No. XXIII—p. 112.
THE DAMSEL'S FATE, ETC.
IT is remarkable that in our Persian text the Damsel herself suggests that her tongue should be cut out, while in the Greek and the Breslau (Arabic) versions the proposal is made by the assembled counsellors, some of whom suggest various other forms of punishment: in Syntipas, to cut off her hands and feet, open her alive, and tear out her heart; in the Mishlé Sandabar, to cut off her hands, to blind her, to kill her. Replying to these cruel suggestions, the Damsel relates, in the Greek, Hebrew, and two of the Arabic texts (the Calcutta and Breslau), the tale of the Fox that preferred mutilation to death. The following is a translation of the Greek version of the story of
O ye magnates, all your utterances against me appear to coincide with the example of a certain fox, who during the night entered into a certain city through the window of a man who curried skins, and whenever he entered into the house he gnawed the skins. The tanner perceiving the tatters made in the skins, and being satisfied the damage was through the fox, immediately fixed a solid trap. According to his wont, the fox entered through the window, and was caught in the trap. The unhappy yet crafty fox, by some well-skilled device, ran away with the trap which ensnared him, and wandered all around the city to find another window by which to go out. Having wandered about the whole night, he found no place of exit, for the city was walled all around.
On the approach of day, he said to himself: “If day should dawn, of a certainty I shall be seized by dogs, and they would not leave me before they had torn away my flesh; but I know what it behoves me to do.” Thereupon he laid himself near the threshold of the gate of the city, feigning himself dead and breathless. And while lying as if dead, the gate, as usual, was opened by the porter at early morn. Some one upon seeing him said to the porter: “Of a truth, the tail of this fox is well adapted to sponge out the mill,” and straightway, on saying this, seizing a sword, he cut off the tail. The fox bore courageously the pain of the clipt tail. Afterwards a certain other person, seeing him, said: “If any one has a little whining child, nothing is better as a cure than the ears of a fox, by holding them over the child,” and forthwith he cut off his ears, and the fox nobly sustained this anguish. And still another, passing along the same path, and seeing him as if dead, said: “I have heard some one say, that if a person is suffering from toothache, and should place on it the tooth of a fox, he is immediately relieved from pain,” and with these words, taking a stone, he knocked out all the teeth, and the fox, without wincing, underwent all these terrible pains, until the moment when another man, walking by, said: “I have heard that a fox's heart is beneficial for every grief, and curative of every disease.” The man, upon speaking thus, taking a sword, in order to cut out his heart, the fox, leaping up, ran away in haste through the gate of the fortress, for the gate happened at that time to be open, and he was saved from the death he was about to suffer. “And thus [continues the Damsel] am I, helpless being, O king, prepared to undergo all the suggestions thy rulers counsel thee to follow; but I am unable to bear having my heart forcibly taken out— for this would be a bitter and painful death.”
This story, as Goedeke has pointed out, like the four tales in the introduction to the Sindibād Nāma, is of Buddhist origin, being No. 23 of the Avadānas translated by Julien. It seems to me very probable that it also occurred in the complete text of the Sindibād Nāma, since it would naturally follow the Damsel's suggestion that her tongue should be cut out. And the next chapter, in which Sindibād discourses eloquently to the king, which wants the commencement, may have contained the tale, preserved in the Greek text only, related by the sage in the course of his reply to the king's inquiry, to whom his son's wisdom was due. It is as follows, and may be entitled
There was a certain king in former times, who had in his service many philosophers, one of whom was far superior to the others, and at that king's court a certain one also who understood and professed in a high degree the astrological art. To the first-mentioned philosopher had just been born a son, and on it being communicated to the king, the philosopher was immediately summoned to the court. But the aforesaid astrologer, hearing of the birth of the son, consulted the stars concerning the destiny of the boy. When the king asked him regarding the boy's horoscope, he answered thus: “To judge, O my master, from the signs and courses of the stars, this new-born child inherits the evil destiny of thieves and wrong-doers;—he will survive many years, and in his thirteenth year he will commit an atrocious robbery.” Upon the astrologer uttering these words, the father of the new-born child said to him: “Have you then made manifest to the king the whole truth concerning my child?” “Yea, O philosopher,” replied he; “for I have accurately examined that which attaches to the destiny of the boy, and discovered that he will become a robber, and the most hardened of robbers.” In answer to this, the philosopher said to the king: “I shall educate my boy, then, in such a manner, that he never would or could commit such a deed, but, on the contrary, I shall cause him to avoid all forbidden acts.”
The child, when eight months old, discontinued suckling his mother's milk. Shut up in a secluded house by his father, he was nourished with succulent victuals, and instructed fully in literature and honourable conduct. While educating his son with such precision and accuracy, the father forbade that any one should visit, or any boy outside the house should approach him, or that he should learn or hear of any evil deed of the outside world. Brought up in this manner, he commenced his thirteenth year. The father then said to him: “To-morrow, my son, I am desirous of going to the king, and wishing to take you with me, you must know how and by what obeisance you should hail the king.” In this wise the philosopher spoke to his son. The youth, however, upon hearing of the proposed visit to the king, inwardly debated over his father's speech, and said within himself: “I have never seen a king; and as my father tells me I must pay him obeisance, it is proper I should approach his Majesty with aromatic spices, in order that their sweet odour may honour and aggrandise the king. But I am ashamed to ask any details from my father, and yet it behoves me to accomplish this purpose.”
Thereupon, at the approach of night, he went secretly forth from his father's house, proceeded to the palace, and, having made an opening in the wall, entered close to the royal bed. The king, waking up, was agitated on seeing him, and, being timid and alarmed, said to himself: “If this robber did not possess great strength he would never have dared to enter at midnight;—if I should resist him, he will attempt to kill me.” Communing thus within himself, in silence, he afforded full license to the robber. The youth, then, extending his hand towards the linen clothes of the king, seized a linen cloth of great value, and went out of the palace. Having sold the linen cloth, he purchased with its proceeds myrrh and various perfumes. On that night, however, the king did not recognise the robber.
On the following day the father, accompanied by his son, went into the king's presence, and both father and son prostrated themselves in obeisance to the very floor. The son then presented to the king the perfumes and beautiful offerings he had purchased, and began to praise and eulogise his Majesty. And the philosopher said: “O king, live for ever! Behold, I have brought into thy presence my son, concerning whom the astrologer told thee, that in the thirteenth year of his age he should become a robber. He is now thirteen years old, and has not committed a theft. Thy astrologer, therefore, may be, solemnly and in public, declared to be a false prophet, and from this all the words uttered by him have now been proved idle talk.” At these words the king, steadfastly and attentively fixing his eyes on the countenance of the youth and his outward form, recognised him to be the person who had broken through the wall, and the very bold and shameless robber who had stolen the linen cloth from the royal couch. The king then, in answer, said to the philosopher: “This is the robber who entered the king's room, and this being the fact, the prognostication of the astrologer must the rather be relied upon as true.”
“From this narrative, therefore, O king [continues Syntipas], it is clearly shown that at and from the birth of each individual there is a distinct and separate career of life predestined by the Deity. It is not what a child has learned or suffered at the commencement of his growth, as happened at the birth of this thy son, but when he arrives at man's estate. Praiseworthy and excellent deeds and prosperous days comprised and brightened his state of manhood, but odious actions and clouds of adversity darkened the mature life of the son of that philosopher whom the king had in his service.”
That this tale—or one of a similar tendency—was also in the Sindibād Nāma is, I think, more than likely, from the circumstance, as stated in p. 112, that where the fragment of the chapter in which it should appear begins, “Sindibād has been making some remarks on the impossibility of avoiding destiny,” and at this place, as in the Greek text, he proceeds to cite the moral precepts of Farīdūn.
It has already been mentioned (note 1, p. 110) that the story of the Four Liberators is not told by Sindibād, but by the Prince; and Professor Comparetti was therefore mistaken in supposing that it had been substituted by the author of the Sindibād Nāma for the tale of Destiny, related by the sage in the Greek version. Moreover, the two tales have nothing in common that should render such a conjecture probable, even if the relator of the Four Liberators was doubtful, the latter having no bearing upon the question of resisting fate.
The Syriac text must have had both the story of the Fox and that of Destiny, although they are wanting in the only known copy, which breaks off at the beginning of the story of the Blind Old Man (see end of note, p. 104). There is also a lacuna in the MS. where the story of the Bathman should be related.
The old Castilian translation wants both the concluding stories of Syntipas, also the tale of the Woman and the Rice-Dealer; the latter was certainly not suppressed from motives of delicacy, since the two most objectionable of the tales proper to the Book of Sindibād are retained. It seems probable that the MS. from which the only extant text was made had lost the leaves containing these tales. A new one has been added to the four the Prince has in the Syriac and Greek texts, which is as follows, according to Mr. H. C. Coote's translation:
I have heard of a woman whose husband went away on some business, and she sent to the abbot to say that her husband was not at home, and that he should come for the night to her dwelling. And the abbot came and entered the house. And when he came it was midnight. The husband came and called at the door. And he [i.e. the abbot] said: How shall it be? And she said: Go and hide thyself in that apartment till daylight. And the husband entered, and threw himself on his bed. And when day came the woman arose, and went to a friar her friend, and asked him for a habit that he might get the abbot away who was in her house. And the friar went and said: What has become of such a one? And she said: He is not yet risen. And he went in and asked him [the husband] whence he came, and was there until the abbot was dressed. And the friar said: Pardon me, I wish to retire. He said: You must go, and be well. And joining the other in the apartment, the abbot went out dressed like a friar, and in that dress went with him to the convent.284
The author of the Hebrew version has omitted no fewer than seven tales which occur in Syntipas, namely: The Drop of Honey, the Bread Elephant (both of which are also not found in the Persian text), Woman's Wiles, the Poisoned Guests, the Infant in the Cradle, the Child of Five Years, and Destiny; but he has inserted four new ones, and fused into one tale the Prince and the Ghūl and the Changed Sex. He has also altered the order of the tales as they appear in the Greek version. Two of the new tales are of Jewish argument; the two others are undoubtedly of Oriental origin. The Woman, on the fifth night, adduces, as a warning to the king,
Knowest thou not, O my lord and king, that revolt will stalk with head on high under thy descendants, if, while thou art still alive and before thy gray head has disappeared, thou riddest not the country of thy son? Is it not true that if the King David had put to death his son Amnon for having outraged his sister, Absalom would not have required to fly to Geshur, to nourish hatred in his breast, to revolt against his father, and David would not have suffered all the misfortune which he suffered? And all this occurred because his father did not wish to vex him at the time, and because he said to him, Why actest thou thus? his heart became so inflamed with pride thereby that he no more feared to offend, and abused his sister Tamar. Thou too shalt fall in the same way, and the advice of thy evil counsellors will not protect thee. Else thinkest thou that thy son is better than Absalom?
The effect of this argument on the king is counteracted by the Sixth Vazīr, who says:
Was it not the King David whom thy wife cited as an example? But had not that King David more sons than thou? And yet did he not pardon them their faults? When he fled with Joab, said he not to him before his people, “Behave with gentleness towards young Absalom?” Did he not weep over him when he was killed? “Alas!” he cried, “my son, Absalom! O my son, my son!” And if it had been in his power would he not have killed Joab? He spared him only to put him into the power of his son Solomon, whom he ordered to put him to death. Yet heaven and earth had been witnesses of the crimes of Absalom, whilst thy son has committed no fault against thee. Canst thou determine to make him die? Canst thou resolve to exterminate thy name, and the posterity issued from thee, and the house of thy ancestors? Then thou wilt remain without children, whilst David had several sons, and notwithstanding the loss of two of whom, there still remained others; and then David at this time was still young, but thou—thou art old. God has favoured thee with a son in thy old age, and thou wishest to banish him for ever from thine eyes.
The Seventh Vazīr's first story is of
There was a man married to a woman fair of body and face. A young man was in love with this woman, but could not obtain access to her because her husband was very jealous; and by reason of this great jealousy he always kept her shut up, and kept the key himself. This man was a merchant, and old. The young man, mastered by his passion, became sick on account of it. An old woman came and found him thus, and he told her what was the matter. The old woman said to him: “Wilt thou do all that I tell thee?” “Yes,” answered he. “Then,” said she, “shave all the hair off thy face and thy beard.” He did so. Then she dressed him in woman's clothes, and putting on him a veil, only his eyes were to be seen. After this, the old woman went to the house of the merchant, and said to him: “I come to beg a favour, my lord. I am a widow, and I have one daughter. Now I wish to go to another town, and I have heard of the propriety that reigns in your house, and I must confess I feel some anxiety in leaving my daughter in a strange place. That is why, my lord, if it will suit you, I wish to bring her to thy house, that she may serve thy wife without any wages.” The merchant was delighted at hearing this, and said to her: “I will take care of her; she has only to come to my wife.” The old woman then brought her pretended daughter, and the latter remained in the house, and the husband went to travel. Then the young man discovered his face, made himself known to the young woman, and passed several days with her.286
The vazīr then relates the story of
There was a woman married to an old man. As to her, she was young, fair of person and face. The husband would not allow her to walk in the street, and she submitted to this only with impatience. One day she said to her maid: “Go outside; perhaps thou wilt meet some one who will be able to amuse us.” The maid went out, and met a hunchback, who had a tambourine and flute in his hand. He was dancing and beating the tambourine, so that the people might give him some reward. The maid brought this man to her mistress, who gave him to eat and to drink, which caused him great pleasure. He then rose to dance and leap about, at which the young woman was much pleased. She dressed him in beautiful clothes, and gave him a present, and then sent him away. The friends and comrades of the hunchback saw him, and asked him where he had met with such good luck, and he told them of the beautiful wife of the old man. The hunchback's companions said to him: “If thou dost not take us with thee, we will make the whole affair public.” Now the young woman sent again for the hunchback, that he might come to her. He said to her: “My companions also wish to come to amuse thee.” The lady replied: “Let them come.” She offered them all sorts of things; they set to eating and drinking, and they got drunk, and fell from their seats. Presently, the master of the house came back, and the woman immediately rose with her maid, and carried the men into another part of the house. There they quarrelled and fought, and strangled each other, and died.288 Meantime the husband, having taken some food, went out again. Then the woman ordered her maid to bring the hunchbacks out, but they were dead. Then said the woman: “Go out quickly, and find some foolish porter,” and she put the dead bodies into sacks. The maid-servant chanced to meet a black man, and brought him to her mistress, who said to him: “Stay with me.” After he had passed some time with her, she said to him: “Take this first sack, and throw it into the river; then come back to me, and I will take care to give thee all that thou mayest require.” The black did so; then he returned and took the second sack, and in that way he took them all, one after the other, and threw them into the river.
