as i have just stated, the court or household fool probably originated in the east. the close of this chapter will show that in the east that pleasant or pretentious official still survives. in a region where aberration of mind is taken to be a sort of divine inspiration, we need not wonder at finding the professional jester still attached to certain families, and himself and his vocation treated with a certain degree of respect.
i have already spoken of the buffoons who could not move the gravity of their own solemn master attila; and we know that timour rather kept these people for the amusement of his guests, than that he experienced any satisfaction himself in the exercise of their craft. they were not wanting in the courts of the caliphs, and the name of bahalul conspicuously figures among the cap-and-bell favourites of haroon al-raschid. it was to him that the caliph once said, “fool, give me a list of all the blockheads in bagdad.” to which bahalul answered, “that were not so easy, and would take too long; but if you want a list of the wise men, you shall have it in two minutes.”
it was in jest that haroon presented him a document, by which he was constituted governor of all the bears, wolves, foxes, apes, and asses, in the caliphate. “it is too much for 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 were69 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 danger70 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 faceti? of hierocles were old71 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 remind72 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 to73 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 this wise:—
the inhabitants of the city, hearing of the approach of the conqueror, prepared to defend themselves with vigour. nasur counselled them to do nothing of the sort, but to trust to him alone, and his mediation with timour. the people were doubtful of his success, but they yielded. before proceeding to the camp of the besieger, nasur, who knew it was useless to approach the great chief without a present, considered what gift was likely to be most acceptable. he resolved it should be fruit, but he hesitated between figs and quinces. “i will consult with my wife,” said nasur ed deen, and he according did so. the lady advised him to take quinces, as the larger fruit. “very good,” said nasur, “that being your opinion, i will take figs.” when he reached the foot of the throne of tamerlane, he announced himself as the ambassador from the beleaguered citizens, and presented, as an offering of their homage, his trumpery basket of figs. the chief burst into a rage, and ordered them to be flung at the head of the representative of the people of jengi-scheher. the courtiers pelted him with right good will; and each time he was struck, nasur, who stood patient and immovable, gently exclaimed, “now allah be praised!” or, “oh, the prophet be thanked!” or, “oh, admirable! how can i be sufficiently grateful?”
“what dost thou mean, fellow?” asked timour; “we pelt you with figs, and you seem to enjoy it!”
74 “ay, truly, great sir,” replied nasur; “i gratefully enjoy the consequence of my own wit. my wife counselled me to bring quinces, but i chose to bring figs; and well that i did, for with figs you have only bruised me, but had i brought quinces, you would have beaten my brains out.”
the stern conqueror laughed aloud, and declared that, for the sake of one fool, he would spare all the asses in the city, male and female, them and their property.
“then,” cried nasur, “the entire population is safe!” and he ran homewards to communicate the joyful intelligence.
nasur, indeed, ranks among the most useful, as well as the most witty, of his ancient vocation. on one occasion, bajazet had condemned many scores of his officers to death, for some trifling offence, in time of war. “ay, indeed,” exclaimed the fool, “hang the knaves! hang them! what use are they? kill them for small offences, and rogues will fear to commit greater! excellent wisdom! timour is at hand; away with them before he comes! the army can do without leaders. you take the standard; i will beat the drum; and we will thus meet that troublesome individual at the head of the forces. we will see how we can handle the tartars, without such knaves as these to help us!” bajazet comprehended the implied reproof, and spared the well-proved and lightly-offending leaders of his host.
on another occasion, nasur, having succeeded so well with his figs, acknowledged the clemency of timour, by presenting him with a few fresh gherkins, for the great warrior’s supper. the chief ordered him a reward of ten gold crowns, and nasur went home rejoiced. when the season came that other gherkins had grown into cucumbers, nasur, expecting commensurate recompense, carried to the residence of timour a basket full of the refreshing vegetable. the door-keeper, however, refused to allow him to pass until he had agreed to give him half the reward that might75 be paid to nasur by order of the chief. it happened that the latter was “not i’ the vein,” and instead of commanding a recompense of gold crowns, he sentenced the unfortunate gift-bearer to receive a hundred blows from the stick. nasur took fifty patiently; but then he cried to the unpleasant official to hold his hand; and he explained how the other half of the acknowledgment belonged to the door-keeper. timour swore that the stipulation should be observed, and the remaining half-hundred blows were paid where they were justly due.
