Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/445

 9* s. vm. NOV. so, i90i.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

437

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1901.

CONTENTS. No. 205.

NOTES : -Sorrow's ' Turkish Jester,' 437 Duchy of Ber- wick, 439 Casanoviana, 410' Lettresdu Prince Bdwarde,' 4-11 Sehiller's Translators -Orme's ' History of Indoostan ' ' The Brownie of Blednoch ' ' The Tempest ' Anagram " Coonda-oil " : " Kunrla-oil "- Christadelphian, 442.

QUERIES. Londres- Thomas Gibbons Meredith Queries

Motto for Door of House " Eternal lack of pence "- Mortara : Arro "In petto," 443 Dunnet English Detenus of War Copperplate Cuts Bowyer Wills Adams China Horn Dancers, 444 Rime on Edward VII.

Marriage Folk-lore Nicholas Courtenay, M.P. Byrom's Epigram " Prospicimus modo," 445.

REPLIES : Widow of Malabar -Corporation Chains and Maces, 446 Crosier and Pastoral Staff Pall Mall Christ Church, Woburn Square, 447 Man in the Form of a Cross - Seventeenth-century Poem " Sawe " Renzo Trama- glino Monolith Johnson, Sheriff " Linkumnddle" Family Likeness St. Alice, 448 - Bricks -A. Fortescue, 449 Cann Office-" Keel " " Parver alley " - " Alewives," 451 Capt. Gordon Destruction of Historical Documents

"Quarter" of Corn Royal Progress of William III. Wearing Hat in Royal Presence, 452 Scott: "Miss Katies" Larks Field: Barons Down- Monsignor Erskine National Covenant, 453" Teenah"=Fig Tree Thurlow and Duke of Grafton, 454.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Clark's 'Care of Books ' Boas's 'Works of Thomas Kyd' Dickens's ' Barnaby Rudge' Prideaux's ' Notes for a Bibliography of Edward Fitz- Gerald ' Goethe's ' Hermann und Dorothea ' Cornish's 6 Chivalry.'

Notices to Correspondents.

BORROWS 'TURKISH JESTER.' THIS booklet was published by W. Webber in 1884 at Ipswich, under the title of "The Turkish Jester ; or, the Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi. Translated from the Turkish by George Borrow." Only 150 copies were printed, and the unsold re- mainder, with the copyright, was bought by Messrs. Jarrold, if I am correctly informed, so it is quite possible that the translation will not appear in Mr. Murray's new edition of Borrow's works. The editor's task was comparatively easy, as his labours were con- fined to drawing up the title-page and sup- pressing in the text one or two words that would have offended the eye of the Western reader. He did not consider it necessary to prefix an introduction to the book wherein he might have explained who Nasr ed-Din was, when and where he lived, &c. ; and thereby our editor missed an excellent opportunity of telling his readers a few interesting things about the bibliography of the " pleasantries " of the worthy efendi and about the collection of comic stones clustered round his name an old and extremely popular book in the East.

Nasr ud-Din Khojah,* as he is called in the Oriental MS. department of the British Museum, or Nasr al-Din Khwajah, as his name appears in the Catalogue of Printed Books issued by the other department of our great national institution, is always men- tioned in the jokes as a contemporary of Sultan Bayezid I. and his rival Timur Lenk ( = the Lame), and his tomb is not merely placed by common tradition in Ak-shehir as Dr. Rieu states but is actually shown to the visitor. Ak-shehir was a few years ago made more accessible to touristst by the opening of the new railway, which was quietly planned and constructed by German engineers and of course laid with rails " made in Germany " while their English colleagues were talking and writing a great deal about the best route for the Euphrates Valley railway to follow. The peculiar monument, at the sight of which the stern warriors of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt (in 1832) doubled up with laughter, though a prize was offered by the Sirdar to every man who was able to pass it and keep a straight countenance, was visited and described lately by a Hungarian savant, Dr. Ignacz Kunos, a well-known Orientalist. The tiirbf? or funeral monument over the grave consists of a roof resting upon four wooden (!) posts ; the spaces between the posts are left perfectly open on three sides, but on the fourth side it is walled in and provided with a door, which is kept locked with a padlock of unusually large dimensions. The monument was designed and raised by the worthy khojah himself so the tradi- tion goes and his grave is visited to this date by as many pious Moslems as that of any other great saint, like, e.g., Gul Baba's, in the vineyards of Old Buda. The pilgrims, if ailing, hang small bits of rags about the tomb, a belief being prevalent among them that the dead saint will cure their illness by miracles. The cheap editions of the "pleasantries " circulating in the East are often embellished with a rude cut show- ing the famous tomb mentioned by many old and modern writers of the East.

On dipping into the collection of comic stories we soon find that their author Nasr

East, and means " Pillar of the Faith." Khojah is a title, and denotes a spiritual adviser.
 * Nasr ed-Din is not an uncommon name in the

t Ak-shehir (=the " White Town ") in Asia Minor, about sixty English miles from Koniah, the old Iconium, and on the north-eastern slopes of Sultan Dagh (the Sultan Mountains). Koniah was the principal town of old Caramania, which was conquered by Timur Lenk after the signal defeat (in 1402) of Sultan Bayezid Yildirim (the Flash of Lightning).