_The Dream of Riches._—In Croker’s Irish Fairy Legends there is a droll
version of this story, entitled “Dreaming Tim Jarvis.” Honest Tim, we
are told, “took to sleeping, and the sleep set him dreaming, and he
dreamed all night, and night after night, about crocks full of gold....
At last he dreamt that he found a mighty great crock of gold and silver,
and where, do you think? Every step of the way upon London Bridge
itself! Twice Tim dreamt it, and three times Tim dreamt the same thing;
and at last he made up his mind to transport himself, and go over to
London, in Pat Mahoney’s coaster—and so he did!” Tim walks on London
Bridge day after day until he sees a man with great black whiskers and a
black cloak that reached down to the ground, who accosts him, and he
tells the strange man about his dream. “Ho! ho!” says the strange man,
“is that all, Tim? I had a dream myself and I dreamed that I found a
crock of gold in the Fort field, on Jerry Driscoll’s ground at
Balledehob, and, by the same token, the pit where it lay was close to a
large furze bush, all full of yellow blossom.” Tim hastens back to his
old place, sells his cabin and garden, and buys the piece of waste
ground so minutely described by the man with black whiskers, finds the
pit, jumps into it, and is among the fairies, who give him leave to
stuff his pockets with gold; but when he returns to upper earth he
discovers that he has got only a handful of small stones mixed with
yellow furze blossoms.
In a note appended to this tale, Croker cites the following from Grimm’s
“Deutsche Sagan,” vol. i. p. 290: A man once dreamed that if he went to
Regensburg and walked on the bridge he should become rich. He went
accordingly; and when he had spent near a fortnight walking backwards
and forwards on the bridge, a rich merchant came up to him, wondering
what he was doing there every day, and asked him what he was looking
for. He answered that he had dreamed if he would go to the bridge of
Regensburg he should become rich. “Ha!” said the merchant, “what do you
say about dreams?—Dreams are but froth (_Träume sind Schäume_). I too
have dreamed that there is buried under yonder large tree (pointing to
it) a great kettle full of money; but I gave no heed to this, for dreams
are froth.” The man went immediately and dug under the tree, and there
he got a treasure, which made a rich man of him, and so his dream was
accomplished.—The same story is told of a baker’s boy at Lubeck, who
dreamed that he should find a treasure on the bridge; there he met a
beggar, who said he had dreamed there was one under a lime-tree in the
churchyard of Möllen, but he would not take the trouble of going there.
The baker’s boy went, and got the treasure.—It is curious to observe
that all the European versions of the story have reference to a bridge,
and it must have been brought westward in this form.
_The Quest of the Image._—It has only now occurred to my mind that there
is a very similar story in the romance of the Four Dervishes
(“Kissa-i-Chehár Darwesh”), a Persian work written in the 13th century,
and rendered into Urdú about 80 years ago, under the title of “Bagh o
Bahár” (Garden of Spring), of which an English translation was made by
L. F. Smith, which was afterwards improved by Duncan Forbes. There the
images are of monkeys—a circumstance which seems to point to an Indian
origin of the story—but the hero falls in love with the spotless girl,
and the jinn-king takes possession of her, though he is ultimately
compelled to give her up.—The fact of this story of the quest of the
lacking image being found in the Persian language is another proof that
the tales in The Nights were largely derived from Persian story-books.