Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/446

 438

NOTES 'AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. NOV. so, 1901.

ed-Din was the Joe Miller of the East ; but many of them have been better told by more modern story-tellers, as, for instance, the fourth in the Borrow series about the nine aspers which were offered to the khojah in his dream, but which he lost through waking up while hankering after another to make them ten. The story is not quite so funny as that told about the Irishman who dreamt that he visited the Pope, who offered him some whisky cold ; but Pat preferred it hot, and lost his grog, as he woke up before the hot water arrived. Others, like, for instance, the first in this series, have evidently been spoiled in the translation. The khojah went up into the pulpit (mimber) one day and asked the congregation whether they knew what he was going to say. On receiv- ing a negative answer he exclaimed, " What shall I say to you until you do know?"- according to Borrow's translation and left the pulpit. According to another version, how- ever, his reply was, " If you do not know it, why should I tell you ? "* In another story it is related how the khojah ordered in his last will that he should be buried in an old grave, and on being asked the reason for this strange wish gives a very feeble, far-fetched explanation in Borrow's translation, but a perfectly intelligible one in other versions. His object was to deceive the two angels, Monkir and Nekir, when they should come to question him about his past life and deeds, by calling their attention to the age of the grave, and telling them that they had made a mistake, and had already been there before. It is almost impossible to pass an opinion about the quality of Borrow's work as a translator from the Turkish, as we do not know the particular original version which he followed. As in the case of Joe Miller's or Till Eulenspiegel's (Howleglas's) tales, scarcely two collections, especially those in MS., are alike. According to Dr. Rieu, of the British Museum ('Catalogue of Turkish MSS.'), and Meheraed Tevfik, one of the khojah's Turkish editors, the tales in their original version were first printed A.II. 1253 ; but this date is evidently an error. The year of the Hijreh in question began on 7 April, 1837, and a printed edition of the ' Menakibi [good saying.s] Nasir-ed-Din' was reviewed, a year after its appearance, in the Christmas number of the Athenaeum in 1834 (A.H. 1250). There is no copy of this edition in the British Museum, t which only possesses a MS. copy

means both " to know" and "to understand."
 * In the original a Turkish verb is used which

t The British Museum is particularly poor in printed Turkish books. According to Dr. Mullen-

made " apparently in the eighteenth century" (Add. MS. 7885). Borrow may have used another MS. copy.

Although, according to the reviewer in the Athenceum, some of the tales in the collection are " sullied by so much grossness and indelicacy " to a Western Puritan mind that they are unfit for translation, the stories have been, notwithstanding, translated into many European languages. Of English ver- sions we have, besides that of Borrow, one from the Persian by Nicholas Arratoon, pub- lished at Calcutta (in 1894) under the title of 'Gems of Oriental Wit and Humour ; or, the Sayings and Doings of Molla Nasraddin.'and, according to Dr. Kunos, another illustrated was being prepared (in 1899) by Konstan- tinidi (?). There are two German versions, one by W. von Camerloher (Triest, 1857), and another by Dr. E. Miillendorff in Reclam's well-known 'Universal-Bibliothek' (No. 2735) ; three French versions, one by N. Mallouf, of Smyrna, and two by L. Decourdemanche (Paris, 1876, and a more complete one Brussels, 1878) There are also Italian, Hun- garian, Rumanian, New Greek, Armenian, Servian, Croatian, and Bosnian versions. There are, of course, numerous Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Tartar versions circu- lating in the East. The best Turkish editions are those by Mehemed Tevfik in 1883 and by Dr. Kiinos under the title ' Nasr ed - Din khojah Laitaflari' (Budapest, 1899), the latter collection gathered on the spot in Asia Minor and rendered in the dialect spoken about Aydin and Koniah. Or, to be quite correct, the first 137 jokes were collected by Dr. Kunos and Yussuff Samih .efendi of Koniah, and 28 more were taken over from Mehemed Tevfik's book.

The tales in Borrow's translation are not numbered (which is another fault of this faulty edition), but 1 have counted them, and make their number 112. It is to be hoped that Mr. Murray will be able to come to some arrangement with the holders of the copy- right, and include an improved edition of the ' Turkish Jester ' in Borrow's complete works now appearing under the able editorship of Mr. Knapp. L. L. K.

dorff, there were thirteen Turkish printed editions of Nasr ed-Din known in 1890, of which the first appeared A.H. 1253. With the still earlier edition of A.H. 12,49 there would thus be fourteen. Not one of these is represented by a copy in the British Museum. Mehemed Tevfik's partly expurgated edition was published by Arakel in Constantinople A.H. 1299 (in 1883). It contains 71 tales of Nasr ed-Din, and 130 by "Buadem." Every one of these latter tales begins with the words "Bu adem," which means " this man."