THE THREE DECEITFUL WOMEN—p. 355.

Page 357—The crafty mother of the bathman is said to have “practised for years under the sorceress Shamsah”; probably the witch of the same name who figures in the story of Táhir, an extract of which will be found in pp. 494, 495.

Page 370—The story of ‘The Sun and the Moon’ (Mihr ú Máh), which the carpenter brags that he knows, is probably the Persian romance of Mihr, the son of Káhvar Sháh, described in Dr. Rieu's Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. ii, p. 765 (Add. 15,099), which also occurs in Hubbí's collection, entitled Hikáyát-i 'Ajíb ú Gharíb, (already cited on p. 474), of which Dr. Rieu, in the same Catalogue (ii, 759, Or. 237), gives the titles of the first nineteen stories, No. 3 being Mihr ú Máh. Dr. Rieu has kindly furnished me with the first part of this tale:

In the kingdom of the East was a mighty king named Khávar Sháh, who had no son. He is told by his astrologers that he is predestined to have a son, provided the mother be a parí (or fairy). On the advice of his vazír, Rushan Ráï, he asks the help of a devotee called Faylasúf, who tells him that he should obtain possession of the book of magic which is kept by the witch Naskas in her castle. All three set out with this intent, and by means of the Most Great Name (see ante, note on p. 163) obtain entrance into the castle, and on their way release a dove from its cage. Deceived by the wiles of the witch, they are transformed: the king, into a lion, the vazír, into a lynx, and the devotee, into a fox; but plunging into the waters of the Spring of Job, they are restored to their natural shape, seek refuge in a hollow tree, and are taken out of it by the bird Rukh (or roc) and carried to the top of a mountain. In the meanwhile the released dove, who was no other than Rúz-afrúz, daughter of Farrukhfál, king of the parís, returns to her parents and tells them of her rescue. Then she goes in search of her deliverers; finds them asleep, and has them conveyed to her father's court. Farrukhfál waives his objection to a marriage which he deemed a mésalliance, and the result in due time is the birth of a prince, called Mihr. The astrologers prophesy that at the age of eighteen grief will come to him through a piece of paper. And, in fact, the young man, while out hunting, meets a youth called Mukhtarí, a rich mer­chant from Maghrab, who has suffered shipwreck and has saved nothing but the portrait of Máh, the fair daughter of Hilál, king of the West. The remainder of the tale deals with the adven­tures of the love-struck prince in search of the fair one, ending, of course, with their happy union.*

The tale of ‘Sayf ul-Mulúk and Bady'á ul-Jumál,’ which the carpenter says he had also heard, occurs in the Arabian Nights; the Tùrkish story-book Al-Faraj ba'd al-Shiddah, or Joy after Distress; the Persian Tales translated into French by Petis de la Croix, under the title of Les Mille et un Jours; and it also exists as a separate story in MSS. preserved in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It recounts how a young prince discovers in his father's treasury the portrait of a very beautiful damsel and sets out in quest of her. After many perilous adventures he finally learns from a jinni that the fair original of the portrait was one of the concubines of King Solomon and had, of course, been dead for many ages.

Whether the ‘Road to the Mosque’, which the carpenter says he has “seen,” be the title of a story, or (as is more likely) that of a devotional work, I am unable to say, never having seen it alluded to elsewhere.

The Trick of the Kází's Wife

is a variant of a story found in the Beslau printed Arabic text of the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ of the Fuller, his Wife, and the Trooper. It also occurs in the Historia Septem Sapientum Romœ, the European adaptation of the Book of Sindibád, where a crafty Knight of Hungary plays the part of the carpenter of our story, and a jealous old baron that of the Kází. The plot of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, which is very similar to the tale of the crafty Knight, in all likelihood suggested to Boiardo the amusing episode, in his Orlando Innamorato, of Folderico and Ordauro, which, in its turn, was perhaps adapted in the Seven Wise Masters. In my Book of Sindibád, p. 343 ff., and in my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii, pp. 214-228, are most of the other known versions and variants of this story.