It is generally supposed that this story of the Hunchbacks in the Mishlé Sandabar suggested that of the Lady and her Three Lovers in the Septem Sapientum, which is to this effect: A lady promises her favours to three knights, unknown to one another, for a hundred florins each, then she acquaints her husband, and persuades him to consent to slay them for the sake of the money they will bring with them. When the first knight arrives, and she is assured that he has brought the money, she admits him into the house, and he is instantly murdered; the two other knights, as they arrive in succession, meet with the same fate; and the three bodies are dragged into a private part of the house. The lady then sends for her brother, who is one of the city night guards, and showing him the body of one of the knights, tells him that her husband had slain the knight in a quarrel, and she wishes him to dispose of it at once. He takes up the body, goes out and throws it into the sea, and returns, to learn that the body has come back again, and is now shown the body of the second knight, which he also carries away and casts into the water; and on his return to the house is shown the body of the third knight as the same that he had already twice disposed of. Convinced now that he has a sorcerer to deal with, he resolves to try whether another element will not destroy him, and accordingly carries the third body into a wood, where he makes a great fire, in the midst of which he instantly tosses it. Presently a knight on horseback, on his way to a tourney, rides up and dismounts to warm his hands, upon which the man, supposing this to be the sorcerer come to life once more, seizes him and his horse and throws them into the fire, which consumes them to ashes. In the sequel the lady, in a passion with her husband, accuses him before neighbours of the triple murder, and they are both put to death.
This story, however, has been taken into the Septem Sapientum almost word for word from the Anglican Gesta Romanorum289 (see Madden's old English versions of the Gesta, [xxv] p. 80), which was compiled, according to Herr Oesterley, towards the end of the 13th century, while the Septem Sapientum does not date earlier than the beginning of the 15th century. And if the author of the Anglican Gesta had for his model the Hebrew story of the Hunchbacks, it must have been a version very different in the details of the catastrophe from that which has reached us, since in the latter no mention is made of the woman's device of persuading the man that the body had come back again. Wright, indeed, conjectured that the Hebrew story originally concluded in the same manner as the Three Knights and the Lady. This may have been so; but why suppose the original of the Latin story to be one so different in its dénouement as we now know it—whatever it may or may not have been—when we have another, and probably an earlier, version which it much more closely resembles, namely, the Trouveur Durant's fabliau of Les Trois Bossus? The following is the outline of this tale:
An old, ugly, and hunchbacked chatelain had a beautiful young wife, of whom he was so very jealous, that he kept a constant watch on her. One day three minstrels, hunchbacked too, came to the castle, and, for once, were entertained by the surly chatelain, who then dismissed them with a present, and he shortly afterwards went out to walk in the fields. His young wife, sitting at her window, perceives the three hunchbacks dancing and capering along the road in great glee, and sends for them to come and amuse her. They have hardly entered her chamber, when she hears her husband coming, so she pushes them into three coffers that stood in the apartment. The husband, however, having only looked in to see whether all was right, immediately goes away to resume his walk, when the lady hastens to release her prisoners, but, to her horror, finds all three dead—suffocated! What was to be done? But woman is ever fertile in expedients. She went to the gate, and, seeing a simple rustic pass, called him in, and, showing him the body in one of the coffers, promised him ample recompense if he disposed of it. The rustic stuffed the body in a sack, carried it off to the river, threw it in, and then returned for his reward. By this time the lady, with the help of her maid, had changed the position of the coffers; so she showed him the body of the second minstrel, saying it was the same that he had thrown into the water. The rustic was amazed, but disposed of it as he had done the first, and in like manner rids the lady of the third body, believing he has had to deal with a magician; after which, on his way back to the lady, he meets the chatelain, returning home from his evening walk. Enraged now beyond measure, “Dog of a hunchback!” he cries, “are you come back again?” So saying, he seized and stuffed him into the sack, tied a large stone round his neck, and presently the unlucky husband joined his brother hunchbacks at the bottom of the river. “I warrant me,” quoth the rustic to the lady, “you haven't seen him this time.” She confessed that she had not. “Yet you were not far from it,” said he, and then related what had happened. The lady instantly comprehended the whole affair, smiled, and dismissed him with a handsome reward.
It thus appears that the fabliau corresponds with the Hebrew version in all essential points excepting the dénouement, and it is highly probable that both were derived from a common source. That the story came from Asia admits of no question, though I am very far from believing, with Douce and Madden, that the Arabian tale of the Little Hunchback is the original of all such stories of adventures with dead bodies. Had Douce known of the comparatively recent date of the Thousand and One Nights— at least, as it exists at present—he would hardly have credited that work with being the original source of tales which were current in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries.
THIS remarkable tale, of which variants were current throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, does not belong to the original Book of Sindibād, and is found in only two of the five Arabic texts of the Seven Vazīrs represented in our Comparative Table, namely, Scott's MS. and the Rich MS. in the British Museum. Its earliest appearance in European literature seems to have been in the spiritual tales, or Contes Devots, written in the 12th and 13th centuries, under the title of “D'un Roi qui voulut faire brûler le fils de son Seneschal,” from which it was probably taken by the complier of the first Italian collection of tales, Cento Novelle Antiche, and by the author of the Anglican Gesta Romanorum, both of which works were composed about the end of the 13th century; it is also found in the continental Gesta, translated by Swan. The 68th of the Novelle Antiche is to the following effect: An envious knight is jealous of the favour a young man enjoys with the king. As a friend, he bids the youth hold back his head while serving this prince, who, he says, was disgusted with his foul breath, and then acquaints his master that the page did so from being offended with his Majesty's breath. The irascible monarch forthwith orders his kiln-man to throw the first messenger he sends into the furnace, and the young man is accordingly despatched on some pretended errand, but happily passing a monastery on his way, tarries for some time to hear mass. Meanwhile, the contriver of the fraud, impatient to learn the success of his stratagem, sets out for the house of the kiln-man, and arrives before his intended victim. On inquiring if the commands of the king have been fulfilled, he is answered that they will be immediately executed, and, as the first messenger on the part of the sovereign, is forthwith thrown into the furnace.292
This forms the 95th chapter of the Anglican Gesta Romanorum, edited for the Roxburgh Club, by Sir Fredrick Madden, and No. 70 of Herrtage's recent edition, published for the Early English Text Society, in which the youth, who is an orphan and the king's nephew, is called Fulgentius, and in place of a knight is an envious steward, who tells his master that his favourite says that his Majesty has leprosy. Fulgentius hearing a chapel-bell, on his way to the lime-pits, goes in to hear mass, and afterwards (having got up earlier than usual) falls asleep in the chapel. When he awakes, he hastens to the lime-pits, inquires, as he was instructed, “Have you done the commandment of the king?” and learns that the steward had met the fate intended for himself.—Cinthio has the story in his Hecatommithi (viii, 6), written in the 16th century, and it is also found in the Anecdotes chrétiennes de l'abbé Reyre, t. i, under the title of “Les Deux Pages.” From an Alsatian tradition Schiller, it is said, composed his ballad, “Der gang nachdem eisenhammer,” which is well known to English readers through Mr. Bowring's excellent translation, entitled, “Fridolin; or the Walk to the Iron Foundry.” Schiller's version bears a slight resemblance to our Arabian tale of Ahmed in one point: Robert the huntsman, having long cherished in vain a guilty passion for the countess, in revenge falsely accuses the page Fridolin to the Count Savern of the crime which he had been but too willing himself to commit:
Then to two workmen beckons he,
And speaks thus in his ire:
The first who's hither sent by me,
Thus of ye to inquire—
Have ye obeyed my lord's word well?
Him cast ye into yonder hell,
That into ashes he may fly,
And ne'er again torment mine eye.
In the Turkish tales of the Forty Vazīrs, the lady's 22nd story is another variant. Instead of a page, the favourite is a courtier, of whom another is envious. Having privately told the king that his favourite went about asserting that his Majesty was leprous, and that he could not endure his breath, the envious courtier caused a Tātār pie to be cooked, strongly seasoned with garlic, and invited the favourite to his house. They ate together of the pie, and immediately after went to the court; on the way thither the envious man warned his “friend” not to approach too near the king because of his garlic-tainted breath. Accordingly the favourite held his sleeve close to his mouth, and stood a little way off. The king naturally thought that this confirmed the report, and gave him a letter to the chief magistrate, telling him at the same time to keep whatever he was offered. The envious man persuaded the favourite to give him the letter, for the sake of the expected present, saying that he should always have the king's countenance. The result of delivering the letter was different from the courtier's expectations;—its contents were: “Seize him who gives this letter into thy hand, and spare him not, but flay him alive, and stuff his skin with grass, and set it upon the road, that, when I pass, I may see it there.” Some days afterwards the king perceives the stuffed skin of the envious courtier, and sends for his former favourite, who explains the whole affair from first to last.
There are innumerable variants of the story current in India, where, indeed, it had its origin, one of which is a Bengali folktale, translated by Mr. C. H. Damant, under the title of “The Minister and the Fool,” in the Indian Antiquary: The minister, in the course of a journey, meets with the fool, and, being struck with some of his remarks, takes him into his service. One day the rāja hears three birds talking together, and requests his minister to inform him what they had been saying. The fool, knowing the speech of birds, gives his master the required information, which he at once communicates to the rāja; but, jealous lest he should learn that it was the fool's wit which had solved his question, he determines to have the fool put to death, and accordingly gives him a sealed letter to the executioner. On his way the fool meets the minister's son, who desires him to pick a nosegay of flowers for him. The fool replies that he will do so immediately after he has delivered the letter; but the youth would brook no delay, and told him to remain in the garden and pick the flowers, while he himself delivered the message. When the minister saw the fool in the garden, and learned that his own son had done the fatal errand, he was frantic with grief.
A parallel incident is found in the Kathá Sarit Ságara: In the Story of Sundaraka, the king is persuaded by his wife, in order that he may acquire magic power, to consent to practise the horrible rite of eating human flesh. The narrative thus proceeds (Professor Tawney's translation, vol. i, pp. 162-3):
“Having made him enter into the circle, previously consecrated, she said to the king, after he had taken an oath: ‘I attempted to draw hither, as a victim, that Bráhman named Phalabhūti, who is so intimate with you; but the drawing him hither is a difficult task: so it is the best way to initiate some cook in our rites, that he may himself slay him and cook him. And you must not feel any compunction about it, because by eating a sacrificial offering of his flesh, after the ceremonies are complete, the enchantment will be perfect, for he is a Bráhman of the highest caste.’ When his beloved said this to him, the king, though afraid of the sin, consented;—alas! terrible is compliance with women! Then that royal couple had the cook summoned, and, after encouraging him, and initiating him, they both said to him: ‘Whoever comes to you to-morrow morning and says, “The king and queen will eat together to-day, so get some food ready quickly,” him you must slay, and make for us secretly a savoury dish of his flesh.’ The cook consented, and went to his own house. Next morning, when Phalabhūti arrived, the king said to him: ‘Go and tell the cook in the kitchen, “The king, together with the queen, will eat to-day a savoury mess, therefore prepare as soon as possible a splendid dish.”’ Phalabhūti said: ‘I will do so,’ and went out. When he was outside, the king's son, whose name was Chandraprabhā, came to him, and said: ‘Have made for me this very day, with this gold, a pair of ear-rings, like those you had made before for my noble father.’ Phalabhūti, in order to please the prince, immediately proceeded, as he was ordered, to get the ear-rings made, and the prince went readily with the king's message, which Phalabhūti told him, alone to the kitchen; and when he delivered the king's message the cook, true to his agreement, at once put him to death with a knife, and made a dish of his flesh, which the king and queen ate, after performing their ceremonies, not knowing the truth. After spending the night in remorse, the next morning the king saw Phalabhūti arrive with the ear-rings in his hand. So being bewildered, he questioned him about the ear-rings immediately; and when Phalabhūti had told him his story, the king fell on the earth, and cried out: ‘Alas, my son!’ blaming the queen and himself; and when the ministers questioned him, he told them the whole story, and repeated what Phalabhūti had said every day: ‘The doer of good will obtain good, and the doer of evil, evil.’”
Closely allied to the class of stories above cited is the 20th chapter of Swan's Gesta Romanorum: A king, belated while hunting, takes shelter for the night in the hut of an exiled courtier, whom he does not recognise. During the night the count's wife gives birth to a fine boy, upon which the king hears a voice telling him that the child just born should be his son-inlaw. In the morning the king orders his squires to take the infant from his mother and destroy him; but, moved to compassion, they place it upon the branches of a tree, to secure it from wild beasts, and then kill a hare, and convey its heart to the king. A duke, passing through the forest, hears the cries of a child, and, discovering it, wraps it in the folds of his cloak, and takes it to his wife to bring up. In course of time, when the child is grown a handsome youth, the king suspects him to be the same who was predicted to be his son-in-law, and despatches him with a letter to the queen, commanding her to put the bearer to death. On his way he goes into a chapel, and there having fallen asleep, a priest, seeing the letter suspended from his girdle, has the curiosity to open it; and after reading the intended wickedness, he alters the purport thus: “Give the youth our daughter in marriage,” which the queen does accordingly.
Dr. Dasent, in his Popular Tales from the Norse, gives a variant of this under the title of “Rich Peter the Pedlar;” and Dr. A. C. Fryer presents similar incidents in the first story of his charming little work, recently published, English Fairy Tales from the North Country, in which a beautiful maiden takes the place of the miller's son, and a sorcerer knight that of Peter the Pedlar.—Professor Tawney has pointed out, in the Indian Antiquary, the exact resemblance which a story in the Kathākosa bears to the Norse tale: A merchant named Sāgarapota, of the town of Rājagriha, hearing it prophesied that a young beggar named Dāmannaka (he was, however, the son of a merchant who had died of the plague) would inherit all his property, makes Dāmannaka over to a Chandāla to be killed. The Chandāla, instead of killing him, cuts off his little finger, and Dāmannaka, having thus escaped death, is adopted by the merchant's cowherd. In the course of time the merchant recognises Dāmannaka. In order to insure his being put out of the way, he sends him with a letter to his son Samudra-datta. But when Dāmannaka reaches the outskirts of the town of Rājagriha he feels fatigued, and falls asleep in the temple. Meanwhile the daughter of that very merchant, named Vishā, came to the temple to worship the divinity. “She beheld Dāmannaka with the large eyes and the broad chest.” Her father's handwriting then caught her eye, and she proceeded to read the letter. In it she read the following distich:
Before this man has washed his feet, do thou with speed
Give him poison [visham], and free my heart from anxiety.
The lady immediately concluded that she herself (Vishā) was to be given to the handsome youth, and that her father had in his hurry made a slight mistake in orthography. She, therefore, makes the necessary correction, and replaces the letter. Samu-dradatta carries out his father's orders, and the merchant returns to Rājagriha to find Dāmannaka married to his daughter Vishā. The termination of the story is the same as that of Phalabhūti [see p. 296] and its European parallels, the tales of Fulgentius, Fridolin, etc. The merchant Sāgarapota arranges a second time to kill Dāmannaka, whom he will send to the temple of the goddess of the city. But, as the bridegroom and bride are going to the temple of the goddess, Samudradatta, the son of the merchant Sāgarapota, meets them, and insists on performing the worship in their stead. “Having taken the articles for offering, Samudradatta went off, and as he was entering the temple of the goddess, he was despatched by Khadgila, who had gone there before.”
