Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/145

 ii s. vi. AUG. 10, i9i-2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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DELAFIELD ARMS (11 S. vi. 29). MR- J. R. DELAFIELD will find an account of how the Delafields erroneously were credited with the Lascelles arm (Sable, a cross paty gold) in an article by Oswald Barren in The Ancestor, xi. 97 et seq.

T. H. B. VABE-WAIJPOLE.

" MORGENSTCNDE HAT GOLD IM MtTSDE "

(11 S. vi. 49). An exact counterpart is the Dutch proverb " De morgenstond heeft goud in den mond." The English equivalent, " Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," reminds one forcibly of Aristotle's To re VWKTW/)' TOUTO yap KCU rrpo?, KCU otKOVO/xtav, Kai <iAocro<i<xv X/3'</o-6/zov. With an Italian variant, " La mattina fa rider' il cuor'," I was often greeted by my landlady years ago in Rimini, when she brought me my caffe con latte before I set out for an early dip in the Adriatic.

J. F. SCHELTEMA.

MR. COOPER'S interesting query gives me an opportunity to present the case for "' early rising " as pictured in the forty books of the Talmud, which, briefly stated, are nothing less than a long commentary on that laudable practice. Countless anec- dotes scattered over its wide borders illustrate this in many ways. I must, however, content myself with a few typical extracts, beginning with the locus classicus in Avodah Zarah 20. The passage, which may be a later interpolation into the text, is very singular, being contrary to the main current of Hebrew philosophy and Agadism, in which, on the whole, asceticism and the monastic principle of life find no wide acceptance. " The study of the Torah promotes early rising (zeheeruss) ; early rising promotes industry ; industry pro- motes self-respect." Obviously this is the voice of the Essenes. whose chief endeavour was after holiness and saintly living. Jose- phus and Philo tell us that the Essenes rose and took their morning ablutions (tevillous) with the lark, in order to greet the radiant orb of day joyously with prayer before beginning their labours in field and farm. This so-called " pagan " reverence for, and worship of. Nature made the Essenes dis- liked by their less artistic, if equally pious, brethren in faith ; but it endears them to us.

The foregoing interpretation of that mystical passage may not be correct ; yet we have ample evidence to confirm the practice of rising in the small hours to study

the Torah or to pray in the synagogue. Take a citation from Succah 28. We are told that throughout the whole of his brilliant career Rabban Yochanon Ben Zakkai never walked a mile without dis- coursing of God and the Torah, and was the last to depart from the House of Study and the first to enter it at daybreak, in order to greet each of his disciples on his arrival.

Living in less austere times, when manners became relaxed, the mediaeval Rabbins saw the need of reviving this practice ; so they invented a midrash about Joseph's good luck and the reward for stirring abroad before cockcrow a legend obviously derived indirectly from Herodotus, who tells a similar story about Polycrates and a fish. The unhappy Joseph was, I fancy, a bachelor who had to do his own " Sabbath-marketing " very early. One Friday, on bringing home his basket of fish, he found in the gills of a noble carp a very costly pearl. Hence- forward the carp shared with the mythical " Livyoson " a reputation for special sanc- tity ; and we know of one Berlin fishmonger in the eighteenth century who acquired a huge fortune through the piety of Hebrew housewives and their zeal to be " first in the field " on Fridays. In one of his famous ' Studies in Judaism ' Prof. Schechter relate^ of a seventeenth-century scholar named Hameln that " he got up every morning at 3 o'clock, dressed himself in his synagogue suit (Schulrock), and read aloud his prayer- book."

The most beautiful of all the many legends and anecdotes on this delightful theme may be found in Berachoth 3, and has actually a realistic counterpart in a sixteenth-century mystic residing in Safed, who wrote down in a diary entitled ' Maggid Meishareem ' the reproachful language of his "guardian angel " as heard in a dream. His mentor accused him of sloth, because he once slept one hour after sunrise, and he " was threatened that if he ever again committed the sin of separating his heart from Torah for so long a time, the consequences would be terrible for him." ' Studies in Judaism : Safed.' The Talmudic legend runs thus :

" Rab Acha Bar Bizna had it direct from Simon the Saint that a magic harp was suspended every night over King David's couch. At the stroke of midnight, stirred by a breeze, the harp gave forth a refreshing melody which roused the monarch from his slumbers to study the Torah " :

an obligatory duty (mitzvah) from which no one in the Hebrew commonwealth could claim exemption. M. L. R. BRESLAR. Percy House, South Hackney.