The Trick of the Bazár-Master's Wife

has many parallels in Eastern story-books, and the tale seems to have been, time out of mind, a favourite with Asiatics. In one version there is no game of yad est between husband and wife. The lady has her lover concealed in an adjoining apartment, for her husband has come home quite unexpectedly. But she tells him plainly of the fact, upon which he demands the key and approaches to open the door of the room, when the lady bursts into laughter. He pauses in astonishment, and asks the cause of her merriment, to which she replies: “I cannot help laugh­ing at your simplicity, in believing that I should have a lover in the next room, and tell you of it.” The husband returns the key and goes away well pleased.

The Trick of the Kutwál's Wife

resembles the latter part of the Arabian tale of the Fuller, his Wife, and the Trooper, where the poor husband is also drugged, his hair is cropped, he is dressed as a soldier, and provided with a letter recommending him to be enrolled by the governor of Isfahán. In this case, however, the poor husband is not reclaimed by his artful wife.

Whatever may be the source of this diverting story, it was known in France as early at least as the 13th century, in the form of a fabliau by Haisiau the Trouvère, under the title “Des Trois Dames qui trouverent un Anel” (Meon's edition of Bar-bazan, 1808, tome iii, p. 220ff., and Le Grand, 1781, tome iv, pp. 163-166), of which the following is the outline:

Three ladies found a ring, and “they swore by Jesu that she should have it who should best beguile her husband to do a good turn to her lover.”

The First Lady, having made her husband drunk, when he is asleep, causes his head to be shaved, dresses him in the habit of a monk, and carries him, assisted by her lover, to the entrance of a convent. When he awakes and finds himself thus trans­formed he imagines that God, by a miraculous exercise of his grace, had called him to the monastic life. So he presents him­self before the abbot and requests to be received among the brethren. The lady hastens to the convent in well-feigned despair, and is exhorted to be resigned and to congratulate her husband on the saintly vow he has taken. “Many a good man,” says the poet, “has been betrayed by woman and her harlotry. This one became a monk in the abbey, where he remained a very long time. Wherefore, I counsel all people who hear this story told, that they ought not to trust in their wives, or in their households, if they have not first proved that they are full of virtues. Many a man has been deceived by women and their treachery. This one became a monk against right, who would never have been such in his life, if his wife had not deceived him.”

The Second Lady had some salted and smoked eels which her husband bade her cook for dinner on a Friday, but there was no fire in the house. Under the pretext of going to have them cooked on a neighbour's fire, she goes out and finds her lover, at whose house she remains a whole week. On the following Friday, about the hour of dinner, she enters a neighbour's house and asks leave to cook her eels, saying that her husband is angry with her for having no fire, and that she could not dare to go back lest he should cut off her head. As soon as the eels are cooked she carries them home, “piping hot.” The husband asks her where she has been for the last week, and commences to beat her. She cries for help and the neighbours come in, and amongst them the one at whose fire the eels had been cooked, who swears that the wife had only just left her house, and ridicules the man for his assertion that she had been away a whole week. The poor husband gets into a great rage and is locked up for a madman.*

The Third Lady proposes to her lover to marry him, and he thinks that she is merely jesting, seeing she is already married, but she assures him that she is quite in earnest, and even under­takes that her husband will give his consent. The lover is to come for her husband and take him to the house of Dan Eustace, where he has a fair niece, whom the lover is to pretend he wishes to espouse, if he will give her to him. The lady will go thither, and she will have made her arrangements with Dan Eustace before they arrive. Her husband cannot but believe that he has left her at home, and she will be so apparelled that he cannot recognise her. This plan is accordingly carried out. The lover asks the lady's husband for the hand of his niece in marriage, to which he very willingly consents, and thus without knowing it makes him a present of his own wife. “All his life long the lover possessed her, because the husband gave and did not lend her; nor could he ever get her back.”*

“Now tell me true,” adds the poet, “without any lie, and if you would judge rightly and truly, which one of these three best deserved to have the ring?”

