(cf. Nights, x., pp. 499, 500). I have also seen a similar miscellaneous
collection in French under the latter title. The tales in the English
work are as follows:
I. Hassan Abdallah, or the Enchanted Keys.
Story of Hassan.
Story of the Basket Maker.
Story of the Dervise Abounader.
II. Soliman Bey and the Story Tellers.
The First Story Teller.
The Second Story Teller.
The Third Story Teller.
III. Prince Khalaf and the Princess of China.
Story of Prince Al-Abbas.
Story of Liri-in.
IV. The Wise Dey.
V. The Tunisian Sage.
VI. The Nose for Gold.
VII. The Treasures of Basra.
History of Aboulcassem.
VIII. The Old Camel.
IX. The Story of Medjeddin (Grimm’s “Haschem,” cf. Nights, x. pp.
474, 475).
X. King Bedreddin Lolo and his Vizier.
Story of the Old Slippers.
Story of Atalmulk, surnamed the Sorrowful Vizier, and the
Princess Zelica.
Story of Malek and the Princess Schirine.
18. _The Modern Arabian Nights._ By Arthur A’ Beckett and Linley
Sambourne. London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co., 1877, sm. 4to., with comic
coloured frontispieces and woodcuts.
Four clever satires (social and political) as follows:
1. Alley Baber and Son, a Mock Exchange Story.
2. Ned Redding and the Beautiful Persian.
3. The Ride of Captain Alf Rashit to Ke-Vere-Street.
4. Mr. O’Laddin and the Wonderful Lamp.
19. _Tales of the Caliph._ By Al Arawiyah, 8vo., London, T. Fisher
Unwin, 1887.
Belongs to Class 5 (Imitations). Consists of fictitious adventures
supposed to have happened to Harun Al Rashid, chiefly during his
nocturnal rambles.
_SEPARATE EDITIONS OF SINGLE OR COMPOSITE TALES (pp. 497–499)._
P. 498, line 12.—No. 184 was published under the title of “Woman’s Wit”
in the “Literary Souvenir” for 1831, pp. 217–237, derived from Langlés’
version (Mr. L. C. Smithers _in litt._).
_TRANSLATION OF COGNATE ORIENTAL ROMANCES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE NIGHTS
(pp. 499–502)._
P. 499, No. 1, Les Mille et un Jours.
Mr. L. C. Smithers (_in litt._) notes English editions published in 1781
and 1809, the latter under the title of “The Persian and Turkish Tales.”
P. 501, No. 5. _Recueil de Contes Populaires de la Kabylie du Djurdjura_
recueillis et traduits par J. Rivière. 12mo. Paris: Leroux. 1882.
This collection is intended to illustrate the habits and ideas of the
people. The tales are very short, and probably very much abridged, but
many of them illustrate the Nights. I may note the following tales as
specially interesting from their connection with the Nights, or with
important tales in other collections, Oriental or otherwise.
Thadhillala. A brief abstract of No. 151.
Les deux Frères. A variant of Herodotus’ Story of Rhampsinitus.
L’homme de bien et le méchant. A variant of No. 262; or Schiller’s
Fridolin.
Le Corbeau et l’Enfant. Here a child is stolen and a crow left in its
place.
H’ab Sliman. Here an ugly girl with foul gifts is substituted for her
opposite.
Le roi et son fils. Here we find the counterpart of Schaibar (from No.
197), who, however, is a cannibal and devours everybody.
Les Enfants et la Chauve-sourie. Resembles No. 198.
Le Joueur de Flute. Resembles Grimm’s story of the Jew in the
Bramble-Bush.
Jésus-Christ et la femme infidèle. (=261 b.; cf. Nights x., p. 473.)
Le Roitelet. This is the fable of the Ox and the Frog.
L’idiot et le coucou (=No. 206a.)
Moh’amed ben Soltan. This is one of the class of stories known to
folklorists as the Punchkin series. The life of a Ghúl is hidden in an
egg, the egg in a pigeon, the pigeon in a camel, and the camel in the
sea.
Les deux Frères. A Cinderella story. The slayer of a hydra is discovered
by trying on a shoe.
Les trois Frères. Here a Ghúl is killed by a single blow from a magic
dagger, which must not be repeated. (Cf. antea, p. 365; and Nights, vii.
p. 361.) In this story, too, the protection of a Ghúlah is secured by
tasting her milk, a point which we find in Spitta Bey’s “Contes Arabes
Modernes,” but not in the Nights.
