figures in a story which in the first part bears some analogy to the
celebrated Arabian tale, and which occurs in an interesting little work,
now apparently forgotten, entitled “The Orientalist; or, Letters of a
Rabbi. With Notes by James Noble, Oriental Master in the Scottish Naval
and Military Academy,” Edinburgh, 1831. The substance of the story is as
follows (p. 118 ff.):
An aged Dervish falls ill in the house of a poor widow, who tends him
with great care, with which he is so touched that he offers to take
charge of her only son Abdallah. The good woman gladly consents, and the
Dervish sets out accompanied by his young ward, having intimated to his
mother that they must perform a journey which would last about two
years. One day they arrived at a solitary place, and the Dervish said to
Abdallah, “My son, we are now at the end of our journey. I shall employ
my prayers to obtain from Allah that the earth shall open and make an
entrance wide enough to permit thee to descend into a place where thou
shalt find one of the greatest treasures that the earth contains. Hast
thou courage to descend into the subterranean vault?” Abdallah swore he
might depend upon his obedience and zeal. Then the Dervish lighted a
small fire, into which he cast a perfume; he read and prayed for some
moments, after which the earth opened, and he said to the young man,
“Thou mayest now enter. Remember that it is in thy power to do me a
great service, and that this is perhaps the only opportunity thou shalt
ever have of testifying to me that thou art not ungrateful. Do not let
thyself be dazzled by all the riches that thou shalt find there: think
only of seizing upon an iron candlestick with twelve branches, which
thou shalt find close to the door. That is absolutely necessary to me;
come up immediately and bring it to me.”
Abdallah descended, and, neglecting the advice of the Dervish, filled
his vest and sleeves with the gold and jewels which he found heaped up
in the vault, whereupon the opening by which he had entered closed of
itself. He had, however, sufficient presence of mind to seize the iron
candlestick, and endeavoured to find some other means of escape from the
vault. At length he discovers a narrow passage, which he follows until
he reaches the surface of the earth, and looking about for the Dervish
saw him not, but to his surprise found that he was close to his mother’s
house. On showing his wealth to his mother it all suddenly vanished. But
the candlestick remained. He lighted one of the branches, upon which a
dervish appeared, and after turning round for an hour, he threw down an
asper (about 3 farthings) and vanished. Next night he put a light in
each of the branches, when twelve dervishes appeared, and after
continuing their gyrations an hour, each threw down an asper and
vanished.
Thus Abdallah and his mother contrived to live for a time, till at
length he resolved to carry the candlestick to the Dervish, hoping to
obtain from him the treasure which he had seen in the vault. He
remembered his name and city, and on reaching his dwelling he found the
Dervish living in a magnificent palace with fifty porters at the gate.
Quoth the Dervish, when Abdallah appeared before him, “Thou art an
ungrateful wretch! Hadst thou known the value of the candlestick, thou
wouldst never have brought it to me. I will show thee its true use.”
Then the Dervish placed a light in each branch, whereupon twelve
dervishes appeared and began to whirl, but on his giving each a blow
with a cane in an instant they were changed into twelve heaps of
sequins, diamonds and other precious stones.
Ungrateful as Abdallah had shown himself, yet the Dervish gave him two
camels laden with gold and a slave, telling him he must depart the next
morning. During the night Abdallah stole the candlestick and placed it
at the bottom of one of his sacks. In the morning he took his leave of
the generous Dervish and set off. When about half a day’s journey from
his own city he sold the slave, that there should be no witness to his
former poverty, and bought another in his stead. Arriving home, he
carefully placed his loads of treasure in a private chamber, and then
put a light in each branch of the candlestick, and when the twelve
dervishes appeared, as usual, he dealt each a blow with a cane. But he
had not observed that the Dervish employed his left hand, and he had
naturally used his right, in consequence of which the twelve dervishes
each drew from under their robes a heavy club and beat him till he was
nearly dead, and then vanished, as did also the treasure, the camels,
the slave, and the wonder-working candlestick.
It is to be regretted that the author has not stated the sources whence
he drew his stories, but that they are without exception of Eastern
extraction does not admit of any doubt: some are taken from the
“Panchatantra,” “Hitopadesa,” or “Anvár-i Suhaylí,” and others are found
in other Asiatic story-books. I have however not met with the foregoing
elsewhere than in Noble’s little volume. The beginning of the story is
near akin to that of Aladdin: for the wicked magician who pretends to
take the tailor’s son under his care we have a dervish who in good faith
takes charge of the son of a poor widow who had nursed him through a
severe illness. The cave scene is very similar in both, only the
magician performs diabolical incantations, while the dervish practises
“white magic” and prays to Allah for assistance. The twelve-branched
candlestick takes the place of the Wonderful Lamp. Like Aladdin, young
Abdallah is shut in the cavern, though not because he refused to give up
the candlestick until he was safe above ground again, but because his
cupidity induced him to pocket some of the treasures which filled the
cave.
There is a strong Indian—even Buddhistic—flavour in the story of
Abdallah and the Dervish, and the apparition of the twelve whirling
fakírs, who when struck with a cane held in the left hand fall into so
many heaps of gold coin, has its analogue in the “Hitopadesa” and also
in the Persian Tales of a Parrot (“Tútí Náma”). The 10th Fable of Book
iii. of the “Hitopadesa” goes thus: In the city of Ayodhya (Oude) there
was a soldier named Churamani, who, being anxious for money, for a long
time with pain of body worshipped the deity the jewel of whose diadem is
the lunar crescent.[144] Being at length purified from his sins, in his
sleep he had a vision in which, through the favour of the deity, he was
directed by the lord of the Yakshas[145] to do as follows: “Early in the
morning, having been shaved, thou must stand, club in hand, concealed
behind the door of thy house; and the beggar whom thou seest come into
the court thou wilt put to death without mercy by blows of thy staff.
Instantly the beggar will become a pot full of gold, by which thou wilt
be comfortable the rest of thy life.” These instructions being followed,
it came to pass accordingly. But the barber who had been brought to
shave him, having witnessed it all, said to himself, “O, is this the
mode of gaining treasure? Why, then, may not I also do the same?” From
that day forward the barber in like manner, with club in hand, day after
day awaited the coming of the beggar. One day a beggar being so caught
was attacked by him and killed with the stick, for which offence the
barber himself was beaten by the King’s officers and died.
The same story is differently told, at greater length and with
considerable humour, in Nakhshabí’s Parrot-Book, but the outline of it
can only be given here: A rich merchant named Abd-el-Malik resolved to
give all his substance to the poor and needy before he departed this
life. At midnight an apparition stood before him in the habit of a fakír
and thus addressed him: “I am the apparition of thy good fortune and the
genius of thy future happiness.[146] When thou, with such unbounded
generosity, didst bequeath all thy wealth to the poor, I determined not
to pass by thy door unnoticed, but to enrich thee with an inexhaustible
treasure, suitable to the greatness of thy capacious soul. To accomplish
which I will every morning in this shape appear to thee; thou shalt
strike me a few blows on the head, and I shall instantly fall at thy
feet, transformed into an image of gold. From this take as much as thou
shalt have occasion for; and every member that shall be separated from
the image shall instantly be replaced by another of the same precious
metal.”[147] In the morning a covetous neighbour named Hajm visited the
merchant, and soon after the apparition presented itself. Abd-el-Malik
at once arose and after striking it several blows on the head with a
stick, it fell down and was changed into an image of gold. He took what
sufficed for the day’s needs and gave the larger portion to his visitor.
