Chapter VIII: A Handful of Curiosities (5)

Two or three of the stories that I have noted down on the gruesome subject of heart-eating have been given above. Such ideas were abhorrent to the Jewish conscience, and the use of the heart torn from a living animal was regarded as characteristic of idolatry (Jerusalem Talmud, _Aboda Zara_, ii, 41b). In the Book of Tobit a fish's heart plays a part, but it is detached from the dead animal, and is not eaten. It forms an ingredient of the smoke which exorcises the demon that is troubling the heroine Sarah.

I have not come across any passage in the Jewish Midrashim that ascribes to "heart-eating," even in folk-lore, the virtue of bestowing wisdom. Aristotle seems to lend his authority to some such notion as that I have quoted from Pliny, when he says, "Man alone presents the phenomenon of heart-beating, because he alone is moved by hope and by expectation of what is coming." As George H. Lewes remarked, it is quite evident that Aristotle could never have held a bird in his hand. The idea, however, that eating the heart of an animal has wisdom-conferring virtue seems to underlie a very interesting Hebrew fable published by Dr. Steinschneider, in his _Alphabetum Siracidis_. The Angel of Death had demanded of God the power to slay all living things.

"The Holy One replied, 'Cast a pair of each species into the sea, and
then thou shalt have dominion over all that remain of the species.' The
Angel did so forthwith, and he cast a pair of each kind into the sea.
When the fox saw what he was about, what did he do? At once he stood and
wept. Then said the Angel of Death unto him, 'Why weepest thou?' 'For my
companions, whom thou hast cast into the sea,' answered the fox. 'Where,
then, are thy companions?' said the Angel. The fox ran to the sea-shore
[with his wife], and the Angel of Death beheld the reflection of the fox
in the water, and he thought that he had already cast in a pair of foxes,
so, addressing the fox by his side, he cried, 'Be off with you!' The fox
at once fled and escaped. The weasel met him, and the fox related what
had happened, and what he had done; and so the weasel went and did
likewise.

"At the end of the year, the leviathan assembled all the creatures in the
sea, and lo! the fox and the weasel were missing, for they had not come
into the sea. He sent to ask, and he was told how the fox and the weasel
had escaped through their wisdom. They taunted the leviathan, saying,
'The fox is exceedingly cunning.' The leviathan felt uneasy and envious,
and he sent a deputation of great fishes, with the order that they were
to deceive the fox, and bring him before him. They went, and found him by
the sea-shore. When the fox saw the fishes disporting themselves near the
bank, he was surprised, and he went among them. They beheld him, and
asked, 'Who art thou?' 'I am the fox,' said he. 'Knowest thou not,'
continued the fishes, 'that a great honor is in store for thee, and that
we have come here on thy behalf?' 'What is it?' asked the fox. 'The
leviathan,' they said, 'is sick, and like to die. He has appointed thee
to reign in his stead, for he has heard that thou art wiser and more
prudent than all other animals. Come with us, for we are his messengers,
and are here to thy honor.' 'But,' objected the fox, 'how can I come into
the sea without being drowned?' 'Nay,' said the fishes; 'ride upon one of
us, and he will carry thee above the sea, so that not even a drop of
water shall touch so much as the soles of thy feet, until thou reachest
the kingdom. We will take thee down without thy knowing it. Come with us,
and reign over us, and be king, and be joyful all thy days. No more wilt
thou need to seek for food, nor will wild beasts, stronger than thou,
meet thee and devour thee.'

"The fox heard and believed their words. He rode upon one of them, and
they went with him into the sea. Soon, however, the waves dashed over
him, and he began to perceive that he had been tricked. 'Woe is me!'
wailed the fox, 'what have I done? I have played many a trick on others,
but these fishes have played one on me worth all mine put together. Now I
have fallen into their hands, how shall I free myself? Indeed,' he said,
turning to the fishes, 'now that I am fully in your power, I shall speak
the truth. What are you going to do with me?' 'To tell thee the truth,'
replied the fishes, 'the leviathan has heard thy fame, that thou art very
wise, and he said, I will rend the fox, and will eat his heart, and thus
I shall become wise.' 'Oh!' said the fox, 'why did you not tell me the
truth at first? I should then have brought my heart with me, and I should
have given it to King Leviathan, and he would have honored me; but now ye
are in an evil plight.' 'What! thou hast not thy heart with thee?'
'Certainly not. It is our custom to leave our heart at home while we go
about from place to place. When we need our heart, we take it; otherwise
it remains at home.' 'What must we do?' asked the bewildered fishes. 'My
house and dwelling-place,' replied the fox, 'are by the sea-shore. If you
like, carry me back to the place whence you brought me, I will fetch my
heart, and will come again with you. I will present my heart to
Leviathan, and he will reward me and you with honors. But if you take me
thus, without my heart, he will be wroth with you, and will devour you. I
have no fear for myself, for I shall say unto him: My lord, they did not
tell me at first, and when they did tell me, I begged them to return for
my heart, but they refused.' The fishes at once declared that he was
speaking well. They conveyed him back to the spot on the sea-shore whence
they had taken him. Off jumped the fox, and he danced with joy. He threw
himself on the sand, and laughed. 'Be quick,' cried the fishes, 'get thy
heart, and come.' But the fox answered, 'You fools! Begone! How could I
have come with you without my heart? Have you any animals that go about
without their hearts?' 'Thou hast tricked us,' they moaned. 'Fools! I
tricked the Angel of Death, how much more easily a parcel of silly
fishes.'

