Читать книгу The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century - Wiener Leo - Страница 7

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THERE can be no doubt that the Jews were the most potent factors in the dissemination of folk-literature in the Middle Ages.[23] Various causes united to make them the natural carriers of folklore from the East to the West, and from the West back again to the East. They never became so completely localized as to break away from the community of their brethren in distant lands, and to develop distinct national characteristics. The Jews of Spain stood in direct relations with the Khazars of Russia, and it was a Jew whom Charlemagne sent as ambassador to Bagdad. The Jewish merchant did not limit his sphere of action by geographical lines of demarkation, and the Jewish scholar was as much at home in Italy and Germany as he was in Russia or Egypt. Again and again, in reading the biographies of Jewish worthies, we are confronted with men who have had their temporary homes in three continents. In fact, the stay-at-homes were the exception rather than the rule in the Middle Ages. In this manner not only a lively intercourse was kept up among the Jews of the diaspora, but they unwittingly became also the mediators of the intellectual life of the most remote lands: they not only enriched the literatures of the various nations by new kinds of compositions, but also brought with them the substratum of that intellectual life which finds its expression in the creations of the popular literature.

The Jews have always possessed an innate love for story telling which was only sharpened by their travels. The religious and semi-religious stories were far from sufficient to satisfy their curiosity, and in spite of the discussions by the Rabbis of the permissibility of reading foreign books of adventure, they proceeded to create and multiply an apocryphal and profane folk-literature which baffles the investigator with its variety. Most addicted to these stories were the women, who received but little learning in the language of their religious lore, and who knew just enough of their Hebrew characters to read in the vernacular books specially prepared for them. Times changed, and the education of the men varied with the progress of the Hebrew and the native literatures; but the times hardly made an impression on the female sex. The same minimum of ethical instruction was given them in the eighteenth century that they had received in the fourteenth, and they were left to shift for themselves in the selection of their profane reading matter. The men who condescended to write stories for them had no special interest to direct the taste of their public, and preferred to supply the demand rather than create it; nor did the publishers have any more urgent reason why they should trouble themselves about the production of new works as long as the old ones satisfied the women. Consequently, although now and then a 'new' story book saw daylight, the old ones were just as eagerly received by the feminine readers. And thus it happens that what was read with pleasure at its first appearance is accepted as eagerly to-day, and the books that were issued from the printing presses of the sixteenth century may be found in almost unchanged hundredth editions, except as to the language, printed in 1898 in Wilna or Warsaw.

Time and space are entirely annihilated in the folklore of the Russian Jews. Here one finds side by side the quaint stories of the Talmud of Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian origin, with the Polyphemus myth of the Greeks, the English 'Bevys of Hamptoun,' the Arabic 'Thousand and One Nights.' Stories in which half a dozen motives from various separate tales have been moulded into one harmonious whole jostle with those that show unmistakable signs of venerable antiquity. Nowhere else can such a variety of tales be found as in Judeo-German; nor is there any need, as in other literatures, to have recourse to collections of the diligent searcher; one will find hundreds of them, nay thousands, told without any conscious purpose in the chapbooks that are annually issued at Wilna, Lemberg, Lublin, and other places. Add to these the many unwritten tales that involve the superstitions and beliefs of a more local character, in which the Slavic element has been superadded to the Germanic base, and the wealth of this long-neglected literature will at once become apparent to the most superficial observer.[24]

These stories have dominated and still dominate the minds of the women and children among the Russian, Roumanian, and Galician Jews. For them there exists a whole fantastic world, with its objects of fear and admiration. There is not an act they perform that is not followed by endless superstitious rites, in which the beliefs of Chaldea are inextricably mixed with French, Germanic, or Slavic ceremonies. To pierce the dense cloud of superstition that has involved the Mosaic Law, to disentangle the ancient religion from the rank growth of the ages, to open the eyes of the Jews to the realities of this world, and to break down the timeless and spaceless sphere of their imaginings—that has been the task of the followers of the Mendelssohnian Reform for the last one hundred years. In the pages of the Judeo-German works that they have produced to take the place of the story books of long ago, one meets continually with lists of superstitions that they are laboring to combat, with the names of books that they would fain put in an index expurgatorius.

