Folktales of the Jews, Volume 1: Tales from the Sephardic Dispersion

42. Letters from the Angel of Death (IFA 9704)

42 Letters from the Angel of Death T O L D B Y S H M U ’ E L R E C A N A T I T O H E D A J A S O N It happened in Mah.aneh Yehudah.* There was an old man there, and Satan** came to him. “Come!” “What do you mean?” “Your time has arrived. I have come to take your soul.” “What sort of procedure is this, without any advance notice?” “What do you mean, without notice? I sent you letters.” “What letters? I didn’t get any letters.” “What do you mean? Hasn’t your hair turned white? It used to be black and now it’s white. That was the first letter. And what’s that on your eyes? Glasses—that was the second letter. And what do you have in your mouth?You’re missing teeth, they’ve fallen out—that was the third letter. And what’s that in your hand? A cane! That was the fourth letter. Enough now, come along quietly.” And he took him away. 336 * A neighborhood in central Jerusalem, (established in 1887), once populated mainly by Sephardim and best known as the site of the open-air market. ** That is, the Angel of Death; see also tale 34, IFA 16395 (vol.1) and the notes to it. COMMENTARY FOR TALE 42 (IFA 9704) Shmu’el Recanati told this anecdote to Heda Jason in July 1972 in Jerusalem. Cultural, Historical, and Literary Background The Brothers Grimm included a tale about Death’s three messengers in their collection ;1 they based the story on a sixteenth-century literary source rather than on oral tradition. In the annotation of their tales,2 most, if not all, the references are to medieval and later literary sources. Similarly, the texts in Röhrich3 and Morris4 are primarily from literary sources. Morris5 suggested, and S. Thompson6 agreed, that the earliest known version of this tale is from Indian Buddhistic literature and noted that it “does not occur in the Jataka book, the Panca-Tantra, or the Kalilag and Damnag literature” and was found only in the Anguttara Nikaya.7 The Anguttara Nikaya is part of the Theravada Buddhist canon known as the Pali canon, the text of which is a direct descendant of the most ancient stage of Buddhist literature. The tales in the Anguttara Nikaya are the product of oral tradition and were set in their final form around the fifth century C.E. Schwarzbaum8 reiterated this proposition, offering further supporting references. In the Buddhist text, the messengers of death and old age are old and sick people, whom the individual should have seen around him; in the European and Jewish tales, the messengers are diseases and the loss of senses that the person himself or herself suffers. Western versions draw on the description of old age and death in Ecclesiastes 12:3–8. Because most available European versions are from literary sources, the present text is a rare oral rendition that the narrator localized and personalized. Similarities to Other IFA Tales In the IFA there are eight oral versions of this tale: • IFA 970: Angel of Death’s Messengers (Yemen). • IFA 3944: The Diviner’s Slave (Iraqi Kurdistan).9 • IFA 4994: The Angel of Death’s Letters (Eretz Yisra’el, Sephardic). • IFA 7201: The Angel of Death and His Client (Rumania). • IFA 9792: The Angel of Death Warned Him (Czechoslovakia).10 • IFA 12435: The Warnings of the Angel of Death (Poland).11 • IFA 12989: The Angel of Death’s Messengers (Yugoslavia).12 • IFA 13039: Charity Saves from Death (Yemen).13 Folktale Types • 335 “Death’s Messengers.” • 335 “Death’s Messengers” (new ed.). • 335 (Jason) “Death’s Messengers.” 42 / Letters from the Angel of Death  337  • 3277 (Tubach) “Messengers Sent by Death.” Folklore Motifs • J1051.1 “Death from messengers.” • V233 “Angel of Death.” • Z71.2 “Formulistic number: four • Z111 “Death personified.” • Z111.6 “Death’s messengers.” __________ Notes __________ 1. Grimm and Grimm, The Complete Fairy Tales, 557–558 no. 177. 2. Bolte and Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder-u: Hausemärchen 3:293–297 no. 177; and Uther, Grimms Kinder-und Hausmärchen, 4:327–328. 3. Erzählungen der Späten Mittelalters und ihr Weiterleben, 1:80–92. 4. “Death’s Messengers.” 5. Op. cit., 190. 6. The Folktale, 47. 7. Thera and Bodhi, Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, 51–53 no...