This begins as a swan-maiden story.[FN#439] 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.[FN#440] The Ghuleh
tells him she cannot help him, but he must wait for her son Adberrahym. 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,[FN#441]
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-Shatír), 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 Ghul 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 Ghul; 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.[FN#442] 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 Ghuleh, and she was banished to the kitchen, where
she peeled 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 King 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 presence, 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 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.
A prince named Mohammed l'Avisé went to seek a wife, and fell in love with the
daughter of a leek-grower. She would not accept him unless he learned a trade,
so he learned the trade of a silk weaver, who taught him in five minutes, and
he worked a handkerchief with the palace of his father embroidered upon it.
Two years afterwards, the prince and the wazir took a walk, when they found a
Maghrabi seated at the gate of the town, who invited them to take coffee. But
he was a prisoner (or rather a murderer) who imprisoned them behind seven
doors; and after three days he cooked the wazir, and was going to cook the
prince, but he persuaded him to take his handkerchief to market where it was
recognised, and the prince released from his peril. Two years later the king
died, and the prince succeeded to the throne. The latter had a son and
daughter, but he died when the boy was six and the girl eight, warning the boy
not to marry until the girl was married, lest his wife should ill-use her.
After two years the sister said, "Brother, if I show you the treasures of your
father and mother, what will you do?" He answered, "I will buy a slipper for
you and a slipper for me, and we will play with them among the stones." "No,"
said she, "you are still too little," and waited a year before she asked him
again. This time he answered, "I will buy a tambourine for you, and a flute
for myself and we will play in the street." She waited two more years, and
this time he answered, "We will use them to repair the water-wheels and my
father's palaces, and we will sow and reap." "Now you are big," said she, and
gave him the treasures, which he used to erect buildings in his father's
country. Soon afterwards, an old woman persuaded the youth to marry her
daughter; but she herself went into the mountains, collected eggs of the bird
Oumbar, which make virgins pregnant if they eat them, and gave them to the
sister. The old woman reported the result to the king, who visited his sister
to satisfy himself of the truth of the matter, and then left her, but sent her
food by a slave. When the sister's time came, four angels descended from
heaven, and took her daughter, bringing the child to her mother to be nursed.
The mother died of grief, and the angels washed and shrouded her and wept over
her; and when the king heard it, he opened the door, and the angels flew away
to heaven with the child. The king ordered a tomb to be built in the palace
for his sister, and was so much grieved at her death that he went on
pilgrimage. When he had been gone some time, and the time of his return
approached, the old woman opened the sister's tomb, intending to throw her
body to the dogs to devour, and to put the carcase of a sheep in its place.
The angels put the child in the tomb, and she reproached and threatened the
old woman; who, however, seized upon her and dyed her black, pretending that
she was a little black slave whom she had bought. When the king returned, he
pitied her, and called her to sit by him, but she asked for a candle and
candlestick to hold in her hand before all the company. Then she told her
mother's story, saying to the candle at every word, "Gutter for kings; this is
my uncle, the chief of kings." Then the candle threw mahboubs on her uncle's
knees. When the story was ended the king ordered proclamation to be made, "Let
whosoever loves the Prophet and the Elect, bring wood and fire." The people
obeyed, and the old woman and her daughter were burned.
VIII.--Histoire du Prince Amoureux.
A woman prayed to God to give her a daughter, even if she should die of the
smell of flax. When the girl was ten years old, the king's son passed through
the street, saw her at the window, and fell in love with her. An old woman
discovered that he loved Sittoukan, the daughter of a merchant, and promised
to obtain her. She contrived to set her to spin flax, when a splinter ran
under her nail, and she fainted. The old woman persuaded her father and mother
to build a palace in the midst of the river, and to lay her there on a bed.
Thither she took the prince, who turned the body about, saw the splinter, drew
it out, and the girl awoke. He remained with her forty days, when he went down
to the door, where he found the wazir waiting, and they entered the garden.
There they found roses and jasmines, and the prince said, "The jasmines are as
white as Sittoukan, and the roses are like her cheeks; if you did not approve,
I would still remain with her, were it only for three days." He went up again
for three days, and when he next visited the wazir, they saw a carob-tree, and
the prince said, "Remember, wazir, the carob-tree is like the eyebrows of
Sittoukan, and if you would not let me, I would still remain with her, were it
only for three days." Three days later, they saw a fountain, when the prince
observed that it was like the form of Sittoukan, and he returned. But this
time, she was curious to know why he always went and returned, and he found
her watching behind the door, so he spat on her saying, "If you did not love
men, you would not hide behind doors"; and he left her. She wandered into the
garden in her grief, where she found the ring of empire, which she rubbed, and
the ring said, "At your orders, what do you ask for ?" She asked for increased
beauty, and a palace beside that of the prince. The prince fell in love with
her, and sent his mother to propose for her hand. The mother took two pieces
of royal brocade as a present, which the young lady ordered a slave in her
hearing to cut up for dusters. Then the mother brought her an emerald collar
worth four thousand diners, when she ordered it to be threshed, and thrown to
the pigeons. The old lady acknowledged herself beaten, and asked Sittoukan if
she wished to marry or not. The latter demanded that the prince should be
wrapped in seven shrouds, and carried to the palace which she indicated, as if
he were dead. Then she went and took off the shrouds one after another, and
when she came to the seventh, she spat on him, saying, "If you did not love
women, you would not be wrapped in seven shrouds." Then he said, "Is it you?"
and he bit his finger till he bit it off, and they remained together.