It is not difficult to discern a number of distinct strata in the many folk-tales that are current now, even though the motives from various periods may be found hopelessly intertwined in one and the same story. The oldest of these may be conveniently called the Talmudical substratum, as in those older writings the prototypes of them can be found. Of course, these in their turn are of a composite nature themselves, but that need not disconcert us in our present investigation as long as the resemblance is greater to the stories in the Talmud than to the originals from which that collection has itself drawn its information. There is a large variety of subjects that must be classified in that category. Here belong a number of animal fables, of stories of strange beasts, much imaginary geography, but especially a vast number of apocryphal Bible stories.[25] One of the most interesting series of that class is the one that comprises tales of the river Sambation.[26] This river has rarely been discovered by poor mortals, although it has been the object of their lifelong quest. During the week it throws large rocks heavenwards, and the noise of the roaring waters is deafening. On the Sabbath the river rests from its turmoil, to resume again its activity at its expiration. Behind the Sambation lives the tribe of the Red Jews.

The best story of that cycle is told by Meisach. An inquisitive tailor sets out in search of the Sambation River. Of all the Jews that he meets he inquires the direction that he is to take thitherward; and he makes public announcements of his urgent business at all the synagogues that he visits. But all in vain. Three times he has already traversed the length and the breadth of this earth, but never did he get nearer his destination. Undaunted, he starts out once more to reach the tribe of the Red Jews. Suddenly he arrives near that awful river. Overwhelmed by its din, terrified at its eruptions, he falls down on the ground and prays to the all-merciful God. It happened to be a few minutes before the time that the river was to go to rest. The clock strikes, and, as if by magic, the scene is changed. The tailor finds a ford, passes on the other side, and, exhausted from his wandering, he lies down to sleep in the grass. The tribe of men that live there are a race of giants. One of them, noticing the intruder, takes him to be a new species of a grasshopper, picks him up, and slips him in his spacious coat pocket. He proceeds to the bathhouse to take his ablution, and thence to the synagogue, leaving the tailor all the while in his pocket. The giants begin to pray. At the end, while a pause ensues, the pious tailor unconsciously exclaims 'Amen!' Astonished to hear that mysterious voice, the giant brings the tailor to light and showers many signs of respect upon him, for even the giants know how to honor a pious man. The tailor liked it there so much that he never returned to his native home.

Abramowitsch has made a fine use of this story in his Jewish 'Don Quixote.' The hero of that novel has so long pondered about the Sambation River and the mysterious race of men that live beyond it, that he loses his reason, and starts out to find them. But he does not get beyond Berdichev. Another very fruitful class of stories belonging to that category is the one in which the prophet Elijah plays an important part.[27] According to the popular belief, Elijah did not die; he even now frequently comes to visit men, to help them in some dire necessity. His presence is surmised only when he has disappeared, generally leaving behind him a vapory cloud. So rooted is this belief in the visitation of Elijah, that during the ceremony of the circumcision a chair is left unoccupied for the good prophet. Elijah is not the only one that may be seen nowadays. Moses and David occasionally leave their heavenly abodes to aid their devotees or to exhort those that are about to depart from the road of righteousness. King David presides over the repast at the conclusion of the Sabbath, for it is then that a song in which his name is mentioned is recited. There are some who regard it as a devout act to celebrate that occasion with unswerving accuracy. To those who have made the vow of 'Mlawe-Malke,' as the repast is called, King David is wont to appear when they are particularly unfortunate. Unlike Elijah, he makes his presence known by his company of courtiers and musicians, and he himself holds a harp in his hands; and unlike him, he resorts to supernatural means to aid his protégés.