The incident of a person being made the unconscious bearer of his own death-warrant is as old at least as the Biblical story of King David and Uriah; while classical legend furnishes a familiar example in the tale of Bellerophon; and another instance (not so well known) is found in Arabian tradition, in the story of the celebrated pre-Islamite poets Tarafa and Mutalammis, who, having offended the King of Hīra, by composing satires upon his drunken habits, were sent by him with letters to the govenor of Bahrayn, ordering him to put the bearers to death;—Mutalammis having learned the nature of the missive he carried destroyed it, and urged his friend to turn back with him, but Tarafa declined to do so, and continued his fatal journey.—But in these tales, Western and Eastern, which I have cited, there is the same fundamental outline—the same sequence of identical incidents, which indicate, without any possibility of doubt, that they have all been derived from a common source.
A SOMEWHAT analogous story to this occurs in the Ottoman romance of the Forty Vazīrs; it is related by the 30th vazīr, and Mr. E. J. W. Gibb has translated it as follows:
An Arab of the tribe of Benī 'Aqīl took a goat to a city with the purpose of selling it. An Arab of the tribe of Benī Nefīr wished to buy that goat. The owner of the goat wanted eight baghdādās as the price; the purchaser offered six. The owner of the goat swore he would divorce his wife if he gave it for an aspre less than eight baghdādās. And the purchaser swore he would divorce his wife if he gave an aspre more than six. Then the two of them began to quarrel. The Arab who wished to buy took up a stone and threw it at the owner of the goat; it hit his head, which smashed like a rotten gourd. His kinsfolk heard this, and they came and smote that other man, and killed the killer. As a man of each tribe had been slain, they fell one upon another. Every one came on his horse, with his arms, to the field, and they began to fight with each other, so that hills of slain arose, and blood flowed in streams. At length the tribe of Benī 'Aqīl was victorious and put to flight the tribe of Benī Nefīr. That tribe went to the Prince of the Abyssinians and asked help. So the Prince of Abyssinia gave them 200 horsemen, and the Nefīr prince again fell upon the 'Aqīl prince, and they began to fight with one another. At length the fortune of the 'Aqīl prince was changed into disaster, and the Benī Nefīr army returned with victory and triumph.
Feuds, often originating in trifles, are still common among the desert Arabs, and this story is probably of Arabian invention, if not the narrative of an actual occurrence.
IT is unfortunate that a lacuna in the Persian MS. text (see p. 80 of the present volume) deprives us of the whole of this story, since it probably represented a version nearer to the original than that found in Syntipas, which is very confused towards the conclusion: after the transformation, the prince meets with a peasant, who agrees to become a woman in his place, on condition that his proper sex be restored to him at the end of four months; the prince then proceeds to the court of his intended father-in-law, marries the princess, and contrives to evade the fulfilment of his promise to the peasant.—In the Libro de los Engannos the story is similarly garbled, a “devil” taking the place of the rustic.—In the Mishlé Sandabar, the prince, after his transformation, passes the night near the enchanted fountain; in the morning he meets in the forest a troop of girls, to whom he discloses his rank and present misfortune, and they direct him to the other fountain.— There can be little doubt, I think, that the Arabian version has better preserved the original form of the story, though, strangely enough, nothing is said of the punishment of the treacherous vazīr.
The idea of enchanted fountains whose waters produced remarkable moral or physical transformations in such as drank of or bathed in them is very ancient, and was probably borrowed from classical legends by the mediæval romancists. In chap. xiv of the Gesta Romanorum, a king leaves his daughter in the care of his secretary, who is warned not to allow her to drink of a certain fountain that affected all who drank of it with leprosy. The princess, in spite of all precautions, contrives to reach this fountain, and immediately after drinking of it becomes a leper. In dismay the secretary seeks advice of a holy man, who directs him to a mountain, where he will find a peculiar kind of stone, and a rod. He is to strike the stone with the rod until moisture exudes from it, then smear the affected parts of the damsel's body with the liquid, and she will be restored to health and beauty.
According to the classical legend, there were two springs in Bœotia, of which one was believed to increase, the other to take away, the memory. Cupid's two arrows—one of gold, which created love, the other of lead, which instilled hate—may have suggested the idea of the two fountains in Claudian's picture of the gardens of Venus (De Nupt. Honor. et Mar, l. 69):
Two fountains glitter in the solar beam;
This spouts a sweet, and that a bitter, stream,
Where Cupid dips his darts, as poets dream—
which again seems to have been imitated by Ariosto, in the Orlando Furioso (c. i, st. 77, 78):
Then, as at hazard, she directs her sight,
Sounding in arms, a man on foot she spies,
And glows with sudden anger and despite;
For she the son of Aymon eyes.
Her more than life esteems the youthful knight,
While she from him, like crane from falcon, flies—
Time was the lady sighed, her passion slighted;
Tis now Rinaldo loves, as ill requited.And this effect two different fountains wrought,
Whose wondrous waters different moods inspire.
Both sprang in Arden, with rare virtue fraught:
This fills the heart with amorous desire;
Who taste that other fountain were untaught
Their love, and change for ice their former fire.
Rinaldo drank the first, and vainly sighs;
Angelica the last, and hates and flies.301
So, too, in Berni's Innamorato, there are the Fountains of Love and of Disdain.—In the old Spanish romance of Diana, by Montemayor, we are told of a fountain that possessed at once the qualities of inspiring love and producing indifference: The priestess of Diana, who knew by inspiration all the misfortunes of her guests, and had traced in her mind a plan for their future happiness, conducted them to the interior of the temple, and filled three cups from an enchanted stream. This beverage having been quaffed by Sereno, Sylvanus, and Sylvania, they instantly fell into a profound sleep, in which they remained for a considerable time. Sereno awoke in a state of the most perfect indifference for his once much loved Diana, while Sylvanus and Sylvania, forgetting their former attachments, arose deeply enamoured of each other, and employed the most ardent expressions of affection.302
But more closely resembling the enchanted springs of our tale of the Transformed Prince are the magical streams in the Hindū romance of Somasekhara and Chitrasekhara,302a which recounts the adventures of two princes, one of whom meets a monkey, who, in his gambols, plunges into a pool, and comes out a man; then leaping into another pool, issues a monkey as before. And in the Indian collection, Sinhásana Dwátrinsati, Thirty-two Tales of a Throne, we read of a magical well which transforms a monkey into a woman, whenever a certain pious hermit comes to converse with her, and again into a monkey before he retires.302b In the Tūtī Nāma (35th Night of India Office MS. No. 2573; tale 23 of Kāderī's abridgment), a Bráhman, in love with the daughter of the king of Babylon, receives from a magician a globule, which, put into the mouth, instantly changes a man into a woman, and he is thus enabled to gain access to the damsel. In the Turkish Tūtī Nāma, a sorceress takes the place of the magician, and gives the enamoured youth a seal instead of a globule. But this story is found in a much older work, the Vetála Panchavinsati, 15th tale.
EASTERN fiction presents numerous instances of princes becoming enamoured of the portraits of beautiful women;—in the Kathá Sarit Ságara occur two examples: the story of the handsome King Prithvirūpa (Tawney's translation, vol. i, p. 490), and the story of Sundārasena and Mandāravatī (vol. ii, p. 370). In Gomberville's romance of Polexandre the African prince Abdu-'l-Malik falls in love with the portrait of Alcidiana, and a similar incident is found in the romance of Agesilaus of Colchos. The notion, nevertheless, is undoubtedly of Oriental origin.
Our story of the Goldsmith is an Arabian variant of a tale in the Dasa Kumara Charita, Adventures of Ten Princes, a most entertaining romance, in Sanskrit, by Dandin, of the 6th century, according to Dr. Albrecht Weber.303 The following translation of this tale, by Dr. H. H. Wilson, is taken from the Oriental Quarterly Magazine, of Calcutta, 1828, where it first appeared:
In Surasena is a city called Mathura, where dwelt a youth of family, who was addicted to loose pleasures and to vicious society, and, being a lad of spirit, he was so often entangled in broils that he was called Kalaha Kataka. One day he saw, in a painter's possession, the picture of a girl, with whose charms he became violently enamoured. After some solicitation, he prevailed on the painter to tell him who the original was, and having learnt that she was the wife of Anantakirtti, a merchant of Ujjayni, and her name Nitambavati, set off in the disguise of a mendicant for that city. Having got access to the house, under pretence of soliciting alms, he obtained a sight of the lady, and found her still more fascinating than her picture.
With a view to effect his projects, he solicited and obtained the care of the cemetery, and with the clothes of the dead he attached to his interests a female Sramanika, or Buddha devotee. This woman he employed to convey a message from him to Nitambavati, inviting her to come and see him, to which she sent back an angry and indignant reply. He was not discouraged, but desired his messenger to return to the merchant's wife, and say to her, as from himself: “Persons like us, who are fully acquainted with the insufficiency of life, and only desirous of final emancipation, cannot be suspected of entertaining any purpose adverse to the reputation of a woman of respectability. The message I lately conveyed to you I only intended to try your merit, as I was afraid such youth and beauty could scarcely be satisfied with a man so advanced in years as your husband. I was mistaken, and the result has so much pleased me that I am anxious to confer upon you a proof of my esteem. I snould wish to see you a mother, but the planet under which your husband was born has hitherto opposed it. The evil influence, however, may be counteracted if you will be content to assist. Accompany me to a grove at night, where I will bring you a seer versed in incantations. You must put your foot in his hand whilst he conveys into it his charms; then, as if angry, kick your husband in the breast, when the evil influence will be expelled, and you will be blessed with progeny, and your husband will venerate you as a goddess: there is nothing to be afraid of.”
Nitambavati, with some little difficulty, consented, and, being apprised of her intentions, the false saint awaited her at the appointed place. She came as was directed, and put her foot into his hand; he pretended to rub it, muttering imaginary charms all the time, until he had taken off her golden anklet, when, making a sudden cut at her thigh with a knife, which he had covertly prepared, he inflicted a gash in the upper part of it, and then quickly withdrew. Nitambavati, full of pain and terror, and reviling herself for her own folly, and ready to kill the Sramanika for having exposed her to such peril, returned home, and, privately dressing her wound, kept her bed for some days.
The rogue in the meantime offered the anklet to Anantakritti for sale; he knew it to be that of his wife, and inquired how the vendor had come by it; he refused to tell, and the merchant threatened him with punishment, on which Kalaha Kataka professed himself ready to communicate the truth to the guild (or committee of merchants). He was accordingly taken before them, when he desired the merchant to send for his wife's anklets. She replied that she had lost one of them; it was large, and had slipped off, but she forwarded the other. The anklet in the possession of the supposed mendicant, being compared with this, was found to correspond, and there remained no doubt of their owner. The ascetic, being then questioned as to the circumstances under which he had gained possession of it, replied as follows:
“You are aware, gentlemen, that I was employed to take charge of the graves of the deceased. As some people wished to deprive me of my fees by burning the bodies by night, I kept watch at all hours. Last night, I saw a dark-complexioned woman dragging the half-burnt fragments of a dead body from the funeral-pile, when, to punish her horrible design, I made a cut at her with my knife, and wounded one of her thighs, as she turned to escape: she ran off, however, dropping one of her anklets as she fled, and I thus became possessed of it.”
The account thus given inspired all the auditors with horror. Nitambavati was unanimously pronounced a sakini, or witch. She was turned out of his house by her husband, and rejected with abhorrence by all the citizens. In this distress she repaired to the cemetery, where she was in the act of putting a period to her existence, when she was prevented by her lover. He threw himself at her feet, and told her that, unable to live without her, he had adopted this contrivance to obtain her person, and entreated her to rely upon the fervour and faithfulness of his regard. His entreaties and protestations were at last successful, combined with the consciousness of her helpless situation, and Nitambavati rewarded his ingenuity with her affection.
A considerably different form of the story is found in the Vetála Panchavinsati, Twenty-five Tales of a Demon, namely, that of
of which the commencement has already been given in p. 249. The prince having gained entrance into the house of his beloved Padmavati, in the way she had indicated by signs to the old go-between, he marries her by the Gandharva form (in which the consent of parents is dispensed with), and, after passing some time happily in her society, visits his friend the minister's son, who is still lodging with the go-between. While the prince is there, a great outcry is heard in the streets, that the rāja's son had disappeared; upon which the minister's son details to him a cunning plan for carrying off the damsel to their own country, which he consents to adopt. Accordingly the prince returned to Padmavati, and when she was sound asleep he marked her on the hip with an iron spike which he had brought with him for the purpose, and, taking her ornaments, quitted the house and rejoined his friend. Next morning the minister's son went to the cemetery, and there disguised himself as an ascetic; and, having made the prince assume the garb of a disciple, he said to him: “Take this necklace, which is part of this set of ornaments, and offer it for sale in the market, but ask a high price for it, so that it may attract attention; and should the police arrest you, say, ‘My spiritual preceptor gave it me to sell.’” The pretended disciple is arrested by the police (who had been informed of the lady's loss), and answering them as he had been instructed, the sham devotee is at once sent for. On being asked how the necklace came into his possession, he replied: “I am an ascetic, in the habit of constantly wandering in the forest, and as I was by chance in the cemetery at night, I saw a company of witches collected from different quarters. And one of them brought the prince, with the lotus of his heart laid bare, and offered him to [the god] Bhairava. And the witch, who possessed great powers of delusion, being drunk, tried to take away my rosary while I was reciting my prayers, making horrible contortions with her face. And, as she carried the attempt too far, I got angry, and marked her on the loins with my trident;307 and then I took this necklace from her neck, which I must now sell, as it does not suit an ascetic.”—The magistrate informed the king of this extraordinary affair, and he concluded that it must be the pearl necklace which the dentist's daughter had los3t; so he sent a trusty old woman to see if she was really marked on the loins. When this was ascertained, the king consulted the pretended ascetic as to how Padmavati should be punished, and by his advice she was banished from the city. “In the evening the minister's son and the prince rode out of the city, and found Padmavati lamenting; then they mounted her upon a horse, and took her to their own country, where the prince lived happily with her.”
It seems strange that a prince should have required to employ so many artifices to obtain a dentist's daughter for his wife. The exact meaning of the Sanskrit word which Tawney has rendered “dentist,” namely, dantaghātaka, appears to be doubtful; and the name of the lady's father, Sangrāmavardhana, having, as Tawney remarks, “a warlike sound,” perhaps he may have been, as he is represented in the Hindī version (Baital Pachísí), a powerful rāja.
The original story may very possibly date centuries before our era. In all the three versions, the Goldsmith, Nitambavati, and the Minister's Son, the catastrophe is the same—the stealing of the ornaments, the wounding of the girl, and the charge of witch-craft, although differently brought about in each. The first and the third are alike in this respect: the youth gains entrance to the girl's chamber by means of a rope, and she is wounded and robbed while asleep. The incident of the portrait occurs only in the first and the second. We must therefore conclude that the Arabian translator derived the materials of his story from a version—perhaps Persian—combining incidents of both the Hindū tales.