When Hajm the covetous returned to his own house he pondered what he had
seen, and concluding it would be as easy for him to convert fakírs into
gold, invited to a feast at his house all the fakírs of the province.
When they had feasted to their hearts’ content, Hajm seized a heavy club
and began to unmercifully belabour his guests till he broke their heads
and “the crimson torrent stained the carpet of hospitality.” The cries
of the fakírs soon brought the police to their assistance, and a great
crowd of people gathered outside the house. Hajm was immediately haled
before the magistrate, and attempted to justify his conduct by giving an
account of what he had seen done in the house of Abd-el-Malik. The
merchant was sent for and declared Hajm to be mad, no better proof of
which could be desired than his treatment of the fakírs. So Hajm the
covetous was sent forthwith to the hospital for lunatics.
_KHUDADAD AND HIS BROTHERS—p. 269._
Readers of The Nights must have observed that a large number of the
tales begin with an account of a certain powerful king, whose dominions
were almost boundless, whose treasury overflowed, and whose reign was a
blessing to his people; but he had one all-absorbing care—he had no son.
Thus in the tale of Khudadad we read that in the city of Harrán there
dwelt a sultan “of illustrious lineage, a protector of the people, a
lover of his lieges, a friend of mankind, and renowned for being gifted
with every good quality. Allah Almighty had bestowed upon him all that
his heart could desire, save the boon of a child; for though he had
lovely wives within his haram-door and concubines galore [far too many,
no doubt!], he had not been blessed with a son,” and so forth. This is
the “regulation” opening of by far the greater number of Asiatic
stories, even as it was _de rigueur_ for the old pagan Arab poets to
begin their _kasídas_ with a lamentation for the departure of a fair
one, whether real or imaginary. The Sultan of our story is constantly
petitioning Heaven for the boon of a son (who among Easterns is
considered as the “light of the house”), and at length there appears to
him in his slumbers a comely man who bids him go on the morrow to his
chief gardener and get from him a pomegranate, of which he should eat as
many seeds as he pleases, after which his prayers for offspring should
be granted. This remedy for barrenness is very common in Indian fictions
(to which I believe Khudadad belongs), only it is usually the king’s
wives who eat the seeds or fruit.[148] A few parallels to the opening of
our tale from Indian sources may prove somewhat interesting, both to
students of popular fictions and to those individuals who are vaguely
styled “general readers.”
A Kashmírí tale, entitled “The Four Princes,” translated by the Rev. J.
Hinton Knowles, in the “Indian Antiquary,” 1886,[149] thus begins: In
days long since gone by there lived a king most clever, most holy, and
most wise, who was a pattern king. His mind was always occupied with
plans for the improvement of his country and people; his _darbár_ was
open to all; his ear was ever ready to listen to the petition of the
humblest subject; he afforded every facility for trade; he established
hospitals for the sick, inns (_sará’e_) for travellers, and large
schools for those who wished to learn. These and many other such things
he did. Nothing was left undone that ought to be done, and nothing was
done that ought not to have been done. Under such a wise, just, and
beneficent ruler the people of course lived very happily. Few poor or
unenlightened or wicked persons were to be found in the country. But the
great and good king had not a son. This was an intense sorrow to him—the
one dark cloud that now and again overshadowed his otherwise happy and
glorious life. Every day he prayed earnestly to Siva to grant him an
heir to sit upon the throne after him. One day Siva appeared to him in
the garb of a yogí,[150] and bade him ask a boon and it should be
granted. “Take these four fruits,” said Siva, “and give them to your
wife to eat on such a day before sunrise. Then shall your wife give
birth to four sons who will be exceedingly clever and good.” The king
follows these instructions and in due course his wife is delivered of
four sons at one birth and thereupon dies. The rest of the story is a
variant of the Tamil romance “Alakésa Kathá,”[151] and of “Strike, but
hear!” in Rev. Lal Behari Day’s “Folk-Tales of Bengal.”
This is how the Tamil story of The Four Good Sisters begins (“Folk-Lore
in Southern India,” Part iii., by Pandit S. M. Natésa Sástrí[152]): In
the town of Tañjai there reigned a king named Hariji, who was a very
good and charitable sovereign. In his reign the tiger and the bull drank
out of the same pool, the serpent and the peacock amused themselves
under the same tree; and thus even birds and beasts of a quarrelsome and
inimical disposition lived together like sheep of the same flock. While
the brute creation of the great God was thus living in friendship and
happiness, need it be said that this king’s subjects led a life of peace
and prosperity unknown in any other country under the canopy of heaven?
But for all the peace which his subjects enjoyed, Harijí himself had no
joy: his face was always drooping, his lips never moved in laughter, and
he was as sad as sad could be, because he had no son.—After trying in
vain the distribution of charitable gifts which his ministers and the
priests recommended, the king resolves to retire into the wilderness and
there endeavour to propitiate Mahésvara [_i.e._ Siva], hoping thus to
have his desire fulfilled. He appoints his ministers to order the realm
during his absence, and doffing his royal robes clothes himself in the
bark of trees and takes up his abode in the desert. After practising the
most severe austerities for the space of three years, Siva, mounted on
his bull, with his spouse Párvatí by his side, appears before the
hermit, who is overjoyed at the sight of the deity. Siva bids him ask
any boon and it should be granted. The royal ascetic desires to have a
son. Then says Siva: “For thy long penance we grant thy request. Choose
then—a son who shall always be with thee till death, but shall be the
greatest fool in the whole world; or four daughters who shall live with
thee for a short time, then leave thee and return before thy death, but
who shall be the incarnation of learning. To thee is left to choose
which thou wilt have,” and so saying, the deity gives him a mango fruit
for his wife to eat, and then disappears. The king elects to have the
four learned daughters, whose history is very entertaining.
Another tale in the Pandit’s collection (No. 4) informs us that once
upon a time in a town named Vañjaimánagar there ruled a king named
Siváchár. He was a most just king and ruled so well that no stone thrown
up fell down, no crow pecked at the new-drawn milk, the lion and the
bull drank water from the same pond, and peace and prosperity reigned
throughout the kingdom. Notwithstanding all these blessings, care always
sat on his face. His days and nights he spent in praying that God might
bless him with a son. Wherever he saw _pípal_ trees he ordered Bráhmans
to circumambulate them.[153] Whatever medicines the doctors recommended
he was ever ready to swallow, however bitter they might be. At last
fortune favoured Siváchár; for what religious man fails to obtain his
desire? The king in his sixtieth year had a son, and his joy knew no
bounds.