9. _Turkish Evening Entertainments._ “The Wonders of Remarkable
Incidents and the Rarities of Anecdotes,” by Ahmed ibn Hemdem the
Ketkhoda called “Sobailee.” Translated from the Turkish by John F.
Brown. 8vo. New York, 1850.
Contains a great number of tales and anecdotes, divided into 37
chapters, many of which bear such headings as “Illustrative of
intelligence and piety,” “On justice and fostering care,” “Anecdotes
about the Abbaside Caliphs,” &c.
“A translation of the Turkish story-book, ‘Aja’ib al-ma’ásir wa ghará
’ib ennawádir,’ written for Muád the Fourth Ottoman Sultan who reigned
between 1623–40. A volume of interesting anecdotes from the Arabic and
Persian” (Mr. L. C. Smithers, _in litt._)
10. _Contes Arabes Modernes, recueillis et traduits par Guillaume
Spitta-Bey._ 8vo. Leyden and Paris, 1883.
This book contains 12 orally collected tales of such great importance
from a folk-lore point of view that I have given full abstracts of all.
They are designed to illustrate the spoken Egyptian dialect, and are
printed in Roman character, with translation and glossary. The hero of
nearly all the tales is called “Mohammed l’Avisé,” which Mr. Sydney
Hartland renders “Prudent,” and Mr. W. A. Clouston “Discreet.” The
original gives “Essâtir Mehammed.” (Al-Shátir Mohammed, _i.e._, M. the
Clever) The frequent occurrence of the number 39 (forty less one) may
also be noted. Ghúls often play the part which we should expect Jinn to
fill. The bear which occurs in two stories, is not an Egyptian animal.
Having called attention to these general features we may leave the tales
to speak for themselves.
I. _Histoire de Mohammed l’Avisé._
Contains the essential features of Cazotte’s story of the Maugraby, (cf.
Nights, x., p. 471) with interesting additions. The “Mogrébin” confers
three sons on a king and queen, and claims Mohammed, the eldest and the
cleverest. He gives him a book to read during his absence of 30 days,
but on the 29th day he finds a girl hanging by her hair in the garden,
and she teaches him to read it, but not to tell the magician. The latter
cuts off his arm, threatening to cut off his head if he cannot read the
book within another 30 days. As soon as he is gone, Mohammed reads on
his arm again with the book, and escapes with the girl, when they
separate and return to their respective homes. Mohammed then changes
himself into a sheep for his mother to sell, but warns her not to sell
the cord round his neck. Next day he changes himself into a camel,
forbidding his mother to sell the bridle; but she is persuaded to do so,
and he falls into the hands of the magician. But he contrives to escape
in the form of a crow and the magician pursues him for two days and
nights in the form of a hawk, when he descends into the garden of the
king whose daughter he had rescued from the magician, and changes
himself into a pomegranate on a tree. The magician asks for and receives
the pomegranate, when it bursts, and the seed containing the life of
Mohammed rolls under the king’s throne. The magician changes himself
into a cock, and picks up the seeds, but while he is searching for the
last, it changes into a dagger, and cuts him in two. The princess
acknowledges Mohammed as her deliverer, and they are married.
II. _Histoire de l’Ours de Cuisine._
This begins as a swan-maiden story.[440] A king steals the feather-dress
of a bathing maiden, who will only marry him on condition that she shall
tear out the eyes of his forty women (39 white slaves and a princess).
The king answers, “C’est bien, il n’y a pas d’inconvénient.” The forty
blind women are shut up in a room under the kitchen, where they give
birth to children whom they cut up and divide; but the princess saves
her shares and thus preserves her son, whom she calls “Mohammed
l’Avisé,” and teaches to read. He steals food from the kitchen, calling
himself “Ours de Cuisine;” the queen hears of him, pretends to be ill,
and demands that he shall be sent to fetch the heart of the Bull of the
Black Valley. He finds a Ghúleh sitting with her breasts thrown back on
her shoulders, so he tastes her milk unperceived, and she at once adopts
him as her son. She gives him a ball and a dagger, warning him that if
he strikes the bull more than once, he will sink into the earth with
him. The ball rolls before him, and when it stops, the bull rises from
the ground. Mohammed kills him, refusing to repeat the blow, returns the
ball and dagger to the Ghúleh, and returns home. A few days afterwards,
the queen sends Mohammed to fetch the heart of the Bull of the Red
Valley, and when he informs the Ghúleh, she says, “Does she wish to kill
her second brother too?” “Are these her brothers?” asked Mohammed. She
answered, “Yes, indeed, they are the sons of the Sultan of the Jánn.” He
kills the Bull as before. A fortnight afterwards, the queen hides a loaf
of dry bread under her mattress, when its cracking gives rise to the
idea that she is very ill, and she complains of great pain in the sides.
