Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-03-06

"sich. by the way, is excellent English
| of its kind
We pass over the graver contests, when
| kings ask sages or sages ask one another,
(which is the oldest thing, the greatest
| thing, the wisest thing? Nor can We
| linger on the riddles of Esop for which an
| Oriental origin is claimed by many scholars
| who trace them now to Arabia, now in In
| dia. The story which has the deepest signi-
| fcance as we'll as the widest popularity is
| that in which >Esop undertakes to drink
| the sea dry and, when confronted with his
\ task demands that the rivers be turned off
first as they were not included in the bar
gain. 49,.
Riddles With More Than One Answer.
Roman boys asked one, another: "My
mother bore me and is borne of me-" Tho
answere is 'fce,' although it might be a
dozen things, and the Greek form of it
makes the answer ''day and night, either
of which will serve. Indeed the night as
the work of the day has figured in serious
poetry from Eschylus down.
In such contests to lose ones head fg-
uratively was often to lose ones head liter
ally. There are many ancient stories in
which life Is the forfeit of failure to read the
riddle The most familiar of these is the
question propounded by the Sphinx, which
pstill enjoys a wide popularity in Greece.
Unfortunately so much crawling is done at
all ages that "four-footed in the morning,
two-footed at noon, ard three-footed at
night" W ill hardly cover the facts.
One of the more famous riddles of the
dangerous kind is that which cost Homer
his life, for the poet is said to have pined
away because he could not find the key to
the fsherman's riddle, who, when asked by
him what they had caught, replied:
l.f-, .t,,%x Il
not catch we have on us % 80
This riddle had great popularity, although
Homer's scholars when they mention it put
it aside scornfully-not recognizing the in
terest taken by the people in the fortunes
of the poet hero The walls of Pompeii
show the meditatory poet and the inquiring
fisherman. Less serious was the Greek GUS
tom Of asking conundrums after dinner,
which was favorite way of testing the ca
pacity of a. suitor for the hand of the daugh-
ter of the house. The casket story in the
Merchant of Venice" is of the same family.
Decapitation puzzles were very common,
as were all the other tricks with letters.
Anagrams were favorite playthings, andthe
whole brood of acrostics.' Pc
Doesn't Pay to Translate Puns.
The chapter of riddles that involve puns
must be passed over as, in the main, puns
And then the Greek language in it's pho
netic perfection did not readily admit OF
puns, and q successful pun was matter Of
self-gratulatiOn such as we can hardly
understand. The most ancient of all was
the pun by which Odyssus deceived the Cy-
clops, who understood him to say norman"
when he said '.noman'" (nawman), cock
ney possibility which 1 blush to record.
The best Greek pun on record requires two
words to make it and reminds one of the
Hamburg gentleman who made up clubs Of
four to understand one of Rivarol's jokes.
The Odyssey contains more than one rid
die. The f'Kine of the Sun, IN the twelfth
book, are the days of the year, and the
sheep are the nights of the same. The
description in the tenth book of the land in
which q sleepless man could earn double
wages is riddle, the answer Of which 10
sought in the extreme north; and the cave
of the nymphs in the thirteenth is still an
enigma.
Some of the literary riddles were exceed
ingly clever, so clever that the solution has
not been found yet like Praed's ''Sir Hillary
at Agincourt;" and having reached this
point in our wapderings we take the hint
and "give it up
Professor of Greek at Johns Hopkins