THE Persian version of this story differs very materially from that in Syntipas, where the woman, having learned of the young man's book of wiles, tells him the following tale:

“A certain man possessed a house and a prudent wife, and was always disparaging all woman kind. ‘Abuse not all women,’ his wife said, ‘but only the bad.’ ‘All,’ retorted he. ‘Speak not thus,’ the wife replied; ‘since you happen not to be united with one of them.’ ‘Had I fallen in with one of them,’ he then said, ‘I should have cut off her nose.’ After his own fashion, he also held up to obloquy some quarrelsome female neighbours. The wife then said to her husband: ‘What do you purpose doing to-day?’ And he answered: ‘I am going into the field, and, at your leisure, cook something and bring it thither, that I may dine.’ The wife then going forth met with, on her way, and purchased some fish, and scattered them in the field where her husband was to plough. When he discovered the fish, he said to his wife: ‘Have you prepared aught for us to eat this evening?’ And she replied: ‘I have cooked neither flesh nor fish, nor anything else.’ Thereupon he said: ‘Behold the food I found in the field, and cook it.’ Upon this she took the fish and concealed them. The table having been laid out, the man said to his wife: ‘Where is the fish?’ ‘What fish?’ she demanded. ‘Thou fool,’ said he, ‘did I not bring some fish just now, which I found in the field?’ The woman, scratching her face with her nails, cried out: ‘O listen to me, neighbours!’ And the neighbours having assembled, the wife said to them: ‘Listen, O my masters! My husband bids me cook fish which he brought from the field.’ The men asked the husband: ‘What sayest thou?—that you found fish in a ploughed field?’ He replied: ‘O my masters and brethren! the food I found there; but how it happened to be there, I know not.’ His wife then cried out: ‘This man has a devil!’ And the neighbours then put iron fetters on his hands and feet, and the whole night through the wretched man continued to say: ‘Did I not find the fish, and, bringing them to this jade, bid her cook them? Why have they, then, bound me with fetters?’ At the dawn of day the wife again raised a cry; upon which the neighbours reassembled, and asked: ‘What has happened?’ and the unfortunate man once more repeated the truth. ‘He is pos­sessed of a devil!’ cried the woman; and the neighbours, believing her, said: ‘Verily, the man is suffering somewhat.’ After the third day, the woman said to her husband: ‘Art thou hungry? May I give thee somewhat to eat?’ And he answered; ‘Yea; and what hast thou to give me to eat?’ She said: ‘Cooked victuals, in the frying-pan.’ ‘Thou sayest well, woman. Are not those the same that I brought to you from the field?’ The wife then exclaimed: ‘O Christian masters! the evil spirit still possesses this man, as he continues to talk about the victuals.’ But on his declaring, ‘I no longer maintain what I uttered before,’ she gave him a portion and he ate of the food, without saying a word about it. But she asked: ‘Dost thou not remember the food?’ He replied: ‘I know not what thou art talking about.’ She then released him, and said: ‘O husband, all that thou hast uttered is true; but wherefore abusest thou not only the bad but also the good women? And I said to thee: “Be silent;” but thou repliedst: “If I had such a wicked wife, I should slay her.” No longer vainly boast of being superior to womankind.’”

Having put the youth off his guard by this artful story, the woman makes advances to him, and then makes a great outcry, which brought the neighbours, who asked the cause of her exclamations. The youth by this time had taken his seat at the table, and the woman said in reply to the neighbours: “This stranger, who is received kindly by us, eating at our table, was suffering grievously, and was in great danger of being choked, in consequence of a morsel sticking in his throat; but I, quickly seeing what had happened, and fearing the death of a guest, shouted out as you heard me. But now the help of God has saved him from the danger of choking, and granted him health,” and the neighbours went away. The woman, then approaching the stranger, said: “Hast thou written down all I have related to thee, and all I have done?” The stranger answered: “By no means.” She then said: “In vain, O man, have you sus­tained labours and outlays;—despite your endeavours, you have accomplished nothing, and never fathomed the machinations of women!” And the stranger immediately took the records of the wiles of women, and threw them into the fire, and, marvelling, said: “No human being is able to know the knaveries of women.” After this, hesitating, and not realising what might happen, he discontinued the investigation of woman's evil-craft, returned to his native land, and married a wife.