She demands a pomegranate from the White Valley, where the pomegranates
grow to the weight of half a cantar.[441] The Ghúleh tells him she
cannot help him, but he must wait for her son Abderrahym. When he
arrives he remarks, “Hum! mother, there’s a smell of man about you,
bring him here to me to eat for breakfast.” But his mother introduces
Mohammed to him as his foster brother, and he becomes friendly at once,
but says that the pomegranate is the queen’s sister. He tells Mohammed
to get an ardebb of small round loaves in a basket, along with a piece
of meat, and a piece of liver. The Ghúl then gives him a rod, saying,
“Throw it down, and walk after it. It will knock at the garden gate,
which will open, and when you enter you will find great dogs, but throw
the bread right and left, without looking back. Beyond a second gate you
will find Ghúls; throw bread to them right and left, and after passing
them, look up, and you will find a tree in a fountain surrounded with
roses and jasmine. You will see a pomegranate upon it. Gather it, and it
will thunder, but fear nothing, and go on your way directly, and do not
look behind you after passing the gate.” The queen waits another
fortnight, and then demands the flying castle from Mount Kaf, intending
that her father, who dwelt there, should burn him. The Ghúleh directed
Mohammed to dye himself black, and to provide himself with some mastic
(ladin) and lupines. With these, he makes friends with a black slave,
who takes him into the castle, and shows him a bottle containing the
life of the queen; another containing the eyes of the forty women; a
magic sword which spares nothing, and the ring which moves the castle.
Mohammed then sees a beetle,[442] which the slave begs him not to kill,
as it is his life. He watches it till it enters a hole, and as soon as
the slave is asleep, he kills it, and the slave dies. Then he lays hands
on the talismans, rushes into the room where the inhabitants of the
castle are condoling with the king and queen on the loss of their three
children, and draws the sword, saying “Strike right and left, and spare
neither great nor small.” Having slain all in the castle, Mohammed
removes it to his father’s palace, when his father orders the cannons to
be fired. Then Mohammed tells his father his history, compels the queen
to restore the eyes of the forty women, when they become prettier than
before, and then gives her the flask containing her life. But she drops
it in her fright, and her life ends, and the king places Mohammed on the
throne.
III. _Histoire de la Dame des Arabes Jasmin._
A king sends his wazir to obtain a talisman of good luck, which is
written for him by Jasmine, the daughter of an Arab Sheikh. The king
marries her, although she demands to be weighed against gold, but drives
her away for kissing a fisherman in return for a bottle which he has
drawn out of the river for her. She goes two days’ journey to a town,
where she takes up her abode with a merchant, and then discovers that
whenever she turns the stopper of the bottle, food, drink, and finally
ten white dancing girls emerge from it. The girls dance, each throws her
ten purses of money, and then they retire into the bottle. She builds
herself a grand palace, where her husband seeks her, and seeing the new
palace, orders that no lights shall be lit in the town that night. She
lights up her palace, which convinces the king that he has a dangerous
rival. Then the wazir and the king visit her; the king asks for the
bottle, and she demands more than a kiss, then reveals herself, puts the
king to shame, and they are reconciled.
IV. _Histoire du Pécheur et de son Fils._
A king falls in love with the wife of a fisherman, and the wazir advises
the former to require the fisherman on pain of death to furnish a large
hall with a carpet in a single piece. The fisherman’s wife sends him to
the well of Shoubrah where he exclaims, “O such-and-such-a-one, thy
sister so-and-so salutes thee, and asks thee to send her the spindle
which she forgot when she was with thee yesterday, for we want to
furnish a room with it.” The fisherman drives a nail into the floor at
one end of the room, fixes the thread on the spindle to it, and draws
out a wonderful carpet. Then the wazir demands a little boy eight days
old, who shall tell a story of which the beginning shall be a lie and
the end a lie. The fisherman is sent to the well with the message, “O
such-and-such-a-one, thy sister so-and-so greets thee, and requests thee
to give her the child which she brought into the world yesterday.” But
the child only cries until three gnats are applied to him, one on each
side, and one on the back. Then the boy speaks, saying, “Peace be on
thee, O king!” and afterwards tells his lying story: “When I was in the
flower of my youth, I walked out of the town one day into the fields
when it was very hot. I met a melon-seller, I bought a melon for a
mahboub, took it, cut out a piece, and looked inside, when I saw a town
with a grand hall, when I raised my feet and stepped into the melon.
