101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition

Ulrich Marzolph

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780814347751
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Folklore et critique littéraire mythique

Against the methodological backdrop of historical and comparative folk narrative research, 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition surveys the history, dissemination, and characteristics of over one hundred narratives transmitted to Western tradition from or by the Middle Eastern Muslim literatures (i.e., authored written works in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish). For a tale to be included, Ulrich Marzolph considered two criteria: that the tale originates from or at least was transmitted by a Middle Eastern source, and that it was recorded from a Western narrator's oral performance in the course of the nineteenth or twentieth century. The rationale behind these restrictive definitions is predicated on Marzolph's main concern with the long-lasting effect that some of the "Oriental" narratives exercised in Western popular tradition—those tales that have withstood the test of time. Marzolph focuses on the originally "Oriental" tales that became part and parcel of modern Western oral tradition. Since antiquity, the "Orient" constitutes the quintessential Other vis-à-vis the European cultures. While delineation against this Other served to define and reassure the Self, the "Orient" also constituted a constant source of fascination, attraction, and inspiration. Through oral retellings, numerous tales from Muslim tradition became an integral part of European oral and written tradition in the form of learned treatises, medieval sermons, late medieval fabliaux, early modern chapbooks, contemporary magazines, and more. In present times, when national narcissisms often acquire the status of strongholds delineating the Us against the Other, it is imperative to distinguish, document, visualize, and discuss the extent to which the West is not only indebted to the Muslim world but also shares common features with Muslim narrative tradition. 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition is an important contribution to this debate and a vital work for scholars, students, and readers of folklore and fairy tales.

Chapter 1

The Fox Rids Itself of Fleas (ATU 63)

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Tales that enjoy such great popularity as to be known as “folktales” are not necessarily long and complex narratives. In particular, some of the tales catalogued as animal tales, that is, tale types ATU 1–299, are short and ostensibly realistic observations about the life of animals. These tales contrast with structured fictitious narratives such as fables, in which animals speak and act as metaphorical representatives of human characters, often stereotypical ones. Referring to the need for a clear distinction between the two types of animal tales, identified by Carl Wilhelm von Sydow,1 the compilers of the catalogue of French folktales discussed the short tale classified as tale type ATU 63: The Fox Rids Himself of Fleas.2 According to the tale, the fox would take a small object such as a piece of moss into its mouth and then slowly immerse its body into the water, tail first. To avoid being drowned, the fleas would gradually mount the fox’s body up to its head. Finally, when the fox would submerge its head in the water, they would save themselves by jumping onto the piece of moss. The fox would then abandon the floating object and be rid of the fleas.

Some of the tale’s versions documented from European oral tradition in the twentieth century are extemely short, such as the one in German dialect recorded by J. Schwebe from the oral performance of Christoph Lemke (b. 1866), a former farmer in Lüchow, Lower Saxony, in 1958.3 Although this version does not even mention an object on which the fleas rescue themselves, the action is virtually the same as summarized above.

The fox is full of fleas. It goes backward into the water with its tail first until the fleas jump off his nose. Thus it gets rid of the fleas.

Other versions, such as an Estonian text, authenticate the alleged observation by embellishing it into a lengthy narrative in which a man collecting wood at the shore of a river on a hot summer day observes the fox perform the said action.4 The Estonian text ends by mentioning that the narrator did not understand what the fox had actually done until he picked up the bundle of hay the fox had held in its mouth. It was so full of fleas that the narrator could not get rid of them himself. John Campbell’s version from the Scottish Highlands presents the observation as fact, claiming that the fox “was seen in the sea near the Caithness hills.”5 Similarly, the Irish narrator Mac Thuathaláin, aged 60, claimed his version to be a factual report, saying that Máirtín Ó Loideáin saw a fox “draw a mouthful of wool from a sheep, go into the river and swim to the foot of a waterfall and back” three times.6

