Robert Nisbet Bain (1854–1909) was “a British historian and linguist who worked for the British Museum”, and “most prolific translator into English from Hungarian in the nineteenth century”, according to Wikipedia, the universal repository of knowledge about all knowable things, and even quibusdam aliis, as the saying goes. In 1896 he published a most delightful translation of several Turkish fairy and folk tales, which had been collected by the Hungarian folklorist Ignácz Kúnos.
To the Turkish tales “snatched from the burning” by Kúnos, Nisbet Bain appended “four semi-Turkish tales” from
Petre Ispirescu’s
Legends or the Tales of the Romanians: namely the tale of
Emperor Aleodor, the tale of the
Enchanted Hog, the tale of
Prâslea the Strong and the Golden Apples, and that metaphysical gem of Romanian fairy tales,
Youth without Age and Life without Death. Nisbet Bain recommends warmly Ispirescu’s book to the lovers of folklore, as “curious and original, abounding as it does in extraordinarily bizarre and beautiful variants of the best-known fairy tales, a very natural result of the peculiar combination in Roumanian of such heterogeneous elements as Romance, Slavonic, Magyar, and Turkish”.
The magnificent
Internet Archive has a digitized copy of the 1901 edition of Nisbet Bain’s
Turkish Fairy Tales, with splendid illustrations by
Celia Levetus (1874–1936). From this edition I reproduce the tale of Emperor Aleodor, curiously retitled by Nisbet Bain as “The Story of the Half-Man-Riding-on-the-Worse-Half-of-a-Lame-Horse”.
Comparing the Romanian text, graciously
put online by Wikisource, with Nisbet Bain’s English text, one cannot but notice some peculiarities of the translation. Romanian readers will undoubtedly wonder why the half of a lame rabbit had to become the worse half of a lame horse, how did the horse-fly become an ant, and why did Nisbet Bain consider that he had to use old-fashioned English with “thou” and “thine” and “dost” and “mayest” when Ispirescu wrote in plain modern Romanian. In order for the reader to form an idea of the faithfulness of the translation here is a fragment from the original Romanian compared with the corresponding paragraph in Nisbet Bain’s English:
Aleodor voi să se codească oarecum, ba că trebile împărăției nu-l iartă să facă o călătorie așa de lungă, ba că n-are călăuz, ba că una, ba că alta; dară ași! unde vrea să știe pocitul de toate astea! El o ținea una, să-i aducă pe fata lui Verdeș împărat, dacă vrea să scape de ponosul de tâlhar, de călcător de drepturile altuia, și să rămâie cu sufletul în oase.
Aleodor se știa vinovat. Deși fără voia lui, dară știa că a făcut un păcat de a călcat pe moșia slutului. Mai știa iară că de omul dracului, să dai și să scapi. Să n-ai nici în clin, nici în mânecă cu dânsul. Făgădui în cele din urmă să-i facă slujba cu care-l însărcina. | | Aleodor would very much have liked to have got out of the difficulty some other way, as affairs of State would not allow him to take so long a journey, a journey on which he could find no guide to direct him; but what did the monster know of all that? Aleodor felt that if he would avoid the shame of being thought a robber and a trampler on the rights of others, he must indeed find the daughter of the Green Emperor. Besides, he wanted to escape with a whole skin if he could; so at last he promised that he would do the service required of him. |
Nisbet Bain translates
Făt-Frumos as
Boy-Beautiful: it’s a well-found, reasonable translation. English-speaking readers will probably want to know how to pronounce the name of the protagonist; in Romanian it’s /ale.o'dor/. I’d say that the best English approximation is to pronounce it
Aleodore, with
-eodore as in
Theodore.
These being said, without any further delay I present the tale of Emperor Aleodor by Petre Ispirescu, retold in English by Robert Nisbet Bain.
————————————
The Story of the Half-Man-Riding-on-the-Worse-Half-of-a-Lame-Horse
by
Petre Ispirescu
(Legende sau Basmele Românilor, 1874)
translated into English by
Robert Nisbet Bain
(Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, 1896)
Once upon a time, long long ago, in the days when poplars bore pears and rushes violets, when bears could switch themselves with their tails like cows, and wolves and lambs kissed and cuddled each other, there lived an Emperor whose hair was already white, and who yet had never a son to bless himself with. The poor Emperor would have given anything to have had a little son of his own like other men, but all his wishes were in vain.
At last, when he was quite an old old man, Fortune took pity on him also, and a darling of a boy was born to him, the like of which the world had never seen before. The Emperor gave him the name of Aleodor, and gathered east and west, north and south, together to rejoice in his joy at the child’s christening.
The revels lasted three days and three nights, and all the guests who made merry there with the Emperor could think of nothing else for the rest of their lives.
But the lad grew up as strong as an oak and as lovely as a rose, while his father the Emperor drew nearer every day to the edge of the grave, and when the hour of his death arrived he took the child on his knees and said to him:
Aleodor and the Emperor.
(Illustration by Celia Levetus)
“My darling son, behold the Lord calls me. The moment is at hand when I am to share the common lot of man. I foresee that thou wilt become a great man, and though I be dead my bones will rejoice in the tomb at thy noble deeds. As to the administration of this realm I need tell thee nought, for thou, with thy wisdom, wilt know how it behoves a king to rule. One thing there is, nevertheless, that I must tell thee. Dost thou see that mountain over yonder? Beware of ever setting thy foot upon it, for ’twill be to thy hurt and harm. That mountain belongs to the ‘Half-man-riding-on-the-worse-half-of-a-lame-horse,’ and whosoever ventures upon that mountain cannot escape unscathed.”
He had no sooner said these words than his throat rattled thrice, and he gave up the ghost. He departed to his place like every other human soul that is born into the world, though there was never Emperor like him since the world began. Those of his household bewailed him, his great nobles bewailed him, his people bewailed him also, and then they had to bury him.
Erà odată un împarat bogat peste samă. Intr’o noapte visază un vis că batăr că-i bogat de nu mai are păreche, şi-i mai mare peste toţi împaraţii, el nici un folos n’are să aibă pe ceea lume, până n’a face o biserică numai de lei şi leiţe. Că — ziceà omul cel ce i s’o aratat prin vis: — chiar împărăţia toată s’o dai de pomană, tot degeaba ţi-i; da’ de-i face biserica numai din lei şi din leiţe, apoi de-acolea două parale de-i da cuiva de pomană, au să fie primite înaintea lui Dumnezeu.