IT is a peculiarity of Fairyland that there are certain rooms which the fortunate mortal who has entered the enchanted palace is expressly forbidden to enter, or doors which he must on no account open, or cabinets which he must not unlock, if he would continue in his present state of felicity. This story of the Young Man who was taken to the Land of Women bears a very close resemblance to that of the Third Royal Mendicant in the Thousand and One Nights, but it is perhaps better told, at least in some texts of the Seven Vazīrs. Both may be compared with the Story of Saktideva in the Kathá Sarit Ságara (vol. i, p. 223 of Tawney's translation, now in course of publication at Calcutta): Saktideva is conveyed by a monstrous bird—one of the race of Garūda, the bird of Vishnū, and the prototype of the “Roc” of the Arabian Tales—to the Golden City, the residence of female Vidyádharas (a species of fairies), the queen of whom welcomes him as her husband. Having occasion to leave him for a time, the queen gives him strict charge not to ascend to the middle terrace of the palace. But, impelled by curiosity, he goes there, and sees much to marvel at, and coming to a lake discovers by the side of it a horse with a jewelled saddle. Saktideva approaches to mount him, but the steed kicks him into the lake, and on his rising to the surface he finds himself standing in the middle of a garden pond in his native city.
Fairyland has, among its numerous marvels, subaqueous halls of dazzling light, as we find from the following tale in the Hito-padésa , in which there is also a forbidden thing to tempt curiosity (ch. ii, fab. 6—Johnson's translation):
One day, as I was in the pleasure-garden, I heard from a voyaging merchant that, on the fourteenth day of the month, in the midst of the sea which was near, beneath what had the appearance of a kalpa-tree, there was to be seen, seated on a couch variegated with the lustre of strings of jewels, a certain damsel, as it were the goddess Lakshmī, bedecked with all kinds of ornaments, and playing on a lute. I therefore took the voyaging merchant, and, having embarked in a ship, went to the place specified. On reaching the spot, I saw her exactly as she had been described; and, allured by her exquisite beauty, I leaped after her into the sea. In an instant I reached a golden city; where, in a palace of gold, I saw her reclining on a couch, and waited upon by youthful sylphs. When she perceived me at a distance, she sent a female friend, who addressed me courteously. On my inquiry, her friend said: “That is Ratna-manjarī, the daughter of Kandarpakeli, king of the Vidyádharas. She has made a vow to this effect: ‘Whosoever shall come and see the city of gold with his own eyes shall marry me.’” Accordingly I married her by that form of marriage called Gandharva: after the conclusion of which I remained there a long while delighted with her. One day she said to me in private: “My beloved husband, all these things may be freely enjoyed; but that picture of the fairy Swarnarekhā must never be touched.” Some time afterwards, my curiosity being excited, I touched Swarnarekhā with my hand. For so doing, I was spurned by her although only a picture, with her foot beautiful as the lotus, and found myself alighted in my own country. Since then I have been a miserable wanderer over the earth.
Subaqueous halls and forbidden rooms, doors, or other objects are common to the popular fictions of almost every country of Europe and Asia. Those gifted ones who can discover “a rich truth in a tale's pretence” may perhaps be disposed to regard stories of forbidden rooms as distorted versions of the Fall of Man: it is just possible, however, that their conception is due to hashish, or some other narcotic which constitutes the Paradise of Fools!
DOUBTLESS a chest has been frequently found very convenient for concealing a gallant or for conveying him to his mistress; however this may be, or have been, it is a common expedient in tales of intrigue, Western as well as Eastern. In the Norse tale of Big Peter and Little Peter, a woman hides her lover, a priest, in a big chest on hearing her husband's knock at the door. Similar instances abound in the early Italian novels; and in Balzac's Contes Drolatiques, one of the canon's nephews (story of the Devil's Heir) tells him how he carries on an intrigue with the wife of a jeweller, by being shut up every night in a chest, to which she goes, under pretence of getting some medicine.
The story of the Lover in the Chest is in some versions of the Seven Vazīrs followed by another, also told by the Damsel:
of Birds.
A young slave, learning that his master and his wife were to spend the morrow in a suburban garden, went secretly there, and buried beneath three trees some fruit, comfits, and wine. The husband sent his wife, escorted by the young slave, before him to the garden, promising to join her in a short time. As the lady and the slave were walking up and down the garden, a crow, sitting on a tree, croaked, upon which the young slave exclaimed: “Thou sayest truly.” His mistress asked him what he meant by such a remark, and he replied that the bird had said there was some fruit at the foot of such a tree. She desired him to search, and he produced the fruit; and, in like manner, when the bird croaked a second and a third time, the comfits and wine were unearthed, with which they regaled themselves. After this, the crow again croaked, and the slave-boy, pretending to be angry and shamefaced, threw a stone at it. The lady rebuking him for his ingratitude to a bird that had provided them with such good things, the slave-boy replied that it had made a very improper suggestion to him. She insists upon knowing what it was the bird had said this time, and after much seeming reluctance he told her, when, to his great delight, she very cordially approved of the bird's suggestion, but just at this moment the husband made his appearance—and so the story ends, lamely enough.
AN imperfect MS. text of the Thousand and One Nights preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,311 has two different versions of this story, namely, Nights 726-728, the Lady of Cairo and her Three Gallants, and, Nights 738-743, the Lady of Cairo and her Four Suitors. This text does not appear to contain the Seven Vazīrs, unless it was in the missing portion, Nights 167-305. Of the first version I know nothing, but presume it is somewhat similiar to that in the present volume, since Scott has selected, in vol. vi of his edition of the Arabian Nights, the second for translation, though he had to suppress parts of it. In this version the lady—unlike the heroine of our tale—is described as virtuous. Her lovers are the judge, the collector-general of port-duties, the chief of the butchers, and a rich merchant. She informs her husband of her plan to punish them, and at the same time reap some profit. The judge comes first, and presents her with a rosary of pearls. She makes him undress, and put on a robe of yellow muslin and a parti-coloured cap—her husband all the while looking at them through an opening in the door of a closet. Presently there is heard a loud knock at the street door, and, on the pretence that it is her husband, the judge is pushed into an adjoining room. The three other suitors, as they successively arrive, bring each also a valuable present, and are treated in the same manner. The husband now enters, and his wife tells him—to the consternation, no doubt, of the imprisoned suitors—that in returning from the bazaar that day she had met with four antic fellows, whom she had a great mind to bring home with her for his amusement. He affects to be vexed that she had not done so, since he must go from home to-morrow. The lady then says that they are, after all, in the next room, upon which the husband insists on their being brought before him, one after another. So the judge is dragged forth in his absurd attire, and compelled to dance and caper like a buffoon, after which he is made to tell a story, which bears a curious resemblance to the Turkish tale in the Forty Vazīrs included in our illustrations of Women's Wiles—see page 261; only in place of a king we have here an officer, and instead of a real lover concealed in a chest, it is a conceited tailor who has fallen in love with the lady, whom she thus punishes with fright, by first arousing and then doing away her husband's jealousy.—The judge, having told his story, is dismissed. The three other suitors go through the same performance, but their stories (albeit told in presence of the “virtuous” lady) Scott found to be unfit for translation.
In the Persian tales ascribed to a dervish of Ispahān, Arouya, the virtuous wife of a merchant, entraps, also with her husband's sanction, a qāzī, a doctor, and the city governor. And in the Bahār-i Dānish, a lady named Gohera, whose husband is in the hands of the police, makes assignations with the kutwal (police magistrate) and the qāzī, one of whom is entrapped in a large jar, the other in a chest, and next morning she causes porters to carry them before the sultan, who orders them to be punished and her husband to be set at liberty.
In various parts of India the story seems to be very popular. Mr. G. H. Damant has published, in the Indian Antiquary, 1873, a translation of a folk-tale of Dinajpur, entitled “The Touchstone,” in the concluding portion of which a young woman consents to receive at her house the kutwal at the first watch of the night; the king's counsellor at the second watch; the king's minister at the third watch; and the king himself at the fourth watch. She smears the kutwal with molasses, pours water on him, covers his whole body with cotton wool, and then secures him close to the window. The counsellor is hidden under a mat; the minister, behind a bamboo screen; and when the king comes, last of all, and sees the frightful figure of the kutwal in the window, he asks what it is, and she replies that it is a rākshasa, upon which king, minister, and counsellor flee from the house in dread of the monster. The kutwal is then released and makes the best of his way home in his hideous condition. (Mr. Damant gives a Bengalī variant in the Indian Antiquary, 1880, in the story of Adi's Wife, who entraps the kutwal, the nazīr, the vazīr, and the king in a wardrobe.)
In Miss Stokes' amusing Indian Fairy Tales (No. 28), a merchant's clever wife, during his absence, takes four hanks of thread to the market to sell, and is accosted, in turn, by the kutwal, the vazīr, the qāzī, and the king, to each of whom she grants an interview at her house, at different hours, and contrives to entrap them into chests. In the morning she hires four stout coolies, who take the chests on their backs, and proceeding to the houses of her suitors, disposes of them to their sons for various sums of money, telling each that the chest contained something he would value far beyond the sum she asked.
The oldest extant form of this wide-spread tale is found in the Kathá Sarit Ságara, of which the following is a translation, by Dr. H. H. Wilson:
Whilst I was absent, my wife, who performed with pious exactitude her ablutions in the Ganges, attracted the notice and desires of several suitors, especially of the king's domestic priest, the commander of the guard, and the young prince's preceptor, who annoyed her by their importunities, till at last she determined to expose and punish their depravity. Having fixed upon the plan, she made an appointment for the same evening with her three lovers, each being to come to her house an hour later than the other. Being desirous of propitiating the gods, she sent for our banker to obtain money to distribute in alms; and when he arrived he expressed the same passion as the rest, on her compliance with which he promised to make over to her the money that I had placed in his hands; or, on her refusal, he would retain it to his own use. Apprehending the loss of our property, therefore, she made a similar assignation with him, and desired him to come to her house that evening at an hour when she calculated on having disposed of the first comers, for whose reception, as well as for his, she arranged with her attendants the necessary preparations.
At the expiration of the first watch of the night, the preceptor of the prince arrived. Upakosā affected to receive him with great delight; and after some conversation, desired him to take a bath, which her attendants had prepared for him, as a preliminary to any further intimacy. The preceptor made not the slightest objection, on which he was conducted into a retired and dark chamber, where his bath was made ready. On undressing, his own clothes and ornaments were removed, and, in their place, a small wrapper given to him, which was a piece of cloth smeared with a mixture of oil, lamp-black, and perfumes. Similar cloths were employed to rub him after bathing, so that he was of a perfect ebon colour from top to toe. The rubbing occupied all the time till the second lover (the priest) arrived, on which the women exclaimed: “Here is our master's most particular friend! —in, in here, or all will be discovered,” and hurrying their victim away, they thrust him into a long and stout wicker basket, fastened well by a bolt outside,315 in which they left him to meditate upon his mistress.
The priest and the commander of the guard were secured, as they arrived, in a similar manner, and it only remained to dispose of the banker. When he made his appearance, Upakosā, leading him near the baskets, said aloud: “You promise to deliver me my husband's property?” And he replied: “The wealth your husband entrusted to me shall be yours.” On which she turned towards the baskets, and said: “Let the gods hear the promise of Hiranygupta!” The bath was then proposed to the banker. Before the ceremony was completed the day began to dawn, on which the servants desired him to make the best of his way home, lest the neighbours should notice his departure; and with this recommendation they forced him, naked as he was, into the street. Having no alternative, the banker hastened to conceal himself in his own house, being chased all the way by the dogs of the town.
So soon as it was day, Upakosā repaired to the palace of Nanda, and presented a petition to the king against the banker, for seeking to appropriate the property entrusted to him by her husband. The banker was summoned. He denied having ever received any money from me. Upakosā then said: “When my husband went away, he placed our household gods in three baskets; they have heard this man acknowledge his holding a deposit of my husband's, and let them bear witness for me.” The king, with some feeling of surprise and incredulity, ordered the baskets to be sent for, and they were accordingly produced in the open court. Upakosā then addressed them: “Speak, gods, and declare what you overheard this banker say in our dwelling. If you are silent, I will unhouse you in this presence.” Afraid of this menaced exposure, the tenants of the baskets immediately exclaimed: “Verily, in our presence the banker acknowledged possession of your wealth.” On hearing these words, the whole court was filled with surprise, and the banker, terrified out of his senses, acknowledged the debt, and promised restitution.
The business being adjusted, the king expressed his curiosity to see the household divinities of Upakosā, and she very readily complied with his wish. The baskets being opened, the culprits were dragged forth by the attendants, like so many lumps of darkness. Being presently recognised, they were overwhelmed with the laughter and derision of all the assembly. As soon as the merriment had subsided, King Nanda begged Upakosā to explain what it all meant, and she acquainted him with what had occurred. King Nanda was highly incensed, and, as the punishment of their offence, banished the criminals from the kingdom. He was equally pleased with the virtue and ingenuity of my wife, and loaded her with wealth and honour. Her family likewise were highly gratified by her conduct, and she obtained the admiration and esteem of the whole city.316
By whatever way this story may have journeyed to Europe, it was turned into a humorous but, in some of its details, very objectionable fabliau (interesting, however, as an illustration of manners) in the 13th century, under the title of Constant du Hamel, ou la Dame qui atrappa un Prêtre, un Prevost, et un Forestier. In this version a lady is importuned, as its title indicates, by three suitors, who, on her refusal, persecute her husband. To put a stop to their active malice, she consents to receive them, one somewhat later than another, so that by the time the first is stripped for the bath, the second arrives, and, pretending it is her husband, she hides him in a bin full of feathers, and so too with the second and third; in the end they are ignominiously bundled out of doors, well feathered, and hasten home, with all the curs of the town barking and snapping at their heels.—This is the only version that agrees with the Hindū original in the incident of the bath.
The old English metrical tale of the Wright's Chaste Wife (written by one Adam of Cobsam, 15th century), if partly borrowed from, is certainly a very great improvement on, the fabliau. This is an abstract of it:
A wright marries the daughter of a poor widow, whose only dower is a garland that will remain fresh while she continues chaste, but will wither when she becomes unfaithful. After a time the wright, thinking it likely that men would come to tempt his wife when he was from home, constructs in his house a lower room, the walls of which he makes as smooth as a mirror, and in the floor above a crafty trap-door, which would give way the moment a man touched it with his foot, and precipitate him into the pit below, out of which it was impossible to escape. Just at this time the lord of the town sent for him to build him a hall— a job of two or three months. The lord observes the wright's garland, and, learning that it is a proof of his wife's chastity, determines to visit her. He goes accordingly, and offers her forty marks. She asks him to lay the money down, and then conducts him to the room with the trap-door, and he no sooner puts his foot on it than down he tumbles into the room below. He begs and prays the dame to have pity on him, but she says: “Nay; you must wait till my husband sees you.” Next day he asks for some food, but she tells him he must first earn it. “Spin me some flax,” says she. The lord consents; so she throws him the tools and the flax, and he works away for his food. The steward next sees the wright's garland, and he too must visit the goodwife, whom he offers twenty marks, which she pockets, and then leads him into the same trap, where, after suffering some days' hunger, he spins flax for his meat. Then the proctor, seeing the wright's garland, asks him all about it, and in due course, after depositing twenty marks with the dame, he joins the lord and the steward in the wright's crafty trap for men of their sort. There all three spin and spin away, as if for their very lives, until at length the wright has finished his three months' job, and comes home. His wife tells him of her prisoners, and sends for their wives, and each takes away her own shamefaced and penitent spouse.