Most of the medieval legends cluster around the Rabbis of Central Europe, who have in one way or another become famous. The cities of Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Worms, Prague, Cracow, have all their special circle of wonderful tales about the supernatural powers of the worthies of long ago. But the king of that cycle of miracle workers is Rambam, as Maimonides is called.[28] His profound learning and great piety, his renowned art of medicine, his extensive travels, have naturally lent themselves to imaginative transformations. He has undergone the same transmogrification that befell Vergil. Like the latter, he is no longer the great scholar and physician, but a wizard who knows the hidden properties of plants and stones, who by will power can transfer himself in space, and who can read dreams and reveal their future significance. His whole life was semi-miraculous. When he had arrived at the proper age to enter an academy of medicine, he applied to a school where only deaf-mutes were accepted as disciples of Æsculapius. This precaution was necessary, lest the secrets of the art be disseminated, to the disadvantage of the craft. Rambam pretended to have neither hearing nor speech. His progress was remarkable, and in a short time he surpassed his teachers in the delicate art of surgery. Once there came to the school a man who asked to be cured of a worm that was gnawing at his brain. The learned doctors held a consultation, and resolved to trepan the skull and extract the worm. This was at once executed, and Rambam was given permission to be present at the operation. With trembling and fear he perceived the mistake of his teachers and colleagues, for he knew full well that the man would have to die as soon as the seventh membrane under the dura mater was cut away. With bated breath, he stood the pang of anxiety until the sixth covering had been removed. Already the doctors were applying the lancet to the seventh, when his patience and caution gave way, and he exclaimed, 'Stop; you are killing him!' His surprised colleagues promised to forgive his deceit if he would extract the worm without injury to the membrane. This Rambam carried out in a very simple manner. He placed a cabbage leaf on the small opening in the seventh covering, and the worm, attracted by the odor of the leaf, came out to taste of the fresh food, whereupon it was ousted.[29]

Of such a character are nearly all of his cures. The supernatural element of the later period, where everything is fantastic, is still absent from the Rabbi legends. There is always an attempt made to combine the wonderful with the real, or rather to transfer the real into the realm of the miraculous. The later stories of miracle-working pursue the opposite course: they engraft the most extraordinary impossibilities on the experiences of everyday life. Rambam's travels have also given rise to a large number of semi-mythical journeys. One of the legends tells of his sojourn in Algiers, where he incurred the hatred of the Mussulmans for having decided that an oil-vat had become impure because a Mohammedan had touched it, whereas another vat into which a weed had fallen was pronounced by him to be ritually pure. Knowing that his life was in danger, he escaped to Egypt, making the voyage in less than half an hour by means of a miraculous document that he took with him and that had the power of destroying space. In Cairo he became the chief adviser of the king, and he later managed to save the country from the visitation of the Algerian minister, who had come there ostensibly to pursue the fugitive Rambam, but in reality to lay Egypt waste by his magical arts.

The most interesting stories that still belong to that cycle are those that have developed in Slavic countries. Out of the large material that was furnished them by the German cities, in conjunction with the new matter with which they became familiar in their new homes, they have moulded many new stories in endless variety. The number of local legends is unlimited. There is hardly an inn on the highways and byways of Western Russia and Galicia that has not its own circle of wonderful tales. Every town possesses its remarkable Rabbi whose memory lives in the deeds that he is supposed to have performed. But none, except the town of Mesiboz, the birthplace of Bal-schem-tow, the founder of the sect of the Khassidim, can boast of such a complete set of legendary tales as the cities of Wilna and Cracow. In Wilna they will still tell the curious stranger many reminiscences of those glorious days when their Rabbis could arrest the workings of natural laws, and when their sentence was binding on ghosts as well as men. They will take him to the synagogue and show him a large dark spot in the cupola, and they will tell him that during an insurrection a cannon-ball struck the building, and that it would have proceeded on its murderous journey but for the command of the Rabbi to be lodged in the wall. They will take him to a street where the spooks used to contend with humankind for the possession of the houses in which they lived:—the contention was finally referred to the Gaon of Wilna. After careful inquiry into the justice of the contending parties he gave his decision, which is worthy of the wisdom of Solomon: he adjudicated the upper parts of the houses, as much of them as there was above ground, to the mortals, while the cellars and other underground structures were left in perpetuity to the shadowy inhabitants of the lower regions.[30] One of the Gaons at Wilna was possessed of the miraculous power to create a Golem, a homunculus. It was a vivified clay man who had to do the bidding of him who had given him temporary life. Whenever his mission was fulfilled he was turned back into an unrecognizable mass of clay.[31]

