The laughable stories collected by Mâr Gregory John Bar Hebræ

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XXIV
INTRODUCTION.
scarabaeus is
ImTofthe^^^
made to say to its mother, "Whithersame
sto- "soever I go men spit upon me," and its mother replies
ries.
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"It is because thy beauty and smell are pleasant." With
this may be compared the Arabic proverb, "The beetle
"is a beauty in the eyes of its mother."' Again in
No. CCCLXXV we have the story of the ape of the
mosque and the dog, but the turn given to the story
therein is quite different from that of the Arabic
version". We may also notice in passing that stories
told of one man by one author are told of some one
quite different by Bar-Hebraeus. Thus in No. IV it is
said that Socrates once saw a woman who had hanged
herself, and that he remarked, "Would that all trees
"bore such fruit as this;" but in Diogenes Laertius
(VI, 2) the saying is attributed to Diogenes the Cynic,
and is thus given :
ibwv nore YuvaiKa? an' eXeiag dTrriYXOvicr-
(ievas, "ei'ee Tap, etpn. iravTa rd 5ev6pa toioOtov Kaprrov r|veTKev."
f^ng em!P'"°'" the fifth Chapter of the "Laughable Stories" we
ployed by are able to see the plan upon which Bar-Hebraeus
Bar-He-
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braeus. worked in making his compilation and to form an idea
how far he followed his authorities, and how far he
abridged them. In perusing the Chapter we see at
once that he stands on his own ground, and that he
is dealing with a class of literature with which he is
familiar at first hand. The chief source of the stories
of the Christian recluses is the Syriac version of Palla-
'