like them, had all drawn laughter from Eastern potentates before they began to raise a smile in the fairer faces of the Hellenes. But these stories only amused; and the jester had the prerogative of being free, as well as the duty of being entertaining.

      This freedom of the jester, and the good use to which he could apply his joke and his license, is exemplified in the case of the town-fool who entered the hall where Mahmoud Ghizni was seated in full assembly. Without appearing to be conscious of the illustrious presence and the august company, he went prying about into the corners of the hall, as if in search of some particular object. At length, said he, “Not one!”

      “Not one what?” roared the Ghiznian.

      “Sheep’s tail!” said the fool, in a tone of voice which set every one in a roar of laughter.

      “It’s no laughing matter,” added he; “I am starving, and all I ask is a sheep’s tail for my dinner.”

      “Nay!” cried Mahmoud, “thou shalt have one;” and whispering to an official who stood near, the latter personage presently brought in a raw vegetable, which in its shape somewhat closely resembled the long, heavy, and unctuous tail of the Eastern sheep. The fool took it without observation; and, after thanks to the Prophet for excellent mutton, he began devouring it. Observing that the monarch smiled, the jester asked him, with the tail in his mouth, if what he was doing reminded his Majesty of anything.

      “Of what should a sheep’s tail in thy mouth remind me,” said Mahmoud, “except of the proverb that ‘Extremes meet’?” The fool was overwhelmed for awhile by the laughter duly shouted forth by the subordinates at their great master’s joke, but he soon recovered himself, and when Mahmoud asked him what he thought of his joint, he answered, “That the thing was eatable enough, but that he observed that sheep’s tails were by no means so fat and well-flavoured as they had been in the days of his Majesty’s predecessor; but that, as men were more lean, too, now, than they used to be, perhaps the fact alluded to was of no material consequence.”

      “Thou art not such a fool as thou pretendest to be,” said the sovereign. “It was but yesterday that one of thy profession told me of the gratitude the owls felt for me, because of the many ruined villages in the land; and now thou hintest at the misery of the people. Go thy way, good fellow, and go thy way with full stomach, and assurance that both evils shall yet be remedied.”

      In the sixteenth century, when Baber was Emperor of Hindostan, the merry profession was in favour, but the furnishers of amusement for the monarch comprised others besides jesters. Thus, at state dinners, as soon as the imperial host and his guests took their places, tumblers, rope-dancers, and jugglers, whom no other country could equal, exhibited their feats. The highest point of fun was when the scattering of coin among the performers, excited a huge uproar. In earlier times, the wordy contests of two fools used to beguile the half-hour before dinner; but in Baber’s days, he and similar potentates were wont to be exceedingly well amused by witnessing a couple of rams butting at each other. It was perhaps as rational for royalty so to do, as to listen to Ethiopian serenaders chanting harmonized nonsense.

      Some writers have classed the “Mutes” among the professional fools of the Eastern courts. This would seem to be an error not easily accounted for. The duty of that official was of a rather severe cast. The fool, however, was well known among the Turks, and perhaps the most celebrated was that Nasur ed Deen Chodscha, who was in the service of the first Bajazet, and who joked to such excellent effect that he once tickled Timour Leng into such good humour that the latter paid the fool the high compliment of saving from plunder his native town Jengi-Scheher (Neapolis). It was done after СКАЧАТЬ