a whole encyclop?dia might be written of the sayings and doings of the eastern “simpletons,” alone. my space is too limited to allow of my doing much more than to offer a few illustrations; but, to those who have much curiosity in the matter, and who may not be disinclined to spend whole hours with a single class of the oriental fools, i recommend the well-known book, which contains the birth, parentage, and education, life, character, and behaviour, lively sayings, last dying speech and confession of the gooroo noodle. from that tempting chronicle, i return to the “toorke” jester, with the remark that, great as was his freedom of speech, it was not every witty fellow at court who was so licensed. the courtier who ventured to take a liberty with a turkish potentate was as uncertain, as to the effect, as the roman wits were when bold enough to joke with the emperor. selim, the son of bajazet, was one with whom the most favoured of his followers could not with impunity venture on freedom of speech. when engaged on his egyptian expedition, one of his officials the most closely attached to his person, hazarded the question as to when his majesty expected to be at cairo. “we shall be there,” said selim, “when it may please god. as for thy arrival there, it rather pleases me that thou shalt stay here.” and therewith, on a sign from the sultan, the unlucky querist was instantly put to death.
76 murad the third, though as savage by nature as selim, could take a joke better than his predecessor could a simple question. there was one thing, however, which he could not tolerate—tobacco; the use of which he punished with death. but among the few members of his court was a man renowned for his wit, and for his power of raising the spirits of the sultan, even when these had been depressed by a three days’ fit of drunkenness. now this court-wit loved smoking, and was resolved, not only to have his pipe, but to escape the penalty of death attached to the enjoyment of it. accordingly, he caused a deep pit to be dug in his tent, and when he desired to give himself up to his dearest indulgence, he would descend into it, sitting there concealed by a sieve-like construction drawn over the top, and lightly covered with turf. one evening, murad became sagacious of the hookah from afar, and, tracing the offender to the very pit in which he was quietly smoking, threatened him with instant death. the offender, however, coolly thrusting his head upward, as he provokingly drew another mouthful of reeking luxury, exclaimed, “go to, thou son of a bond-woman! thy edicts extend over the earth, certainly; but they do not extend under it.” “take thy life for thy joke,” said murad, laughing and coughing,—the first at the jest, and the second at the odour and vapour, which he detested,—“i only wish thy pipe were as enjoyable as thy wit.”
many samples of this sort i could continue to place before my readers; but, having regard to the patience of those who have so often borne patiently with me, i will only trace the eastern jester down to modern times. till after the commencement of the present century, the courts of the hospodars of moldavia and wallachia were never without the mirthful official. the latter was usually an armenian. indeed, there were, ordinarily, several at each court. their duty was to amuse their lord when he was at table, by every means in their power, by strange remarks, by droll stories,77 or by burlesques more or less extravagant. in processions, they walked before their masters, and carried long staves covered with silver bells. since they fell into disuse, the gipsies succeeded to the exercise of one part of their office, and these are admitted to the palaces of the great, on particular festivals, to amuse their illustrious hearers with national and comic songs.
from a very early period, the public and private buffoons of the east seem to have been selected from among the armenians. joinville introduces to us some very sprightly professionals of this sort, in his ‘history of st. louis.’ “there came with the prince,” he says, “three minstrels from armenia (trois ménestriers de la grande hyrménie). they carried three horns, and when they began to perform on them, you might have taken the sound for that of swans. they produced the softest melody....” he then informs us how, having fulfilled their office of minstrels, they performed that of buffoons, for the amusement of the illustrious personages present. “they made three marvellous leaps (sauts); ... a cloth (touaille) being placed beneath their feet, they threw a somersault upon it, without any spring, and two of them leaped in this way, head backwards.”