In like fashion does the Persian “Sindibád Náma” begin: There reigned in
India a sage and mighty monarch, the bricks of whose palace were not of
stone or marble but of gold; the fuel of whose kitchen was fresh wood of
aloes; who had brought under the signet of his authority the kingdoms of
Rúm and Abyssinia; and to whom were alike tributary the Ethiop Maháráj
and the Roman Kaysar. He was distinguished above all monarchs for his
virtue, clemency, and justice. But although he was the refuge of the
Khalífate, he was not blessed with an heir: life and the world appeared
profitless to him, because he had no fruit of the heart in the garden of
his soul.—One night, while reclining on his couch, sad and thoughtful,
consumed with grief like a morning taper, he heaved a deep sigh, upon
which one of his favourite wives (he had a hundred in his harem),
advancing towards him and kissing the ground, inquired the cause of his
distress. He discloses it. His wife consoles him, encourages him to
hope, and assures him that if he prayed, his prayers would be answered;
but that at all events it was his duty to be resigned to the will of
God. “Prayer is the only key that will open the door of difficulty.” The
king fasted for a whole week and was assiduous in his devotions. One
night he prayed with peculiar earnestness and self-abasement till
morning. The companion of his couch was one of his wives, fairer than
the sun and the envy of a perí. He clasped her in his embrace,
exclaiming, “There is no strength, no power, save in God!” and he felt
assured in his heart that his prayer was granted. In due time a son was
born to him, and, eager to show his gratitude, he bestowed munificent
gifts and lavished his treasures on all his subjects.
The seventh of Lal Behari Day’s “Folk-Tales of Bengal” opens as follows:
Once on a time there reigned a king who had seven queens. He was very
sad, for the seven queens were all barren. A holy mendicant, however,
one day told the king that in a certain forest there grew a tree, on a
branch of which hung seven mangoes; if the king himself plucked those
mangoes and gave one to each of the queens they would all become
mothers. So the king went to the forest, plucked the seven mangoes that
grew upon one branch, and gave a mango to each of the queens to eat. In
a short time the king’s heart was filled with joy, as he heard that the
seven queens were pregnant.—In Miss Stokes’ “Indian Fairy Tales,” p. 91,
Rájá Barbál receives from an ascetic 160 _lichí_ fruits, one of which he
is to give to each of his 160 wives, who would have each a son.—Similar
instances occur in Steel and Temple’s “Wide Awake Stories”, from the
Panjáb and Kashmír, pp. 47 and 290, and in Natésa Sástrí’s “Dravidian
Nights’ Entertainments” (a translation of the Tamil romance entitled
“Madanakámarájankadai”), pp. 55, 56.—Among biblical instances of women
having offspring after being long barren are: Sarah, the wife of Abraham
(Gen. ch. xv. 2–4, xxi. 1, 2); Rachel, the wife of Jacob (Gen. ch. xxx.,
1, 22, 23); and Elisabeth, the wife of Zacharias, the high-priest, who
were the parents of John the Baptist (Luke, ch. i.). Whether children be
a “blessing,” notwithstanding all that has been said and sung about the
exquisite joys of paternity and maternity, is perhaps doubtful,
generally speaking: one thing is certain, that many an honest fellow has
had too much cause to “wonder why the devil he got an heir!”[154]
Although no version or variant of the story of Khudadad and his Brothers
has yet been found besides the one in the Turkish collection “Al-Faráj
ba’d al-Shiddah,” yet the elements of which it is composed occur in many
European and Asiatic tales. As we have in Galland a story of sisters who
envied their cadette, so, by way of justice to the “fair sex,” we have
likewise this tale of envious brothers, which is a favourite theme of
popular fictions, only in the story of Khudadad, the brothers were not
at first aware of the hero’s kinship to them, though they had been
informed of it when they most ungratefully cut and slashed him with
their swords as he lay asleep by the side of his beauteous bride the
Princess of Daryabár.
Sometimes it is not a brother, or brothers, but a treacherous friend or
a secret cowardly rival, who attempts the life of the hero and claims
the credit and reward for his bold achievement. Many examples must occur
to readers familiar with Icelandic, Norwegian, and German folk-tales,
which need not here be cited. In the old French romance of the Chevalier
Berinus and his gallant son Aigres de l’Aimant, the King of Loquiferne
is in love with the Princess Melia, daughter of a king named Absalon,
who would give her only to the prince who should bring with him two
knights prepared to combat with and slay two fierce lions, or would
attempt this feat himself. None of the barons of the King of Loquiferne
offering themselves for the adventure, Aigres undertakes it very
readily, and is accompanied by a knight named Açars, who has charge of a
casket of jewels destined for the princess as a wedding-gift. Young
Aigres encounters and kills the lions single-handed, and the
lily-livered and faithless Açars envies him the glory of his exploit. On
their way back to Loquiferne with the Princess Melia, as they pass near
a deep well Açars purposely allows the casket of jewels to fall into it
and pretends to be distracted at the misfortune. But the gallant Aigres
securing one end of his horse’s reins to the top of the well descends by
this improvised rope, and when he dives into the water to recover the
casket the rascal Açars cuts the reins and compels the princess and her
maid to follow him. His triumph is brief, however, for Melia and her
maid are taken from him, without his striking a blow in their defence,
by a king who is in love with the princess. Açars proceeds to the court
of the King of Loquiferne and tells him how the lady had been snatched
out of his hands by a king who attacked him with a great army while
Aigres had fled like a craven. Meanwhile Aigres contrives to get out of
the well, and finds his steed and armour close by: he is fortunate in
rescuing the princess and her maid from the king who had taken them from
Açars, and arriving at the court of Loquiferne denounces Açars as a
coward and traitor, and the princess Melia confirms his assertions; so
the carpet-knight is for ever disgraced.
Another example not very generally known is found in the Urdú romance,
“Gul-í Bakáwalí”: When the hero, Taj al-Malúk, the youngest son of King
Zayn al-Malúk, is born, the astrologers cast his horoscope and predict
that the king will lose his sight as soon as he looks upon him. In order
to prevent such a calamity, the king causes the child and his mother to
be placed in a house far distant from the city, where Zayn al-Malúk
grows up into a handsome, courageous youth. By chance he meets his
father, the king, while the latter is hunting, and the king no sooner
casts his eyes on the youth than he becomes blind. The royal physicians
tell him that only the Rose of Bakáwalí can restore his sight, and the
four other sons of the king set out together to procure this wonderful
flower. They fall victims to the wiles of a courtesan, who wins all
their money at play and ultimately imprisons them in her house. In the
meantime Taj al-Malúk has started on the same errand; he outwits the
courtesan, obtains the liberation of his brothers, and then journeys to
Jinnistán, where, by the help of a friendly demon, he plucks the Rose in
the garden of the beauteous fairy Bakáwalí, and retraces his way
homeward. Meeting with his four brothers on the road, he acquaints them
of his success, and on their doubting the virtue of the flower, it is
applied to the eyes of a blind man, and his sight is instantly restored.