"They returned in shame, and related to their master what had happened.
'In truth,' he said, 'he is cunning, and ye are simple. Concerning you
was it said, The turning away of the simple shall slay them [Prov. i:32].
Then the leviathan ate the fishes."

Metaphorically, the Bible characterizes the fool as a man "without a heart," and it is probably in the same sense that modern Arabs describe the brute creation as devoid of hearts. The fox in the narrative just given knew better. Not so, however, the lady who brought a curious question for her Rabbi to solve. The case to which I refer may be found in the _Responsa_ Zebi Hirsch. Hirsch's credulous questioner asserted that she had purchased a live cock, but on killing and drawing it, she had found that it possessed no heart. The Rabbi refused very properly to believe her. On investigating the matter, he found that, while she was dressing the cock, two cats had been standing near the table. The Rabbi assured his questioner that there was no need to inquire further into the whereabouts of the cock's heart.

Out of the crowd of parallels to the story of the fox's heart supplied by the labors of Benfey, I select one given in the second volume of the learned investigator's _Pantschatantra_. A crocodile had formed a close friendship with a monkey, who inhabited a tree close to the water side. The monkey gave the crocodile nuts, which the latter relished heartily. One day the crocodile took some of the nuts home to his wife. She found them excellent, and inquired who was the donor. "If," she said, when her husband had told her, "he feeds on such ambrosial nuts, this monkey's heart must be ambrosia itself. Bring me his heart, that I may eat it, and so be free from age and death." Does not this version supply a more probable motive than that attributed in the Hebrew story to the leviathan? I strongly suspect that the Hebrew fable has been pieced together from various sources, and that the account given by the fishes, viz. that the leviathan was ill, was actually the truth in the original story. The leviathan would need the fox's heart, not to become wise, but in order to save his life.

To return to the crocodile. He refuses to betray his friend, and his wife accuses him of infidelity. His friend, she maintains, is not a monkey at all, but a lady-love of her husband's. Else why should he hesitate to obey her wishes? "If he is not your beloved, why will you not kill him? Unless you bring me his heart, I will not taste food, but will die." Then the crocodile gives in, and in the most friendly manner invites the monkey to pay him and his wife a visit. The monkey consents unsuspectingly, but discovers the truth, and escapes by adopting the same ruse as that employed by the fox. He asserts that he has left his heart behind on his tree.

That eating the heart of animals was not thought a means of obtaining wisdom among the Jews, may be directly inferred from a passage in the Talmud (_Horayoth_, 13b). Among five things there enumerated as "causing a man to forget what he has learned," the Talmud includes "eating the hearts of animals." Besides, in certain well-known stories in the Midrash, where a fox eats some other animal's heart, his object is merely to enjoy a titbit.

One such story in particular deserves attention. There are at least three versions of it. The one is contained in the _Mishle Shualim_, or "Fox-Stories," by Berechiah ha-Nakdan (no. 106), the second in the _Hadar Zekenim_ (fol. 27b), and the third in the _Midrash Yalkut_, on Exodus (ed. Venice, 56a). Let us take the three versions in the order named.

A wild boar roams in a lion's garden. The lion orders him to quit the place and not defile his residence. The boar promises to obey, but next morning he is found near the forbidden precincts. The lion orders one of his ears to be cut off. He then summons the fox, and directs that if the boar still persists in his obnoxious visits, no mercy shall be shown to him. The boar remains obstinate, and loses his ears (one had already gone!) and eyes, and finally he is killed. The lion bids the fox prepare the carcass for His Majesty's repast, but the fox himself devours the boar's heart. When the lion discovers the loss, the fox quiets his master by asking, "If the boar had possessed a heart, would he have been so foolish as to disobey you so persistently?"

The king of the beasts, runs the story in the second of the three versions, appointed the ass as keeper of the tolls. One day King Lion, together with the wolf and the fox, approached the city. The ass came and demanded the toll of them. Said the fox, "You are the most audacious of animals. Don't you see that the king is with us?" But the ass answered, "The king himself shall pay," and he went and demanded the toll of the king. The lion rent him to pieces, and the fox ate the heart, and excused himself as in the former version.

The _Yalkut_, or third version, is clearly identical with the preceding, for, like it, the story is quoted to illustrate the Scriptural text referring to Pharaoh's heart becoming hard. In this version, however, other animals accompany the lion and the fox, and the scene of the story is on board ship. The ass demands the fare, with the same _denouement_ as before.

What induced the fox to eat the victim's heart? The ass is not remarkable for wisdom, nor is the boar. Hence the wily Reynard can scarcely have thought to add to his store of cunning by his surreptitious meal.

Hearts, in folk-lore, have been eaten for revenge, as in the grim story of the lover's heart told by Boccaccio. The jealous husband forces his wife, whose fidelity he doubts, to make a meal of her supposed lover's heart. In the story of the great bird's egg, again, the brother who eats the heart becomes rich, but not wise. Various motives, no doubt, are assigned in other _Maerchen_ for choosing the heart; but in these particular Hebrew fables, it is merely regarded as a _bonne bouche_. Possibly the Talmudic caution, that eating the heart of a beast brings forgetfulness, may have a moral significance; it may mean that one who admits bestial passions into his soul will be destitute of a mind for nobler thoughts. This suggestion I have heard, and I give it for what it may be worth. As a rule, there is no morality in folk-lore; stories with morals belong to the later and more artificial stage of poet-lore. Homiletical folk-lore, of course, stands on a different basis.

