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value, both for its clever illustration of the turning worm and for its moral application. Petrus himself, though a poor Latinist, was a man of considerable understanding. "Fragilem etiam hominis esse consideravi complexionem," says he in the prologue of his work, quae ne taedium incurrat, quasi provehendo paucis et paucis instruenda est; divitiae quoque eius recordatus, ut facilius retineat, quodammodo necessario mollienda et dulcificanda est; quia et obliviosa est, multis indiget quae oblitorum faciant recordari. Propterea ergo libellum compegi, partim ex proverbiis philosophorum et suis castigationibus, partim ex proverbiis et castigationibus Arabicis et fabulis et versibus, partim ex animalium et volucrum similitudinibus." And this libellus with its thirty-odd tales is one of the main inlets of Arabic and therefore Indian and Persian-stories into the West. The simplest and perhaps the earliest form of the "dream-bread" story contains neither dream nor loaf. We begin - like the musing organist, doubtfully and far away with the very ancient fable of the oldest animal, and bespeak the reader's suspension of disbelief until we can resolve the dissonance. The original "form of this fable is probably found in the 'Culla Vagga' portion of the Vinayapitaka, one of the oldest parts of the Buddhist books, which Professor Cowell thinks can hardly be later than the third century B.C."1

Long ago a partridge, a monkey, and an elephant lived inharmoniously together in a great banyan-tree. It occurred to them that if they knew which of them was the eldest they could honor and obey him. So they asked one another what were the oldest things they could remember. The elephant recalled walking over the banyan-tree when it was so small it did not reach his belly. The monkey said when he was young he used to sit on the ground and eat the topmost shoots of the tree. "In yonder place," said the partridge, "was a great banyan whose fruit I once ate and voided it, and from the seed sprang this tree." The others then agreed the partridge was the eldest. They obeyed and honored him, and he admonished them in the five moral duties.'

1 W. A. Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions (Edinburgh and London), 2: 91. The same material is found also in Clouston's The Book of Sindibad (Appendix: 217 et seq.). I am indebted to Clouston for much of my Oriental matter.

Compare Upham, Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon, 3: 292, for the same fable (Göttinger Gelehrter Anzeiger, 1857. p. 1772). The following (from Göttinger Gelehrter Anzeiger, I. c.: Memoires sur les contrées occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit en Chinois, en l'an 648, par Hiouen-Thsang, et du Chinois en Français par M. Stanislas Julien) is a simpler and perhaps still older version: In the time when the Tathagata lived the life of a Bodhisatva, when he saw the people of his generation did not observe the traditions, he took the form of a bird, and, approaching a monkey and a white elephant, asked them, "Which of you saw this holy fig-tree first?" The two began to debate, and finally adjusted themselves to their rank according to their relative ages. The effect of this spread, until all men, both lay and clergy, followed their example. For another variant, adding a hare to the other three, cf. Clouston, Popular Tales, 2:92 (note 2). Clouston gives other Sanscrit variants, and also quotes from Cowell, "The Legend of the VOL. XXX. NO. 117.-25

We approach much nearer the story of the "Three Dreams" with a Mongolian version of the above fable, in which a wolf and a fox take a skin full of fat to the top of a mountain. "There is not enough for both of us," says the fox, "and it cannot be divided. Let one of us eat the whole."-"But which of us?" asks the wolf. "The elder," answers the fox. "When I was young," says the wolf, lying, "Mount Sumérn was only a clot of earth in a bog, and the ocean was only a puddle." Whereupon the fox begins to weep, because (he explains) he once had two cubs, and the youngest was just the wolf's age.1

A more elaborate tale from the Introduction of the "Sindibad Namah" - a poetical version, written in Persian A.D. 1375, of the "Book of Sindibad," which is as old as the tenth century - makes the transition practically complete.