Upon this the brothers take the flower from Taj al-Malúk by force and
hasten with it to their father. But the hero’s friends the demons build
for him a splendid palace, and the fame of his wealth soon reaches the
court of his father, who, with the four brothers and the ministers of
state, visits him, and after a great feast Taj al-Malúk makes himself
known to the king and relates the whole story of how he procured the
flower that had restored his sight. The king falls upon his son’s neck
and weeps tears of joy, saying, “You have restored the light of my eyes
by the Rose of Bakáwalí, and by the sight of you the door of
cheerfulness has been opened in my sorrowful heart. It is incumbent on
me to make known this enlivening news to your mother, who has looked out
for you with anxiety, and I must cause her, who has been afflicted with
grief at your absence, to drink the sherbet of the glad tidings of your
safety.” Then the king went to Taj al-Malúk’s mother, made many
apologies for his ill-treatment of her, exalted her higher than she was
previously, and gave her the joyful news of her son’s arrival. The
remainder of the romance recounts the marvellous adventures of the hero
in fairyland, whither he proceeds to rejoin Bakáwalí, and where he
undergoes many strange transformations; but ultimately all is “merry as
marriage bells.”—Nothing is said about the punishment or pardon of the
treacherous brothers, but doubtless in the original form of the story
the hero acted as generously towards them as did Khudadad when his
father would have put the forty brothers to death. It seems somewhat
strange that after Khudadad’s brothers had killed him (as they believed)
they did not take the Princess Daryabár away with them, which generally
happens in stories of this kind.
_THE STORY OF THE BLIND MAN, BABA ABDULLAH—p. 311._
An incident in the Muhammedan version of the legend of the Seven
Sleepers may have furnished a hint for this well-told tale: When the
evil-minded Dekianus views the Hid Treasure, which he had covenanted
with the aged man who read the Tablet for him and conducted him to the
spot should be equitably divided betwixt them—when he had beheld with
wonder and astonishment the incalculable riches contained in the seven
chambers, he says within himself, “And must I share this with the old
man?” Then he ponders and thinks, “Nay, but I will give him a goodly
portion;” but finally he resolves to give him nothing—nay more, to take
away his life so that there should be none on earth besides himself
acquainted with the source of his wealth. In vain does the old man bid
him take all the treasure and swear that he will ever preserve the
secret: Dekianus smote him with his sword so that he died.
There is a tale in the Persian story-book “Shamsah wa Kahkahah” (also
entitled “Mahbúb al-Kalúb”) which bears some analogy to the story of the
Blind Man, Baba Abdullah. A skilful geomancer is desired by a tradesman
to cast his horoscope. He does so, and informs the tradesman that he is
to find a treasure. The man is incredulous, but after the operation is
repeated with the same result at length becomes convinced of the
accuracy of the geomancer’s calculations, locks his door, and forthwith
they both begin to dig the floor. They come upon a large stone which on
removal is found to have covered a well. The geomancer lowers the
tradesman down it in a basket, which the latter fills with gold and
silver and precious stones, and it is drawn up by the geomancer. When
this has been repeated several times and the geomancer views the immense
quantity of glittering treasure heaped up beside him, covetous thoughts
enter his mind, and he determines to leave the tradesman to his fate at
the bottom of the well, take all the wealth for himself, and live in
comfort and luxury the rest of his days. Accordingly he does not again
let the basket down, and the poor tradesman, suspecting his iniquitous
design, calls out piteously to his perfidious friend, imploring him not
to leave him there to perish, and swearing that the treasure should be
equally shared as between brothers. But the covetous geomancer is deaf
to his appeal, and begins to consider how the treasure might be conveyed
to his own house without attracting the notice of any of the folk of the
quarter, and in the midst of his cogitations he falls asleep. Now it
happened that the poor tradesman had an enemy who had long waited for an
opportunity to do him a personal injury, and that very night he came to
the house, and by means of a rope with a hook which he fastened to the
wall he climbed on to the roof and descended into the place where the
geomancer was sleeping. The man, mistaking him for the tradesman, seized
the geomancer and with a sharp awl pierced his eyes, blinding him for
ever. But, having thus effected his revenge as he thought, in groping
his way out of the house he stumbled into the well and broke his foot.
The tradesman taking him for the geomancer, come for more gold,
upbraided him for his insatiable avarice, and the man, in his turn,
supposing him to have been thrown into the well by the tradesman,
replied, “Be satisfied; I have punished him who cast you into this
place,” but as he began to howl from the pain of his broken foot, the
tradesman knew that he was not the geomancer. Next morning the
tradesman’s son arrives from a long trading journey, with much gold and
merchandise and many slaves. On entering his father’s house he is
astounded to perceive the open well and by the side of it a vast heap of
treasure and a man holding both hands to his eyes and wailing bitterly,
lamenting the covetousness which had caused him the loss of his
eyesight. The young man sends a slave down into the well and the first
person drawn up is the tradesman, who is both surprised and overjoyed to
behold his son once more, and tells him the whole story. His enemy is
then taken out and is dismayed to find that he has blinded the wrong
man. Both the geomancer and the tradesman’s enemy are pardoned, but the
latter dies soon after, while the geomancer retires to a cave in the
mountains, where every morning and evening two small loaves are thrown
in to him by an unknown hand, and during the rest of his life he never
ceased to repeat this distich:
If you possess one barley grain of justice,
You will never have half a grain of sorrow.
But much more closely resembling the story of Baba Abdullah is a tale in
the Persian romance which recounts the imaginary adventures of Hatim
Ta’í. A blind man is confined in a cage which is suspended from a branch
of a tree, and constantly exclaims, “Do evil to none; if you do, evil
will overtake you.” Hatim having promised to mend his condition and
relieve him, he relates his history as follows:
“I am by occupation a merchant, and my name is Hamír. When I became of
age my father had finished the building of this city, and he called the
same after my name. Shortly after, my father departed on a sea voyage,
and left me in charge of the city. I was a free-hearted and social young
man, and so in a short time expended all the property left under my care
by my father. Thus I became surrounded with poverty and want; and as I
knew that my father had hidden treasures somewhere in the house, I
resolved to discover them if possible. I searched everywhere, but found
nothing; and, to complete my woe, I received the news of my father’s
death, the ship in which he sailed being wrecked.
