The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-03-26 00:00:00

WHAT WE OWE TO THE FAR PAST.

WHEN the Wise Man said there was nothing
new under the sun, he might have been
thinking not merely of the way in which
history repeats itself, but about the obliga-
tions of the age in which he lived to the
ages that had gone before. The same re-
mark is equally applicable in our own time,
at least to certain highly-prized products of
the human brain. All who have given the
matter their special study are agreed that
the modern world is indebted for many of
its cherished possessions, in the shape of
popular tales, to something much older and
more widely diffused.than the classical liter-
ature of ancient Greece 'and Rome, The
latest results of additional laborious re-
searches among the manuscript treasures
preserved in the British Museum, the Indian
Office, the Bodleian, and other great libra-
ries, only serve to confirm opinions previ-
ously expressed as to the antiquity and
Eastern origin of familiar stories commonly
supposed to be of native growth. Variants
of the same stories found mixed up with the
folk lore of different races in all parts of the
globe point in the direction of ancient parent
sources, and these souices are pronounced by
learned experts, who can support their view s
with documentary evidence, to be Oriental
—lndian, Persian, Arabian, or Egyptian.
Short stories, with few yet striking inci-
dents, bearing a strong similarity, though
locally coloured, might readily enough be
supposed to have independent native origins,
but this theory ,s quite 'untenable with re-
spect to longerritories, possessing some com-
plexity of plot, which is identical in all the
variants. The character of the plots, in
most instances, bears testimony to their
origin. No doubt a certain disquietude of
mind is apt to accompany the disillusion
which results from being told that the
familiar nursery tales about the Old Woman
and the Crooked Sixpence, the House tl-at
Jack Built, and Whittington and his Cat,
are as much Eastern in their origin as the
stories about Sindbad and Aladdin. It is
ather unpleasant to awaken to the know.
ledge that there were more inventive brains,
so far as fanciful creations are concerned, in
long byegone ages than in the present age,
and that the world would have been poorer
,
• (ran tt' lose
names and histories are utterly unknown,
had not lived in Orient lands three thousand
years ago. Seeing that our obligations to
ancient Eastern story-tellers are so great, lb
is something to be thankful for that. Cin-
drella, with the glass slippers, was the fanci-
ful creation of a European, Charles Perrault,
who lived in a century not very far removed
from our own. Whatever literary contro-
Ver --',alists may say when the disputatious
mood is on
about a:9 wer.,..."1 " fafr " be-
ingtntsLl
mis-translated " glass " in a renchl
edition of the original fairy tale, publish
at The Hague, it is certain that Cindrella,
glass slippers and all, will continue to be
cherished by- the Western nations as a
heroine whom the storied East, so fertile in
fanciful inventiveness in old times, cannot
be permitted to claim. There is something
more than disillusion there is a feeling
excited akin to that of mortified pride when
we are forced to acknowledge, on the
strength of authorative statements, sup-
ported by proofs, that many of the smartest
sayings and merriest jests, generally thought
to be the indubitable products of English
wit, weiv really the outcome of dusky-faced
wags who had Sanscrit for their mother
tongue. Prototypes of numbers of the jests,
contained in the collection of Hierocles, wlr)
flourished at Alexandria in the fifth century
of the Christian era, are to be found in much
earlier Buddhist writings, and the same has
to be said of the English collection made by
Andrew Borde, who was phy,ician to Henry
the Eighth.. Joe Miller and Archie Arm-
strong, who played the part of Yorick at the
Court of James 1., were credited by the com-
pilers of jest books with witticisms which
never fell from their lips, and the practice
has continued down to our own time of
fathering very ancient jokes upon modern
men of mark. Nevertheless, although it is
hard to have our faith in the fatherhood of
numerous jests thus rudely shaken, there
still remains a rich residuum of witt:cisms
which cannot be separated from the names
of such supreme wags as Samuel Foote,
Sydney Smith, and Douglas Jerrold. Our
Ametican cousins may also congratulate
themselves, though some of their jokes are
elder than their own primeval forests, that
there was not a single Josh Billings among
the ancient Buddhists. There is an entirely
original extravaganza element in American
WI; and humour which quite rivals without
reproducing the hyperbolical form of figur-
ative description characteristic of Eastern
poetry, including the Song of Solomon. It
is satisfactory, too, in the circumstances, to
receive assurance that there were noodles as
well as wise and clever men in the ancient
world, and that simpletons equal to t:ie
Gothamites could be reared in old times on

the banks of the Ganges. in connection
with the question of the indebtedness of the
living present to the long dead past for
popular tales and facetive, much interes';

_ _
naturally_ attaches to the _ mtliods _ and

periods -of their migration, which affords in

ample field for study and speculative surmise.
The circumstance that variants of the same

stories, Oriental in origin, which are com-
mon to all the countries of Earope, have
found a lodgment among the native races of
some of the groups of islands in the South
Pacific must always remain an inscrutable
mystery. But the migration into Europe
of Eastern tales in the Middle Ages was no
doubt greatly promoted by the crusades.
Sir Walter Scott, in his Talisman," which
is a tale of the crusades, describes the Trou-

badour Blon lel as visiting the camp of
Richard Coeur de Lion in Palestine, and
wandering minstrels, like himself, who fol-
lowed the march of armies, would be bure
to make good use of their opportunities for
increasing their stock of romantic tales.

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