Two intimate friends, an old wolf and a fox, travelling together, were joined by a camel. They went on for a long time through a desert, their only food a pumpkin. At length, tired, parched, and hungry, they came to a pool, set forth their pumpkin, and after much discussion decided it should go to the eldest. Said the wolf: "Indian, Tajik, and Turk know that my mother bore me a week before God created heaven and earth, time and space. Therefore I have the best right to the pumpkin." "Yes," said the fox, "I was standing by and lit the taper the night you were born." Hearing these speeches, the camel bent forward and snapped up the pumpkin, saying, “It is impossible to conceal a thing so manifest as this, — that with such a neck and haunches and back as mine, it was neither yesterday nor last night that my mother bore me.'

11 2

Oldest Animals," in Y Cymrodor, October, 1882. In the Mabinogion, Arthur's messengers in search of Mabon, son of Modron, go to the ousel, then to the stag, the owl, the eagle, and the salmon (cf. Lady Guest's ed., London, 1842, 4: 297 et seq.). A note, p. 361, refers to the same tradition in Davydd ap Gwilym's Yr Oed, in which there are only three animals. Because three is the usual number in the Orient, Cowell thinks Davydd's version is the older. Compare also another Welsh story in Ausland, 1857, No. 17, p. 398. -Professor Archer Taylor of Washington University, to whose invaluable aid this article is greatly indebted, sends me the following additional references on Sending to the Older or Oldest Folklore, 1: 504, 20: 243; Folk-lore Journal, 1 : 318; Jahresbericht über die Erscheinungen auf dem Gebiete der germanischen Philologie, 10: 129; Germania, 37: 363; Zs. d. Vereins für Volkskunde, 7: 207; Bolte und Polívka, Anmerkungen, 2: 400; Rhys, Cymmrodorion, 1896; Asbjørnsen og Moe, Norske Folke-Eventyr, Kjøbenhavn, 1876, No. 5, "Den syvende Far i Huset," p. 21; D. H. Hyde, Legends of Saints and Sinners, p. 56; W. M. Parker, Na Daoine Sidhe (Gaelic Fairy Tales), Glashu, 1908, pp. 34-39; J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1900), p. 64; R. Basset, Nouveaux contes berbères (Paris, 1897), No. 76, pp. 30-31; Belkassen ben Sedira, Cours de langue kabyle, pp. ccxxiii-ccxxiv; Chauvin, Bibliographie, 7: 61, (note 4); Hahn, Griech- und Albanesische Märchen, No. 15 (Am. J. Philology, 37:415).

1 Clouston, Popular Tales, 2: 93-94; variants, p. 94 (note 1); and cf. Belkassen ben Sedira, reference on p. 379, note 2, above.

2 Asiatic Journal, 35 (1841): 175. Compare Chauvin (op. cit., 8: 73 [No. 40]; and pp. I et seq.) for the different versions of the Sindibad. The Introduction, which contains this story, does not appear in the earlier extant versions. Clouston (The Book of Sindi

A similar story of a camel, a steer, and a goat, who find a bit of grass that each wants to eat, occurs in Volume 6 of the "Mesnewi" of the thirteenth-century Persian poet Dschelaleddin Rumi;1 and in another volume (2: 288, No. Ivi) there is a still closer parallel to the exemplum of Petrus in the story of a Moslem, a Christian, and a Jew.

A Moslem, a Christian, and a Jew were travelling together, and on the way they found a ducat. Since they could not agree how to divide it, the Jew suggested that they buy some flour, butter, and sugar, and make a sort of halwa, or cake, that they all could eat. The others agreed; but when the halwa was finished, the Jew said: "Now we shall quarrel over the larger and smaller portions. I think it is better that we go to sleep, and allow whichever of us has the most beautiful dream to eat the whole cake." The other two agreed to this also. But while they were asleep, the Jew ate the halwa all himself. When they awoke, the Moslem told how the Prophet had appeared to him in a vision, had led him into Paradise, and had shown bad) conjectures that the Sindibad Namah may "more faithfully reflect the Book of Sindibad than the older texts" (p. lii). Certainly the story of the camel, the wolf, and the fox, may be assumed to be older than the Sindibad Namah.