“One day as I was sauntering, mournful and dejected, through the bazár,
I espied a learned man who cried out, ‘If any one has lost his money by
theft or otherwise, my knowledge of the occult sciences enables me to
recover the same, but on condition that I receive one fourth of the
amount.’ When I heard this seasonable proclamation, I immediately
approached the man of science, and stated to him my sad condition and
how I had been reduced from affluence to poverty. The sage undertook to
restore my wealth, and above all to discover the treasures concealed in
my father’s house. I conducted him to the house and showed him every
apartment, which he carefully examined one after another. At length by
his art he discovered the stores we were in search of; and when I saw
the gold and silver and other valuables, which exceeded calculation, the
demon of fraud entered my heart, and I refused to fulfil my promise of
giving a fourth of the property to the man of wisdom. I offered him only
a few small pieces of silver; instead of accepting which, he stood for a
few moments in silent meditation, and with a look of scorn said, ‘Do I
thus receive the fourth part of your treasure which you agreed to give
me? Base man, of what perjury are you guilty?’ On hearing this I became
enraged, and having struck him several blows on the face, I expelled him
from my house. In a few days, however, he returned, and so far
ingratiated himself into my confidence that we became intimate friends;
and night and day he displayed before my sight the various hidden
treasures contained within the bowels of the earth. One day I asked him
to instruct me in this wonderful science, to which he answered that no
instruction was requisite. ‘Here,’ said he, ‘is a composition of surma,
and whoever applies the same to his eyes, to him will all the wealth of
this world become visible.’[155] ‘Most learned sir,’ I replied, ‘if you
will anoint mine eyes with this substance, I promise to share with you
the half of all such treasures as I may discover.’ ‘I agree,’ said my
friend; ‘meanwhile let us retire to the desert, where we shall be free
from interruption.’
“We immediately set out, and when we arrived there I was surprised at
seeing this cage, and asked my companion whose it was. I received for
answer, that it belonged to no one. In short, we both sat down at the
foot of this tree, and the sage, having produced the surma from his
pocket, began to apply it to my eyes. But, alas! no sooner had he
applied this composition than I became totally deprived of sight. In a
voice of sorrow I asked him why he had thus treated me, and he replied,
‘Such is the reward of treachery; and if you wish to recover your sight,
you must for some time undergo penance in this cage. You must utter no
complaint and you shall exclaim from time to time, ‘Do no evil to
anyone; if you do, evil will befall you.’ I entreated the sage to
relieve me, saying, ‘You are a mere mortal like myself, and dare you
thus torment a fellow-creature? How will you account for your deeds to
the Supreme Judge?’ He answered, ‘This is the reward of your treachery.’
Seeing him inexorable, I begged of him to inform me when and how my
sight was to be restored; and he told me, that a noble youth should one
day visit me, and to him I was to make known my condition, and farther
state, that in the desert of Himyar there is a certain herb called the
Flower of Light, which the youth was to procure and apply to my eyes, by
means of which my sight should be restored.’”
When the man in the cage had ended his story, the magnanimous Hatim bade
him be of good cheer, for he would at once endeavour to relieve him. By
the aid of the fairies, who carry him through the air for the space of
seven days, he arrives in the desert where the Flowers of Light shine
brilliant as lamps on a festival night, diffusing the sweetest perfume
far and wide; and recking naught for the serpents, scorpions, and beasts
of prey which infested the place (for he had a talisman that protected
him), he advances and plucks three of the largest and most brilliant
flowers. Returning in the same manner as he had gone thither, he reaches
the spot where the blind man Hamír is imprisoned: taking down the cage,
he releases the wretched man, compresses the stalk of the flower so that
the juice drops upon his sightless eyeballs, and when this has been
repeated three times Hamír opens his eyes, and seeing Hatim falls
prostrate at his feet with a profusion of thanks.
Although there are some differences in the details of the story of Baba
Abdullah and that of Hamír, as above, yet the general similarity between
them is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that if one was not adapted
from the other, both must have been derived from the same source; and
here we have, I think, clear evidence of the genuineness of another of
the tales which Galland was believed to have invented himself.
_HISTORY OF SIDI NU’MAN—p. 325._
It is curious to find this current as a folk-tale at Palena, in the
Abruzzi, without any material variation except in the conclusion. My
friend Mr. E. Sidney Hartland has favoured me with the following
abstract of the Italian version, as given in vol. iii. of the “Archivio
per lo studio delle Tradizioni Popolari” (Palermo, 1882), p. 222:
There was once a husband and wife. The wife says that she cannot eat
anything, and only picks a few grains of rice with a large pin. Her
husband asks why she eats nothing, and she answers that she does not
want to eat. Meantime she goes out secretly every night, and the husband
begins to have suspicions of her. One night he follows her softly, and
finds she goes to the burial ground, where she meets with certain female
companions. They open a grave and feed on the flesh of the dead. The
next morning the husband cooks rice again, and the wife picks up a few
grains of it with a pin as before. The husband exclaims, “What! you
enjoy the flesh of dead men, and over rice you are so finical as to eat
it with a pin!” The wife is so enraged at learning that her husband
knows of her doings that she goes to the waterbucket, fills a small
bottle from it, and having muttered certain words over the water flings
it upon him and he instantly becomes transformed into a dog. A provision
merchant sees him running about, and takes and sets him on his counter.
When the people come to buy provisions the dog examines the money to see
if it be good, and the false coin he throws on the ground. One day a man
comes to buy bacon and offers false coin. The provision merchant refuses
to take it; they dispute over the matter, and it is referred to the dog,
who throws the money on the ground. The man is astonished, and returning
home tells his wife, who at once says that the dog is not a dog, and
desires her husband to bring her the animal that she may see it. The man
returns to the provision merchant and begs him to lend him the dog for a
little while, and takes it home. The wife, who is a companion of the
wife of him who has been changed into a dog, and understands witchcraft,
fills a bottle with water, pronounces certain words over it, and throws
the water upon the dog, who immediately becomes a man again, and she
advises him to do to his wife as she had done to him, and imparts the
secret to him. As soon as he returns home he fills the bottle with water
from the bucket, says the words he had learned, and throws the water
over his wife, who becomes a mare. He drives her out of the house and
beats her as flax is beaten. To every one who asks why he is thrashing
the mare he tells his story, and the people say, “Serve her right!” This
goes on for some time. At last, when the husband sees that his wife has
voided enough foam from the mouth, with another dash of water he changes
her back to her proper form, and henceforward she eats whatever is set
before her, obeys her husband in all things, and never goes out by night
again. So they live long, happy and contented.
This version from the Abruzzi so closely resembles the story of Sidi
Nu’mán that we should perhaps be justified in concluding it to have been
directly derived from Galland’s Nights, in the absence of any Venetian
version, which might well have been imported independently from the
East; but however this may be, the story in Galland bears unquestionable
internal evidence that it is a genuine Arabian narrative, having nothing
peculiarly European in its details.