the old fashion in the east did not altogether expire till a very recent period, for we find a jester at the court of the father of the present sultan of turkey. it was said of some eminent individual, that he had made two centuries illustrious; and something like it may be said of this oriental jester, who flourished at the court of constantinople at the close of the last, and above a quarter of the present century. in 1836 died abdi bey, who, for nearly half a century previous, had been the favourite jester of successive sultans. he worked hard and reaped a large fortune. in the early part of his career, his masters treated him as a mere brutish buffoon, on whom they might play any trick. sometimes they set him off in a gallop, mounted on a giraffe, or tumbled him78 headlong into a pond, to the danger of his life. the late sultan mahmoud had no stomach for such sorry jokes, and abdi bey devoted his capacity to keep his patron in good spirits by amusing him with smart sayings and pleasant stories. he must have been an incomparable fool in his time, or his masters must have been greater fools than he, for out of their imperial bounty, he contrived to save ￡150,000, which he left to his grateful and deeply-resigned heirs. it was nearly as much as the late mr. greenough made by the manufacture of lozenges—“ten a penny!”
abdi bey has been called the last of the household buffoons. but this is not the case; for though the official fool has disappeared from court, he is still to be found attached to families, or heads of families. we even meet with this rather impudent than merry fellow in the household of christian patriarchs. only a few years ago, when the nestorian patriarch was flying, with a large number of his followers, from their would-be murderers in the mountains, they found refuge at mosul, in the houses of the english consul and the rev. mr. fletcher. the latter gentleman, in his ‘notes from nineveh,’ so describes his reverence’s buffoon as to induce us to believe that to have much to do with him was really “no joke at all.” “my new guests,” he says, “were very orderly in their manners, though wild in their appearance. only one decided quarrel broke out among them during their abode with me; and this was occasioned by a half-crazy old man who served the patriarch in the double capacity of a domestic and buffoon. this worthy was addicted, like many of his countrymen, to the vice of intoxication; and having on one occasion partaken rather freely of the juice of the grape, he grew riotous, and addressed a reproachful epithet to one of his companions. the fiery nature of the mountaineer was excited, and he retorted in no complimentary terms. the old buffoon drew his dagger, and made a rush at his antagonist, who retreated79 into an inner apartment and shut the door. nothing could equal the rage of old yohanan at being thus baulked of his vengeance. two or three times he burst from those who were restraining him, and drove his knife into the hard wood of the door. at length he was quieted, and after sleeping-off his drunkenness, appeared the next morning with a sober and abashed countenance.” i suppose old yohanan was past being amusing, for we are subsequently told, that to raise the drooping spirits of the patriarch, an itinerant italian juggler was hired. at his tricks and witticisms the pious head of the nestorian church forgot the slaughter of his friends and the devastation of their and his homesteads. the saintly and sympathetic man laughed till he could hardly sit upright on his cushions, and only ceased then because some wonderful stroke of the juggler’s art induced him suddenly to suspect that such marvellous proficiency was only an inspiration of the devil.
* * * * *
by way of supplement to this chapter, i will add a few short illustrations of the jester at other barbarous courts than those of the east;—and first, of “that beyond the atlantic.”
when cortez first visited the court of montezuma, he found there various instances of high civilization:—among others, light ladies, strong drinks, court fools, and a spirit of infidelity against the established church, inspired by an influence called the “rational owl.” the aztec monarch resembled heliogabalus in one respect;—“he had a museum,” says brantz mayer, in his excellent work, ‘mexico, aztec, spanish, and republican,’ “in which, with an oddity of taste unparalleled in history, there had been collected a vast number of human monsters, cripples, dwarfs, albinos, and other freaks and caprices of nature.” bernal diaz saw the monarch at dinner, and among the incidents recorded80 by the old spaniard, is, that, “at different intervals during the time of dinner, there entered certain indians, hump-backed, very deformed and ugly, who played tricks of buffoonery; and others, who they said were jesters.” the fashion of maintaining the latter was followed by the nobles. “the principal men,” says acoste, quoted by prescott, “had also buffoons and jugglers in their service, who amused them, and astonished the spaniards by their feats of dexterity and strength.”
montezuma patronized rather the witty buffoons than the skilful jugglers. “indeed, he used to say, that more instruction was to be gathered from them than from wiser men, for they dared to tell the truth.” prescott adds in a note, founded on clavigero, that “the aztec mountebanks had such repute, that cortez sent two of them to rome, to amuse his holiness, clement vii.” this was only an exchange of personages of similar profession, for the european official house fool had already been imported into america. in 1519, at st. jago, when velasquez the governor was beginning to be suspicious of the designs of cortez to supplant him, the two great men were walking together towards the port. as they passed on, the fool of the former called aloud, “have a care, master velasquez, or we shall have to go a-hunting, some day or other, after this same captain of ours.” “do you hear what the rogue says?” exclaimed the governor to his companion. “do not heed him,” said cortez, “he is a saucy knave, and deserves a good whipping.” the hint of the fool, however, heightened the suspicions of his master; but how the latter was too slow of wit and action to profit thereby, is known to all who have read the graphic pages which tell of the conquest of mexico.
