The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran
this respect, with the African potentate, who never stirred abroad with less than five hundred official fools in his vast and noisy retinue!
There were, as late as the last century, and there probably still linger on the Gold Coast, traditions of the mythological jester of Africa, Nanni, son of the Spider. His busy parent had spun all the human race from the thread of his bowels, and found no gratitude from the living produce of his labours. The Fetis seduced all creation to sin, and the Spider bethought him how to annoy the Fetis. With what little material he had left, he spun the last man, and educated him at his own paternal feet, on the edge of the domestic web. The tricks the father taught his boy were long the delight of polished and perspiring African tribes. Nanni was the ebony Owlglas of the land of Ham. He served the Fetis, but only as Jocrisse did his master, to his great vexation. Was Nanni commissioned to provide a chicken for dinner, he knew how, after devouring the bird himself, to replace bones and skin, and place it before his employer, the very model of a plump pullet. Was an egg ordered for breakfast, Nanni first sucked out the contents through a minute orifice, and filled up the shell with the finest sand. Nanni, too, was a married man, with numberless children, and more wives than “that Sardanapalus of Snobs,” Brigham Young. In a time of scarcity, when even a bean was worth more than its weight in gold, the hungry wives and offspring of Nanni drove him forth by their importunity, to seek food. He came upon a company of boys and girls who had been left by their father in charge of a quantity of beans, to dry and turn them in the air. Nanni leaped in among them, made them shriek with laughter at his jokes, and stamp with delight at his dancing. The latter exercise he concluded by rolling his well-oiled body among the beans, with which, sticking to him as he rose, he made off, after bidding the children look at his hands, to see that he carried nothing away with him. By repeating this feat, he nourished his household for days; and the alarmed owner of the precious vegetables could not account for their diminution from any account rendered by the young guardians. But detecting Nanni in the fact, the owner chopped off both his hands, as he lay rolling his greased body among the beans. The wit of the national jester had been grievously at fault, and his household becoming more hungry and angry than ever, his wives broke into open revolt, and eloped in a body, in search of another mate. But Nanni was beforehand with them in every respect; for taking the guise of a woodman, and having recovered his lost members, he met them in their flight, without being recognized by them. They told him of the fate of their husband, and of their intentions, concluding with a gentle hint that they were well enough inclined to accept a well-built young wood-cutter for their common husband. “No! no!” cried Nanni, “times are so very hard, that I have been obliged to dismiss forty-nine of my wives, and to live as well as I can with one!” This speech alarmed the ladies, who forthwith hurried homeward; but the active Nanni encountered them at the threshold, over which he would not allow them to pass till they had entered into stipulations whereby he was secured in full and despotic authority over his entire family.
The jokes of Nanni, son of the Spider, for a long time formed all the history, literature, and amusement of Negro circles. A thousand times over have his tricks been told and acted, in a semi-dramatic way, to delighted groups of swarthy listeners beneath the African moon. I may notice that the story-teller has always been a greater favourite in Africa than the mere jester. I remember, indeed, having read of one potentate, the Kaffir chief Tshaka, or Chaka, who would tolerate neither, at his horridly solemn court. On one occasion, however, and in full council, a merry fellow gave utterance to a frolicsome thought which he could not repress. It succeeded admirably—gloomy king and grave counsellors were thrown into the most convulsive hilarity. When they had all recovered, the chief, pointing towards the jester, showed his grateful sense of a rare delight, by exclaiming, “Take that dog out, and kill him; he has made me laugh!”
To make his patron laugh was the especial and variously-rewarded vocation of the jester whom I now proceed to introduce to my readers. The English Court Fool was a very peculiar fellow, and in the history of some members of the order of Motley, in this country, there are incidents unparalleled in the history of the official jesters of any other nation. Let us see whence they came, as well as who they were.
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