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 Gordon Destruction of Historical Documents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