Nothing is sacred! Including these is a way of offending both Christians and Muslims at the same time. It's intriguing that they could so easily get away with it with apparent ease, but then, 1884 was a time for popularising Darwin.
In fact, it would have been more the Christians at their throats when this was written, not the Muslims. Hey, I'm just the messenger here.
In fact, it would have been more the Christians at their throats when this was written, not the Muslims. Hey, I'm just the messenger here.
017
Satires And Profanities
by G. W. Foote and James Thomson (1884)
✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺
Again it is told that a certain miner, a tough cuss, who could whip his weight in wild cats and give points to a grizzle, seemed uncommonly moody and low-spirited one morning, and on being questioned by his chum, at length confessed that he was bothered by a very queer dream.
"I dreamt that I was dead,” he explained; "and a smart spry pretty little angel took me up to heaven.”
"Dreams go by contraries,” suggested the chum, by way of comfort.
"Let that slide,” answered the dreamer; "the point isn’t there. Wall, St. Peter wasn’t at the gate, and the angel critter led me on to pay my respects to the boss, and after travelling considerable we found him as thus. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost and Peter, all as large as life, were playing a high-toned game of poker, and there was four heavy piles on the table—gold, not shinplasters, you bet. I was kinder glad to see that they played poker up in heaven, so as to make life there not on-bearable; for it would be but poor fun singing psalms all day; I was never much of a hand at singing, more particularly when the songs is psalms. Wall, we waited, not liking to disturb their game, and I watched the play. I soon found that Jesus Christ was going through the rest, cheating worse than the heathen Chinee at euchre; but of course I didn’t say nothing, not being in the game. After a while Peter showed that he began to guess it too, if he wasn’t quite sure; or p’r’aps he was skeared at up and telling Christ to his face. At last, however, what does Christ do, after a bully bluff which ran Pete almost to his bottom dollar, but up and show five aces to Pete’s call; and ‘What’s that for high?’ says he, quite cool. ‘Now look you, Christ,’ shouts Pete, jumping up as mad as thunder, and not caring a cent or a continental what he said to anybody; ‘look you, Christ, that’s too thin; we don’t want any of your darned miracles here!’ and with that he grabbed up his pile and all his stakes, and went off in a mighty huff. Christ looked pretty mean, I tell you, and the game was up.
Now you see,” said the dreamer, sadly and thoughtfully, "it’s a hard rock to drill and darned poor pay at that, if when you have a quiet hand at poker up there, the bosses are allowed to cheat and a man can’t use his deringer or put a head on ’em; I don’t know but I’d rather go to the other place on those terms.”
Not yet to be read in books, as I have intimated, but circulating orally, and in versions that vary with the various rhapsodists, such are the legends you may hear when a ring is formed round the hotel-office stove at night, in shanties and shebangs of ranchmen and miners, in the shingled offices of judge and doctor, in railroad cars and steamboats, or when bumming around the stores; whenever and wherever, in short, men are gathered with nothing particular to do. The very naïveté of such stories surely testifies to the child-like sincerity of the faith they express and nourish. It is the simple unbounded faith of the Middle Ages, such as we find in the old European legends and poems and mysteries, such as your poetess Mrs. Browning well marks in Chaucer.
✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺
Yea, when I contrast these glowing and glorious prospects held out to the faithful by the Kur-ân, with the everlasting singing in white night-gowns, amidst the howling of elders and composite beasts all over eyes (what our Heine terms “all the menagerie of the Apocalypse”), in adoration of a God like a jasper and sardine stone to look upon, and of a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes; then do I wring my hands and beat my breast and tear my hair, sighing and sobbing, moaning and groaning, weeping and lamenting most piteously—Alas! and alas! and alas! why was I bom in a Christian land and reared for the Christian Heaven?
Would that I had been born among the Muslims and brought up in the faith of El Islâm! So should I be now looking forward (for from such a generous faith never, never would I have lapsed) unto a Paradise worthy of the name; revelling in anticipations of four-score thousand servants, uncloying courses of three hundred dishes, unlimited strong wine without inebriation, six-dozen wives of the refulgent celestial virgins, aging not themselves, aging not me; perpetual youth, unsating and unexhausting raptures, for ever, and ever, and ever; and instead of having to sing my own throat hoarse, I should have the angel Isrâfeel to sing for me.
Ah, dear God! Thou most Compassionate! Thou most Bountiful! Thou to whom all things are possible! grant that I may even yet be converted from a doleful Christian infidel into a blessed Muslim true believer! O God the All-merciful, save me from the terrors and tortures of our Sankey and Moody Christian heaven! O God the All-gracious, let me lie secure in the arms of six-dozen hooreeyehs of Paradise of El Islam! Amen, and Amen.
Would that I had been born among the Muslims and brought up in the faith of El Islâm! So should I be now looking forward (for from such a generous faith never, never would I have lapsed) unto a Paradise worthy of the name; revelling in anticipations of four-score thousand servants, uncloying courses of three hundred dishes, unlimited strong wine without inebriation, six-dozen wives of the refulgent celestial virgins, aging not themselves, aging not me; perpetual youth, unsating and unexhausting raptures, for ever, and ever, and ever; and instead of having to sing my own throat hoarse, I should have the angel Isrâfeel to sing for me.
Ah, dear God! Thou most Compassionate! Thou most Bountiful! Thou to whom all things are possible! grant that I may even yet be converted from a doleful Christian infidel into a blessed Muslim true believer! O God the All-merciful, save me from the terrors and tortures of our Sankey and Moody Christian heaven! O God the All-gracious, let me lie secure in the arms of six-dozen hooreeyehs of Paradise of El Islam! Amen, and Amen.
✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺
Your download site
☟
☟
✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.