We have here a parallel to the Hindū story of the virtuous Devasmitá, as related in the Kathá Sarit Ságara: Guhasena, a young merchant, is compelled to leave his wife, Devasmitá, for a short season, on business matters. The separation is painful to both, and the pain is aggravated by fears on the wife's part of her husband's inconstancy. To make assurance doubly sure, a couple of divine lotus flowers of a red colour are obtained in a dream, the hues of which, the married pair are told, will fade should either prove untrue.318 Guhasena falls in with boon companions, who, learning the purport of his lotus and the virtue of his wife, set off to put it to the proof. (Wilson.)—The rest of the story is already detailed in pp. 244-247.
A somewhat similar tale occurs in Nakhshabī's Tūtī Nāma (4th Night of the India Office MS. No. 2573), as follows: A soldier's wife, on his taking leave of her to enter the service of a nobleman, gives him a nosegay, which, she says, will remain fresh so long as she preserves her chastity. The nobleman, marvelling that any one should be able to procure a fresh nosegay every day in the middle of winter, inquires of the soldier how it was, and learns that its perennial freshness is a token that his wife continues faithful. The nobleman sends one of his cooks to try to form an intimacy with the soldier's wife, but she craftily entraps him; and the second cook, being next despatched to see what has become of his chief, meets with a similar reception. Finally the nobleman himself, with his attendants—among whom is the soldier—proceeds to visit this paragon of virtue. The soldier's wife receives him courteously, and his two cooks, dressed as female slaves, wait upon him at supper. The happy soldier then returns his wife the nosegay, still fresh and blooming.
A curious variant is given in Narain Sawney's Select Tamil Tales, Madras, 1839, in which Ramakistnan (the Scogin of India) entraps the rāja and his domestic chaplain, whom he persuades to disguise themselves as women, on the pretence that he will introduce them to the beautiful wife of a man who has lately come to lodge at his house. The jester having locked them, as they successively arrive, in the same room, when they recognise each other, they are heartily ashamed, and softly request to be let out, but this the jester does only after he has extracted from them a solemn promise that they would forgive him a hundred offences every day.
To return to English variants. The well-known tale of the Monk and the Miller's Wife belongs to the same cycle of stories, in which a woman punishes objectionable wooers by entrapping them and exposing them to public ridicule:
A monk having visited, with amorous intent, the virtuous wife of a miller, during her husband's absence, she affects to be pleased to see him, and they sit down together to a plentiful supper. But hardly have they eaten a mouthful when footsteps are heard approaching the house, and the monk, in dismay, asks what that can be. The wife answers that it is probably her husband come back unexpectedly, and bids him get into the great chest in the meantime, which he loses no time in doing, and the goodwife fastens it down upon him, and keeps him confined there in fear and trembling all the long night. In the morning she causes the miller's men to carry the chest into church at the hour of mass, where she opens it, and discovers the monk in presence of all assembled.
From the 1st Novel, Day ix, of Boccaccio's Decameron, John Lydgate (circa 1430) perhaps borrowed the idea of his metrical tale of
A knight, a parish priest, and a merchant are suitors to a lady prioress, who thus gets rid of them all. As the condition of her love, the knight is to lie, like a dead body sewed in a sheet, in the chapel in the wood, with two tapers burning beside him. She next tells the priest that she has a cousin lying dead in the chapel; but as he died in debt, his burial is forbidden [because the debtor had arrested the body]; therefore she has sent for him, in order that, if he would win her love, he should bury her kinsman. The priest accordingly goes to the chapel, with mattock and shovel, and says the dirge at the feet of the knight, who had duly assumed the part of a dead body. The lady prioress now sends for the merchant, tells him the dead man lying in the chapel owed her a sum of money, and she wished him to prevent the burial [to see whether his relatives would not pay the debt], which the priest was to perform that same night. “Shame would it be for us to lose our money, as we shall do if he is buried before it is paid.” She therefore proposes that the merchant should dress himself up like the devil, and, when the priest is about to bury the body, leap in at the choir door like a fiend. The merchant consents, and, duly dressed up, goes to the chapel door, and “roars as devils seemed to do.” The priest, in mortal terror, rushes through the window, breaking both it and his head. The knight can endure this no longer, so he rises up, at which the “devil” also runs away; while the “corpse,” equally frightened, flies off in another direction, and the three suitors spend a wretched night, hiding from each other. Next morning, the priest tells the lady prioress of all his mishaps, how the devil appeared, and the body rose up. “I wis,” quoth she, “I never yet had a lover who died a good death.” “Then,” says Mass John, “that will serve for ale and meat; thou shalt never be wooed by me.” When the knight came, she told him that he did not brook the bargain; so he, too, went away. She threatened the merchant that she would tell his wife and all the country of his wickedness; but he purchased her silence by giving twenty marks to the convent, and after his death endowed it in fee for ever.
A parallel to Lydgate's tale is found in Thorpe's Netherland-ish story of the Wicked Lady of Antwerp.—The Norse tale of the Mastermaid (Dr. Dasent) is the only version, so far as I know, in which magical arts are employed in punishment of the suitors. The heroine of this tale takes shelter in the hut of a cross-grained old woman, who is killed by an accident, and she is thus left alone. A constable, passing by and seeing a beautiful maiden, falls in love with her, and bringing a bushel of silver, she consents to marry him; but at night, when they are about to go to bed, she says that she has forgot to make up the fire: this the dutiful bridegroom undertakes to do himself, but no sooner has he taken hold of the shovel, than she cries out: “May you hold the shovel, and the shovel hold you, and may you heap burning coals over yourself till morning breaks.” So there stood the constable all night heaping hot coals upon himself till daybreak, when he was released from the spell and ran home, dancing with pain, to the amusement of all who saw him on the way. In like manner, on the second night, the maiden casts her spells over the attorney, who is made to hold the handle of the porch-door till morning; and on the third night, the sheriff is compelled to hold the calf's tail and the calf's tail to hold him till morning breaks, when he goes home in a sorry plight.
NOTHING is more common in Oriental romance than for a beautiful, spoiled, and self-willed princess to impose certain hard conditions on her suitors: they must solve dark riddles; or answer knotty questions; or undertake a perilous journey to the confines of the earth—nay, even into jinnistān, the land of the jinn, or genii—in order to procure some wonderful talisman upon which the lady has set her heart.
The present story calls to mind the classical legend of Atalanta, who would marry only him that should outstrip her in a footrace, but all of her competitors whom she overtook were to be killed on the spot by the dart with which she had armed herself; and who was ultimately vanquished by Hippomenes, who threw in the course, at some distance from each other, three golden apples from the gardens of the Hesperides, which Atalanta stopped to pick up, and thus enabled Hippomenes to reach the goal before her.—This tale is reproduced in Berni's Orlando Innamorato, where the daughter of the King of the Distant Isles makes the same condition with two suitors, Ordauro and Folderico; the latter, an old man, wins the race by the device of the golden apples.
Morier, in his Second Journey to Persia, relates a similar tradition, the conclusion of which is, however, tragical (he does not seem to have observed its affinity to the classical story of Atalanta): In former days a king of Persia promised his daughter in marriage to any one who would run before his horse all the way from Shīrāz to Ispahān. One of his running-footmen nearly accomplished the feat, having reached to the eminence now marked by the Shatir's Tower, when the king, fearful that he should be obliged to keep his promise, dropped his whip. The ligatures which encompassed the footman's body were such that, in the state he then was, he knew for certain that if he stooped to the ground to pick up the whip his death would immediately follow; therefore he contrived to take up the whip with his foot, carried it to his hand, and presented it to the king. This trick having failed, the king then dropped his ring, upon which the footman, who saw that his fate was decided, exclaimed: “O king, you have broken your word; but I will show you my submission to the last,” so saying, he stooped, picked up the ring, and died.—The Shatir's Tower was, it is said, afterwards erected on the spot where the footman fell dead, to commemorate his exploit and his fidelity to the king.
Amazon princesses are favourite characters in old romances. In the Nibelungenlied, Queen Brunhilda did battle with all her suitors, and was finally conquered only by the aid of magical power. In Berni's burlesque Innamorato, Marphisia, a young Indian queen, made a vow never to lay aside her armour till she had taken three kings captive, namely, Charlemagne, Gradasso, and Agrican. In the Arabian story of 'Omar Bin Nu'man, a princess wrestles with the hero, and throws him, more by the weakening power of her fully-developed charms than by her personal strength and skill, though she possessed both these necessary qualifications of an athlete. The same lady afterwards, disguised as a knight, and armed cap-à-pie, encounters her lover in single combat—an incident which seems imitated from an episode of the Arabian romance of 'Antar:
Muhārib and Zāhir, the fathers respectively of Khālid and Jaida, were brothers. Muhārib was chief of the tribe of Zebīd, and Zāhir was his counsellor. The brothers quarrelled, and Zāhir struck his tents, and cast his lot with the kindred tribe of Sa'd. Zāhir's wife becoming pregnant, he said to her that if a son were born, he would be most welcome; but if a girl, she was to conceal the fact, and let it appear to the world that they had a male child, in order that his brother should not exult over him. In due course a daughter was born, and was called in private Jaida, but Jūdar in public, that it might appear she was a boy. About the same time Muhārib had a son born to him, whom he called Khālid. The daughter of Zāhir was brought up as a boy, and taught to ride on horseback; and she soon became famous in all the exercises befitting a noble warrior, accompanying her father to battle, in which she ever took a prominent part. Khālid was also one of the most illustrious horsemen of the age, universally acknowledged as an intrepid warrior and a valiant hero.
The fame of his cousin Jaida (Jūdar) having reached him, Khālid, after his father's death, visited his uncle, and spent ten days in jousting with the horsemen of the family. Jaida became deeply enamoured of him, and her mother, on learning this, revealed the secret of her sex to Khālid's mother, and suggested that their children should be united in marriage. But when Khālid was told by his mother that his cousin was a woman, he was greatly chagrined, slighted her love for him, and hastened back to his own tribe.
Jaida, enraged at finding herself thus scorned, resolved to be revenged on her cousin, and, disguising herself, set out for the land of Zebīd. Arrived there, she entered a tent of public entertainment, close-visored, like a horseman of the Hijāz. After proving her superiority to the best cavaliers in the course, she encountered Khālid for three days in succession, without either of them obtaining any advantage, when she discovered herself to her cousin, whose hatred was now suddenly converted into love. But Jaida rejected him, and returned home.
Khālid hastened to his uncle and demanded Jaida in marriage. His cousin at length consented, on the condition that he should provide for slaughter at her wedding feast a thousand camels belonging to Ghashm, son of Malik, surnamed the Brandisher of Spears. These Khālid procured by plundering the tribe of 'Āmir; but on his return Jaida imposed a further condition— that her camel should be led by the captive daughter of a prince. Khālid again set out with his horsemen, and, assailing the family tribe of Mu'āwiyya, son of Nizal, took captive his daughter Amīma; and his marriage with Jaida was immediately celebrated, when the daughter of Mu'āwiyya held the bridle of her camel, “and the glory of Jaida was exalted among women and among men.”
In another Arabian romance, Delhama, of which Lane has given an account in his Modern Egyptians, two amazons figure prominently. One of these is a woman called Esh-Shumsta, or the Grizzle, “whom the heroes of her time held in great fear on account of her prowess and strength.” The Emīr Dārim resolved to attack her. She mounted her horse in haste, on hearing of his approach, and went forth to meet him and his party. For a whole hour she contended with them; killed the greater number, and put the rest to flight, excepting the Emīr Dārim, whom she took prisoner, and led in bonds, disgraced and despised, to her fortress. His ten sons, hearing of his misfortune, set forth with their attendants to rescue the Emīr, but they are taken prisoners and most of their followers are slain by Esh-Shumsta, who, however, is in the end overthrown and put to death by El-Gūndūba, the adopted son of the Emīr. Afterwards El-Gūndūba in the course of his adventures encounters in single combat another amazon, called Kattalet esh Shugān, or the Slayer of Heroes.
Richardson, in the Dissertation prefixed to his Arabic and Persian Dictionary, relates some curious historical anecdotes of the bravery of Arabian women in turning the tide of battle against the Greeks.—There can be no doubt that Europe has owed much of its institutions of chivalry to the Arabs, and an interesting chapter on this subject might be complied from authentic Arabian history, as well as from their romancists and poets.
*** ALTHOUGH the Western versions (or imitations, rather) of the Book of Sindibād, known generally under the title of the Seven Wise Masters, possess but little in common with the Eastern texts, besides the outline of the connecting tale, yet a brief analytical account of one of the old English metrical texts may perhaps add somewhat to the usefulness of the present work. This version, entitled the Seven Sages, is believed to have been composed—probably from the French—about the end of the 14th century, and has been printed, from a MS. in Cambridge University Library, in the publications of the Percy Society, vol. xvi, with an interesting introductory essay by Thomas Wright. An analysis of another version, in the famous Auchinleck MSS., is given by Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, and the text was afterwards printed in Weber's Northern Romances. “Few works,” remarks Dunlop, “are more interesting and curious than the Seven Wise Masters, in illustrating the genealogy of fiction, or its rapid and almost unaccountable transition from one country to another.”
IN Rome was a renowned emperor, “as the book tellys us;” his name was Diocclecius; and he had a wife, called Helie. He had one only son, and when the child was seven years old, he was entrusted to the care of Seven Wise Masters, who undertook to instruct him in the space of seven years. They took him from the city into the country, in order that he should not learn any wickedness; and at once began to teach him the seven sciences, by means of lessons which they painted upon the wall of his chamber.327 Thus when the prince lay on his bed he might con his lesson upon the wall. Ere the seven years were gone he was master of the seven sciences—“there was none but he had good skill in.” Then said the masters to each other: “This child waxeth very wise. Let us therefore prove him.” So they secretly placed beneath each of the posts of his bed four ivy leaves. And in the morning the prince said to them: “Of a surety, either the roof of my room has become lower, or the floor is risen.” “He is a wise man, I wis,” they exclaimed.
Now while the child was thus with his masters, his mother died—“as we schalle alle dye.” And soon after she was dead, the emperor's courtiers urged him to take another wife; and as he was “jolyf of blode,” he desired them to seek out for him a fitting wife, which they did, and the emperor was married to the woman according to the law, and for some time he lived in great solace with her.328 One day she was told of the child, the emperor's lawful heir, how he was so comely and so wise, and she began to hate the child from that hour, and resolved to have him put to death. So she bribed a magician to contrive that if the prince should speak a word during seven days and seven nights he should instantly die.328a After this, “in a merry morning of May,” she said to the emperor that she longed to see his son, whom she loved as if he was her own, though she had not yet beheld him; and the emperor promised to despatch messengers at once to bring his son to court:
But the emperour wist nought
What was hire wickkyd thought—
An evyl deth mot scho dey!