IX.--Histoire du musician ambulant et de son fils.
This travelling musician was so poor that when his wife was confined, he went
out to beg for their immediate necessities, and found a hen lying on the
ground with an egg under her. He met a Jew to whom he sold the egg for twenty
mahboubs. The hen laid an egg every day, which the Jew bought for twenty
mahboubs, and the musician became rich and opened a merchant's shop. When his
son was grown, he built a school for him at his own expense, where poor
children were taught to read. Then the musician set out on pilgrimage,
charging his wife not to let the Jew trick her out of the hen. A fortnight
afterwards, the Jew called, and persuaded the woman to sell him the hen for a
casket of silver. He ordered her to cook it, but told her that if anybody else
ate a piece, he would rip him up. The musician's son came in, while the fowl
was cooking, and as his mother would not give him any, he seized the gizzard,
and ate it, when one of the slaves warned him to fly before the arrival of the
Jew. The Jew pursued the boy, and would have killed him, but the latter took
him up with one hand, and dashed him to pieces on the ground. The musician's
son continued his journey, and arrived at a town where thirty-nine heads of
suitors who had failed to conquer the princess in wrestling, were suspended at
the gate of the palace. On the first day the youth wrestled with the princess
for two hours without either being able to overcome the other; but during the
night the king ordered the doctors to drug the successful suitor, and to steal
the talisman. Next morning when the youth awoke, he perceived his weakness,
and fled. Presently he met three men quarrelling over a flying carpet, a
food-producing cup, and a money mill. He threw a stone for them to run after
and transported himself to Mount Kaf, where he made trial of the other
talismans. Then he returned to the palace, called to the princess to come down
to wrestle with him, and as soon as she stepped on the carpet, carried her
away to Mount Kaf, when she promised to restore the gizzard, and to marry him.
She deserted him, and he found two date-trees, one bearing red and the other
yellow dates. On eating a yellow date, a horn grew from his head[FN#443] and
twisted round the two date-trees. A red date removed it. He filled his
pockets, and travelled night and day for two months.[FN#444] He cried dates
out of season, and the princess bought sixteen yellow ones, and ate them all;
and eight [sixteen ?] horns grew from her head, four to each wall. They could
not be sawn off, and the king offered his daughter to whoever could remove
them. When the musician's son married the princess, and became wazir, he said
to his bride, "Where is my carpet, &c." She replied, "Is it you?" "Yes," said
he, "Is my trick or yours the best?" She admitted that she was beaten, and
they lived together in harmony.
X.--Histoire du rossignol chanteur.
Three brothers built a palace for their mother and sister after their father's
death. The sister loved someone of whom the brothers disapproved. An old woman
advised the sister to send her brothers for the singing nightingale. The two
eldest would not wait till the bird was asleep, but while they were trying to
shut his cage, he dusted sand over them with his claws, and sunk them to the
seventh earth. The beads and the ring gave warning of their deaths at home;
but the third, who left a rose with his mother, to fade if he died captured
the bird, and received sand from under the cage. When he scattered it on the
ground, more than a thousand men rose up, some negroes and some Turks. The
brothers were not among them, so the youngest was told to scatter white sand,
when 500 more people emerged, including the brothers. Afterwards the eldest
brother was sitting in his ship when a Maghrebi told him to clean his turban;
which his mother interpreted to mean that his sister had misconducted herself,
and he should kill her. He refused, and fled with her to the desert. Hearing
voices, he entered a cave where thirty nine robbers were dividing rations; and
he contrived to appropriate a share, and then to return it when missed; but as
he was detected, he gave himself out as a fellow-robber, engaged himself to
them, and watching his opportunity, slew them. Afterwards he brought his
sister two young lions. She found a wounded negro in the cave, whom she
nursed, and after having had two children by him, plotted against her brother.
She pretended to be ill, and sent him to find the grapes of Paradise. He met a
Ghúleh who gave him a ball which directed him to Paradise, and he returned
safely. Then his sister sent him for the Water of Life when the two young
lions followed him, and he could not drive them back. After travelling for a
year the brother reached the Sea of the Water of Life, and while resting under
a tree heard two pigeons telling each other that the king's daughter was ill,
and every doctor who failed to restore her was put to death, and she could
only be cured by the Water of Life. "Mohammed l'Avisé" filled two bottles and
a jar with the water, cured the princess with the water in the jar, married
her, and after forty days, gave her one bottle, and set out to visit his
family. At the sister's instigation, the negro slew Mohammed, cut him to
pieces, and put the remains into a sack, which they loaded on the ass. Then
the lions drove the ass to the wife of Mohammed, who restored his life with
the water which he had left with her. Mohammed then shut up the lions, dressed
himself as a negro, and went to visit his sister, taking with him some rings
and mastic (ladin). His sister recognised his eyes, and while she and the
negro were disputing, Mohammed slew the negro and the three [sic] children,
and buried his sister alive. He then returned to his wife, announced that his
relations were dead, and asked for a hundred camels; and it took them a week
to convey away the treasures of the robbers.