A special class of legends that have been evolved in Slavic countries are those that tell of the Lamed-wow-niks. According to an old belief the world is supported by the piety of thirty-six saints (Lamed-wow is the numerical representation of that number). If it were not for them, the sins of men would have long ago worked the destruction of the universe. Out of this basal belief have sprung up the stories that relate the deeds of the 'hidden' saints. They are called 'hidden' because it is the very essence of those worthies not to carry their sanctity for show: they are humble artisans, generally tailors or shoemakers, who ply their humble vocations unostentatiously, and to all intents and purposes are common people, poor and rather mentally undeveloped. No one even dreams of their hidden powers, and no one ever sees them studying the Law. When by some accident their identity is made apparent, they vigorously deny that they belong to the chosen Thirty-six, and only admit the fact when the evidence is overwhelmingly against them. Then they are ready to perform some act by which a calamity can be averted from the Jews collectively, and after their successful undertaking they return to their humble work in some other town where there is no chance of their being recognized and importuned.

One of the most perfect stories of that kind is told of a hidden saint who lived in Cracow in the days of Rabbenu Moses Isserls. The Polish king had listened to the representations of his minister that as descendant of the Persian king he was entitled to the sum of money which Haman had promised to him but which he evidently had not paid, having been robbed of it by the Jews. He ordered the Jews of Cracow to pay forthwith the enormous sum upon pain of being subjected to a cruel persecution. After long fasting Rabbenu Isserls told his congregation to go to Chaim the tailor who was living in the outskirts of the town and to ask him to use his supernatural powers in averting the impending calamity. After the customary denials, Chaim promised to be the spokesman of the Jews before the king. On the next morning he went to the palace. He passed unnoticed by the guards into the cabinet of his majesty and asked him to sign a document revoking his order. In anger, the king went to the door to chide the guards for having admitted a ragged Jew to his presence. As he opened it, he stepped into space, and found himself in a desert. He wandered about for a whole day and only in the evening he met a poor man who offered him a piece of dry bread and showed him a place of shelter in a cave. The poor man advised him not to tell of his being a king to any one that he might meet, lest he be robbed or killed. He gave him a beggar's garments, and supplied him with a meal of dry bread every day. At the expiration of a year, the poor man offered him work as a woodcutter with an improvement in his fare if he would first sign a document. The king was only too happy to change his monotonous condition, and without looking at it signed the paper presented to him. His trials lasted two years more, after which he became a sailor, was shipwrecked and carried back to Cracow. Just then he awoke to discover that his three years' experience had only lasted fifteen minutes by the clock. He abided by his agreement in the document which he had signed in his dream, and thus the great misfortune was once more warded off by the piety of a Lamed-wow-nik. The minister, the story continues, escaped to Italy and hence to Amsterdam, where he became a convert to Judaism. In his old age he returned to Cracow to make pilgrimages to the graves of Rabbenu Isserls and Chaim, the saint.