Now, in the _Yalkut_ version of the fox and the lion fable, all that we are told is, "The fox saw the ass's heart; he took it, and ate it." But Berechiah leaves us in no doubt as to the fox's motive. "The fox saw that his heart was fat, and so he took it." In the remaining version, "The fox saw that the heart was good, so he ate it." This needs no further comment.

Of course, it has been far from my intention to dispute that the heart was regarded by Jews as the seat both of the intellect and the feelings, of all mental and spiritual functions, indeed. The heart was the best part of man, the fount of life; hence Jehudah Halevi's well-known saying, "Israel is to the world as the heart to the body." An intimate connection was also established, by Jews and Greeks alike, between the physical condition of the heart and man's moral character. It was a not unnatural thought that former ages were more pious than later times. "The heart of Rabbi Akiba was like the door of the porch [which was twenty cubits high], the heart of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua was like the door of the Temple [this was only ten cubits high], while our hearts are only as large as the eye of a needle." But I am going beyond my subject. To collect all the things, pretty and the reverse, that have been said in Jewish literature about the heart, would need more leisure, and a great deal more learning, than I possess. So I will conclude with a story, pathetic as well as poetical, from a Jewish medieval chronicle.

A Mohammedan king once asked a learned Rabbi why the Jews, who had in times long past been so renowned for their bravery, had in later generations become subdued, and even timorous. The Rabbi, to prove that captivity and persecution were the cause of the change, proposed an experiment. He bade the king take two lion's whelps, equally strong and big. One was tied up, the other was allowed to roam free in the palace grounds. They were fed alike, and after an interval both were killed. The king's officers found that the heart of the captive lion was but one-tenth as large as that of his free companion, thus evidencing the degenerating influence of slavery. This is meant, no doubt, as a fable, but, at least, it is not without a moral. The days of captivity are gone, and it may be hoped that Jewish large-heartedness has come back with the breath of freedom.

"MARRIAGES ARE MADE IN HEAVEN"

"The Omnipresent," said a Rabbi, "is occupied in making marriages." The
levity of the saying lies in the ear of him who hears it; for by
marriages the speaker meant all the wondrous combinations of the
universe, whose issue makes our good and evil.

_George Eliot_

The proverb that I have set at the head of these lines is popular in every language of Europe. Need I add that a variant may be found in Chinese? The Old Man of the Moon unites male and female with a silken, invisible thread, and they cannot afterwards be separated, but are destined to become man and wife. The remark of the Rabbi quoted in "Daniel Deronda" carries the proverb back apparently to a Jewish origin; and it is, indeed, more than probable that the Rabbinical literature is the earliest source to which this piece of folk-philosophy can be traced.

George Eliot's Rabbi was Jose bar Chalafta, and his remark was made to a lady, possibly a Roman matron of high quality, in Sepphoris. Rabbi Jose was evidently an adept in meeting the puzzling questions of women, for as many as sixteen interviews between him and "matrons" are recorded in Agadic literature. Whether because prophetic of its subsequent popularity, or for some other reason, this particular dialogue in which Rabbi Jose bore so conspicuous a part is repeated in the _Midrash Rabba_ alone not less than four times, besides appearing in other Midrashim. It will be as well, then, to reproduce the passage in a summarized form, for it may be fairly described as the _locus classicus_ on the subject.

"How long," she asked, "did it take God to create the world?" and Rabbi
Jose informed her that the time occupied was six days. "What has God been
doing since that time?" continued the matron. "The Holy One," answered
the Rabbi, "has been sitting in Heaven arranging marriages."--"Indeed!"
she replied, "I could do as much myself. I have thousands of slaves, and
could marry them off in couples in a single hour. It is easy enough."--"I
hope that you will find it so," said Rabbi Jose. "In Heaven it is thought
as difficult as the dividing of the Red Sea." He then took his departure,
while she assembled one thousand men-servants and as many maid-servants,
and, marking them off in pairs, ordered them all to marry. On the day
following this wholesale wedding, the poor victims came to their mistress
in a woeful plight. One had a broken leg, another a black eye, a third a
swollen nose; all were suffering from some ailment, but with one voice
they joined in the cry, "Lady, unmarry us again!" Then the matron sent
for Rabbi Jose, admitted that she had underrated the delicacy and
difficulty of match-making, and wisely resolved to leave Heaven for the
future to do its work in its own way.

The moral conveyed by this story may seem, however, to have been idealized by George Eliot almost out of recognition. This is hardly the case. Genius penetrates into the heart, even from a casual glance at the face of things. Though it is unlikely that she had ever seen the full passages in the Midrash to which she was alluding, yet her insight was not at fault. For the saying that God is occupied in making marriages is, in fact, associated in some passages of the Midrash with the far wider problems of man's destiny, with the universal effort to explain the inequalities of fortune, and the changes with which the future is heavy.