A somewhat similar story is quite familiar to me, but I cannot at
present call to mind whether it occurs in a Persian collection or in The
Nights, in which the woman going out when she thinks her husband asleep,
the latter follows her to a hut at some distance which she enters, and
peeping into the hut, he sees a hideous black give her a severe beating
for not coming sooner, while she pleads that she could not venture to
quit the house until her husband was sound asleep. The two carouse
together, and by-and-by the black going outside for a purpose, the
husband strikes off his head with his sword and then conceals himself
close by. The woman, after waiting some time, goes out to see what is
detaining her paramour, and finding his headless body, she moans over it
in great sorrow, and then taking the corpse on her back carries it away
and throws it into the river. Her husband hastens home before her, and
so she suspects nothing. Some days after, when she refuses to do some
light work because of her physical weakness, her husband can no longer
control himself, and tells her that she had strength enough to carry on
her back the body of her black paramour, and so on.[156]
The ghoul-wife of Arabian tales, who eats little or nothing at home, has
her counterpart in the rákshasí of Indian fictions, who secretly devours
antelopes etc. There are many parallels in The Nights and other Asiatic
story-books to the incident of Sidi Nu’mán being changed back into his
proper form, the most noteworthy being perhaps the case of the Second
Calender in the shape of a monkey, or ape, whom the princess, an adept
in white magic, at once recognises as a man and veils her face, as does
the young woman in the case of Sidi Nu’mán: but while the Calender is
restored to his own form, the princess, alas! perishes in her encounter
with the genie who had transformed him.—In most of the Arabian tales of
magical transformations of men and women into beasts the victims are
ultimately restored to their natural forms, but in the Indian romance of
the princes Somasekhara and Chitrasekhara, a wicked king named Ugrabáhu
is permanently changed by some water taken from a magic fountain into a
monkey and sold to a beggar, who compels him to perform tricks in public
for his benefit. Heywood, in his “History of Women” (Book viii.), cites
some curious European stories of men being transformed into donkeys by
eating a certain kind of cheese.
_HISTORY OF KHWAJAH HASAN AL-HABBAL—p. 341._
How this entertaining story found its way into North Germany—and nowhere
else in Europe, so far as I am aware—it is not easy to say, but its
twin-brother seems to be orally current there, in all essential details,
excepting the marvellous conclusion. For the poor ropemaker, however, a
struggling weaver and for the two gentlemen, Sa’d and Sa’dí, three rich
students are substituted. There does not appear (according to the
version given by Thorpe in his “Yule Tide Stories,” which he entitles,
not inaptly, The Three Gifts) to be any difference of opinion among the
students regarding the influence of Destiny, or Fate, upon men’s
fortunes: they simply give the poor weaver a hundred dollars, “to assist
him in his housekeeping.” The weaver hides the money in a heap of rags,
unknown to his wife, who sells them to a rag-collector for a trifling
sum. A year afterwards the students are again passing the house of the
weaver and find him poorer than ever. He tells them of his mishap and
they give him another hundred dollars, warning him to be more careful
with the money this time. The weaver conceals the dollars in the
ash-tub, again without the cognisance of his wife, who disposes of the
ashes for a few pieces of soap. At the end of the second year the
students once more visit the wretched weaver, and on being informed of
his loss, they throw a bit of lead at his feet, saying it’s of no use to
give such a fool money, and go away in a great huff. The weaver picks up
the lead and places it on the window-sill. By-and-by a neighbour, who is
a fisherman, comes in and asks for a bit of lead or some other heavy
thing, for his net, and on receiving the lead thrown down by the
students promises to give him in return the first large fish he catches.
The weaver does get a fine fish, which he immediately cuts open, and
finds in its stomach a “large stone,” which he lays on the window-sill,
where, as it becomes dark, the stone gives forth a brighter and brighter
light, “just like a candle,” and then he places it so that it
illuminates the whole apartment. “That’s a cheap lamp,” quoth he to his
wife: “wouldst not like to dispose of it as thou didst the two hundred
dollars?” The next evening a merchant happening to ride past the
weaver’s house perceives the brilliant stone, and alighting from his
horse, enters and looks at it, then offers ten dollars for it, but the
weaver says the stone is not for sale. “What! not even for twenty
dollars?” “Not even for that.” The merchant keeps on increasing his
offers till he reaches a thousand dollars, which was about half its real
value, for the stone was a diamond, and which the weaver accepts, and
thus he becomes the richest man in all the village. His wife, however,
took credit to herself for his prosperity, often saying to him, “How
well it was that I threw away the money twice, for thou hast me to thank
for thy good luck!”—and here the German story ends. For the turban of
the ropemaker and the kite that carried it off, with its precious
lining, we have the heap of rags and the rag-collector; but the ashes
exchanged for soap agrees with the Arabian story almost exactly.
The incident of the kite carrying off the poor ropemaker’s turban in
which he had deposited the most part of the gold pieces that he received
from the gentleman who believed that “money makes money”—an
unquestionable fact, in spite of our story—is of very frequent
occurrence in both Western and Eastern fictions. My readers will
recollect its exact parallel in the abstract of the romance of Sir
Isumbras, cited in Appendix to the preceding volumes: how the Knight,
with his little son, after the soudan’s ship has sailed away with his
wife, is bewildered in a forest, where they fall asleep, and in the
morning at sunrise when he awakes, an eagle pounces down and carries off
his scarlet mantle, in which he had tied up his scanty store of
provisions together with the gold he had received from the soudan; and
how many years after he found it in a bird’s nest (Supp. Nights, vol.
ii. p. 361 and p. 365).—And, not to multiply examples, a similar
incident occurs in the “Kathá Sarit Ságara,” Book ix. ch. 54, where a
merchant named Samudrasúra is shipwrecked and contrives to reach the
land, where he perceives the corpse of a man, round the loins of which
is a cloth with a knot in it. On unfastening the cloth he finds in it a
necklace studded with jewels. The merchant proceeds towards a city
called Kalasapuri, carrying the necklace in his hand. Overpowered by the
heat, he sits down in a shady place and falls asleep. The necklace is
recognised by some passing policemen as that of the king’s daughter, and
the merchant is at once taken before the king and accused of having
stolen it. While the merchant is being examined, a kite swoops down and
carries off the necklace. Presently a voice from heaven declares that
the merchant is innocent, explains how the necklace came into his
possession, and orders the king to dismiss him with honour. This
celestial testimony in favour of the accused satisfies the king, who
gives the merchant much wealth and sends him on his way. The rest of the
story is as follows: “And after he had crossed the sea, he travelled
with a caravan, and one day, at evening time, he reached a wood. The
caravan encamped in the wood for the night, and while Samudrasúra was
awake a powerful host of bandits attacked it. While the bandits were
massacring the members of the caravan, Samudrasúra left his wares and
fled, and climbed up a banyan-tree without being discovered. The host of
bandits departed, after they had carried off all the wealth, and the
merchant spent that night there, perplexed with fear and distracted with
grief. In the morning he cast his eyes towards the top of the tree, and
saw, as fate would have it, what looked like the light of a lamp,
trembling among the leaves. And in his astonishment he climbed up the
tree and saw a kite’s nest, in which there was a heap of glittering
priceless jewelled ornaments. He took them all out of it, and found
among the ornaments that necklace which he had found in Svarnadvípa and
the kite had carried off. He obtained from that nest unlimited wealth,
and descending from the tree, he went off delighted, and reached in
course of time his own city of Harshapúra. There the merchant
Samudrasúra remained, enjoying himself to his heart’s content, with his
family, free from the desire of any other wealth.”
