The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran
of which he punished with death. But among the few members of his court was a man renowned for his wit, and for his power of raising the spirits of the Sultan, even when these had been depressed by a three days’ fit of drunkenness. Now this court-wit loved smoking, and was resolved, not only to have his pipe, but to escape the penalty of death attached to the enjoyment of it. Accordingly, he caused a deep pit to be dug in his tent, and when he desired to give himself up to his dearest indulgence, he would descend into it, sitting there concealed by a sieve-like construction drawn over the top, and lightly covered with turf. One evening, Murad became sagacious of the hookah from afar, and, tracing the offender to the very pit in which he was quietly smoking, threatened him with instant death. The offender, however, coolly thrusting his head upward, as he provokingly drew another mouthful of reeking luxury, exclaimed, “Go to, thou son of a bond-woman! Thy edicts extend over the earth, certainly; but they do not extend under it.” “Take thy life for thy joke,” said Murad, laughing and coughing—the first at the jest, and the second at the odour and vapour, which he detested—“I only wish thy pipe were as enjoyable as thy wit.”
Many samples of this sort I could continue to place before my readers; but, having regard to the patience of those who have so often borne patiently with me, I will only trace the Eastern jester down to modern times. Till after the commencement of the present century, the courts of the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia were never without the mirthful official. The latter was usually an Armenian. Indeed, there were, ordinarily, several at each court. Their duty was to amuse their lord when he was at table, by every means in their power, by strange remarks, by droll stories, or by burlesques more or less extravagant. In processions, they walked before their masters, and carried long staves covered with silver bells. Since they fell into disuse, the Gipsies succeeded to the exercise of one part of their office, and these are admitted to the palaces of the great, on particular festivals, to amuse their illustrious hearers with national and comic songs.
From a very early period, the public and private buffoons of the East seem to have been selected from among the Armenians. Joinville introduces to us some very sprightly professionals of this sort, in his ‘History of St. Louis.’ “There came with the Prince,” he says, “three minstrels from Armenia (trois ménestriers de la Grande Hyrménie). They carried three horns, and when they began to perform on them, you might have taken the sound for that of swans. They produced the softest melody. …” He then informs us how, having fulfilled their office of minstrels, they performed that of buffoons, for the amusement of the illustrious personages present. “They made three marvellous leaps (sauts); … a cloth (touaille) being placed beneath their feet, they threw a somersault upon it, without any spring, and two of them leaped in this way, head backwards.”
The old fashion in the East did not altogether expire till a very recent period, for we find a jester at the court of the father of the present Sultan of Turkey. It was said of some eminent individual, that he had made two centuries illustrious; and something like it may be said of this oriental jester, who flourished at the court of Constantinople at the close of the last, and above a quarter of the present century. In 1836 died Abdi Bey, who, for nearly half a century previous, had been the favourite jester of successive Sultans. He worked hard and reaped a large fortune. In the early part of his career, his masters treated him as a mere brutish buffoon, on whom they might play any trick. Sometimes they set him off in a gallop, mounted on a giraffe, or tumbled him headlong into a pond, to the danger of his life. The late Sultan Mahmoud had no stomach for such sorry jokes, and Abdi Bey devoted his capacity to keep his patron in good spirits by amusing him with smart sayings and pleasant stories. He must have been an incomparable fool in his time, or his masters must have been greater fools than he, for out of their imperial bounty, he contrived to save £150,000, which he left to his grateful and deeply-resigned heirs. It was nearly as much as the late Mr. Greenough made by the manufacture of lozenges—“ten a penny!”
Abdi Bey has been called the last of the household buffoons. But this is not the case; for though the official fool has disappeared from Court, he is still to be found attached to families, or heads of families. We even meet with this rather impudent than merry fellow in the household of Christian Patriarchs. Only a few years ago, when the Nestorian Patriarch was flying, with a large number of his followers, from their would-be murderers in the mountains, they found refuge at Mosul, in the houses of the English Consul and the Rev. Mr. Fletcher. The latter gentleman, in his ‘Notes from Nineveh,’ so describes his reverence’s buffoon as to induce us to believe that to have much to do with him was really “no joke at all.” “My new guests,” he says, “were very orderly in their manners, though wild in their appearance. Only one decided quarrel broke out among them during their abode with me; and this was occasioned by a half-crazy old man who served the Patriarch in the double capacity of a domestic and buffoon. This worthy was addicted, like many of his countrymen, to the vice of intoxication; and having on one occasion partaken rather freely of the juice of the grape, he grew riotous, and addressed a reproachful epithet to one of his companions. The fiery nature of the mountaineer was excited, and he retorted in no complimentary terms. The old buffoon drew his dagger, and made a rush at his antagonist, who retreated into an inner apartment and shut the door. Nothing could equal the rage of old Yohanan at being thus baulked of his vengeance. Two or three times he burst from those who were restraining him, and drove his knife into the hard wood of the door. At length he was quieted, and after sleeping-off his drunkenness, appeared the next morning with a sober and abashed countenance.” I suppose old Yohanan was past being amusing, for we are subsequently told, that to raise the drooping spirits of the Patriarch, an itinerant Italian juggler was hired. At his tricks and witticisms the pious head of the Nestorian Church forgot the slaughter of his friends and the devastation of their and his homesteads. The saintly and sympathetic man laughed till he could hardly sit upright on his cushions, and only ceased then because some wonderful stroke of the juggler’s art induced him suddenly to suspect that such marvellous proficiency was only an inspiration of the devil.
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By way of supplement to this Chapter, I will add a few short illustrations of the jester at other barbarous courts than those of the East;—and first, of “that beyond the Atlantic.”
When Cortez first visited the court of Montezuma, he found there various instances of high civilization:—among others, light ladies, strong drinks, court fools, and a spirit of infidelity against the established church, inspired by an influence called the “Rational Owl.” The Aztec monarch resembled Heliogabalus in one respect;—“he had a museum,” says Brantz Mayer, in his excellent work, ‘Mexico, Aztec, Spanish, and Republican,’ “in which, with an oddity of taste unparalleled in history, there had been collected a vast number of human monsters, cripples, dwarfs, albinos, and other freaks and caprices of nature.” Bernal Diaz saw the monarch at dinner, and among the incidents recorded by the old Spaniard, is, that, “at different intervals during the time of dinner, there entered certain Indians, hump-backed, very deformed and ugly, who played tricks of buffoonery; and others, who they said were jesters.” The fashion of maintaining the latter was followed by the nobles. “The principal men,” says Acoste, quoted by Prescott, “had also buffoons and jugglers in their service, who amused them, and astonished the Spaniards by their feats of dexterity and strength.”
Montezuma patronized rather the witty buffoons than the skilful jugglers. “Indeed, he used to say, that more instruction was to be gathered from them than from wiser men, for they dared to tell the truth.” Prescott adds in a note, founded on Clavigero, that “the Aztec mountebanks had such repute, that Cortez sent two of them to Rome, to amuse his Holiness, Clement VII.” This was only an exchange of personages of similar profession, for the European official house fool had already been imported into America. In 1519, at St. Jago, when Velasquez the governor was beginning to be suspicious of the designs of Cortez to supplant him, the two great men were walking together towards the port. As they passed on, the fool of the former called aloud, “Have a care, Master Velasquez, or we shall have to go a-hunting, some day or other, after this same captain of ours.” “Do you hear what the rogue says?” exclaimed the Governor to his companion. “Do not heed him,” said Cortez, “he is a saucy knave, and deserves a good whipping.” The hint of the fool, however, heightened the suspicions of his master; but how the latter was too slow of wit and action to profit thereby, is