Rabbi Jose's proverbial explanation of connubial happiness was not merely a _bon mot_ invented on the spur of the moment, to silence an awkward questioner. It was a firm conviction, which finds expression in more than one quaint utterance, but also in more than one matter-of-fact assertion. To take the latter first:

"Rabbi Phineas in the name of Rabbi Abbahu said, We find in the Torah, in
the Prophets, and in the Holy Writings, evidence that a man's wife is
chosen for him by the Holy One, blessed be He. Whence do we deduce it in
the Torah? From Genesis xxiv. 50: _Then Laban and Bethuel answered and
said_ [in reference to Rebekah's betrothal to Isaac], _The thing
proceedeth from the Lord._ In the Prophets it is found in Judges xiv. 4
[where it is related how Samson wished to mate himself with a woman in
Timnath, of the daughters of the Philistines], _But his father and mother
knew not that it was of the Lord._ In the Holy Writings the same may be
seen, for it is written (Proverbs xix. 14), _House and riches are the
inheritance of fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord._"

Many years ago, a discussion was carried on in the columns of _Notes and Queries_ concerning the origin of the saying round which my present desultory jottings are centred. One correspondent, with unconscious plagiarism, suggested that the maxim was derived from Proverbs xix. 14.

Another text that might be appealed to is Tobit vi. 18. The Angel encourages Tobit to marry Sarah, though her seven husbands, one after the other, had died on their wedding eves. "Fear not," said Raphael, "for _she is appointed unto thee from the beginning_."

Here we may, for a moment, pause to consider whether any parallels to the belief in Heaven-made marriages exist in other ancient literatures. It appears in English as early as Shakespeare:

God, the best maker of all marriages,
Combine your hearts in one.

_Henry V., v. 2._

This, however, is too late to throw any light on its origin. With a little ingenuity, one might, perhaps, torture some such notion out of certain fantastic sentences of Plato. In the _Symposium_ (par. 192), however, God is represented as putting obstacles in the way of the union of fitting lovers, in consequence of the wickedness of mankind. When men become, by their conduct, reconciled with God, they may find their true loves. Astrological divinations on the subject are certainly common enough in Eastern stories; a remarkable instance will be given later on. At the present day, Lane tells us, the numerical value of the letters in the names of the two parties to the contract are added for each name separately, and one of the totals is subtracted from the other. If the remainder is uneven, the inference drawn is favorable; but if even, the reverse. The pursuit of Gematria is apparently not limited to Jews. Such methods, however, hardly illustrate my present point, for the identity of the couple is not discovered by the process. Whether the diviner's object is to make this discovery, or the future lot of the married pair is all that he seeks to reveal, in both cases, though he charm never so wisely, it does not fall within the scope of this inquiry. Without stretching one's imagination too much, some passages in the _Pantschatantra_ seem to imply a belief that marriage-making is under the direct control of Providence. Take, for instance, the story of the beautiful princess who was betrothed to a serpent, Deva Serma's son. Despite the various attempts made to induce her to break off so hideous a match, she declines steadfastly to go back from her word, and bases her refusal on the ground that the marriage was inevitable and destined by the gods.

As quaint illustrations may be instanced the following: "Raba heard a certain man praying that he might marry a certain damsel; Raba rebuked him with the words: 'If she be destined for thee, nothing will part thee from her; if thou art not destined for her, thou art denying Providence in praying for her.' Afterwards Raba heard him say, 'If I am not destined to marry her, I hope that either I or she may die,'" meaning that he could not bear to witness her union with another. Despite Raba's protest, other instances are on record of prayers similar to the one of which he disapproved. Or, again, the Midrash offers a curious illustration of Psalm lxii. 10, "Surely men of low degree are a breath, and men of high degree a lie." The first clause of the verse alludes to those who say in the usual way of the world, that a certain man is about to wed a certain maiden, and the second clause to those who say that a certain maiden is about to wed a certain man. In both cases people are in error in thinking that the various parties are acting entirely of their own free will; as a matter of fact, the whole affair is predestined. I am not quite certain whether the same idea is intended by the _Yalkut Reubeni_, in which the following occurs: "Know that all religious and pious men in this our generation are henpecked by their wives, the reason being connected with the mystery of the Golden Calf. The men on that occasion did not protest against the action of the mixed multitude [at whose door the charge of making the calf is laid], while the women were unwilling to surrender their golden ornaments for idolatrous purposes. Therefore they rule over their husbands." One might also quote the bearing of the mystical theory of transmigration on the predestination of bridal pairs. In the Talmud, on the other hand, the virtues of a man's wife are sometimes said to be in proportion to the husband's own; or in other words, his own righteousness is the cause of his acquiring a good wife. The obvious objection, raised by the Talmud itself, is that a man's merits can hardly be displayed before his birth--and yet his bride is destined for him at that early period.

Yet more quaint (I should perhaps rather term it consistent, were not consistency rare enough to be indistinguishable from quaintness) was the confident belief of a maiden of whom mention is made in the _Sefer ha-Chasidim_ (par. 384). She refused persistently to deck her person with ornaments. People said to her, "If you go about thus unadorned, no one will notice you nor court you." She replied with firm simplicity, "It is the Holy One, blessed be He, that settles marriages; I need have no concern on the point myself." Virtue was duly rewarded, for she married a learned and pious husband. This passage in the "Book of the Pious" reminds me of the circumstance under which the originator of the latter-day Chasidism, Israel Baalshem, is said to have married. When he was offered the daughter of a rich and learned man of Brody, named Abraham, he readily accepted the alliance, because he knew that Abraham's daughter was his bride destined by heaven. For, like Moses Mendelssohn, in some other respects the antagonist of the Chasidim, Baalshem accepted the declaration of Rabbi Judah in the name of Rab: "Forty days before the creation of a girl, a proclamation [Bath-Kol] is made in Heaven, saying, 'The daughter of such a one shall marry such and such a one.'"

