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