The messengers arrive at the house of the Seven Wise Masters, and command them, in the emperor's name, to bring the prince to court within three days. They go into an arbour in the evening, “for solace,” and there one of them discovers from the aspect of the moon and stars that the prince's stepmother has by magic planned his death. The prince himself takes an observation of the heavenly bodies, and perceives the danger he should be in if he spoke during the next seven days and seven nights, and proposes that each of his masters should, by their wisdom, save his life one day, to which they readily agree.329
When the prince appears before his father he is dumb. His stepmother comes with her maidens, and welcomes him, but he utters not a word. She then obtains leave to take him with her into her own chamber, where having tempted him in vain, she accuses him to the emperor of having sought to dishonour his couch.329a —During the seven following days the Queen and the Seven Wise Masters by turns relate tales to the emperor, who alternately condemns to death and reprieves his son, according as he is moved by the arguments of the accuser and defenders.
I—The Queen relates the story of
that is, a creeper, which had gradually absorbed all the vigour of the tree, so that it died.
II—The First Master relates the story of
for which see a prose version above, pp. 237-239.
III—The Queen relates the story of
a prose version of which will be found in pp. 242-244.—It is stated, in p. 242, that this form of the story was taken into the Historia Septem Sapientum Romæ from the Mishlé Sandabar, but it occurs in earlier Western texts, such as, for instance, Les Sept Sages and the Liber de Septem Sapientibus. Des Longchamps thought this story was suggested by the classical legend of the Boar of Erymanthus, slain by Hercules, to which it certainly bears some resemblance.
IV—The Second Master relates the story of
the latter having cured the son of the king of Hungary, and induced the queen to confess that the child's real father was a foreign prince who had been on a visit to her husband, his uncle Hippocrates, envious of his skill and fame, slew him in his garden after his return home.
The incident of the discovery of the spurious son occurs in the Cento Novelle Antiche (nov. 2), where a Greek king is found to be the son of a baker; in the Arabian Tale of the Sultan of Yaman and his Three Sons (vol. vi of Jonathan Scott's edition of the Arabian Nights), where a certain sultan is proved to be the son of a cook; and in the Lady's 2nd tale in the Forty Vazīrs.
V—The Queen relates the story of
A certain king's counsellor, having wasted all his wealth and become reduced to great straits, with the assistance of his son, breaks into the royal treasury and takes away a large quantity of gold. The king, having discovered the robbery, sets a large vessel filled with pitch close to the place where the breach had been made in the wall, in order to entrap the robber when he next came there. The counsellor, having once more fallen into poverty, went again one night with his son to procure a fresh supply of gold, and on entering the treasury, through the opening in the wall, instantly fell up to the neck in the vessel of pitch. Calling to his son, he warned him not to enter and attempt his release, for it was impossible; but desired him to draw his sword and cut off his head and carry it away, so that he should not be recognised and his family disgraced. The son accordingly cuts off his father's head, carries it home, and recounts the whole particulars of the misadventure.
In the Septem Sapientum, the robber of the king's treasury is a knight, who had spent all his wealth at tourneys and similar idle sports. After the son had taken home his father's head, the king is informed of the headless body found in his treasury, and orders it to be drawn at the tails of horses through the principal streets to the gallows, charging his soldiers to bring before him any persons whom they observed affected with excessive grief. As the body was being drawn past the knight's house, one of his daughters uttered loud cries of sorrow, upon which the son quickly drew his knife and wounded his hand, so that the blood flowed freely. The soldiers entered the house, and inquired the cause of the loud cries they had just heard, when the son, showing his wounded hand, said that his sister had been alarmed at seeing his blood, upon which the soldiers, satisfied with this explanation, quitted the house.
This story has been adapted from Herodotus, who relates it of Rhampsinitus, King of Egypt, and his architect, who in building the royal treasury left a stone loose, but so nicely fitted in that it could not be discovered by any one ignorant of the secret: his two sons, after his death, frequently enter the treasury by this means, until at length one of them is entrapped, as above. A similar legend is found in Pausanias, B. ix, c. 37, relating to the treasury of Hyrieus. It occurs also in the Kathá Sarit Ságara, eighth section, in the tale of Ghata and Karpara, which bears a very close analogy to the leading incidents of the story in Herodotus, especially the device of drugging the soldiers that guarded the body. From the Seven Wise Masters it was probably taken by Ser Giovanni (Day ix, Nov. i), and by Bandello (Par. i, nov. 25). The story is also found in an old French romance, L'Histoire du Chevalier Berinus, in which Herodotus has been imitated in the concluding incident, of the king's daughter's attempt to discover the clever thief; and it forms one of the exploits of the Shifty Lad in Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands.
VI—The Third Master relates the story of
The wife of a certain old man was in the habit of stealing out at nights when he was sound asleep, and meeting her lover. It happened one night that the husband awoke, and, missing his spouse from beside him, at once concluded that she was unfaithful; so he rose up, and securely bolted the outer door. A little before daybreak the truant wife returned, and finding the door fast, she
Bygan loud to crye,
And badde the devle hys neke to breke
That the doore hadde steke.
The goodman, however, was not to be moved by her entreaties or threats, and bade her begone, adding that in the morning he should expose her to all their friends and relations, yea, and to the whole town. In vain she continued to beg to be let in; the justly incensed husband was obdurate. At length she declared that she would not live to suffer such disgrace, and taking up a great stone she plunged it into the well, and then stole quietly close to the door. The husband, supposing the plash he had heard to be caused by her throwing herself into the well, began to relent, for he was doatingly fond of her, in spite of her levity and misconduct; so he hastened to undo the fastenings of the door, and went to the well to draw her forth if possible. Meanwhile the artful wife quickly slipped into the house, bolted the door, and went up stairs to her warm bed—“an evyl deth mote scho dee!” The poor man, having fruitlessly searched into and all round the well for his wife, returned to the house, to find himself in turn shut out. Now there was a law in that town that all husbands found in the streets after a certain hour were to be taken up by the watchmen and severely punished. The husband therefore knocks repeatedly at the door, but his wife bids him return to his leman, with whom he has passed the night. The noise of their altercation attracts the watchmen, who come up, and ask what it is all about, to which the wife from the window replies, that it is her husband come back from spending the night with his leman—she had endured his misconduct too long, and now they may take him away and punish him. So the poor man is arrested, and thus “thorow his wyf he was schent.”
This tale seems to have been taken into the Liber de Septem Sapientibus from Alphonsus (Fab. 13), who probably derived it from the Arabian story-tellers. It is one of the fabliaux of the Trouvères (Le Grand, iii, 143), and the 4th novel, Day vii, of the Decameron. Dunlop says it is “the origin of the Calandra of Cardinal Bibbiena, the best comedy that appeared in Italy previous to the time of Goldoni; it also forms the groundwork of one of Dancourt's plays, and probably suggested to Moliere the plot of his celebrated comedy, George Dandin.”—It has also suggested the plot of one of the plays of Hans Sachs, Das Weib im Brunnen.
VII—The Queen then relates the story of
A certain king, whose body was all swollen, or leprous, desires his seneschal to procure him a mistress, and, on being reminded how repulsive his person was to women, tells him to take from his treasury whatever money might be necessary for the purpose. The seneschal's cupidity induces him to introduce his own wife to the king at night—having terrified her into compliance with his drawn sword. In the morning the seneschal repeatedly knocks at the door of the king's chamber, and is told to go away; at length he informs the king that the woman is his wife, upon which the king, having opened the window and discovered this to be the fact, declares that he will not part with her now, upbraids the seneschal for selling his virtuous wife for a paltry sum of money, and orders him, on pain of death, to quit the kingdom immediately.
This story is similiar to that of the Bathkeeper, which occurs in nearly all the Eastern texts of the Book of Sindibād, where, however (especially in the Arabian versions), it is related with some very objectionable details. In the Seven Wise Masters it is put into the mouth of the Queen, as it is made to tell solely against men; but in the Eastern texts of the Sindibād, it is related by one of the vazīrs, the woman being represented as yielding a not unwilling consent—though even thus its appropriateness as one of the vazīrs' tales is questionable. In the Historia Septem Sapientum Romæ, and its derivatives—English and Scottish, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, etc.—this story is rather clumsily joined with another. It does not occur in Dolo-pathos ;—I was induced to state, in note, p. 61, that the story is found in this old text by Goedeke's comparative table of the versions of the Wise Masters (Orient und Occident, iii, pp. 422, 423), where I mistook “senes” for “senesc.” (senescalcus). In the same table the story does not appear in the contents of Rolland's Scottish version, though it forms part of another tale, as in the Septem Sapientum.
The form which the tale of the Seneschal in the Wise Masters and that of the Bathman in the Eastern texts of the Book of Sindibād assume in the Hitopadésa (Book i, fab. viii and ix) is to the following effect: A young and wealthy prince, becoming enamoured of the blooming wife of a merchant, employed an old woman to solicit her to grant him an interview, which she refused, saying that she was devoted to her husband. The old woman, after reporting the failure of her mission, advises the prince to enter the service of the merchant, who confides to him his most important affairs. One day, at the suggestion of the old woman, the prince, being anointed fresh from the bath, said to the merchant that he must perform a vow to Gaurī for the space of a month, and, beginning that day, requested the merchant to bring him every evening a young woman of good family, and she should be honoured by him in due form. Accordingly, the merchant, having brought a young woman of that description, presented her, and afterwards concealed himself to watch what he would do. The prince, without so much as touching the young lady, having done homage to her at a distance, with vestures, jewellery, perfumes, and sandal, dismissed her immediately in the care of a guard. On seeing this, the merchant became confident; and his mind being biassed by the lust of gain, he brought his own wife and presented her—the result, however, was very different from his expectations, and he was overwhelmed with grief.
VIII—The Fourth Master relates the story of
There was a certain wise and prudent knight who, in his old age, married a young and foolish wife. The lady, being dissatisfied with her spouse, fell in love with a priest. She told her mother of her lover, and the mother advised her to hold fast to the old knight; but if she was determined to do such a thing, she should first prove her husband. So the young wife caused the gardener to cut down a pear-tree, of which the knight was very fond, and lay it in the hall. When the husband discovers the tree, he inquires of her where it came from, and she tells him it was cut down by her orders in the garden. “Well,” says he, quietly, “now that it is hewn down it can't be helped.” The lady returns to her mother and relates how her husband was not angry at her cutting down his favourite tree. “Try him again,” says the mother; “you do not know what he thinks of the matter.” The foolish young wife next slays the knight's favourite hound, and tells him that she did so because it had lain on her dress. “Dame,” quoth he, “thou mightest have drawn thy clothes together, and let my dog live: slay no more, though he lie on thy clothes; if thou dost, I shall certainly be wroth.” Once more she repairs to her mother. “Old men,” says the mother, “will endure much wrong; but try him again.” Soon after this the knight has a noble company assembled at his house; and when all are seated at table, his wife fastens the keys suspended from her girdle to a corner of the cloth, and then suddenly rising, “drow doun coppys and dyschys ilkone,” making a sad mess of the clothes of the guests. At this the good knight was full wroth, and after the guests were gone, he led his wife into a chamber, where, with the help of his brother, he bled her in the arm,336 leaving only so much blood in her body as would keep in life, and then laid her down on a fair bed. When she recovered from her swoon, he gave her meat and drink, and said to her: “Dame, lie thou still. Thou shalt have meat and drink at will. But whenever thou waxest mad again, thou shalt be let blood.” “Mercy, my lord,” she cries, “and I will surely anger thee no more.” “If so,” says the wise and prudent old man, “then do I forgive thee thy three offences.”
Than wald scho no more
Lever of the clerkis lore,
For fere to be let bloode;
But heldir algat trew and good.
Keller, in his introduction to the Roman des Sept Sages, refers, among other parallels to this story, to the Fabliau De la femme qui voulut éprouver son Mari (Le Grand, iii, 177), and to Boccaccio's tale of Lidia and Pyrrhus (Decameron, Day vii, nov. 9). It also occurs in the Contes et joyeux devis of Bonaventure des Périers, and in the Contes, etc., of the Abbé Prévôt.
IX—The Queen relates the story of
In the city of Rome a pillar was set up by the enchanter Merlin, on the top of which was a mirror that shone over all the town, and gave the people warning of any approaching foreign invasion. Two clerks undertake to destroy this safeguard of the city, in order that the King of Apulia should march upon it unawares.
Virgilius is substituted for Merlin in some texts, and, in place of a mirror, two brazen images, which threw a golden ball to each other as a warning to the citizens that an enemy was advancing to attack the city.
Vincent of Beauvais, in the 13th century, describes Virgil's magical tower, which is also the subject of a chapter in the legendary history of Virgilius—see Mr. William J. Thoms' Early Prose Romances, vol. ii, pp. 20-22. This story, with some variations, is reproduced in the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni; it was very popular in Europe during the Middle Ages: numerous parallels are referred to in Keller's edition of the oldest German text of the Wise Masters—Einleitung, pp. 57-59.
X—The Fifth Master relates the story of
which is similar to the tale of the Merchant and his Parrot—pp. 31, 141, and 222.
XI—The Queen relates the story of
who had, by their magical arts, contrived to render the king blind whenever he went out of his palace, in order that they might increase their own wealth by defrauding him and the people. The child Merlin advises the king to put his seven evil counsellors to death, after which his sight would be restored; this the king does accordingly, and afterwards raises Merlin to the highest offices of state.—The tale is taken from the romance of Merlin.
Wright has remarked that this story is of Indian origin, and is found in several Eastern collection,s but he does not specify any of them.
XII—The Sixth Master relates the story of
There was a knight, a rich sheriff, who was doatingly fond of his wife. One day as he sat with her, and they jested together, a knife which he had in his hand chanced to wound her slightly, at which he was so much grieved that he died the next day. His widow, distracted with grief, vowed that nothing should part her from her husband, and so took up her abode beside his grave. At nightfall she made a good fire, for it was the cold winter tide, and she continued to weep and wring her hands, lamenting the loss of her loving spouse. Now near this place were the bodies of three thieves that had been hanged, and a certain knight had to watch that they were not stolen, as quitrent of his lands.
Than the knyght was both zong and bolde,
He was swith sore a-colde,
And at the chappel fyer he sawe light,
And rode thyderward ful ryght.
He dismounted from his steed and approached the fire, saying to the widow: “Dame, by thy leave I will warm myself.” The lady answered: “Yea, sir, welcome art thou, if thou thinkest no evil, but to sit and make thee warm.” This knight was without a wife, and he thought the lady would suit him very well, so he began forthwith to woo her, and her heart inclined towards him, for she saw he was a comely and a manly knight, and he soon won her love. After a while, the knight went to see whether the bodies of the three thieves were still on the gallows, when, behold, one of them was stolen; so he returned to the widow, and told her that in consequence of this he should lose his lands and heritage.
Sire, quod the lady, tho [then],
There-fore he nought wo,
Ne make thou dole there-fore,
Ne schal nouzt thy lond be lore.
To thys berial we wyl goone,
And dyggyn uppe the cors anone,
And hangye hym in his stede,
As fayer as the othyr dyde.