The belief in the Divine ordaining of marriages affected the medieval Synagogue liturgy. To repeat what I have written elsewhere: When the bridegroom, with a joyous retinue, visited the synagogue on the Sabbath following his marriage, the congregation chanted the chapter of Genesis (xxiv) that narrates the story of Isaac's marriage, which, as Abraham's servant claimed, was providentially arranged. This chapter was sung, not only in Hebrew, but in Arabic, in countries where the latter language was the vernacular. These special readings, which were additional to the regular Scripture lesson, seem to have fallen out of use in Europe in the seventeenth century, but they are still retained in the East. But all over Jewry the beautiful old belief is contained in the wording of the fourth of the "seven benedictions" sung at the celebration of a wedding, "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast made man in thine image, after thy likeness, and hast prepared unto him out of his very self a perpetual fabric." Here is recalled the creation of Eve, of whom God Himself said, "I will make for man a help meet unto him." Not only the marriage, but also the bride was Heaven-made, and the wonderful wedding benediction enshrines this idea.

In an Agadic story, the force of this predestination is shown to be too strong even for royal opposition. It does not follow that the pre-arrangement of marriages implies that the pair cannot fall in love of their own accord. On the contrary, just the right two eventually come together; for once freewill and destiny need present no incompatibility. The combination, here shadowed, of a predestined and yet true-love marriage, is effectively illustrated in what follows:

"Solomon the king was blessed with a very beautiful daughter; she was the
fairest maiden in the whole land of Israel. Her father observed the
stars, to discover by astrology who was destined to be her mate in life
and wed her, when lo! he saw that his future son-in-law would be the
poorest man in the nation. Now, what did Solomon do? He built a high
tower by the sea, and surrounded it on all sides with inaccessible walls;
he then took his daughter and placed her in the tower under the charge of
seventy aged guardians. He supplied the castle with provisions, but he
had no door made in it, so that none could enter the fortress without the
knowledge of the guard. Then the king said, 'I will watch in what way God
will work the matter.'

"In course of time, a poor and weary traveller was walking on his way by
night, his garments were ragged and torn, he was barefooted and ready to
faint with hunger, cold, and fatigue. He knew not where to sleep, but,
casting his eyes around him, he beheld the skeleton of an ox lying on a
field hard by. The youth crept inside the skeleton to shelter himself
from the wind, and, while he slept there, down swooped a great bird,
which lifted up the carcass and the unconscious youth in it. The bird
flew with its burden to the top of Solomon's tower, and set it down on
the roof before the very door of the imprisoned princess. She went forth
on the morrow to walk on the roof according to her daily wont, and she
descried the youth. She said to him, 'Who art thou? and who brought thee
hither?' He answered, 'I am a Jew of Acco, and a bird bore me to thee.'
The kind-hearted maiden clothed him in new garments; they bathed and
anointed him, and she saw that he was the handsomest youth in Israel.
They loved one another, and his soul was bound up in hers. One day she
said, 'Wilt thou marry me?' He replied, 'Would it might be so!' They
resolved to marry. But there was no ink with which to write the Kethubah,
or marriage certificate. Love laughs at obstacles. So, using some drops
of his own blood as ink, the marriage was secretly solemnized, and he
said, 'God is my witness to-day, and Michael and Gabriel likewise.' When
the matter leaked out, the dismayed custodians of the princess hastily
summoned Solomon. The king at once obeyed their call, and asked for the
presumptuous youth. He looked at his son-in-law, inquired of him as to
his father and mother, family and dwelling-place, and from his replies
the king recognized him for the selfsame man whom he had seen in the
stars as the destined husband of his daughter. Then Solomon rejoiced with
exceeding joy and exclaimed, Blessed is the Omnipresent who giveth a wife
to man and establisheth him in his house."

The moral of which seems to be that, though marriages are made in Heaven, love must be made on earth.

HEBREW LOVE SONGS

Palestine is still the land of song. There the peasant sings Arabic ditties in the field when he sows and reaps, in the desert when he tends his flock, at the oasis when the caravan rests for the night, and when camels are remounted next morning. The maiden's fresh voice keeps droning rhythm with her hands and feet as she carries water from the well or wood from the scanty forest, when she milks the goats, and when she bakes the bread.

The burden of a large portion of these songs is love. The love motive is most prominent musically during the long week of wedding festivities, but it is by no means limited to these occasions. The songs often contain an element of quaint, even arch, repartee, in which the girl usually has the better of the argument. Certainly the songs are sometimes gross, but only in the sense that they are vividly natural. With no delicacy of expression, they are seldom intrinsically coarse. The troubadours of Europe trilled more daintily of love, but there was at times an illicit note in their lays. Eastern love songs never attain the ideal purity of Dante, but they hardly ever sink to the level of Ovid.