All the previous stories and legends pale into insignificance by the side of the endless miracles spun out by the Khassidim and ascribed to the founder of the sect and his disciples.[32] Nothing is too absurd for them. There seems to be a conscious desire in these stories to outdo all previous records, in order to throw the largest halo on their Bal-schem-tow, or Bescht, as he is called by his initials. Bal-schem-tow was neither the miracle-worker that his adherents would have him, nor the impostor that his opponents imagine him to have been. He was a truly pious man who sought a refuge in mysticism against the verbalism of the Jews of his days, in the middle of the eighteenth century. His followers, unfortunately mistaking the accidental in his teachings for the essentials of the new doctrine, have raised the Cabbalistic lucubrations of his disciples to the dignity of religious books, and have opened wide the doors for superstitions of all kinds. The realities of this world hardly exist for them, or are at best the temporal reflexes of that mystic sphere in which all their thoughts soar. Their rabbis are all workers of miracles, and Bescht is adored by them more than Moses and the Biblical saints. His life and acts have been so surrounded by a legendary atmosphere that it is now, only one hundred and fifty years after his life, not possible to disentangle truth from fiction and to reconstruct the real man. A large number of books relate the various miraculous incidents in his life, but the one entitled 'Khal Chsidim' surpasses them all in variety, and attempts to give as it were a chronological sequence of his acts.

In that book his grandfather and father are represented as foreshadowing the greatness of their descendant. His grandfather is a minister to a king, and Elijah announces to him that at the age of one hundred years his wife will bear him a son who will be a shining light. His father is a wizard and a scholar, and enjoins his son before his death to study with a hidden saint in the town of Ukop. After his studies were completed he became a teacher in Brody, and a judge. He marries the sister of Rabbi Gerschon, who takes him for a simpleton, and in vain tries to instruct him. No one knows of the sanctity of Bescht. He goes into the mountains accompanied by his wife, and there meditates a long while. At one time he was about to step from a mountain into empty space, when the neighboring mountain inclined its summit and received the erring foot of Bescht. After seven years of solitary life he returns to Brody to become a servant in Gerschon's household. Later his career of miracle-working begins: he heals the sick, exorcises evil spirits, brings down rain by prayers, breaks spells, conquers wizards, predicts the future, punishes the unbelievers, rewards the faithful by endowing them with various powers, and does sundry other not less wonderful things. When he prays, the earth trembles, and no one can hear his voice for loudness. He sleeps but two hours at night and prays the rest of the time, while a nimbus of fire surrounds him.

Not less marvellous are the deeds of his disciples as related in the 'Sseefer Maisse Zadikim' and other similar productions that are issued in penny sheets in Lemberg to impress the believers with the greatness of their faith. Many of these have sprung up from the desire to instill the necessity of observing certain religious rites, and this the authors think they can accomplish best by connecting a moral with some miraculous tale. For every imaginable vow there is a special story telling of the blissfulness that the devotee has reached or the misery that the lax follower of Khassidism has had occasion to rue. Every good deed according to them creates its own protecting spirits, while every crime produces a corresponding monstrous beast that pursues the sinner and leads him to destruction. Interesting also are those cases when a man has been as prone to sin as he has been to perform virtuous acts, for then the struggle between the beings of his creation leads to amusing results in which all depends on the preponderance of one kind of deeds over the other. The worst of men is not excluded from the benefits of mercy if he makes amends for his crimes by an earnest repentance which is followed by a long penance.

Of the latter class, the following is a typical story. Chaim has brought many misfortunes to Jewish families by denouncing and blackmailing them to the Polish magnate, the chief authority of the district. Once while on his way to the magnate he sees a half-starved beggar in the road, and he divides with him his bread and carries him to his house and takes care of him until he is well enough to proceed on his journey. Chaim has occasion after several years to denounce some one to the magnate. He goes to the cupboard to fill his wallet for the journey, when he sees a dead person in it. After he has collected himself from his fright, he steps up once more to the cupboard. The dead person tells him that he is the beggar that he saved from starvation some time ago, that he had heard in heaven that Chaim was to be given his last chance in life, and that he had come to warn him to repent his misdeeds. Chaim takes his advice to heart, and for seven years stays uninterruptedly in the synagogue, perfecting himself in his knowledge of the religious lore. On the eve of the Passover he allows himself to be tempted by Satan in the shape of a scholar, to eat leavened bread at a time when the Law prohibits it. As he steps out to the brook to wash his hands before tasting of the bread, the dead person once more appears to him and tells him that Satan has been sent to him to tempt him, because it was thought that his seven years' penance alone was not sufficient to atone for his many evil deeds; that all his labors have been in vain, and that he will have to do penance another seven years. This Chaim is only too ready to undergo, and he applies himself with even more ardor than before to get a remission of his sins. At the expiration of the allotted time Chaim dies and is at once taken to heaven.

