Moorish Literature | Page 6

among other trials, that of sorting out and placing in separate jars the grains of wheat, oats, millet and poppy pease, lentils and lima beans which she had mixed together. This task, beyond the power of Psyche, was accomplished by the ants which came to her aid, and thus she conquered the task set by her cruel mother-in-law.
This same trial we find in a Berber story. It is an episode in a Khabyle story of the Mohammed ben Sol'tan, who, to obtain the hand of the daughter of a king, separated wheat, corn, oats, and sorghum, which had been mingled together. This trait is not found in Arab stories which have served as models for the greater part of Khabyle tales. It is scarcely admissible that the Berbers had read the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, but it is probable that he was born at Madaure, in Algeria, and retained an episode of a popular Berber tale which he had heard in his childhood, and placed in his story.
The tales have also preserved the memory of very ancient customs, and in particular those of adoption. In the tales gathered in Khabyle by General Hanoteau,[30] T. Rivi��re,[31] and Moulieras,[32] also that in the story of Mizab, the hero took upon himself a supernatural task, and succeeded because he became the adopted son of an ogress, at whose breast he nursed.[33] This custom is an ancient one with the Berbers, for on a bas relief at Thebes it shows us a chief of the Machonacha (the Egyptian name of the Berbers) of the XXII Dynasty nursed and adopted by the goddess Hathor. Arab stories of Egypt have also preserved this trait--for instance, "The Bear of the Kitchen,"[34] and El Schater Mohammed.[35]
During the conquest of the Magreb by the Arabs in the seventh century A.D., Kahina, a Berber queen, who at a given moment drove the Mussulman invaders away and personified national defiance, employed the same ceremony to adopt for son the Arab Khaled Ben Yazed, who was to betray her later.
Assisted by these traits of indigenous manners, we can call to mind ogres and pagans who represent an ancient population, or, more exactly, the sectarians of an ancient religion like the Paganism or the Christianity which was maintained on some points of Northern Africa, with the Berbers, until the eleventh century A.D. Fabulous features from the Arabs have slipped into the descriptions of the Djohala, mingled with the confused souvenirs of mythological beings belonging to paganism before the advent of Christianity.
It is difficult to separate the different sources of the Berber stories. Besides those appearing to be of indigenous origin, and which have for scene a grotto or a mountain, one could scarcely deny that the greater part, whether relating to stories of adventure, fairy stories, or comical tales, were borrowed from foreign countries by way of the Arabs. Without doubt they have furnished the larger part, but there are some of which there are no counterparts in European countries. "Half a cock," for instance, has travelled into the various provinces of France, Ireland, Albania, among the Southern Slavs, and to Portugal, from whence it went to Brazil; but the Arabs do not know it, nor do they know Tom Thumb, which with the Khabyles becomes H'ab Sliman. In the actual state of our knowledge, we can only say that there is a striking resemblance between a Berber tale and such or such a version. From thence comes the presumption of borrowed matter. But, for the best results to be gained, one should be in possession of all the versions. When it relates to celebrated personages among the Mussulmans, like Solomon, or the features of a legend of which no trace remains of the names, one can certainly conclude that it is borrowed from the Arabs. It is the same with the greater number of fairy tales, whose first inventors, the Arabs, commenced with the "Thousand and One Nights," and presented us with "The Languages of the Beasts," and also with funny stories.
The principal personage of these last is Si Djeha, whose name was borrowed from a comic narrative existing as early as the eleventh century A.D. The contents are sometimes coarse and sometimes witty, are nearly all more ancient, and yet belong to the domain of pleasantries from which in Germany sprung the anecdotes of Tyll Eulenspiegel and the Seven Suabians, and in England the Wise Men of Gotham. In Italy, and even in Albania, the name of Djeha is preserved under the form of Guifa and Guicha; and the Turks, who possess the richest literature on this person, have made him a Ghadji Sirii Hissar, under the name of Nasr-eddin Hodja (a form altered from Djoha). The traits attributed to such persons as Bon Idhes, Bon Goudous, Bon Kheenpouch, are equally