But why begin an account of Hebrew love songs by citing extant Palestinian examples in Arabic? Because there is an undeniable, if remote, relationship between some of the latter and the Biblical Song of Songs. In that marvellous poem, outspoken praise of earthly beauty, frank enumeration of the physical charms of the lovers, thorough unreserve of imagery, are conspicuous enough. Just these features, as Wetzstein showed, are reproduced, in a debased, yet recognizable, likeness, by the modern Syrian _wasf_--a lyric description of the bodily perfections and adornments of a newly-wed pair. The Song of Songs, or Canticles, it is true, is hardly a marriage ode or drama; its theme is betrothed faith rather than marital affection. Still, if we choose to regard the Song of Songs as poetry merely of the _wasf_ type, the Hebrew is not only far older than any extant Arabic instance, but it transcends the _wasf_ type as a work of inspired genius transcends conventional exercises in verse-making. There are superficial similarities between the _wasf_ and Canticles, but there is no spiritual kinship. The _wasf_ is to the Song as Lovelace is to Shakespeare, nay, the distance is even greater. The difference is not only of degree, it is essential. The one touches the surface of love, the other sounds its depths. The Song of Songs immeasurably surpasses the _wasf_ even as poetry. It has been well said by Dr. Harper (author of the best English edition of Canticles), that, viewed simply as poetry, the Song of Songs belongs to the loveliest masterpieces of art. "If, as Milton said, 'poetry should be simple, sensuous, passionate,' then here we have poetry of singular beauty and power. Such unaffected delight in all things fair as we find here is rare in any literature, and is especially remarkable in ancient Hebrew literature. The beauty of the world and of the creatures in it has been so deeply and warmly felt, that even to-day the ancient poet's emotion of joy in them thrills through the reader."

It is superfluous to justify this eulogy by quotation. It is impossible also, unless the quotation extend to the whole book. Yet one scene shall be cited, the exquisite, lyrical dialogue of spring, beginning with the tenth verse of the second chapter. It is a dialogue, though the whole is reported by one speaker, the Shulammite maid. Her shepherd lover calls to her as she stands hidden behind a lattice, in the palace in Lebanon, whither she has been decoyed, or persuaded to go, by the "ladies of Jerusalem."

_The shepherd lover calls_
Rise up, my love,
My fair one, come away!
For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth:
The birds' singing time is here,
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.
The fig-tree ripens red her winter fruit,
And blossoming vines give forth fragrance.
Rise up, my love,
My fair one, come away!

Shulammith makes no answer, though she feels that the shepherd is conscious of her presence. She is, as it were, in an unapproachable steep, such as the wild dove selects for her shy nest. So he goes on:

O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,
In the covert of the steep!
Let me see thy face,
Let me hear thy voice,
For sweet is thy voice, and thy face comely!

She remains tantalizingly invisible, but becomes audible. She sings a snatch from a vineyard-watcher's song, hinting, perhaps, at the need in which her person (her "vineyard" as she elsewhere calls it) stands of protection against royal foxes, small and large.

_Shulammith sings_
Take us the foxes,
The little foxes,
That spoil the vineyards:
For our vines are in blossom!

Then, in loving rapture,

_Shulammith speaks in an aside_
My beloved is mine, and I am his:
He feedeth his flock among the lilies!

But she cannot refuse her lover one glance at herself, even though she appear only to warn him of his danger, to urge him to leave her and return when the day is over.

_Shulammith entreatingly to her lover_
Until the evening breeze blows,
And the shadows disappear (at sunset),
Turn, my beloved!
Be thou as a young hart
Upon the cleft-riven hills!

This is but one of the many dainty love idylls of this divine poem. Or, again, "could the curious helplessness of the dreamer in a dream and the yearning of a maiden's affection be more exquisitely expressed than in the lines beginning, I was asleep, but my heart waked"? But, indeed, as the critic I am quoting continues, "the felicities of expression and the happy imaginings of the poem are endless. The spring of nature and of love has been caught and fixed in its many exquisite lines, as only Shakespeare elsewhere has done it; and, understood as we think it must be understood, it has that ethical background of sacrifice and self-forgetting which all love must have to be thoroughly worthy."

It is this ethical, or, as I prefer to term it, spiritual, background that discriminates the Song of Songs on the one hand from the Idylls of Theocritus, and, on the other, from the Syrian popular ditties. Some moderns, notably Budde, hold that the Book of Canticles is merely a collection of popular songs used at Syrian weddings, in which the bride figures as queen and her mate as king, just as Budde (wrongly) conceives them to figure in the Biblical Song. Budde suggests that there were "guilds of professional singers at weddings, and that we have in the Song of Songs simply the repertoire of some ancient guild-brother, who, in order to assist his memory, wrote down at random all the songs he could remember, or those he thought the best."