“But,” says the knight, “the thief had a great wound on his head, and if your husband's body were examined and found without such a wound, still should I lose my lands.” “Let not that trouble thee,” quoth she; “thou hast both sword and dagger: with either of them do thou give him such a wound as the thief had.” “Assuredly,” answers the knight, “I could never smite a dead man.” Then the lady drew a knife from her sheath, “that was keen and sharply ground,” and wounded the head of her husband, and putting up the knife, she said, “Now, sir, shall we be gone?” But the knight recollects that the thief had lost two of his front teeth, and the lady, without hesitation,
In hyr hond scho took a stoon,
And knockyd out twa teeth anoon!
She then advises the knight to hang her husband's body on the gallows, before day begins to dawn, which is done accordingly.
In the Septem Sapientum, and some other versions, the knight, after these proofs of the widow's affection for her dead husband, sternly upbraids her, saying that her husband had loved her so much that he died because he had inadvertently shed a little of her blood, but she had not scrupled to mutilate his body: he would therefore have nothing further to do with such a wanton— a more appropriate conclusion of the story, the sole object of the relator being to illustrate the levity and heartlessness of women.
This tale is identical with the episode of the Widow of Ephesus in Petronius Arbiter, which Dunlop had little doubt was originally a Milesian or Sybarite fable. However this may be, it is found in the Talmud, forming one of the supplementary paragraphs which are scattered through the Mishna and Gemara (see Hershon's Talmudic Miscellany, p. 28). It also occurs in the Cento Novelle Antiche (nov. 56), the author of which may have taken it either from the Liber de Septem Sapientibus or from the Fabliau De la Femme qui se fist Putain sur la fosse de son Mari. For many other parallels see Keller's Roman des Sept Sages, Einleitung, clix-clxvii.
Davis, in his work on the Chinese (ch. xiv), relates a somewhat similar story, which he thought was the original of the tale of The Nose in Voltaire's Zadig: A philosopher observed a widow fanning the earth over her husband's grave, and, inquiring the reason for such a strange proceeding, was informed by the sorrowing lady that she had promised her dying husband not to marry again before the earth on his grave was perfectly dry: “And now, as it occurred to me that the surface of this ground, which has been newly tempered, would not very soon dry, I thought I would just fan it a little.” The philosopher approved of her plan, and obtained her fan as a souvenir. Returning home, he told his wife of this adventure, and showed her the fan, which she snatched from him and tore into shreds, declaring the woman to be a heartless hussy;—for her own part, were he to die, she should never marry again. Shortly after this the philosopher was taken suddenly ill, and died. The lady was inconsolable. Preparations were made for the funeral; friends and acquaintances assembled, amongst whom was a young and very handsome student, attended by his servant. He informs the lady that he had purposed becoming a disciple of the late philosopher, and had come to attend his obsequies. The widow falls in love with him, and conveys this to him through his old servant. After several objections which the student raised had been removed by the amorous widow, he consents to marry her, but suddenly falls into convulsions. His servant tells her the only remedy is the brain of a man, recently dead, dissolved in wine. Quoth the lady, readily: “My husband has been dead only a few days; open his coffin, and take the remedy from thence.” The coffin was immediately opened, when, to the consternation of the widow, the philosopher rose up, for he had only been pretending to be dead, and had created all the scene by magical arts.—In Voltaire's story, a lady had vowed not to marry a second husband so long as the rivulet continued to flow past the grave of her lately deceased spouse, and was now busy contriving to turn its course in a different direction. Zadig's wife tells him of this, and professes disgust at such heartlessness. Zadig, not long after, pretends to have died suddenly; his intimate friend visits the sorrowing widow, makes love to her, falls suddenly ill—the nose of a dead man applied to the part affected is the only cure; so the lady immediately takes a sharp knife, and repairs to her husband's tomb, intending to cut off his nose, but Zadig arises, and scoffs at his wife for her hollow professions of affection.
Our old English jest-books abound in satirical tales of “widows' tears, which shrink, like Arno, in the summer.” The tenth jest in Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres, a collection of facetiæ which has been more than once cited in these notes, is as follows:
“There was a yonge woman, the whiche for her husbande, that laye a dyenge, sorowed oute of all measure, wherfore her father came often to her and sayde: daughter, leaue your mourn-inge; for I haue prouyded for you an other husbande, a farre more goodly man. But she did not onely continue in her sorowe, but also was greatly displeased, that her father made any motion to her of an other husbande. As sone as she had buryed her husbande, and the soule mass was songe, and that they were at dyner, betwene sobbynge and wepynge she rowned [i.e. whispered] her father in the eare, and sayde: father, where is the same yonge man, that ye said shuld be min husband?— Lo, thus may ye se, that women sorowe ryght longe, after theyr husbandes be departed.”
Of the same class is the jest in A Hundred Mery Tales—the book referred to by Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing, when she says to Benedick: “Will you tell me who told you that I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales?”—of the woman who followed her fourth husband's bier and wept; not because of his death, as she told a gossip, but because she was not this time, as on former occasions, sure of a new husband; and another in the same collection, of the woman kneeling at the mass of requiem, while the corpse of her husband lay in the chapel, and a young man whispering “that he myght be her husbande,” she replied: “Syr, by my trowthe, I am sory that ye come so late, for I am sped all redy. For I was made sure yesterday to another man.”
XIII—The Queen's seventh and last story is of
The city of Rome was besieged by three Saracen knights, and its defence undertaken by seven wise men, one of whom (named Janus, or Genus, in some of the versions) devised a stratagem with a mirror, or two glittering swords, which caused the Saracens to decamp in mortal terror.
This stupid story is not found in the Liber de Septem Sapien-tibus , but occurs in the Roman des Sept Sages.
XIV—The Seventh Master now appears before the king, and, having predicted that on the following day the prince will recover his speech, relates the story of
A certain noble knight of Hungary dreamt of seeing a very beautiful lady, but knew her not; and it so happened that the lady whom he saw in his dream that same night dreamt also of him. Next day the knight of Hungary took horse and arms, and proceeded in quest of the lady. Three weeks and more did he ride, sorely sighing for his lady-love, till he came to a town, where was a fair castle, strongly fortified. He takes up his lodging at the inn, and, questioning mine host regarding the castle and its owner, he learns that it belongs to a lord who has a fair jewel of a wife, of whom he is so jealous that two years ago he built a strong tower at one end of the castle, in which he confines her, with one maiden as her companion; and he always carries the key of the tower, which is never opened save when he himself visits her. The knight had already seen the lady looking out of the tower window, and recognised her as the object of his dream. He goes on the following day to the castle, and offers his services to the old lord, who heartily bids him welcome; and the knight, being a good and valiant warrior, conquers all his enemies, so that the old man loved him fondly, and made him steward of his lands.
One day, when the steward chanced to be under the tower, the lady perceived him and recognised him as the same she had seen in her dream, and contrived to communicate with him by means of a rope made of rushes let down from the window. The knight now planned a crafty device by which he should enjoy the society of his lady-love unknown to her husband. He built a tower at some distance from the castle, and caused an underground passage to be made, leading direct from it to the lady's chamber. When all was completed, he visited the young wife, who gave him a ring as a keepsake, telling him, should her husband see it and appear suspicious, to bring it back to her at once. The old lord recognises his wife's ring on the steward's finger, “as he sat at meat,” and, after examining it, hastens to the tower; but the steward having reached the lady's chamber by the private way and restored the ring, on the husband demanding to see the ring, she at once produces it, to his great satisfaction.344 At length the lovers resolve to elope, and the lady counsels the steward to tell the old lord that, having slain a great man in his own country, he had been banished, and that his lady-love was coming to him with some tidings regarding his heritage. The old lord would, of course, ask to see the lady, and she herself would play her part. The knight accordingly tells his lord this story, and invites him to a banquet at his own tower. Before he arrives, his wife, dressed in the costume of the knight's country, has reached the banqueting hall by the secret passage, prepared to enact the part of the crafty knight's leman. The old lord, on seeing her, thinks she is remarkably like his own wife; but then he recollected the affair of the ring, and there might also be two women exactly alike. At this juncture the lady pretends to swoon, is taken out, and returns with all speed by the private way to her chamber, where, having changed her dress, she is found by her husband, whom she embraces with every token of affection. He was “blythe as bird on bough,” and remained with her all night. On the day following the crafty knight sends all his property on board a ship, and goes to take leave of the old lord, as he is to return at once, with his lady-love, to his own country. The knight and the old lord's wife—who has resumed the character of the supposititious lady of Hungary—are accompanied by the deceived husband “into the sea a mile or two, with mynstrelsy and many manner of melody,” and then he bids them farewell. On his return home, he proceeds, as usual, to the tower, and finds his bird has flown:
Than sayed he, walaway!
That ever was he man boren!
Than was all hys myrthe lorne.
He lepe out of the tour anoon,
And than brake hys neke boon.
Wright says that this story appears to be taken from some Eastern collection, since a similar tale is found in Von Hammer's supplementary tales of the Thousand and One Nights.—Berni has adapted it, in the Orlando Innamorato—omitting the incidents of the two dreams: Folderico, the old knight who gained, by the artifice of the golden balls in the foot-race (see above, p. 323), the daughter of the King of the Distant Isles, shut her up in a tower where he kept his treasure, and Ordauro, the unsuccessful suitor, who is beloved by the lady, plays the part of the crafty Knight of Hungary.—Dunlop has pointed out that the tale of the Two Dreams corresponds exactly with the plot of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus; the Fabliau Le Chevalier a la Trappe (Le Grand, iii, 157); a tale in the fourth part of Massuccio; and the story Du Vieux Calender in Gueulette's Contes Tartares.
The notion of two young people simultaneously dreaming of each other, though total strangers, is essentially Oriental, and numerous instances might be cited from Asiatic fiction. In the Hindū romance of Vāsavadattā, by Subhandu (7th century), as analysed by Colebrooke in vol. x of the Asiatic Researches, Candaspacētu, a young and valiant prince, saw in a dream a beautiful maiden, of whom he became desperately enamoured. Impressed with the belief that a person such as seen by him in his dream had a real existence, he resolves to travel in search of her, and departs, attended only by his confidant Macaranda. While reposing under a tree in a forest at the foot of the Vindhya mountains, where they halted, Macaranda overhears two birds conversing; and from their discourse he learns that the Princess Vāsavadattā, having rejected all the suitors who had been assembled by the king her father for her to make choice of a husband, had seen Candaspacētu in a dream, in which she had even learnt his name. Her confidante Tamālika, sent by her in search of the prince, has arrived in the same forest, and is discovered there by Macaranda. She delivers the prince a letter from the princess, and conducts him to the king's palace. He obtains from the princess the avowal of her love, and her confidante reveals to him the violence of her passion. The subsequent adventures of the lovers have nothing in common with the exploits of the Knight of Hungary.—In another Indian romance (now known chiefly, if not solely, through the Persian translation) Prince Kāmarupa dreams of Kāmalata and she dreams of him, having never seen or heard of each other before.—In the 39th tale of the Tūtī Nāma (33rd of Kāderī's abridgment), an emperor of China dreams of a beautiful damsel, and being sorely smitten with love for the creature of his dreaming fancy, he can find no peace of mind. One of his vazīrs, who is an excellent portrait painter, receiving from the emperor a minute description of the lady's features, draws the face, and the emperor acknowledges the likeness to be very exact. The vazīr then goes abroad with the portrait, to see whether any one can recognise the original of it. In the course of his wanderings, he meets with an old ascetic, who at once recognises the portrait as that of the Princess of Rūm, who, he says, has an unconquerable aversion for men, ever since she beheld, in her garden, a peacock basely desert his mate and their young ones, when the tree on which their nest was built had been struck by lightning: she believed that all men were equally selfish, and was resolved never to marry. The vazīr returns to his royal master and recounts to him these interesting particulars regarding the object of his affection, and undertakes to conquer the aversion of the princess, which he does, by exhibiting before her a painting of a male deer sacrificing his life for the safety of his mate and their fawn.—The frame of the Persian Tales ascribed to a dervish of Ispahān seems to have been adapted from this story of the Tūtī Nāma, in which, as Gerrans has remarked, in the preface to his incomplete translation, the nurse “Sutlumene ransacks her invention to combat the obstinacy of the princess Farrukhnaz, who, from the impression of a dream, had formed as unfavourable an opinion of men as the Sultan of the Indies [in the Arabian Nights] had preconceived of women.”
Next day the Prince presents himself before his Majesty and relates the particulars of his stepmother's wickedness towards himself. And here in the Septem Sapientum and its derivatives is interpolated the incident referred to in note, pp. 286-7, of the discovery of the queen's paramour disguised as one of her female attendants: the prince requests that the queen be summoned, with all her maidens, and when the latter have been ranged in such order that every one of them could be distinctly seen, according to Rolland's old Scottish metrical version348 —
Than said the Childe: Father, lift up zour Ene,
Behald how lang that ze haue blindit bene
With zour Emprice that is zour Maryit quene,
And that zoung wenche that all is cled in grene,
Quhilk is bour Mayd348a unto zour awin Empres,
Quhome scho hes mair in fauour and kindnes,
Than euer scho had, I dar weill tak on me,
Sen thay first met than to zour Maiestie.
Quhome I desire, gif it plesit zour grace,
To be uncled348b befoir zow in this place.
That being done, richt weill ze sall persaue,
Sic ane bour Mayd, and sic Emprice ze haue.
To quhome answerit this Nobill Empreour:
Thou knawis, sone, it is not my honour,
It will be schame to me and to vs all,
Ane naikit Mayd befoir us for to call.
Than said the Chylde: ane Mayden gif scho be,
All the greit schame thairof beis laid on me;
Gif scho be not ane zoung Mayd as ze tell,
Than let all schame remane still with her sell.
The Empreour than commandit that be done:
The officers thay unbecled348c hir sone.
The clais of tane,348d it weill appeirit than
It was na Mayd, bot alwayis was a man.
XIV—The Prince then relates the story of
A knight and his son row over to an island where only a hermit lived. Three ravens are conversing together, and the father remarks to his son that it would be interesting to know what they were talking about. The youth, who understood the language of birds, replied that he could tell, but was afraid of giving offence to his father by the communication. Being assured that he might speak freely, the youth then said that the ravens had prophesied that he should become a great man, and that his father should one day hold a basin of water while he washed his hands, and his mother should wait upon him with a towel. Incensed at this, the father cast his son into the sea, but the lad, being able to swim, contrived to reach the shore, and was taken up by a fisherman, who sold him to the warden of a castle. In course of time, it happened that the king was much annoyed at being followed constantly whenever he went abroad by three ravens, who kept up a loud chattering as if in hot dispute. The king offered the hand of his daughter in marriage to any one who would explain the meaning of the three ravens always following him, and the youth, being introduced to his Majesty, explained that the ravens were two males and one female; that during a time of scarcity the female bird's mate had driven her away, and she had been fed and supported by the young male raven; but now the old male bird had returned to claim his mate, and the female would have none of him, but elected the young male that had befriended her in adversity for her mate. The king then ruled that the old male bird should depart and trouble the happy pair no more. On hearing this decision the birds flew away. After this the youth married the king's daughter, and ruled the kingdom jointly with his royal father-in-law. Years passed on, and the youth's father having fallen into poverty, he and his wife, for shame thereof, quitted their native country, and came to the land where their own son was become so eminent. He hears of this, and visits them, with a grand retinue, at their humble abode. The aged couple, not knowing him, of course, make haste to receive him with all reverence, and the father holding the basin of water, and the mother the towel, thus was the ravens' prophecy fulfilled. The youth then discovered himself, embraced his parents, and made them comfortable for the remainder of their lives.
