Pardon Me: a fairy tale of flatulence

• kateshrewsday

Tears of mirth have of late been running down my face.

And for all the wrong reasons.

Mine, you see, is the land of mummers and Punch and Judy; of blatant slapstick humour which is shameless and ribald. Shakespeare did it; we all do it. Make rowdy jokes about wind.

Tonight, like a Sultan, I needed a fairy story. There are days like that when nothing else will do. And like a speculative holidaymaker in a lending library, my fingertips traversed the different classes of tale.

And lo: there is a class of traditional folkloric tales from across the globe entitled: Breaking wind: legendary farts.

Forgive me. So base. But utterly mesmerising! How could I pass on by?

Yes: there are seven tales. The majority are from Germany. And one hails from Korea. But two come from the same hallowed source: from the storyweaving of one of my greatest heroines and role models, Scheherazade.

And one of them goes something like this.

Once upon a time, in the city of Kaukaban in Yemen, there lived a wealthy merchant, plump with power and influence, called Abu Hassan. His wife had died: and his friends urged him to take another.

He became weary of their pestering and took himself to negotiate with the women who matchmake. And they found him a woman as beautiful as the pale serene moon over the sea. Scheherazade relates that he invited everyone to the wedding: “kith and kin, ulema and fakirs, friends and foes, and all of his acquaintances.”

So it was a grand affair with incredible food, and according to the traditions of the time and place the bride tried on seven dresses for the womenfolk to admire, and another. And they were captivated by her fair grace.

The time came for the groom to enter and claim his bride, to see her radiant beauty. Except that Abu Hassan had been indulging in some very rich food and had had more than his fair share of Dutch courage. The assembly was hushed with awe at this seminal moment. You could hear a pin drop. His footsteps echoed up the long aisle. And then  suddenly, disastrously, Abu’s digestion took over.  In abject horror, he let rip a great and terrible blast of noisy, flapping wind.

All the guests turned away, terrified, and affected they had not heard, for this was a powerful man. Aghast, the merchant made some excuse about needing to use the bathroom, and fled from his intended wife’s gaze.

He did not pause to think or consider; did not weigh up whether to return and mend his flatulent reputation. He knew that it was irreparable. He walked straight out of the hall, jumped on his horse, and  rode off into the night, weeping bitterly, into self-imposed exile. When he ran out of land, he got on a boat for India and sailed far away.

In India, he was able to leave his shame behind, becoming a highly successful captain of the king’s bodyguard.

He did not return for ten years, but  his longing for his country became almost overpowering.He left his successful post one night, disguised as a dervish, and endured hardships and terrors to make it back home to Kaukaban.

“I don’t want anyone to recognise me,” he said to himself. “So I’ll just hang about near the city walls to listen to people.”

And this is just what he did. For seven nights and seven days he listened: and on the seventh day he heard a little girl addressing her mother in innocent piping tones. “Mummy, one of my friends wants to tell my fortune,” she was saying. “On which day was I born?”

“Child,” the woman replied levelly, “You were born on the very night Abu Hassan farted.”

The merchant shot in the air. “Oh, curses,” he wailed, “truly, my fart has become a date!”

And he turned and fled, never to return.

44 thoughts on “Pardon Me: a fairy tale of flatulence”

    1. And an art in its own right, Roger. Pitch, duration, timbre: all important facets of a really riproaring fart. I loved this. I shall probably sit down with a glass of wine and watch the whole thing through. Trust Leonard Rossiter 😀

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  2. You remember John Aubrey’s tale, in Brief Lives of the Earl of Oxford, “making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to travel 7 yeares. On his return the Queen welcomed him home and sayd: ‘My lord. We have forgot the Fart.’ “

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      1. Hi Kate…I’ve actually written a book called “Silent But Deadly” which is a comedy thriller about how flatulence brings down the British government…no takers so far…Perhaps I should rename it 50 shades of Brown…1 🙂

  7. There is a wonderful book called ‘The Past We Share: the Near Eastern Ancestry of Western Folk Literature’ by E L Ranelagh (Quartett Books, London, 1979) which draws attention to how much the stories in the ‘Arabian Nights’ shares material with or maybe contributes to Western popular culture. This very tale has a parallel told of an unfortunate courtier who passed wind loudly in front of Good Queen Bess; mortified, he travelled the world, returning many years later, only to be told by the monarch, with a twinkle in her eye, “It’s alright, we have forgot the fart!”

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    1. Oh, so the Elizabeth quote is not true, just folklore, Chris? How sad. I would love to hear of Elizabeth coming out with that one-liner…ho hum. I’m sure it sold John Aubrey a few books, though.

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  13. It is always hard for me to laugh at these, given the amount of wind my father created in my growing-up years………and always, always blamed on the paper mill, regardless of whether we were in proximity to one.

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  14. Talk about his putting on airs! 😀 How delightful, Kate! Loved the double entendre.

    You carve out such a welcome niche by sharing these historical truffles! We are assured of rare delicacies.

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  15. Fun post bringing out one’s inner fifth grader, Kate. In reference to George Vagabon mentioning the silent but deadly fart, I used to be involved with a woman with a penchant for 5 alarm fire-type spicy food. Therefore, she was monumentally gaseous. She was also head turning beautiful and resembled Natalie Wood. At night I’d spoon her at my own risk. She was not averse to emitting a puff of hot putrid air on my abdomen. She was infamous for cutting the deadliest SBD’s on a crowded subway train at rush hour. To deflect attention from herself she’d stare hard at a businessman, seething resentment so fellow commuters would assume that that poor innocent sap was the culprit.

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  20. When I was in the service learning Arabic, over twenty years ago, one of our Iraqi instructors told that same joke to the class. He was too modest and embarrassed to say fart out loud so, instead, he wrote FART, in big letters, on the chalkboard!

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  23. Well, I’m laughing now! This was quite a tale! One of the books I read to the girls is “Walter the Farting Dog”–which is just hilarious, too! Walter’s flatulence is so out of control that he saves the day when the home is invaded by robbers…they can’t stand the smell. I don’t know about Big Al, but Sophia, at five, is currently enamored with bodily sounds and finds it all quite humorous…as do all the “big” five-year-olds who have responded to your story! 🙂

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  25. One of your respondents wrote of learning FART in Arabic, which reminded me of a real marketing visit, to a middle Eastern country, to sell a radio station. A plan was produced which made the Arabic audience double up with laughter.
    The chairs in the plan were each labelled “OPERATOR’S STOOL”.
    Erroneous translation.
    Dad

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