This story is not found in the Mishlé Sandabar or the Seven Vazīrs, and the subordinate tale, related by the woman, as above, is peculiar to the Greek text. The woman's own wile is also found in the Bahār-i Dānish, or Spring of Knowledge, by Ināyatu-'llāh of Delhi, a work which is avowedly derived, all but the frame, from ancient Indian sources; and in the 8th Night of Nakhshabī's Tūtī Nāma, where it is told by the fourth vazīr.—The twenty-first vazīr's story in the Turkish book of The Forty Vazīrs is not remotely related to the same tale. Mr. E. J. W. Gibb has favoured me with the following trans­lation of it, from a printed text procured at Constantinople:

“There was in the palace of the world a great king, and he had a beautiful wife, such that many a soul dangled in the tresses on her cheek. That lady had a secret affair with a youth; and she used to hide the youth in a chest in the palace. One day the youth said to the lady: ‘If the king were aware of our work, he would slay the two of us.’ The lady said: ‘Leave that thought; I can do so that I shall hide thee in the chest, and say to the king: “Lo, my lover is lying in this chest;” and then, when the king is about to kill me, I will make him re­pentant by one word.’ While the youth and the lady were saying these words, the king came, and the lady straightway put the youth into the chest and locked it. The king said: ‘Why lockest thou that chest in such haste? What is in the chest?’ The lady answered: ‘It is my lover; I saw thee coming, and put him into the chest and locked it.’ Then was the king wroth, and he bared his sword, and thought to slay him who was in the chest, when the lady said: ‘O king, art thou mad? Where is gone thy understanding? Am I mad, that I should advance a strange man to thy couch, and then say to thee: “Lo, he is in the chest?” In truth, I wondered if thou wast sincere in thy trust of me, and I tried thee, and now I know that thou thinkest evil concerning me.’ Then did the king repent of what he had done; and he begged and besought of his wife, saying, ‘Forgive me.’ And he gave her many things, and craved pardon for his fault. When the king had gone out from the harem into the palace, the lady took that youth forth of the chest, and said: ‘Didst thou not see what a trick I played the king?’ and they gave themselves up to merriment.”

In another Turkish collection, according to Cardonne, a philosopher who had compiled a book of the tricks and devices of women is concealed in a chest by an Arab woman on the appearance of her husband. It seems the man and his wife had been for some time playing a game, which consists in receiving nothing from the person one is engaged to play with, without pro­nouncing the word Diadestè, or Touch-stake, from which the game derives its name. The woman, to the terror of the concealed philosopher, coolly tells her husband that she has a lover locked in the chest, upon which he furiously demands the key, which she gives him, and then calls out to him: “Pay me the forfeit —you have lost the Diadestè!” The husband, happy to find no cause for his jealousy, returns the key to his wife, and goes away, and the philosopher on being released from his confinement is advised by the woman to enter this contrivance in his book.

The trick played by the wife on her husband with the fishes in the ploughed field, which is interwoven with the Story of Woman's Wiles in the Greek text, finds parallels in other collec­tions of Eastern fiction. For instance: In the tale of the Bang-Eater and his Wife (vol. vi of Jonathan Scott's edition of the Arabian Nights), the man having discovered a hidden treasure, his wife fetches it away, and he, being a very honest fellow, threatens to inform the chief of the police of her having appropriated the gold; upon which, in order that his story should be discredited, she scatters pieces of cooked meat around the house outside, and then awakes her husband, who was sleeping off the effects of a dose of his favourite bang, and tells him that it had just rained these pieces of food. He believes her; but next day he goes to the chief of police, and acquaints him that his wife has taken away some money which had been concealed in a heap of earth. The magistrate asks the woman if her husband told the truth, and she desires him to inquire of the foolish man what day it was that she took the money; he replies that it was the same day that it rained cooked food, and the magistrate causes him to be confined as a lunatic. Some time afterwards his wife persuades him to say that nobody ever knew of it raining anything but water, and he is set at liberty.

So, too, in the story of the Foolish Sachalī, in Miss Stokes' Indian Fairy Tales, the simpleton meets with a strayed camel, loaded with rupees, and takes it home; his mother conceals the treasure, and, while he is out of the way, scatters comfits outside the house. On his return home she tells him that the comfits have fallen from the skies, and the foolish Sachalī informs the neigh­bours that his mother had concealed a large quantity of rupees, which he found the same day that it rained comfits.—In an Eng­lish story, it rained raisins, and in Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands, there are showers of milk-porridge and pancakes.

In the Calcutta text of the Thousand and One Nights there occurs (Night 394) what seems an absurd variant of the trick with the fishes: A man gives his wife one Friday a fish to cook; while he is out, her lover comes, and, putting the fish in a jar of water, she goes off with him, and is absent a whole week. On the following Friday she comes home, and her husband (who had sought for her everywhere), reproaches her, but she brings out the fish alive from the jar, to show that she could not have been absent at all; she then assembles the neighbours, who, consider­ing him mad, load him with fetters.