Then I walked about to look at the people of the town inside the melon.
I walked on till I came out of the town into the country. There I saw a
date tree bearing dates a yard long. I wished for some, and climbed the
date-tree to gather a date and eat it. There I found peasants sowing and
reaping on the date-tree, and the threshing wheels were turning to
thresh the wheat. I walked on a little, and met a man who was beating
eggs to make a poultry yard. I looked on, and saw the chickens hatch;
the cocks went to one side and the hens to the other. I stayed near them
till they grew up, when I married them to each other, and went on.
Presently I met a donkey carrying sesame-cakes, so I cut off a piece and
ate it. When I had eaten it, I looked up, and found myself outside the
melon, and the melon became whole as it was at first.” Then the child
rebukes and threatens the king and the wazir, and the fisherman’s wife
sends her husband to take the child back to the well.
The fisherman had a son named Mohammed l’Avisé (Al-Shátír), who was as
handsome as his mother; but the king had a son whose complexion was like
that of a Fellah. The boys went to school together, and the prince used
to say, “Good day, fisherman’s son,” and Mohammed used to reply, “Good
day, O son of the king, looking like a shoe-string.” The prince
complained to his father, who ordered the schoolmaster to kill Mohammed,
and he bastinadoed him severely. The boy went to his father, and turned
fisherman. On the first day he caught a mullet (Fr. _rouget_), and was
about to fry it, when it cried out that it was one of the princesses of
the river, and he threw it back. Then the wazir advised the king to send
Mohammed to fetch the daughter of the king of the Green Country, seven
years journey distant. By the advice of the fish, Mohammed asked the
king for a golden galley; and on reaching the Green Country, invited the
inhabitants to inspect his galley. At last the princess came down, and
he carried her off. When she found she was entrapped, she threw her ring
into the sea, which the fish caught. When the king proposed to the
princess, she first demanded her ring, which Mohammed immediately
presented to the king. Then she said it was the custom of her country on
the occasion of a marriage to dig a trench from the palace to the river,
which was filled with wood, and set on fire. The bridegroom was required
to walk through the trench to the river. The wazir proposed that
Mohammed should walk through the trench first; and by the fish’s advice,
he stopped his ears, cried out, “In the name of God, the Compassioning,
the Merciful,” threw himself into the trench, and returned from the
river handsomer than before. So the wazir said to the king, “Send for
your son to go with us, that he may become as handsome as Mohammed.” So
the three threw themselves into the fire, and were burned to ashes, and
Mohammed married the princess.
V. _Histoire de Dalâl._
Dalal was a little girl, the daughter of a king, who found a louse on
her head, and put it into a jar of oil, where it remained till Dalal was
twenty years old, when it burst the jar, and emerged in the form of a
horned buffalo. The king ordered the hide to be hung at the gate of the
palace, and proclaimed that anyone who could discover what the skin was
should marry his daughter, but whoever tried and failed should lose his
head. Thirty-nine suitors thus perished, when a Ghúl passed by in the
form of a man, who knew the secret. He took Dalal home with him and
brought her a man’s head, but as she would not eat it, he brought her a
sheep. He then visited her under the forms of her mother and her two
aunts, and told her that her husband was a Ghúl; but she refused to
believe it until the third visit. Then he was angry; but she begged him
to let her go to the bath before she was eaten. He consented, took her
to a bath, and sat at the door; but she rubbed herself with mud, changed
clothes with an old lupine-seller, and escaped for a time. She reached a
palace which she would not enter until she was invited by the Prince
himself, who then proposed to marry her, but on the wedding day, her
husband, having tracked her out, contrived that another Ghúl in the form
of a man should present him to the king in the form of a sheep,
pretending that he had been reared in a harem, and would bleat so loud
that nobody could sleep, unless he was tethered in the women’s
apartments. At night the Ghúl carried off Dalal from beside the prince
to the adjoining room, but she begged to be allowed to retire for a few
moments, when she called upon Saint Zaynab for help, who sent one of her
sisters (?) a Jinniyah. She clove the wall, and asked Dalal to promise
to give her her first child. She then gave her a piece of wood to throw
into the mouth of the Ghúl when he opened his mouth to eat her.[443] He
fell on the ground senseless, and Dalal woke up the prince who slew him.