But this theory has been generally rejected as unsatisfying. The book, despite its obscurities, is clearly a unity. It is no haphazard collection of love songs. There is a sustained dramatic action leading up to a noble climax. Some passages almost defy the attempt to fit them into a coherent plot, but most moderns detect the following story in Canticles: A beautiful maid of Shulem (perhaps another form of Shunem), beloved by a shepherd swain, is the only daughter of well-off but rustic parents. She is treated harshly by her brothers, who set her to watch the vineyards, and this exposure to the sun somewhat mars her beauty. Straying in the gardens, she is on a day in spring surprised by Solomon and his train, who are on a royal progress to the north. She is taken to the palace in the capital, and later to a royal abode in Lebanon. There the "ladies of Jerusalem" seek to win her affections for the king, who himself pays her his court. But she resists all blandishments, and remains faithful to her country lover. Surrendering graciously to her strenuous resistance, Solomon permits her to return unharmed to her mountain home. Her lover meets her, and as she draws near her native village, the maid, leaning on the shepherd's arm, breaks forth into the glorious panegyric of love, which, even if it stood alone, would make the poem deathless. But it does not stand alone. It is in every sense a climax to what has gone before. And what a climax! It is a vindication of true love, which weighs no allurements of wealth and position against itself; a love of free inclination, yet altogether removed from license. Nor is it an expression of that lower love which may prevail in a polygamous state of society, when love is dissipated among many. We have here the love of one for one, an exclusive and absorbing devotion. For though the Bible never prohibited polygamy, the Jews had become monogamous from the Babylonian Exile at latest. The splendid praise of the virtuous woman at the end of the Book of Proverbs gives a picture, not only of monogamous home-life, but of woman's influence at its highest. The virtuous woman of Proverbs is wife and mother, deft guide of the home, open-handed dispenser of charity, with the law of kindness on her tongue; but her activity also extends to the world outside the home, to the mart, to the business of life. Where, in olden literature, are woman's activities wider or more manifold, her powers more fully developed? Now, the Song of Songs is the lyric companion to this prose picture. The whole Song works up towards the description of love in the last chapter--towards the culmination of the thought and feeling of the whole series of episodes. The Shulammite speaks:

Set me as a seal upon thy heart,
As a seal upon thine arm:
For love is strong as death,
Jealousy is cruel as the grave:
The flashes thereof are flashes of fire,
A very flame of God!
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it:
If a man would give the substance of his house for love,
He would be utterly contemned.

The vindication of the Hebrew song from degradation to the level of the Syrian _wasf_ is easy enough. But some may feel that there is more plausibility in the case that has been set up for the connection between Canticles and another type of love song, the Idylls of Theocritus, the Sicilian poet whose Greek compositions gave lyric distinction to the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, about the middle of the third century B.C.E. It is remarkable how reluctant some writers are to admit originality in ideas. Such writers seem to recognize no possibility other than supposing Theocritus to have copied Canticles, or Canticles Theocritus. It does not occur to them that both may be original, independent expressions of similar emotions. Least original among ideas is this denial of originality in ideas. Criticism has often stultified itself under the obsession that everything is borrowed. On this theory there can never have been an original note. The poet, we are told, is born, not made; but poetry, apparently, is always made, never born.

The truth rather is that as human nature is everywhere similar, there must necessarily be some similarity in its literary expression. This is emphatically the case with the expression given to the emotional side of human nature. The love of man for maid, rising everywhere from the same spring, must find lyric outlets that look a good deal alike. The family resemblance between the love poems of various peoples is due to the elemental kinship of the love. Every true lover is original, yet most true lovers, including those who have no familiarity with poetical literature, fall instinctively on the same terms of endearment. Differences only make themselves felt in the spiritual attitudes of various ages and races towards love. Theocritus has been compared to Canticles, by some on the ground of certain Orientalisms of his thought and phrases, as in his Praise of Ptolemy. But his love poems bear no trace of Orientalism in feeling, as Canticles shows no trace of Hellenism in its conception of love. The similarities are human, the differences racial.

Direct literary imitation of love lyrics certainly does occur. Virgil imitated Theocritus, and the freshness of the Greek Idyll became the convention of the Roman Eclogue. When such conscious imitation takes place, it is perfectly obvious. There is no mistaking the affectation of an urban lyrist, whose lovers masquerade as shepherds in the court of Louis XIV.

Theocritus seems to have had earlier Greek models, but few readers of his Idylls can question his originality, and fewer still will agree with Mahaffy in denying the naturalness of his goatherds and fishermen, in a word, his genuineness. Mahaffy wavers between two statements, that the Idylls are an affectation for Alexandria, and sincere for Sicily. The two statements are by no means contradictory. Much the same thing is true of Canticles, the Biblical Song of Songs. It is unreasonable for anyone who has seen or read about a Palestinian spring, with its unique beauty of flower and bird and blossom, to imagine that the author of Canticles needed or used second-hand sources of inspiration, however little his drama may have accorded with the life of Jerusalem in the Hellenistic period. And as the natural scenic background in each case is native, so is the treatment of the love theme; in both it is passionate, but in the one it is nothing else, in the other it is also spiritual. In both, the whole is artistic, but not artificial. As regards the originality of the love-interest in Canticles, it must suffice to say that there was always a strong romantic strain in the Jewish character.

Canticles is perhaps (by no means certainly) post-Exilic and not far removed in date from the age of Theocritus. Still, a post-Exilic Hebrew poet had no more reason to go abroad for a romantic plot than Hosea, or the author of Ruth, or the writer of the royal Epithalamium (Psalm xlv), an almost certainly pre-Exilic composition. This Psalm has been well termed a "prelude to the Song of Songs," for in a real sense Canticles is anticipated and even necessitated by it. In Ruth we have a romance of the golden corn-field, and the author chooses the unsophisticated days of the Judges as the setting of his tale. In Canticles we have a contrasted picture between the simplicity of shepherd-life and the urban voluptuousness which was soon to attain its climax in the court of the Ptolemies. So the poet chose the luxurious reign of Solomon as the background for his exquisite "melodrama." Both Ruth and Canticles are home-products, and ancient Greek literature has no real parallel to either.