The legends and folk-tales so far considered are of a strictly Jewish character, whatever their origin. They are in one way or another connected with the inner life of the Jewish community. They deal with the acts of their worthies and inculcate religious truths. But these are far from forming the bulk of all the stories that are current to-day among the German Jews in Slavic countries. Among the printed books of a popular character there are many that not only are of Gentile origin, but that have not been transformed in the light of the Mosaic faith; they have been reprinted without change of contents for the last four centuries, furnishing an example of long survival unequalled probably in any other literature.[33] Many of the stories that had been current in Germany long before the time of printing were among the first to be issued from Jewish printing presses. Stories of the court of King Arthur in verse, of Dietrich of Bern, of the 'Constant Love of Floris and Blanchefleur,' of 'Thousand and One Nights,' had been common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and many of them may be found in editions of this century; but none of them has been so popular as the 'Bovo-maisse,' the latest edition of which is known to me from the year 1895. It is identical with the English 'Bevys of Hamptoun' and was done into Judeo-German by Elia Levita in Venice in the year 1501. It is, no doubt, related to some one of the many Italian versions in which Bevys is turned into Bovo. The popularity of this book has been second only to the 'Zeena-Ureena' which contains a very large number of folk-tales interwoven in a popular exposition of the Bible. There are also books that contain stories of 'Sinbad the Sailor,' or what seem to be versions of Sir John Maundeville's 'Travels,' and other similar fantastic tales.

These stories, having once been committed to writing and printing, have remained intact up to our times, except that they have undergone linguistic modernizations. But there is also an unlimited number of fairy tales and fables in circulation which have never been written down, which have therefore been more or less subjected to local influences; in these Hebrew, German, and Slavic elements meet most freely, causing the stories to be moulded in new forms.[34] It may be asserted without fear of contradiction that among the Russian Jews the investigator will find the best, most complete versions of most, if not all, the stories contained in Grimm's or Andersen's collections. The reason for it is to be sought in the inordinate love of story-telling that the Jews possess. They are fond of staying up late in the night, particularly in the winter, and whiling away the time with an endless series of stories. The stranger who is a good raconteur is sure of a kind reception wherever he may chance to stay; but his nights will be curtailed by the extent of his fund of stories, for his audience will not budge as long as they suspect that the stranger has not spent all the arrows from his quiver. The wandering beggar-students and tailors have the reputation for story-telling; it was by one of the latter that a large number of fairy tales were related to me. I choose for illustration one that is known in a great variety of versions.

The Fool is Wiser than the Wise

"Once upon a time there lived a rich man who had three sons: two of them were wise, while one was a fool. After his death the brothers proceeded to divide the property, which consisted mainly of cattle. The two wise brothers suggested that the herd be divided into three equal parts, and that lots be cast for each; but the fool insisted that corrals be built near the house of each and that each be allowed to keep the cattle that would stray into his corral. The wise brothers agreed to this, and to entice the oxen and cows they placed fresh hay in their enclosures; but the fool did not take measures to gain possession of cattle by unfair means. The animals were attracted by the odor of the new-mown hay, and only one calf strolled into the fool's enclosure. The fool kept his calf for eight days, and forgot to give it fodder during that time; so it died. He took off its hide, and placed it in the sun to get dry. There it lay until it shrivelled up. Then he took the hide to Warsaw to sell it, but no one wanted to buy it, for it was all dried up.