Le Grand, at the end of his modern French prose abridgment of this fabliau, says that it is told at great length in the tales of the Sieur d'Ouville, tome iv, p. 255. In the Facetiœ Bebelianœ, p. 86, three women make a wager as to which of them will play the best trick on her husband. One causes her poor spouse to believe he is a monk, and he goes and sings mass; the second husband believes that he is dead and allows himself to be carried on a bier to that mass; and the third sings in it stark naked, believing he is clothed. It is also found in the Convivales Sermones, t. i, p. 200; in the Délices de Verboquet, p. 166; and in the Facetiœ of Lod. Doménichi, p. 172. In the Contes pour Rire, p. 197, three women find a diamond, and the arbiter whom they select promises it to her who concocts the best device for deceiving her husband, but the ruses, according to Le Grand, are different from those in the fabliau. Possibly from this last mentioned version (if not from some old Morisco-Spanish tale, for the idea of the story is certainly of Eastern origin) Isidro de Robles, a Spanish novelist, who wrote about the year 1666, adapted his tale of ‘The Diamond Ring,’ of which a translation is given by Roscoe in his Spanish Novelists, 1832, vol. iii, pp. 163-214, and the outline of which is as follows:

In the fair city of Madrid there lived three ladies who were very intimate friends. One was the wife of Luca Morena, cashier to a wealthy Genoese merchant; the second was the wife of Diego de Morales, a painter, employed in decorating one of the monasteries; the third was the wife of Señor Geloso, an elderly ill-tempered curmudgeon. It happened one day, when the three ladies were standing near a fountain to see a grand public pro­cession, that they simultaneously discovered a diamond ring which glittered under the water, and when one of them took it up, all three laid claim to it, on various grounds, and they squabbled for its possession till one of them proposed they should submit the matter to a count of their acquaintance whom they saw approaching, to which the others agreed. The count takes charge of the ring and says that it should be the prize of “whichever of you shall, within the space of the next six weeks, succeed in playing off upon her husband the most clever and ingenious trick—always having due regard to his honour.”

The Cashier's Wife employs an astrologer to waylay her husband on his road home and tell him that he looks seriously ill; then to feel his pulse and declare that he will be a dead man within 24 hours, so he had better put his affairs in order. Somewhat alarmed, he reaches home, takes little supper and goes to bed, but only to toss restlessly about all the night. He is off to business earlier than usual next day, and coming home in the evening meets the vicar of the parish and some friends, who are also in the plot. They pretend not to see him, but talk to each other aloud of Luca Moreno's sudden death, and express very uncomplimentary opinions as to his state in the other world. In great perplexity, he continues his way and meets the astrologer and the painter (the latter is the husband of the second lady, and, strange as it may seem, is also a party in the plot), talking likewise of his death. He can endure this no longer, and accosts them, saying that he is not dead, but they affect to take him for his own ghost and run away. Now he thinks he must be really dead, though when and how he died he cannot recollect. Arriving at his house, he finds it shut up, and knocks long and loudly at the door before the maidservant appears, who asks: “Who is it? You can't come in, for master is dead.” “Why,” exclaims the poor cashier, “it is I myself, your master.” “Who calls at this hour? This is the house of mourning, for we are all in grief for the loss of our master.” “Hold your tongue, you jade, and let me in, for I am your master.” She replies that he, poor man, is now engaged counting money in another and a worse world. In his rage he bursts open the door and walks in. His wife on seeing him pretends to swoon, but leaving her in the care of the maidservant he goes down to the pantry to stay his ravenous appetite, and there indulges in a hearty supper, washed down with copious draughts of wine, and then goes to bed. In the morning his wife, in gala dress, awakes him, and he thinks that she is dead also, and asks her when he himself died and was buried. She says all that she knows is that he buried last night some of the best wine and dainties provided for the carnival—he must be still drunk to talk such nonsense. The astrologer and the painter come, and when they hear his story declare they had not seen him or been from home last night, and, the vicar and his friends making a similar statement, he is persuaded the whole affair was a dream, and promises to defray the cost of a feast on Shrove Tuesday.