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the tale was repeatedly published as a factual report in newspapers. In a short notice in the May 4, 1911, issue of Nature, Bohuslav Brauner from Prague recounted the tale as told by his father almost fifty years earlier.7 Instead of wool or hay, the fox here sacrifices a tuft of his own fur to collect the fleas. The narrator further emphasized the fox’s ingenuity by stating “the effect was superior, for the fleas could creep into the hair without noticing any change of medium during the water trick.” In the United States, the December 22, 1900, issue of the Pacific Rural Times quoted the tale from the Baltimore Sun, referring to “an old hunter and naturalist of local repute” who told the tale, confirming it “as absolutely true and trustworthy.”8 Asserting that he never heard or read of the tale, the hunter related the events as “observed in the waters of the Patapsco River.” In this version, when the fox hurried away, the “object left floated near to the observer, and he hauled it ashore with a stick. Fleas literally swarmed through the object, which was found to be a bit of raw rabbit fur.”

Historically, the tale was popularized for many centuries by its mention in a fair variety of European works of a scientific, educative, and sometimes entertaining, nature.9 These include, to list but a few, Scots-Irish novelist William Hamilton Maxwell’s 1833 book on sports and pastimes of the United Kingdom;10 eighteenth-century German encyclopedian Johann Heinrich Zedler’s influential comprehensive dictionary “of all sciences and arts;”11 German author Hilarius Salustius’ chapbook Melancholini wohl-aufgeraumter Weeg-Gefärth (The Melancholic’s Well-tempered Companion; 1717);12 Sir Kenelm Digby’s Two Treatises: Of Bodies and of Man’s Soul, the “first comprehensive philosophical work in the English language,”13 initially published in 1644;14 Swedish historian and naturalist Olaus Magnus’s Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (A History of the Northern People; 1555);15 Swiss physician and naturalist Conrad Gesner’s Historia animalium (History of Animals; 1551);16 and a number of sixteenth-century Spanish works.17 The ultimate source of these authors likely was Albertus Magnus’s (d. 1280) De animalibus (On Animals) who quoted the tale from the obscure medieval author known as Jorach or Jorath (“Iorach dicit . . .”).18 The earliest-known mention of the fox’s clever trick in the European literatures is attested in the Latin Otia imperialia (Recreation for an Emperor), compiled by Gervase of Tilbury at the beginning of the thirteenth century.19

More than three centuries prior to Gervase of Tilbury, the narrative is recounted from “popular tradition” (ḥadīth al-ʿāmma) in the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān (Book of Animals) written by the Arab polymath al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868).20 Here, the action is presented more or less as a scientific observation with the fox taking a tuft of wool into its mouth and slowly submerging its body into the water until the fleas gather on the wool, at which point the fox suddenly abandons the wool and leaves. Being a critical observer, al-Jāḥiẓ added a commentary saying, “If this was true, then there would be nothing more amazing. And if it was not true (bāṭil), then the people would have attributed it to the fox only because of the animal’s demonstrated excellence in cunning and cleverness (al-khubth wa-’l-kays).”

Repeatedly mentioned in Arab learned and entertaining literature of the following centuries,21 albeit with a shorter and slightly different wording, the narrative is cited in such influential compilations as al-Damīrī’s (d. 1405) zoographical encyclopedia Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān (The Life of Animals)22 or al-Ibshīhī’s popular fifteenth-century encyclopedia al-Mustaṭraf fī kulli fann mustaẓraf (The Exquisite Elements from Every Art Considered Elegant).23 Still in the seventeenth century, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn (al-)Ilyās al-Ḥanafī included the tale in his compilation of amusing tales, Nuzhat al-udabāʾ (Entertainment of the Educated).24 Although in particular al-Ibshīhī’s work was widely read until the twentieth century,25 the tale has apparently not been recorded from contemporary Arab oral tradition.26

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the tale is presented in Western children’s books27 and various Internet we...