Yet, despite the fact that the Hebrew Bible is permeated through and through, in its history, its psalmody, and its prophetic oratory, with images drawn from love, especially in rustic guise, so competent a critic as Graetz conceived that the pastoral background of the love-story of Canticles must have been artificial. While most of those who have accepted the theory of imitation-they cannot have reread the Idylls and the Song as wholes to persist in such a theory-have contended that Theocritus borrowed from Canticles, Graetz is convinced that the Hebrew poet must have known and imitated the Greek idyllist. The hero and heroine of the Song, he thinks, are not real shepherds; they are bucolic dilettanti, their shepherd-role is not serious. Whence, then, this superficial pastoral _mise-en-scene?_ This critic, be it observed, places Canticles in the Ptolemaic age.

"In the then Judean world," writes Graetz, "in the post-Exilic period,
pastoral life was in no way so distinguished as to serve as a poetic
foil. On the contrary, the shepherd was held in contempt. Agriculture was
so predominant that large herds were considered a detriment; they spoiled
the grain. Shepherds, too, were esteemed robbers, in that they allowed
their cattle to graze on the lands of others. In Judea itself, in the
post-Exilic period, there were few pasture-grounds for such nomads. Hence
the song transfers the goats to Gilead, where there still existed
grazing-places. In the Judean world the poet could find nothing to
suggest the idealization of the shepherd. As he, nevertheless, represents
the simple life, as opposed to courtly extravagance, through the figures
of shepherds, he must have worked from a foreign model. But Theocritus
was the first perfect pastoral poet. Through his influence shepherd songs
became a favorite _genre_. He had no lack of imitators. Theocritus had
full reason to contrast court and rustic life and idealize the latter,
for in his native Sicily there were still shepherds in primitive
simplicity. Under his influence and that of his followers, it became the
fashion to represent the simple life in pastoral guise. The poet of
Canticles--who wrote for cultured circles--was forced to make use of the
convention. But, as though to excuse himself for taking a Judean shepherd
as a representative of the higher virtues, he made his shepherd one who
feeds among the lilies. It is not the rude neat-herds of Gilead or the
Judean desert that hold such noble dialogues, but shepherds of delicate
refinement. In a word, the whole eclogic character of Canticles appears
to be copied from the Theocritan model,"

This contention would be conclusive, if it were based on demonstrable facts. But what is the evidence for it? Graetz offers none in his brilliant Commentary on Canticles. In proof of his startling view that, throughout post-Exilic times, the shepherd vocation was held in low repute among Israelites, he merely refers to an article in his _Monatsschrift_ (1870, p. 483). When one turns to that, one finds that it concerns a far later period, the second Christian century, when the shepherd vocation had fallen to the grade of a small and disreputable trade. The vocation was then no longer a necessary corollary of the sacrificial needs of the Temple. While the altar of Jerusalem required its holocausts, the breeders of the animals would hardly have been treated as pariahs. In the century immediately following the destruction of the Temple, the shepherd began to fall in moral esteem, and in the next century he was included among the criminal categories. No doubt, too, as the tender of flocks was often an Arab raider, the shepherd had become a dishonest poacher on other men's preserves. The attitude towards him was, further, an outcome of the deepening antagonism between the schoolmen and the peasantry. But even then it was by no means invariable. One of the most famous of Rabbis, Akiba, who died a martyr in 135 C.E., was not only a shepherd, but he was also the hero of the most romantic of Rabbinic love episodes.

At the very time when Graetz thinks that agriculture had superseded pastoral pursuits in general esteem, the Book of Ecclesiasticus was written. On the one side, Sirach, the author of this Apocryphal work, does not hesitate (ch. xxiv) to compare his beloved Wisdom to a garden, in the same rustic images that we find in Canticles; and, on the other side, he reveals none of that elevated appreciation of agriculture which Graetz would have us expect. Sirach (xxxvii. 25) asks sarcastically:

How shall he become wise that holdeth the plough,
That glorieth in the shaft of the goad:
That driveth oxen, and is occupied with their labors,
And whose talk is of bullocks?

Here it is the farmer that is despised, not a word is hinted against the shepherd. Sirach also has little fondness for commerce, and he denies the possibility of wisdom to the artisan and craftsman, "in whose ear is ever the noise of the hammer" (_ib_. v. 28). Sirach, indeed, is not attacking these occupations; he regards them all as a necessary evil, "without these cannot a city be inhabited" (v. 32). Our Jerusalem _savant_, as Dr. Schechter well terms him, of the third or fourth century B.C.E.; is merely illustrating his thesis, that

The wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure;
And he that hath little business shall become wise,

or, as he puts it otherwise, sought for in the council of the people, and chosen to sit in the seat of the judge. This view finds its analogue in a famous saying of the later Jewish sage Hillel, "Not everyone who increaseth business attains wisdom" (_Aboth_, ii. 5).

Undeniably, the shepherd lost in dignity in the periods of Jewish prosperity and settled city life. But, as George Adam Smith points out accurately, the prevailing character of Judea is naturally pastoral, with husbandry only incidental. "Judea, indeed, offers as good ground as there is in all the East for observing the grandeur of the shepherd's character,"--his devotion, his tenderness, his opportunity of leisurely communion with nature.