It is now the turn of the Second Lady to play a trick upon her husband, the painter. “For this purpose she concerted a plan with a brother of hers, who possessed a fine genius for amusing himself at other people's expense. In the first place they contrived to have a false door made at the entrance of the house, on such a plan (then frequently adopted) that it might be easily substituted for the real door at short notice. It was brought thither secretly one night, and concealed in a cellar, while the brother and two friends lay ready to carry on the intended plot in an upper chamber of the house.” The painter returns home as usual, and having supped retires to rest. About midnight he is roused from a deep sleep by the cries of his wife, who pretends to be dying, and implores him to go for her confessor, and her old nurse, who knew her constitution. He very reluctantly rises and dresses himself, and then sets out in quest of the nurse, who lived at the other end of the town. Meanwhile the old door is removed and the false one substituted, and above it a sign is placed bearing the words, “House of Public Entertainment.” Then, according to arrangement, friends of the lady and a party of musicians with their instruments arrive, in order to “make a night of it.” The poor painter, after plodding his weary way in quest of the old nurse, through wind and rain, and knocking at the wrong doors, at last returns home, drenched to the skin. But what must have been his amazement to find his house metamor­phosed into a tavern and to hear sounds from within of mirth and revelry! He knocks at the door, however, and a head is thrust out of an upper window and a voice orders him to be off, for the house is full. When he says that the house is his own, he is told it has been a tavern for the last 15 years and is finally made to beat a retreat by two dogs being let loose on him. Betaking him­self to his friend Senor Geloso (whose turn is yet to come), he relates to him all his strange adventures. His friend thinks he is drunk and accommodates him for the night in his house. Next morning they go to the painter's house, which has been restored to its former appearance, and when he tells them of what had happened to him the previous night, his wife and her friends assure him that the affair must have been the effect of sorcery, at the same time his loving spouse reads him a severe lecture on his debauched way of life, staying out o' nights and so forth. It is finally agreed to say no more about the matter.

The trick played on the jealous, ill-tempered husband of the Third Lady bears a striking resemblance to that of the Kutwál's wife—mutatis mutandis. Having plied him with wine till he is “dead drunk,” she sends for her brother, prior of the convent of Capuchins, who comes (as arranged) with the lay brethren, and, after his head has been shaved and he has been dressed in the monastic garb, they carry him off to the convent and place him in a cell. When he awakes he is perplexed at the change that has taken place in his person and place of abode. In brief, he is flogged next day for contumacy and sentenced to eight days' imprisonment, with bread and water. This term expired, he is sent out with one of the monks to beg alms, and in the course of their rounds they come to his own house, where seeing his wife at a window he rushes in and embraces her. The lady, of course, raises a great outcry, and the servants and neighbours hasten to her assistance. The monk explains that he is a crazy brother who fancies every pretty woman he sees is his wife, and leads him back to the convent, where he is again soundly flogged and put upon a new course of bread and water, so long that his hair and beard were grown again. One night he is treated to a fine supper and a bottle of wine containing an opiate, and, when he is asleep, is carried back to his house, and on awaking next morning and telling his wife of all that he had undergone as a monk, she per­suades him that it was but a distempered dream, and he, glad to find himself in his own house, promises to treat her in future with all respect and full confidence in her virtue.

The three ladies proceed next day to the dwelling of the count and relate the tricks they had played their husbands. He says that he cannot possibly give the preference to any one of them— they are all equally clever—but as the ring is really one he had himself lost the very day when they found it, he must ask them to accept and divide amongst themselves a purse containing three hundred pistoles, and so the ladies take their leave of the count, in every way satisfied.