In the Septem Sapientum and its derivatives, such as our old English prose and Rolland's Scottish metrical versions, this story is greatly amplified by the interpolation of a series of adventures which form the plot of the romance of Amis and Amiloun.—It is found in the Cento Novelle of Sansovino, (Day viii, nov. 4), and in the novels of Lope de Vega, El pronostico cumplido; and many other parallels exist in Asiatic and European fiction; for instance: in the Arabian tale of the Second Royal Mendicant; in the Bakhtyār Nāma, story of the King of Persia and his Son; in chapter 79 of the Anglican Gesta Romanorum; in the classical legend of Danae; in the Bāgh o Bahār, story of the Second Darvīsh; in Ralston's Tibetan Tales, story of the Fulfilled Prophecy; and in Syntipas, story of Destiny, or the Son of the Sage—pp. 280-282. This last, though undoubtedly of Eastern origin (as is evident from the incident of the youth breaking through the wall of the king's palace, the common practice of Asiatic thieves since the days of Job—xxiv, 26), may yet be considered as faithfully reflecting the universal belief in Europe during the Middle Ages, based upon such scripture texts as inculcate faith in an overruling Providence, directly controlling the destinies of every human being.
The prince having related the story of the Ravens, his stepmother acknowledged her wickedness, through the fiend's incitement, and she was put to death. And thus was the child's life saved, and the emperor rewarded the Seven Wise Masters who had told the tales against the vile traitoress the child's stepmother. The emperor remained a widower for the remainder of his life, for he durst no more deal with women, lest they should work further evil.
The following is a comparative table of the tales in (1) the two early English metrical versions of the Seven Sages, 13th and 14th centuries, edited by Weber and Wright; (2) the French metrical Roman des Sept Sages, about 1284, edited by Keller; (3) the Latin prose text, Liber de Septem Sapientibus, edited by Goedeke;351 and (4) the Latin prose version, Historia Septem Sapientum Romœ, Geneva, 1492, and its derivatives:
| SEVEN WISE MASTERS. | ROMAN DES SEPT SAGES. | LIBER DE VII SAP. | HIST. VII SAP. | |
| Ellis. Weber. Wright. | Keller. | Goedeke. | Copland, Rolland. | |
| Queen 1 | Tree and Branch | Id. | Id. | Id. |
| 1st Sage | Dog and Snake | Id. | Id. | Id. |
| Queen 2 | Wild Boar | Queen 3 | Id. | Id. |
| 2nd Sage | Hippocrates | Id. | Id. | 5th Sage |
| Queen 3 | King's Treasury | Queen 5 | Id. | Id. |
| 3rd Sage | Husband Shut Out | Id. | 4th Sage | 2nd Sage |
| Queen 4 | King and Seneschal | Queen 2 | Id. | Queen 6 |
| 4th Sage | Wise Old Man | Id. | 3rd Sage. | Id. |
| Queen 5 | Merlin's Pillar | Queen 7 | Id. | Id. |
| 5th Sage | Burgess and Magpie | Id. | Id. | 3rd Sage |
| Queen 6 | VII Evil Counsellors | Id. | Id. | Queen 4 |
| 6th Sage | Widow Comforted | Id. | Id. | 7th Sage |
| Queen 7 | Siege of Rome | Queen 4 | Queen 6 | |
| 7th Sage | Two Dreams | Id. | Queen 7 | |
| Prince | Ravens | Id. | Id. | Id. |
| Queen 7, Daughter | ||||
| 7th Sage, Stepmother | ||||
| 6th Sage, Three Lovers | ||||
It will be observed that our old English versions have the same stories that occur in the Sept Sages, though not all in the same order; while the Liber de Septem Sapientibus has, in place of the Siege of Rome and the Dreams, two tales which reappear in several other texts represented in Goedeke's comparative table, and are as follows:
There was a soldier, who, having a pet daughter, disdained to correct her in youth. At length she became pregnant by a shield-bearer; and the soldier, not daring to take vengeance upon him, beat his daughter almost to death. When recovered, in her father's absence, she fled to a distant land. At last she was followed by her father, and found in the house of a certain prince. When the daughter observed this, she approached the lady of the land and the prince in whose friendly abode she sojourned, and said, concerning her father, that he was a low character, who had followed her through various countries to corrupt her. Then the wretched father was taken and hung from a gibbet. Observing that her father was now dead, she secretly went off to her own country, where she continued her evil life.
There was a certain citizen, who had a son by his former wife. His stepmother hated him, and, that she might accomplish his destruction, she stole a golden vessel entrusted to the young man to keep, and concealed it in the straw bed in the youth's room. Some days after, the stepmother stirred up her husband to examine the bed in the young man's room. On this account, as well as on account of other misdeeds falsely alleged by the stepmother, the youth was drowned on a charge of attempted parricide. When the relatives of the drowned youth knew this, they slew the stepmother. The relatives of the stepmother slew the citizen, and thus son and stepmother and father died.
In the Historia a new story has been inserted, namely,
for which see above, pp. 288, 289, and, to make room for it, the tales of the King and his Seneschal and the Siege of Rome have been very clumsily joined together.
Wright says that the Latin Historia Septem Sapientum Romœ “appears to have been translated direct from the Hebrew (Mishlé Sandabar), and it served as the groundwork of all other mediæval versions.” It is surprising how he could make such an assertion, since he has given, in the same essay in which it occurs, an analysis of the Hebrew text of the Sindibād, from which the Historia differs as much as it does from all the other Eastern texts. It is true that four of the tales of the Historia—namely, the Dog and the Snake, the King and his Seneschal (first part of the Siege of Rome in this version), the Wild Boar, and the Burgess and his Magpie—are variants of tales belonging to the original Book of Sindibād, but they are also found in much earlier texts of the Wise Masters; and if it be conceded that the story of the Three Knights and the Lady is adapted from the Hebrew tale of the Hunchbacks (which is not at all probable—see p. 289; and observe that the Historia dates about the end of the 15th century), it is surely very slight ground on which to base the theory of the Hebrew version being the source of this Latin prose text. As to the Historia forming the groundwork of “all other mediæval versions,” the comparative table in p. 351 shows that precisely the contrary is the fact—that it was based upon mediæval versions. The cause of this mistake, in which Wright is far from being singular, can now be explained:
In the 13th century a French metrical version, entitled Dolo-pathos , was composed by a trouvère named Herbers, from a Latin work by a Cistercian monk, Johannes de Alta Silva. It was supposed by Des Longchamps and other investigators that the work of this monk was the Historia Septem Sapientum Romœ, and therefore that the variations occurring in Dolopathos were to be ascribed to Herbers. But Montaiglon, the editor of Dolo-pathos , among others, did not accept this view; he assumed two Latin sources: the Historia, by an unknown author, and the lost work of the monk of Alta Silva (Haute Seille). And Mus-saffia has rendered this last view certain; the work of Johannes de Alta Silva having been discovered by him, in 1864, in the Imperial Library at Vienna, and found to be quite different from the Historia, but to correspond exactly with the Dolopathos. Johannes dedicates his Opusculum de rege vel Septem Sapientibus to Bishop Bertrand of Metz. Now Haute Seille at its foundation, in 1140, was assigned to the see of Toul, and in 1184 was transferred from Toul to Metz. Bertrand occupied the see of Metz from 1179 to his death, in 1212; and as Johannes would naturally dedicate his work to his own bishop, it would fall between 1184 and 1212; and probably wishing to commend himself to the new bishop, who was a lover of study, when the cloister passed to Metz, he wrote his work.354
An Italian version, entitled Erasto, based upon current European texts, was printed, at Mantua, in 1558, of which a French translation, Histoire Pitoyable du Prince Erastus, was made in 1572. From the French it was rendered into English, under the title of History of Prince Erastus and the Seven Wise Masters of Rome, in 1674, by Francis Kirkman, a voluminous scribbler. This version comprises some tales which are not found in the earlier texts, but occur in the Italian novels and other collections.
The mediæval romance of the Seven Wise Masters must have been one of the most popular books in England during the 16th and 17th centuries; and even, among the common people, until comparatively recent times; judging from the numerous editions of the prose version which are preserved in our great libraries. The Latin Historia seems to have been translated into English, perhaps from a French rendering, in the beginning of the 16th century, and first printed by Wynkyn de Worde. A copy of this editio princeps in the British Museum commences thus:
Here begynneth thystorye of ye vii Wyse Maysters of rome conteynynge ryght fayre and ryght ioyous narracons and to ye reder ryght delectable;
and the colophon:
Thus endeth the treatyse of the seuen sages or wyse maysters of Rome. Emprented in flet strete in ye sygne of the sone by me Wynkyn de worde. [4to, black letter, 80 leaves, with several page woodcuts: circa 1505.]
According to Ellis, the Seven Wise Masters was “translated from the French into English, first printed by W. Copland, without date, but between 1548 and 1567.” It would appear, however, from the title of Copland's edition (only one copy of which was known to exist, and it disappeared many years ago; I do not know whether it has turned up again), that it was a reprint of Wynkyn de Worde:
Here beginneth thystorye of the seuen wyse Maysters of Rome con-teyning ryght faire and ryght ioyous narracios, and to the reder ryght delectable. [Col.] Thus endeth the treatyse of the seuen sages or wyse Maysters of Rome. Imprinted at London in Flete Strete at the sygne of the Rose Garland, by me William Copland. [8vo, black letter, circa 1550.]
The black letter copy in the Glasgow University Library, which I have made use of occasionally in the course of these notes, is supposed to be a reprint of Copland's edition, by Sanders, one of the early Glasgow printers, about the end of the 17th century. It has been well thumbed, and wants three leaves at the beginning, and probably one leaf at the end.
Besides the editio princeps of Wynkyn de Worde, there are copies of twelve other prose editions of the Seven Wise Masters in the British Museum, viz.—London, 1671, 8vo; 1684, 12mo; 1687, 8vo, B.L.; 1697, 8vo, B.L.; Glasgow (Robert Sanders, son of the printer above mentioned), 1713, 8vo; Newcastle, ? 1760, 12mo; London, ? 1780, 12mo; Boston, 1794, 12mo; London, ? 1750, 12mo; ? 1785, 12mo; ? 1805, 12mo; and Warrington, ? 1815, 12mo: the four last are chap-books. The Bodleian Library, Oxford, has two prose editions, 1653 and 1682; and a curious metrical version entitled: Sage and prudente Saynges of the Seuen wyse Men, by Robert Brenant, with a comment, London, 1553, small 8vo, black letter.—In 1575 was printed at Edinburgh John Rolland's Scottish metrical version, but it was written in 1560. There are imperfect copies of this work, dated 1620, in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and in the Glasgow University Library. It was reprinted (in black letter, 4to), with an Introduction by David Laing, for the Bannatyne Club, in 1835.
A wretched catchpenny imitation of the Wise Masters was published in 1663, under the title of The Seven Wise Mistresses of Rome, which was reprinted as a chap-book, within quite recent years, at Dublin.
*** HAVING furnished some account of the group of Western texts of the Seven Wise Masters, as they are fairly represented by our early English metrical versions, I now present, in conclusion, an abstract of another and very different text—moreover, the earliest form in which the romance appeared in Europe—entitled Dolopathos; sive, de Rege et Septem Sapien-tibus (the work of Johannes de Alta Silva, referred to in p. 354, above), edited by Professor Hermann Oesterley, and published at Strassburg, 1873; of which no description has hitherto appeared in English.357
THERE was formerly in Sicily a wise and just king, called Dolopathos. The Roman emperor Augustus having bestowed on him Agrippa, the sister of the empress, the result of their union was a son. Before his birth it was declared by “the diviners and mathematicians” that the child would be a son; that he would become a great philosopher, suffer many evils from snares laid for him, but rule in his father's place, and become a worshipper of the true God. The child was named Luscinius, and left seven years with the nurses, after which the task of his education was undertaken by Virgil. The great wisdom and learning of Luscinius caused him to be envied by those who could not equal him, and he was invited to a banquet where they designed to poison him. He went, accompanied by Virgil, and when the poisoned cup was presented, Luscinius at once declared its nature, and challenged his enemies to taste it. They knew they must now die of poison, or be accused by Virgil to Cæsar, and slain; so they drank the cup, and died.
Luscinius looks one day into the astronomical books, and suddenly falls senseless on the floor. By the aid of Virgil and others the prince recovers, and informs his tutor that he found from the astronomical rules that his mother had died, that his father had married again, and that ambassadors were then on the way to convey him home from Virgil;—these events had caused him sorrow, and he had swooned. Virgil comforts him, and induces him to promise that, after leaving him, he would speak to no one on the way home, or in his country, or to the king or the queen, or to the princes, or to any one until he again saw him (i.e. Virgil). The messengers arrive, and take Lusci-nius away with them. Discovering that he is dumb, they fear the king's wrath, but he keeps them from suicide by signs, and by writing that by-and-by he should recover the use of his tongue.
Meanwhile Dolopathos makes great preparations for the reception of his son, who at length arrives, and is greeted with loud strains of music, but it is not discovered that he is dumb. Next morning the king has a private interview with his son, whom he proposes to crown in his own stead, but the prince does not reply. The king is angry; Luscinius shows signs of affection, upon which the king rages against Virgil and the messengers. Luscinius writes that he is dumb through grief at his mother's death. The king's counsellors advise the use of music, the company of girls, wine, good food, pleasant objects, etc. The queen enters, and undertakes to carry out this plan. In the queen's apartments the immodest bearing of the damsels towards the prince failing to shake his constancy, the queen herself tempts him, with amorous gestures, but has finally to confess to her maidens that she has also failed, and they advocate revenge—propose to accuse him of attempting to violate the queen: “varium et semper mutabile femina!” So they scratch and disfigure themselves before Luscinius, tear their clothes, and the queen rushes with clamour into the king's council-room, and accuses the prince—her maids attest the truth of her complaint, and Dolopathos expresses his grief, sorrow, and anger.
Luscinius is brought forward, and is still dumb and unmoved. Sentence is demanded by the queen's relatives and friends. Dolopathos calls upon the assembled grandees to decide. At first they say that the laws do not provide for such a case, but being urged, they pronounce sentence of death by burning, which is ratified by Dolopathos. A great fire is accordingly kindled next day, but the people, captivated by the appearance of Luscinius, murmur at the severity of the sentence, and no one is willing to obey the king's command to throw Luscinius into the flames. Just then one of the Seven Wise Men, by chance, comes riding up on a white mule, and, ascertaining the cause of the great assemblage, remonstrates with the king on his credulity and injustice, and relates the story of