A clever Magyar is introduced with his companions in disguise into the
camp of the King of the Tátárs, who is menacing his country. The prince,
suspicious, causes him to be carefully watched by his mother, a skilful
sorceress. They brought in the evening’s repast. “What good wine the
prince has!” said she. “Yes,” replied one, “but it contains human
blood.” The sorceress took note of the bed from whence these words
proceeded, and when all were asleep, she deftly cut a lock of hair from
him who had spoken, crept stealthily out of the room, and brought this
mark to her son. The strangers started up, and when our hero discovered
what had been done to him, he cut a lock from all, to render his
detection impossible. When they came to dinner, the king knew not from
whom the lock had been taken. The following night the mother of the
prince again slipped into the room, and said, “What good bread has the
prince of the Tátárs!” “Very good,” replied one, “it is made with the
milk of a woman.” When all were asleep, she cut a little off the
moustache of him who was lying in the bed from which the voice
proceeded. This time the Magyars were still more on the alert, and when
they were apprised of the matter, they all cut a little from their
moustaches, so that next morning the prince found himself again foiled.
The third night the old lady hid herself, and said in a loud voice,
“What a handsome man is the prince of the Tátárs!” “Yes,” replied one,
“but he is a bastard.” When all were asleep, the old lady made a mark on
the visor of the helmet of the one from whence had come the words, and
then acquainted her son of what she had done. In the morning the prince
perceived that all the helmets were similarly marked.[503] At length he
refrained, and said, “I see that there is among you a master greater
than myself; that is why I desire very earnestly to know him. He may
make himself known; I should like to see and know this extraordinary
man, who is more clever and more powerful than myself.” The young man
started up from his seat and said, “I have not wished to be stronger or
wiser than yourself. I have only wished to find out what you had
preconcerted for us. I am the person who has been marked three nights.”
“It is well, young man. But prove now your words: How is there human
blood in the wine?” “Call your butler and he will tell you.” The butler
came in trembling all over, and confessed that when he corked the wine
he had cut his finger with the knife, and a drop of blood had fallen
into the cask. “But how is there woman’s milk in the bread?” asked the
king. “Call the bakeress,” he replied, “and she will tell it you.” When
they questioned her, she confessed that she was kneading the bread and
at the same time suckling her baby, and that on pressing it to her
breast some milk flowed and was mixed with the bread. The sorceress, the
mother of the king, when they came to the third revelation of the young
man, confessed in her turn that the king was illegitimate.
* * * * *
Mr. Tawney refers to the Chevalier de Mailly’s version of the Three
Princes of Serendip (Ceylon): The three are sitting at table, and eating
a leg of lamb, sent with some splendid wine from the table of the
emperor Bahrám. The eldest maintains that the wine was made of grapes
that grew in a cemetery; the second, that the lamb was brought up on
dog’s milk; while the third asserts that the emperor had put to death
the son of the wazír, and that the latter is bent on vengeance. All
these statements turn out to be well-grounded. Mr. Tawney also refers to
parallel stories in the Breslau edition of The Nights; namely, in Night
458, it is similarly conjectured that the bread was baked by a sick
woman; that the kid was suckled by a bitch, and that the sultan is
illegitimate; and in Night 459, a gem-cutter guesses that a jewel has an
internal flaw, a man skilled in the pedigrees of horses divines that a
horse is the offspring of a female buffalo, and a man skilled in human
pedigrees that the mother of the favourite queen was a rope-dancer.
Similar incidents occur in “The Sultan of Yemen and his Three Sons,” one
of the Additional Tales translated by Scott, from the Wortley-Montague
MS., now in the Bodleian Library, and comprised in vol. vi. of his
edition of “The Arabian Nights Entertainments,” published at London in
1811.
* * * * *
An analogous tale occurs in Mr. E. J. W. Gibb’s recently-published
translation of the “History of the Forty Vezírs” (the Lady’s Fourth
Story, p. 69 ff.), the _motif_ of which is that “all things return to
their origin.”