"He started for home and came to an inn where he wanted to stay over night. He found there twelve men eating, and drinking good wine. He asked the landlady whether he could stay there over night. She told him she would not keep him in the house for all the money in the world, and she asked him to leave the house at once. He did not like her hasty manner, and he hid himself behind the door where no one could see him. There he overheard the landlady saying to the men: 'Before my husband gets home you must go down in the cellar and hide behind the wine-casks. In the night, when he will be asleep, you must come up and kill him. Then I shall be satisfied with you!' After a short while her husband returned from the distillery with some brandy, and the men hurried down into the cellar. He unloaded the brandy-casks, and went into the house. He asked his wife for something to eat; but she said there was nothing in the house. Just then the fool stepped in and asked the innkeeper whether he could not stay there over night. The landlady got angry at him and said: 'I told you before that there was no bed here for you!' But the innkeeper said: 'He will stay here over night!' and the innkeeper's word was law. He told the fool to sit down at the table with him, and they started a conversation. The fool accidentally placed his hand on the hide, which being dry began to crackle. The innkeeper asked him: 'What makes the hide crackle that way?' and the fool answered: 'It is talking to me!' 'What does it say?' 'It says that you are hungry, and that your wife says that there is nothing in the house, but that if you will look into the oven you will find some dishes.' He went up to the oven and found there enough for himself and the fool to eat. Then the hide crackled again, and the innkeeper asked again: 'What does it say?' 'It says that you should start a big fire in the oven!' 'What is the fire for?' 'I do not know, but you must obey the hide.' So he went and made a big fire in the oven. Then the hide crackled again. Says he: 'What does the hide say now?' 'It tells to heat kettles of water.' When the water got hot, the hide crackled again. Then he asked: 'What does the hide say now?' 'It says that you should take some strong men with you to the cellar and pour the water behind the wine-casks.' And so he did. The robbers were all scalded, and they ran away. Then he came upstairs, and the hide crackled again. Said he: 'Why does it crackle now?' 'The twelve robbers wanted to kill you at night, because your wife ordered them to do so.' When the wife heard that, she also ran away. Then the innkeeper said: 'Sell me your hide!' The fool answered: 'It costs much money.' 'No matter how much it costs, I shall pay for it, for it has saved my life.' 'It costs one thousand roubles.' So he gave him one thousand roubles. The fool went home, and when the brothers heard that he had sold his hide for one thousand roubles, they killed all their cattle, and took their hides to Warsaw to sell. They figured that if their brother's calf brought one thousand roubles, the hides of their oxen ought to fetch them at least two thousand roubles apiece. When they asked two thousand roubles apiece, people laughed and offered them a rouble for each. When they heard that, they went home and upbraided their brother for having cheated them. But he insisted that he had received one thousand roubles for his hide, and the brothers left him alone.

"After a while the fool's wife died. The undertakers wanted one thousand roubles for her interment. But the fool would not pay that sum. He placed his wife in a wagon and took her to Warsaw. There he filled the wagon with fine apples and put the dead body at the head of the wagon all dressed up. He himself stood at some distance and watched what would happen. There rode by a Polish count, and as he noticed the fine apples, he sent his servant to buy some. The servant asked the woman several times at what price she sold the apples; but as she did not answer him, he hit her in the face. Then the fool ran up and cried, saying that they had killed his wife. The count descended from his carriage, and when he had convinced himself that the woman was really dead, he asked the fool what he could do to satisfy him. The fool asked five thousand roubles, and the count paid him. The fool paid the undertaker in Warsaw a few roubles, and he buried his wife. He returned home and told his brothers of his having received five thousand roubles for his dead wife. Upon hearing that, they killed their wives and children and took the dead bodies to Warsaw to sell. When they arrived in Warsaw, they were asked what they had in their wagons. They said: 'Dead bodies for sale.' The people began to laugh, and said that dead bodies had to be taken to the cemetery. There was nothing left for the brothers to do but to take them to the cemetery and have them buried.

