82
NOTES AND Q UERIES. [ii s. iv. JULY 29, 1911.
for the manufacture of paper on account of
the duty on foreign rags. Punch came out
with a cartoon on the 7th of April, 1860,
' A Glimpse of the Future : a Probable
and Large Importation of Foreign Rags. ' The
cartoon portrays young Bomba, Napo-
leon III., and the Pope coming to England
in patched and ragged clothes ; in the same
number appears ' The Song of the Distressed
Paper-Maker,' air " Billy Barlow " :
My name is John Brown, making paper's my trade, And by it till now a good living I've made ; I've saved, too, a trifle ten thousand or so But 'tis all U.P. now with the business, I trow.
Oh woe ! raggedy Oh ! In rags soon each maker of paper will go.
It's that blessed Bill Gladstone our ruin who'll
cause, With that Budget which gained him such wondrous
applause ;
Says he : " Off your paper the duty I'll throw. Though you won't get your rags free from France
yet, I know."
Oh woe ! raggedy oh ! Say we : " Then we're ruined ; to pot we must go."
The Birthday Number just issued is well worthy of the " commemoration ; the illus- trations have been skilfully chosen from past numbers, and the letterpress which precedes the various periods is admirable. We find policemen in their chimneypot hats, white ducks, and body coat ; the Chartist scare and the special constables ; men with " Dundreary " whiskers ; ladies in bloomer costumes ; the hat and table-moving experi- ments ; Paterfamilias as a Volunteer ; the vogue of croquet ; and the introduc- tion of the sewing machine, upon which a draper suggests that " there is nothing left for the ladies to do now but to improve their intellects.
One of the best likenesses of Norman Maccoll, the late editor of The Athenaeum, appeared in Punch in an illustration of literary characters in the Reading Room at the British Museum (March 28th, 1885).
It is pleasant to note that on the occasion of the Punch Exhibition Mr. Bradbury sought the aid .of the readers of ' N. & Q.' to help to make the Exhibition a success.
Again, many happy returns !
JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS.
CHAUCER'S ' PARDONER'S TALE ' :
AFRICAN ANALOGUE.
I DO not know whether any one has yet pointed out that there exists a Swahili version of the story on which Chaucer's ' Pardoner's Tale ' is founded. This has been printed in ' Kibaraka ' (Universities'
Mission Press, Zanzibar, 2nd ed., 1896%
p. 89) under the title of 'Chungu* za
Thahabu' ('The Heaps of Gold'). It is
evidently derived from a Muhammsdan
source. Mtoro bin Mwenyi Bakari, Swahili
Reader at the Hamburg Colonial Institute,
informs me that it is contained in the ' Vitabu
vya ilmu,' by which Arabic religious works
other than the Koran are meant ; but I
have no clue to the particular book in which
it is to be found. It is in substance identical
with the Persian version contributed by
W. A. Clouston to the Chaucer Society's
volume of ' Originals and Analogues of some-
of the Canterbury Tales' (1888, p. 423),
and agrees much more closely with this
than with the " First Arabian Version "
(p. 426). The Persian settlements on the
Swahili coast have left traces not yet effaced
by centuries of Arab occupation, so that it
is not surprising if Persian traditions have
been incorporated with Swahili folk-lore.
Other tales, orally current and now reduced
to writing, appear to have been derived,
directly or indirectly, from Persia and
India, e.g., ' The Washerman's Donkey '
in Steere's ' Swahili Tales,' which is in
substance the Sumsumara Jataka. The
numerous minor differences between the
Swahili story and Mr. Clouston 's may well
be due to oral transmission ; moreover, it
must be remembered that the latter is a
literary one, taken from a poem by Ferid-
u'd-Din ' Attar, and possibly departs more
from the traditional basis than does the
Swahili. I append, as a curiosity, an English
rendering of the latter, which, as will be seen,
omits the first and second miracles recorded
in the Persian. Any information as to its
immediate source will be welcome.
Jesus [Isa] set out one day to beg [mnaja, ex- plained by Mtoro as equivalent to ku omba]. And! he went on till he met a man on the road, who asked him, " Whither goest thou ? " And he answered him, " I go begging." And he said to him, " Let us go together, thou and I." And: Jesus said, " Thou wilt not be able to go along with me." And he said to him, " I shall be able." [Is this a reminiscence of Matt. xx. 22 ?] They went on till they came near to a town, and Jesus took out some money and said to that man, " Go into the town and buy three loaves, one for thee and one for me, and one we will put by " [tutveJce akiba, keep in reserve]. He went and bought the loaves and brought them back. And they ate there, each his own [loaf], and one remained over. And Jesus said, " Carry this, and when we find some water we will eat it."
And they went on their way, and next day they came to some water. And Jesus said to
- Chungu, with aspirated ch, means " a heap " ;
chimgu, " a pot," would be more phonetically written tyungu.