There is nothing improbable—at all events, nothing impossible—in the
History of Khwajah Hasan al-Habbál. That he should lose the two sums of
money in the manner described is quite natural, and the incidents carry
with them the moral: “Always take your wife into your confidence” (but
the Khwajah was a Muslim), notwithstanding the great good luck which
afterwards befell, and which, after all, was by mere chance. There is
nothing improbable in the finding of the turban with the money intact in
the bird’s nest, but that this should occur while the Khwajah’s
benefactors were his guests is—well, _very_ extraordinary indeed! As to
the pot of bran—why, some little license must be allowed a story-teller,
that is all that need be said! The story from beginning to end is a most
charming one, and will continue to afford pleasure to old and young—to
“generations yet unborn.”
_ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES—p. 369._
I confess to entertaining a peculiar affection for this tale. It was the
first of the tales of the “Arabian Nights Entertainments” which I read
in the days of my “marvelling boyhood”—eheu! fugaces, &c., &c. I may
therefore be somewhat prejudiced in its favour, just as I still consider
Scott’s “Waverley” as the best of his long series of fascinating
fictions, that being the first of them which I read—as it was the first
he wrote. But “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”—the “open, sesame!”
“shut, sesame!”—the sackfuls of gold and silver and the bales of rich
merchandise in the robbers’ cave—the avaricious brother forgetting the
magical formula which would open the door and permit him to escape with
his booty—his four quarters hung up _in terrorem_—and above all, the
clever, devoted slave-girl, Morgiana, who in every way outwitted the
crafty robber-chief;—these incidents remain stamped in my memory
ineffaceably: like the initials of lovers’ names cut into the bark of a
growing tree, which, so far from disappearing, become larger by the
lapse of time. To me this delightful tale will ever be, as Hafiz sings
of something, “freshly fresh and newly new.” I care not much though it
never be found in an Arabic or any other Oriental dress—but that it is
of Asiatic invention is self-evident; there is, in my poor opinion,
nothing to excel it, if indeed to equal it, for intense interest and
graphic narrative power in all the Nights proper.
Sir Richard Burton has remarked, in note 1, p. 369, that Mr. Coote could
only find in the south of Europe, or in the Levant, analogues of two of
the incidents of this tale, yet one of those may accepted as proof of
its Eastern extraction, namely, in the Cyprian story of “Three Eyes,”
where the ogre attempts to rescue his wife with a party of blacks
concealed in bales: “The King’s jester went downstairs, in order to open
the bales and take something out of them. Directly he approached one of
the sacks, the black man answered from the inside, ‘Is it time, master?’
In the same manner he tried all the sacks, and then went upstairs and
told them that the sacks were full of black men. Directly the King’s
bride heard this, she made the jester and the company go downstairs.
They take the executioner with them, and go to the first sack. The black
man says from the inside, ‘Is it time?’ ‘Yes,’ say they to him, and
directly he came out they cut his head off. In the same manner they go
to the other sacks and kill the other black men.”[157]
The first part of the tale of Ali Baba—ending with the death of his
greedy brother—is current in North Germany, to this effect:
A poor woodcutter, about to fell a beech at the back of the scattered
ruins of the castle of Dummburg, seeing a monk approach slowly through
the forest, hid himself behind a tree. The monk passed by and went among
the rocks. The woodcutter stole cautiously after him and saw that he
stopped at a small door which had never been discovered by the
villagers. The monk knocks gently and cries, “Little door, open!” and
the door springs open. He also cries, “Little door, shut!” and the door
is closed. The woodcutter carefully observes the place, and next Sunday
goes secretly and obtains access to the vault by the same means as that
employed by the monk. He finds in it “large open vessels and sacks full
of old dollars and fine guilders, together with heavy gold pieces,
caskets filled with jewels and pearls, costly shrines and images of
saints, which lay about or stood on tables of silver in corners of the
vault.” He takes but a small quantity of the coin, and as he is quitting
the vault a voice cries, “Come again!” First giving to the church, for
behoof of the poor, a tenth of what he had taken, he goes to the town
and buys clothes for his wife and children, giving out to his neighbours
that he had found an old dollar and a few guilders under the roots of a
tree that he had felled. Next Sunday he again visits the vault, this
time supplying himself somewhat more liberally from the hoard, but still
with moderation and discretion, and “Come again!” cries a voice as he is
leaving. He now gives to the church two tenths, and resolves to bury the
rest of the money he had taken in his cellar. But he can’t resist a
desire to first measure the gold, for he could not count it. So he
borrows for this purpose a corn-measure of a neighbour—a very rich but
penurious man, who starved himself, hoarded up corn, cheated the
labourer of his hire, robbed the widow and the orphan, and lent money on
pledges. Now the measure had some cracks in the bottom, through which
the miser shook some grains of corn into his own heap when selling it to
the poor labourer, and into these cracks two or three small coins
lodged, which the miser was not slow to discover. He goes to the
woodcutter and asks him what it was he had been measuring. “Pine-cones
and beans.” But the miser holds up the coins he had found in the cracks
of the measure, and threatens to inform upon him and have him put to the
question if he will not disclose to him the secret of his money. So the
woodcutter is constrained to tell him the whole story and much against
his will, but not before he had made the miser promise that he would
give one-tenth to the church, he conducts him to the vault. The miser
enters, with a number of sacks, the woodcutter waiting outside to
receive them when filled with treasure. But while the miser is gloating
over the enormous wealth before him—even “wealth beyond the dreams of
avarice”—a great black dog comes and lays himself down on the sacks.
