My obliging friend, Mr. W. F. Kirby, who contributed to the 10th volume
of Sir Richard’s Nights proper the very able Bibliographical Essay, has
drawn my attention to an analogue of this tale in Geldart’s Folk-Lore of
Modern Greece: There were two brothers, one of whom was wealthy and had
four children, who were in feeble health, the other was poor and had
seven children, who were in robust health. The poor brother’s wife,
begging relief, was allowed to come twice a week to the house of the
rich brother to bake bread. Her children were starving, but the rich
people gave the mother nothing for several days, and all she could do
was to wash the dough off her hands for the children, who thrived, and
the rich man, discovering the cause, made his wife compel the poor woman
to wash her hands before she left the house. The father found his
children crying for food, and pretended to go to the wood for herbs, but
really purposing to kill himself by falling from a crag. But seeing a
great castle, he determined first to ascertain what it was, so he went
near, and, having climbed a tree, saw forty-nine dragons come out. When
they were gone he entered, and found a treasure, filled his bag, and
hurried away. On his return home he found his wife weeping bitterly, but
when he showed her the treasure, she said the first thing was to buy oil
to light a lamp to our Lady. Next day they bought a house, and moved
into it, but agreed only to buy what they needed for each day’s use and
nothing they could do without. For two months they went often to church
and helped the poor, till, one day, the wife of the rich man, who had
met with losses lately, called for them and was hospitably received. She
heard the story of the treasure, and the poor man offered to show his
brother the place. The rich brother miscounted the dragons as they left
the castle, and the one left to watch killed and quartered him. Two days
afterwards his brother went to look for him, brought home the severed
body, and got a tailor to sew the quarters together. Next day the
dragons called on the tailor to make them coats and shoes (_sic_), and
heard of his sewing together the body. He showed them the house, and
forty-eight dragons got into chests, which the forty-ninth deposited
with the poor man. The children, playing about the chests, heard the
dragons say, “Would that it were night, that we might eat them all!” So
the father took forty-eight spits and made them red hot, and thrust them
into the chests, and then said that a trick had been played upon him,
and sent his servant to throw them one by one into the sea. As often as
the servant returned he pretended to him that he did not throw the chest
far enough and it had come back and thus he disposed of the whole
number. In the morning when the last dragon came, the poor man told him
one chest was found open: he was seized with fear, pushed in and spitted
like the others, and the poor man became possessor of the dragons’
castle.
There can be no doubt, I think, that this story owes nothing to Galland,
but that it is a popular Greek version of the original Asiatic tale, of
which Galland’s “Ali Baba” is probably a fair reflection. The device of
pretending to the servant that the dragon he had thrown into the sea was
returned has its exact analogue in the humorous _fabliau_ of “Les Trois
Bossus,” where a rustic is made to believe that each of the hunchbacks
had come back again, with the addition that, on returning from the river
the third time, he seizes the lady’s hunchbacked husband and effectually
disposes of him.