"They wept bitterly, and swore that they would take revenge on their brother. And so they did. When they arrived home, they told him that they wished to make him a prince. They enticed him for that purpose into a bag, and wanted to throw him into the water. They went away to find a place where they could throw him in without being noticed. In the meanwhile the fool kept on crying in the bag that he did not care to be a prince, that he wished to get out of the bag. Just then a rich Polish merchant drove by. When he heard the cries in the bag, he stepped down from his carriage and asked the fool why he was crying so. He said: 'I do not want to be a prince!' So he untied him and said: 'Let me get into the bag and be made a prince! I shall make you a present of my horses and my carriage, if you will let me be a prince.' The rich man crept into the bag, and the fool tied it fast. He went into the carriage and drove away. The brothers came, picked up the bag, and threw it into the water. The fool watched their doings from a distance. The brothers were sure they had drowned the fool and returned home. The next morning they were astonished to see their brother driving around town in a fine carriage. They asked him: 'Where did you get that?' He answered: 'In the water.' 'Are there more of them left?' 'There are finer ones down there.' So they went down to the water's edge, and they agreed that one of them should leap in and see if there were any carriages left there, and if he should find any, he was to make a noise in the water, when the other one would follow him. One of them leaped in, and beginning to drown, began to splash the water. The other, thinking his brother was calling him, also jumped in, and they were both drowned. The fool became the sole heir of all their property; he married again, and is now living quite happily."

Corresponding to the diffusion of folklore among the Jews, their store of popular beliefs, superstitions, and medicine is unlimited. Their mysterious world is peopled with the imaginary beings of the Talmud, the creatures of German mythology, and the creations of the Slavic popular mind. These exist for them, however, not as separate entities, but as transfused into an organic whole in which the belief of Babylonia and Assyria has much of the outward form of the superstition of Russia, just as the spirits of Poland and Germany are made to be brothers to those of Chaldea and Egypt. To their minds the transmigrated souls of the Gilgulim, the scoffing Leezim, the living dead bodies of the Meessim, the possessing Dibukim, the grewsome Scheedim, are as real as the Riesen and Schraetele of Germany and the Nischtgute (niedobry), Wukodlaki (werewolf), Zlidne, Upior (vampyre), and Domowoj of Russia. The beast Reem of the Talmud, the Pipernātter (Lindwurm) of Germany are not less known to them than the fabled animals of Russian fairy tales. In case of sickness they consult with equal success the miracle-working Rabbi with his lore derived from Talmud and Cabbala, as the Tartar medicine man (znachar), or get some old woman to recite the ancient German formula for warding off the evil eye. There is not an incident in their lives, from their births unto their deaths, that is not accompanied by its own circle of superstitious rites and practices.[35]

Their literature, both oral and printed, is also full of evidences of that popular creative spirit which finds its expression in the form of maxims and proverbs. One can hardly turn the pages of a novel or comedy without finding some interesting specimens of this class. But little has been done to classify them, or even to collect them. The printed collections of Tendlau and Bernstein contain less than three thousand proverbs, while the seven thousand saws on which Schwarzfeld bases his generalizations in a Roumanian periodical (Anuarul pentru Israeliţi) have not yet been published by him.[36]

Equally rich would prove the harvest of popular anecdotes, either as told of separate individuals, as Herschele Ostropoler, Motke Chabad, Jōssef Loksch, the wise man of Chelm, and the like, or as applied to the inhabitants of certain Abderitic towns.[37] Many such collections are mentioned in the appendix, but they do not by any means exhaust the stories that are current among the people. Though they generally are of the same character as those told of Schildburg and Till Eulenspiegel, and are even borrowings from those German stories, yet they contain so much original matter, and have been welded into such new forms, that they deserve the attention of the student of folklore. They also bear excellent witness to that pungent wit for which the Jews are so justly famous.