Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/249

ii s. VIIL SEPT. 27, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

243 some due and sober animadversions on the said speeches. London. Printed for Nathaniel Brooke, at the Angel in Cornhill, and Edward Thomas, at the Adam and Eve in Little Brittain. 1662."

Both these accounts are disregarded in 'State Trials,' and part of the following tract printed instead. The title alone condemns it:—

"The Speeches, Discourses and Prayers of Col. John Barkstead, Col. John Okey and Mr. Miles Corbet, upon the 19th of April, being the day of their suffering at Tyburn. Together with an account of the occasion and manner of their taking in Holland. As also of their several occasional speeches, discourses and letters both before and in the time of their late imprisonment. Faithfully and impartially collected, for a general satisfaction. Prov. 29. 26, 'Every man's judgment cometh from the Lord.' Heb. 11. 13, 'These all dyed in Faith.' Printed in the year 1662."

The lengthy preface is (as usual) omitted in 'State Trials,' and the book in construction and plan is quite obviously based on the forgery of 1660. Thus, after a defence of the "Covenant" (ordered by Parliament to be burnt by the hangman in the same month), we have

"Some occasional passages, discourses and letters of Col. John Barkstead as they were taken from his own mouth, or left behind him in writing under his own hand"

(as if such a thing Would have been permitted ), the object of which is to urge the assassination of Charles II. as a "work of the Gospel." More fictitious letters from Okey follow, with "occasional passages" of Corbet, making up in all forty-eight pages of exceedingly blasphemous fiction, the remaining pages, 49 to 71, being devoted to an account of their execution, which had to be based to a great extent upon the printed narratives by which the forgers had been forestalled.

gives the following story in his 'Italian Popular Tales,' London, 1885, pp. 314-16:—

" [A poor peasant by the name of Crab pre- sented himself to a king as an adept astrologer, ami succeeded, through his cunning devices, in recovering for him a valuable ring that had been stolen by his faithless, servants.] The King, amazed, presented the astrologer with a large purse of money and invited him to a banquet. Among the other dishes, there was brought on the table a plate of crabs. Crabs must then

have been very rare, because only the King and; a few others knew their name. Turning to the- peasant, the King said : ' You, who are an astro- loger, must be able to tell me the name of these things which are in this dish.' The poor astro- loger was very much puzzled, and, as if speaking, to himself, but in such a way that the others heard him, he muttered : ' Ah ! Crab, Crab, what a plight you are in ! ' All who did not know that his name was Crab rose and proclaimed him the greatest astrologer in the world."

Parallel to, if not the original of, the above tale is a Buddhist one, which I have but recently come across on fols. 22-3 in the- second tome of the Japanese ' Oobaku * reprint, in the seventeenth century, of the- anonymous Chinese translation of the ' Sam- yuktavada - na - sutra * (Chin. ' Thah-pi-yii- king '), apparently executed during A.D. 67 220. It runs as follows :

" In times of yore, there stood a monastery with more than one hundred monks living and studying in it. Not far distant there resided a lay devotee (updsaka) who used to receive into his house every day a different member of the community, and ask him various doctrinal questions after giving him food, so that his invitation in this manner was never heartily accepted by some monks of shallow learning- Now the community comprised an absolutely ignorant old man, who had become a monk not very long before his turn came for the first time to be entertained by the devotee. Quite disinclined thereto, the former went with so many halts towards the latter's abode that he did not arrive there in due time, whereon the latter observed in error : ' This venerable one must be a great sage who steps so slowly on account of his minute attention to the code of personal' bearings.' Exceedingly glad of his acquaintance,, the devotee first offered a fine repast to the aged dunce, and then requested him to take a high seat whence to proceed to preach. He took the seat, but of course could utter nothing fit to the occasion. Indeed, so much confused was he that inadvertently he broke forth into an audible soliloquy, ' Ignorant man, how pitifully molested thou art because of thy ignorance ! ' This in- artificial speech was understood by the devotee to import the profound truth that all beings that remain ignorant of the twelve causes of existence are endlessly perturbed by the recurrent births and deaths, which make them ever molested and unhappy. Meditating upon this for a little while, the devotee became on a sudden an ele- mentary saint (srotd-panna). His rejoicing knew no bounds ; he went into his depository for a very valuable white woollen stuff, intending to present it to the old monk in token of his inex- pressible thanks. In the meantime, however,, the monk had run away back to his monastery, and no trace of him was visible in or about the dwelling of the devotee when the latter returned to it with the stuff. Accordingly, the devotee concluded the monk had flown away through his miraculous power, and went after him to the monastery, where the latter secreted himself in his closed cell, fully ashamed of his incapacity for preaching. But his master, who was possessed of all six supernatural talents, well discerned that