but neither aztec nor spanish monarch rivalled their less civilized brother of monomotapa in this peculiar department of his household. gallienus alone deserves to be mentioned, in this respect, with the african potentate, who never stirred81 abroad with less than five hundred official fools in his vast and noisy retinue!
there were, as late as the last century, and there probably still linger on the gold coast, traditions of the mythological jester of africa, nanni, son of the spider. his busy parent had spun all the human race from the thread of his bowels, and found no gratitude from the living produce of his labours. the fetis seduced all creation to sin, and the spider bethought him how to annoy the fetis. with what little material he had left, he spun the last man, and educated him at his own paternal feet, on the edge of the domestic web. the tricks the father taught his boy were long the delight of polished and perspiring african tribes. nanni was the ebony owlglas of the land of ham. he served the fetis, but only as jocrisse did his master, to his great vexation. was nanni commissioned to provide a chicken for dinner, he knew how, after devouring the bird himself, to replace bones and skin, and place it before his employer, the very model of a plump pullet. was an egg ordered for breakfast, nanni first sucked out the contents through a minute orifice, and filled up the shell with the finest sand. nanni, too, was a married man, with numberless children, and more wives than “that sardanapalus of snobs,” brigham young. in a time of scarcity, when even a bean was worth more than its weight in gold, the hungry wives and offspring of nanni drove him forth by their importunity, to seek food. he came upon a company of boys and girls who had been left by their father in charge of a quantity of beans, to dry and turn them in the air. nanni leaped in among them, made them shriek with laughter at his jokes, and stamp with delight at his dancing. the latter exercise he concluded by rolling his well-oiled body among the beans, with which, sticking to him as he rose, he made off, after bidding the children look at his hands, to see that he carried nothing away with him. by repeating82 this feat, he nourished his household for days; and the alarmed owner of the precious vegetables could not account for their diminution from any account rendered by the young guardians. but detecting nanni in the fact, the owner chopped off both his hands, as he lay rolling his greased body among the beans. the wit of the national jester had been grievously at fault, and his household becoming more hungry and angry than ever, his wives broke into open revolt, and eloped in a body, in search of another mate. but nanni was beforehand with them in every respect; for taking the guise of a woodman, and having recovered his lost members, he met them in their flight, without being recognized by them. they told him of the fate of their husband, and of their intentions, concluding with a gentle hint that they were well enough inclined to accept a well-built young wood-cutter for their common husband. “no! no!” cried nanni, “times are so very hard, that i have been obliged to dismiss forty-nine of my wives, and to live as well as i can with one!” this speech alarmed the ladies, who forthwith hurried homeward; but the active nanni encountered them at the threshold, over which he would not allow them to pass till they had entered into stipulations whereby he was secured in full and despotic authority over his entire family.
the jokes of nanni, son of the spider, for a long time formed all the history, literature, and amusement of negro circles. a thousand times over have his tricks been told and acted, in a semi-dramatic way, to delighted groups of swarthy listeners beneath the african moon. i may notice that the story-teller has always been a greater favourite in africa than the mere jester. i remember, indeed, having read of one potentate, the kaffir chief tshaka, or chaka, who would tolerate neither, at his horridly solemn court. on one occasion, however, and in full council, a merry fellow gave utterance to a frolicsome thought which he could not repress. it succeeded admirably,—gloomy king and grave83 counsellors were thrown into the most convulsive hilarity. when they had all recovered, the chief, pointing towards the jester, showed his grateful sense of a rare delight, by exclaiming, “take that dog out, and kill him; he has made me laugh!”
to make his patron laugh was the especial and variously-rewarded vocation of the jester whom i now proceed to introduce to my readers. the english court fool was a very peculiar fellow, and in the history of some members of the order of motley, in this country, there are incidents unparalleled in the history of the official jesters of any other nation. let us see whence they came, as well as who they were.