What appears to be a weakened form of this tale is given by Decourdemanche from a Turkish text of the Sindibad, translated from the Persian about the middle of the sixteenth century (Revue des Traditions Populaires, 14 [1899]: 325-327). The story is told in considerable detail. The three animals have a bit of bread which they decide to award to the one who proves his general superiority. Each makes his boast in turn; then the camel raises his head, and says, "A person of my build is by nature purer of soul than a being of proud and envious spirit, even though of intelligent actions." And the others accept his argument and adjudge him the bread!

Somewhat analogous is "Le plus menteur des trois" given by R. Basset ("Contes et légendes arabes," No. CCXXI) in Revue des Traditions [Populaires, 14 (1899): 291. Three persons found a ducat (dinâr), and instead of sharing it they agreed to award it to the one who could tell the biggest lie. "My father was a perfumer," commences one, "and from an egg that he bought a magnificent cock was hatched. When it grew up, my father packed his perfumes in a valise and went about the town on the cock's back. But one day the cock was wounded, a veterinary recommended a kind of date to be applied to the wound, and soon a palm-tree grew up on the cock's back. In order to get the dates the neighbors threw bricks into the tree; the dates fell, but the bricks remained until a small valley was formed, which my father ploughed with a pair of oxen and sowed to melons. When these were ripe, I cut one of them open, but in doing so lost my knife. So, attaching a string to my waist, I descended into the melon. There I found three persons walking about, and asked them if they had seen my knife; they had spent ten days there looking for their camels, but they had seen no knife. I then returned to my rope and ascended." The others said: "Take the ducat. There never was a greater liar than you."- There is a very curious variant of this story in R. M. Dawkins, Modern Greek in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1916), p. 535.

Compare also FF Communications 2: 21 (No. 95 A): "Three fellows tell lies in such a way that each is confirmed by the next one's." - GRUNDTVIG, Danske Folkeaventyr, 3 (1883): 152.-See, further, Revue des Traditions Populaires, 7: 188, note 2 and references.

1 Mesnewi, 6: 310, No. lxii. Compare Hammer-Purgstall, Bericht über den zu Kairo in J. d. H. 1251 (1835) in sechs Foliobänden erschienen türkischen Commentar des Mesnewi Dschelaleddin Rumis, in Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie, 7 : 705.

him the splendors thereof. He continued with a long description of the roses, the pleasant odors, the milk and honey, the beautiful boys, and the houris with black eyes and eternal youth. "That is magnificent!" cried the Jew; "you would have deserved to eat the halwa." The Christian then related how the Lord Jesus appeared to him and for his sins damned him to hell; and he described most vividly the torments he saw there. "That is a very interesting dream," said the Jew, "and one not unworthy of the halwa. But, my friends, Moses appeared to me and said, 'One of thy companions is in Paradise, and the other is in hell, whence there is no return; eat, therefore, the halwa, that it may not spoil.' And this counsel I followed faithfully."

From the Persian this story was probably translated into Arabic in the "Nozhát el Odaba," a collection of witty and diverting tales from various sources. It may be conjectured that it was this very tale, or a closely similar variant of it, that Petrus Alphonsi made over into the exemplum of the two burghers and the peasant. But there is another version which Petrus may have known and adapted, that of Judas and the goose, related in the Huldreich redaction of the "Toldoth Jeschu." 2

On the journey from Rome to Jerusalem, Jesus, Peter, and Judas stopped at a small inn, and mine host had only one goose to offer his three guests. Jesus then took the goose and said, "This is verily not sufficient for three persons; let us go to sleep, and the whole goose shall be his who shall have the best dream." Whereupon they lay down to slumber. In the middle of the night Judas arose and ate the goose. When morning came, the three met, and Peter said, "I dreamed I sat at the foot of the throne of Almighty God." And to him Jesus answered, "I am the son of Almighty God, and I dreamed thou wert seated near me; my dream is therefore superior to thine, and the goose shall be mine to eat." Then Judas said, "And I, while I was dreaming, ate the goose." And Jesus sought the goose, but vainly, for Judas had devoured it.