But when Dalal brought forth a daughter whom she gave to the Jinniyah,
her mother-in-law declared that Dalal herself was a Ghulah, and she was
banished to the kitchen, where she pealed onions for ten years. At the
end of this time the Jinniyah again clove the wall, and brought back the
young princess, who was introduced to her father, who took Dalal again
into favour. Meantime the sultan of the Jinn sent for the Jinniyah, for
his son was ill, and could only be cured by a cup of water from the Sea
of Emeralds; and this could only be obtained by a daughter of mankind.
So the Jinniyah borrowed Dalal’s daughter again, and took her to the
sultan, who gave her a cup, and mounted her on a Jinni, warning her not
to wet her fingers. But a wave touched the hand of the princess, which
turned as green as clover. Every morning the Sea of Emerald is weighed
by an officer to discover whether any has been stolen; and as soon as he
discovered the deficiency, he took a platter of glass rings and
bracelets, and went from palace to palace calling out, “Glass bracelets
and rings, O young ladies.” When he came to Dalal’s palace, the young
princess was looking out of the window, and insisted on going herself to
try them on. She hesitated to show her right hand; and the spy knew that
she was guilty, so he seized her hand, and sunk into the ground with
her. He delivered her over to the servants of the Sea of Emerald, who
would have beaten her, but the Jinn surrounded her, and prevented them.
Then the King of the Sea of Emerald ordered her to be taken, bound into
the bath, saying that he would follow in the form of a serpent, and
devour her. But she recognised him by his green eyes, when he became a
man, ordered her to be restored to her father, and afterwards married
her. He gave forty camel loads of emeralds and jacinths as her dowry,
and always visited her by night in the form of a winged serpent,
entering and leaving by the window.
VI. _Histoire de la fille vertueuse._
A merchant and his wife set out to the Hejaz with their son, leaving
their daughter to keep house, and commending her to the protection of
the Kazi. The Kazi fell in love with the girl, but as she would not
admit him, he employed an old woman to entice her to the bath; but the
girl threw soap in his eyes, pushed him down and broke his head, and
escaped to her own house, carrying off his clothes. When the Kazi was
well enough to get about again he found that she had had the door of her
house walled up until the return of her friends, so he wrote a
slanderous letter to her father, who sent her brother to kill her, and
bring him a bottle of her blood. But her brother, although he thought
the walling up of the door was a mere pretence, could not find it in his
heart to kill her, but abandoned her in the desert, and filled the
bottle with gazelle-blood. When the young girl awoke, she wandered to a
spring, and climbed into a tree where a prince who was passing saw her,
carried her home, and married her. She had two sons and a daughter, but
one of their playmates refused to play with them because they had no
maternal uncle. The king then ordered the wazir to escort the princess
and her three children to her father’s village for a month; but on the
road, the wazir made love to her, and she allowed him to kill her three
children in succession to save her honour. At last, he became so
pressing that she pretended to consent, but asked to quit the tent for a
moment, with a cord attached to her hand to prevent her escape. But she
untied the cord, fastened it to a tree, and fled. As they could not find
the princess, the wazir advised the soldiers to tell the king that a
Ghúleh had devoured the children, and fled into the desert. The princess
changed clothes with a shepherd boy, went to a town, and took a
situation in a café. When the wazir returned to the king, and delivered
his report, the king proposed that they should disguise themselves, and
set out in search of the princess and her children; and the wazir could
not refuse. Meantime, the brother of the princess had admitted to her
father that he had not slain her, and they also set out in search of
her, taking the Kazi with them. They all met at the café, where she
recognised them, and offered to tell them a story. She related her own,
and was restored to her friends. They seized the Kazi and the wazir, and
sent for the old woman, when they burned them all three, and scattered
their ashes in the air.
VII. _Histoire du prince qui apprit un métier._