Terrified at the flaming eyes of the dog, the miser crept towards the
door, but in his fear forgot the proper words, and instead of saying,
“Little door, open!” he cried, “Little door, shut!” The woodcutter,
having waited a long time, approached the door, and knocking gently and
crying “Little door, open!” the door sprang open and he entered. There
lay the bleeding body of his wicked neighbour, stretched on his sacks,
but the vessels of gold and silver, and diamonds and pearls, sank deeper
and deeper into the earth before his eyes, till all had completely
vanished.[158]
The resemblance which this North German tale bears to the first part of
“Ali Baba” is striking, and is certainly not merely fortuitous; the
fundamental outline of the latter is readily recognisable in the legend
of the Dummburg, notwithstanding differences in the details. In both the
hero is a poor woodcutter, or faggot-maker; for the band of robbers a
monk is substituted in the German legend, and for the “open, sesame” and
“shut, sesame,” we have “little door, shut,” and “little door, open.” In
both the borrowing of a corn-measure is the cause of the secret being
revealed—in the one case, to Kasim, the greedy brother of Ali Baba, and
in the other, to a miserly old hunks; the fate of the latter and the
disappearance of all the treasure are essentially German touches. The
subsequent incidents of the tale of Ali Baba, in which the main interest
of the narrative is concentrated;—Ali Baba’s carrying off the four
quarters of his brother’s body and having them sewed together; the
artifices by which the slave-girl checkmates the robber-chief and his
followers in their attempts to discover the man who had learned the
secret of the treasure-cave—her marking all the doors in the street and
her pouring boiling oil on the robbers concealed in the oil-skins in the
courtyard;—these incidents seem to have been adapted, or imitated, from
some version of the world-wide story of the Robbery of the Royal
Treasury, as told by Herodotus, of Rhampsinitus, King of Egypt, in which
the hero performs a series of similar exploits to recover the headless
body of his brother and at the same time escape detection. Moreover, the
conclusion of the tale of Ali Baba, where we are told he lived in
comfort and happiness on the wealth concealed in the robbers’ cave, and
“in after days he showed the hoard to his sons and his sons’ sons, and
taught them how the door could be caused to open and shut”—this is near
akin to the beginning of Herodotus’ legend of the royal treasury: the
architect who built it left a stone loose, yet so nicely adjusted that
it could not be discovered by any one not in the secret, by removing
which he gained access to the royal stores of gold, and having taken
what he wanted replaced the stone as before; on his deathbed he revealed
the secret to his two sons as a legacy for their future maintenance. The
discovery of Ali Baba’s being possessed of much money from some coins
adhering to the bottom of the corn-measure is an incident of very
frequent occurrence in popular fictions; for instance, in the Icelandic
story of the Magic Quern that ground out gold or whatever its possessor
desired (Powell and Magnússon’s collection, second series); in the
Indian tale of the Six Brothers (Vernieux’s collection) and its Irish
analogue, “Little Fairly”; in the modern Greek popular tale of the Man
with Three Grapes (Le Grand’s French collection), and a host of other
tales, both Western and Eastern. The fate of Ali Baba’s rich and
avaricious brother, envious of his good luck, finds also many
parallels—_mutatis mutandis_—as in the story of the Magic Quern, already
referred to, and the Mongolian tale of the poor man and the Dakinis, the
14th Relation of Siddhí Kúr. Morgiana’s counter-device of marking all
the doors in the street, so that her master’s house should not be
recognised, often occurs, in different forms: in my work on Popular
Tales and Fictions, vol. ii. pp. 164, 165, a number of examples are
cited. The pretended merchant’s objecting to eat meat cooked with salt,
which fortunately aroused Morgiana’s suspicions of his real
character—for robber and murderer as he was, he would not be “false to
his salt”[159]—recalls an anecdote related by D’Herbelot, which may find
a place here, in conclusion: The famous robber Yacúb bin Layth,
afterwards the founder of a dynasty of Persian monarchs called
Soffarides, in one of his expeditions broke into the royal palace and
having collected a large quantity of plunder, was on the point of
carrying it off when his foot struck against something which made him
stumble. Supposing it not to be an article of value, he put it to his
mouth, the better to distinguish it. From the taste he found it was a
lump of salt, the symbol and pledge of hospitality, on which he was so
touched that he retired immediately without carrying away any part of
his booty. The next morning the greatest astonishment was caused
throughout the palace on the discovery of the valuables packed up and
ready for removal. Yacúb was arrested and brought before the prince, to
whom he gave a faithful account of the whole affair, and by this means
so ingratiated himself with his sovereign that he employed him as a man
of courage and ability in many arduous enterprises, in which he was so
successful as to be raised to the command of the royal troops, whose
confidence in and affection for their general induced them on the
prince’s death to prefer his interest to that of the heir to the throne,
from whence he afterwards spread his extensive conquests.
* * * * *
Since the foregoing was in type I discovered that I had overlooked
another German version, in Grimm, which preserves some features of the
Arabian tale omitted in the legend of The Dummburg:
There were two brothers, one rich, the other poor. The poor brother, one
day wheeling a barrow through the forest, had just come to a
naked-looking mountain, when he saw twelve great wild men approaching,
and he hid himself in a tree, believing them to be robbers. “Semsi
mountain, Semsi mountain, open!” they cried, and the mountain opened,
and they went in. Presently they came out, carrying heavy sacks. “Semsi
mountain, Semsi mountain, shut thyself!” they cried; the mountain closed
and they went away. The poor man went up then and cried, “Semsi
mountain, Semsi mountain, open!” the mountain opens, he goes in, finds a
cavern full of gold, silver, and jewels, fills his pockets with gold
only, and coming out cries, “Semsi mountain, Semsi mountain, shut
thyself!” He returns home and lives happily till his gold is exhausted.
Then “he went to his brother to borrow a measure that held a bushel, and
brought himself some more.” This he does again, and this time the rich
brother smears the inside of the bushel with pitch, and when he gets it
back finds a gold coin sticking to it, so he taxes his poor brother with
having treasure and learns the secret. Off he drives, resolved to bring
back, not gold, but jewels. He gets in by saying, “Semsi mountain, Semsi
mountain, open!” He loads himself with precious stones, but has
forgotten the word, and cries only “Simeli mountain, Simeli mountain,
open!” The robbers return and charge him with having twice stolen from
them. He vainly protests, “It was not I,” and they cut his head off.
Here the twelve wild men represent the forty robbers, and, as in Ali
Baba, it is the hero’s brother who falls a victim to his own cupidity.
In the Arabian tale the hero climbs up into a tree when he sees the
robbers approach; in The Dummburg he hides himself behind a tree to
watch the proceedings of the monk; and in Grimm’s version he hides in a
tree. On this last-cited story W. Grimm has the following note: “It is
remarkable that this story, which is told in the province of Münster, is
told also in the Hartz, about The Dummburg, and closely resembles the
Eastern story of ‘The Forty Thieves,’ where even the rock Sesam, which
falls open at the words Semsi and Semeli, recalls the name of the
mountain in the German saga. This name for a mountain is, according to a
document in Pistorius (3, 642), very ancient in Germany. A mountain in
Grabfeld is called Similes, and in a Swiss song a Simeliberg is again
mentioned. This makes us think of the Swiss word ‘Sinel,’ for ‘sinbel,’
round. In Meier, No. 53, we find ‘Open, Simson.’ In Pröhle’s ‘Märchen
für die Jugend,’ No. 30, where the story is amplified, it is
Simsimseliger Mountain. There is also a Polish story which is very like
it.” Dr. Grimm is mistaken in saying that in the Arabian tale the “rock
Sesam” falls open at the words Semsi and Semeli: even in his own
version, as the brother finds to his cost, the word Simeli does not open
the rock. In Ali Baba the word is “Simsim” (Fr. Sesame), a species of
grain, which the brother having forgot, he cries out “Barley.” The
“Open, Simson” in Meier’s version and the “Semsi” in Grimm’s story are
evidently corruptions of “Simsim,” or “Samsam,” and seem to show that
the story did not become current in Germany through Galland’s work.