On the relationship of the "Nozhat el Odaba" version and Petrus's "De duobus burgensibus et rustico," Gaston Paris expressed some doubt. "On a cru voir là [in the 'Nozhat el Odaba'] la forme primitive de ce récit, extraordinairement répandu au moyen âge, et on a jugé que cette forme primitive était juive; mais l'une et l'autre conclusion sont très douteuses." Certainly the conduct of the Jew here is typical of his race's emphasis on terrestrial rather than future rewards. But Paris was hardly justified in reasoning that the story

1 Hammer, Rosenöl, 2: 303 (No. 180). Other stories in this collection later became current in western Europe. - The above summary is based on the Arabic version. A more accurate translation than Hammer's is given by R. Basset, Contes et légendes arabes, No. CCCCLXXXV, “Le meilleur rêve" (Revue des Traditions Populaires, 15 [1900]: 668 et seq.), from MS. fonds arabe No. 3594, fol. 123, of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Historia Jeschuae Nazareni (Leyden, 1705), p. 51. From one point of view, this version may be regarded as a Jewish parody of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. Gaston Paris, Poésie du moyen âge, IIième série, p. 159.

could not have been of Jewish origin, because the Jews who must have written it lived after the advent of Mohammedanism, and therefore believed in a future life; for there is nothing in the action of the Jew who ate the halwa to preclude such a belief. He saw an opportunity to outwit his companions, and he took it. As is the case with all similar transactions, not to speak it profanely, — religion does not enter the question. Again, Paris was probably right in feeling that this tale was not designed to glorify unreservedly the man who duped the others, though, as will appear later, the middle ages saw it differently; but he should not support his opinion by reference to the version in which the leading rôle is assigned to Judas, "qu'ils [the Jews] n'ont nullement voulu réhabiliter." For the whole "Toldoth Jeschu" has Judas for its hero; his function is to overcome Jesus and to glorify the Jews.

As between the Persian-Arabic version, however, and the Judas version, the former is, I think, a rather better story, and is much closer to the form Petrus gave it in the "Disciplina Clericalis." The Judas version has a rather ad-hoc air, as though the tale of how a clever Jew got the best of a Moslem and a Christian had been worked over to give another instance of how Judas outwitted Jesus and one of his followers. There is nothing to indicate which developed first in point of time; but the presence of the one version in the work of Rumi, and the absence of the other from the earlier redactions of the "Toldoth," lends favor to the hypothesis that the Judas version is a later adaptation. There is, however, no reason to suppose that Petrus was not acquainted with both, with the latter during the years before his conversion to Christianity; and with the former, in his capacity of Arabic scholar, interested, as his work plainly shows, in all sorts of Oriental stories that could be made into moral or ethical examples.

The little book that Petrus "put together" in Latin in the early years of the twelfth century won an immediate and enduring popularity. The latest editors have traced sixty-three manuscripts containing the whole or portions of the "Disciplina Clericalis," from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, sixteen in Germany, fourteen in England, thirteen in France, and the rest in Austria, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, and Sweden. Moreover, in the thirteenth century the work was turned into elegiac couplets.3

1 Clouston says, "If Alphonsus adapted his story from the above, and it is not unlikely that he was acquainted with the 'Toldoth Jesu' before he became a convert to Christianity, it must be allowed that he greatly improved upon his model." — Popular Tales, p. 89, note 1.

* Compare Introduction to the Hilka-Söderhjelm edition.

* Edited in part by J. Stalzer, Stücke der Disciplina Clericalis des Petrus Alfonsi in lateinischen Versen der Berliner Handschrift Diez, B 28 (in Dritter Jahresbericht des k. k.

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