begins with an account of a fight which he witnessed in his garden between a white snake and a black snake, and seeing the former was about to succumb he slew the black snake. This incident also occurs in the Romance, when Hatim is returning from his second expedition, only the magnanimous hero does not kill—or even scotch—the black snake: he simply shouts, when it lets go its hold of the other and wriggles off. The white snake then becomes a handsome young man, and tells Hatim that he is the son of a king of the jinn, that the black snake is his father's slave, and bears a most deadly enmity towards himself, and so forth—an incident found in many Asiatic story-books. The Painter's subsequent experiences in the subaqueous palace of the king of the jinn do not occur in the romance, though the story is known to several collections, and, introduced by the incident of the two snakes, it is found, as follows, in Turkish Evening Entertainments, a translation,472 by J. P. Brown, of a Turkish story-book entitled 'Ajá'ib el-ma'ásir wa ghara'ib en-nawádir (Wonders of Remarkable Incidents and Rarities of Anecdote), by Ahmed ibn Hemden, the Ketkhoda, surnamed Suhaylí (i.e. Canopus), who composed it for Murád, the fourth Ottoman sultán, who reigned between A. D. 1623 and A. D. 1640:
In ancient times the sovereign of the country of Saba was a man called Yeshrah. One day, when this excellent prince was travelling, he came to an extensive plain where were two serpents resembling frightful dragons. One of these was white, the other black. They were entwined around each other in desperate conflict, and the white one had received a wound in a most tender part of its body. The black serpent being thus victorious, the strength of the white one was exhausted; it could move no more, and the black one wreaked its vengeance upon the helpless animal. King Yeshrah, touched with pity, went to the assistance of the white snake, and aided it in its conquered state. He placed a diamond-pointed arrow in his bow, and, taking aim at the black snake, he let fly and instantly killed it. The white snake, thus released, crawled away.
One day the king received a visit from a youth of a handsome exterior, who informed him that he belonged to the race of the jinn, and was the white serpent rescued by him. The youth then made proffers of service to the king, which he declined, upon which he offered the king his sister in marriage. The king, enchanted by her beauty, accepted her, and the marriage took place on the king undertaking to consent to everything which his wife did, were it good or evil. Soon after the birth of his first son, a dog approached the queen, who suddenly cast the child into the dog's mouth, and the dog ran away with it, to the king's great grief. Their next child, a girl, the queen cast into a brazier, where the infant was immediately consumed. The king was now exceedingly afflicted; but the birth of a second daughter, who was so delicately beautiful on account of her resembling the húrís of Paradise that she was called Bilkís, somewhat reconciled him to his loss. The king implored her not to treat this child as she had done the two others, for which she severely rebuked him.
Soon after this a powerful enemy attacked the king, and his own vazír, secretly allying himself with the enemy, poisoned the provisions designed for the king's army. The queen destroyed the provisions, at which the king in wrath demanded her reason. The queen explained the affair to her husband, and gave the remaining bread to an animal which fell dead after eating it. She then said that the king having broken the condition made on his marriage with her, all intercourse must now cease between them, and informed him that the son thrown to the dog was still alive, and had been brought up by a nurse in that form, and that the daughter was also in perfect health, nursed by the fire. Beseeching him to be mindful of their daughter Bilkís, who should succeed to the throne and become a great and illustrious queen, and promising to send to his succour an army of jinn-soldiers, she disappeared from the king's sight for ever. The troops of jinn came to his assistance as promised, routed the enemy's forces, and restored the king to his throne. But still he was afflicted by the loss of his wife. At length the fatal moment arrived, and he died; and his daughter Bilkís succeeded him on the throne, and her history has been written elsewhere in a detailed manner.
Thus, if we may place any credit in the foregoing story, the thrice-renowned Queen of Sheba was jinn-born: no wonder, therefore, if she was a miracle of beauty and wisdom! It does not appear, however, why her fairy-mother did not dispose of her soon after she was born, in the same extraordinary manner as she “made away” with her previous babes.—Regarding the notion that when a human being unites with one of a supernatural order there are certain conditions always imposed by the latter, the breaking of which must result in their separation, generally temporary, I take leave to refer the reader to my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. i, p. 212 ff.
In more or less different forms the same story is found in the following works: in Les Mille et un Jours, which purports to have been translated, by Petis de la Croix, from a Persian collection entitled Hazár ú Yek Rúz, the Thousand and one Days, by a darvesh named Mukhlis, of Isfahán, from whom M. Petis obtained a copy in 1675, where it is entitled “Histoire du Roi Ruzvanschad et de la Princesse Cheheristani,” but in this version the king's fairy-wife leaves him only for a time; in a Turkish story-book, entitled Al-Faráj ba'd al-Shiddah, Joy after Distress, a work written not later than the 15th century;474 and in a collection described by Dr. Chas. Rieu in his Catalogue of Persian MSS. in the British Museum, vol. ii, p. 759, Or. 237, which has no specific title, the compiler, whose poetical name was Hubbí, merely calling his work, Hikáyát-i 'Agíb ú Gharíb, Wonderful and Strange Tales. In this last work, the MS. of which is unfortunately imperfect, the final story, No. 34, relates how a king of Yaman, while hunting, saw two snakes, a white one and a black one, engaged in deadly combat. He sends an attendant to kill the black snake and rescue the white one, which was half dead; which being done, he causes the rescued snake to be laid down beside a spring of water, under the shade of a tree. The snake rallies, and after a while crawls away. When the king is asleep at night, the wall of his chamber suddenly opens and a fair youth appears. “I am,” says he, “the king of the parís (fairies). You rescued me from the black snake. I am now come to requite your kind act. If you wish it, I will make you rich with many treasures.” No more of the MS. remains,475 but it is not unlikely that the sequel was similar to that of the Turkish story cited above.
The battle between the two snakes, which is found so often reproduced in Arabian and Persian story-books—though I cannot recollect having met with it in any Indian collection—seems reflected in two incidents in the Voyage of Saint Brandan. One day the saint and his companions discover a monstrous sea-serpent on the surface of the water, exhaling fire from its nostrils, as it were the roaring flame of a furnace; and while the pious voyagers could not measure its length they were more successful with its breadth, which was “full fifteen feet, I trow”; presently a monster of the same species appears, and a terrific combat takes place between the two, until one is torn by his antagonist into three pieces, when the victor sinks down into the sea. After this they see a deadly conflict in the air between a griffin and a dragon.—It is well known to students of the history of popular fictions that many Eastern tales and incidents had found their way into Western literature long before the collection commonly but incorrectly called the Arabian Nights, in its existing form, was compiled.
Among the countless absurdities abounding in the Toldoth Jeshu, a scurrilous “life” of Jesus Christ of Jewish invention—the text of which, with a Latin translation, is given at the end of the second volume of Wagenseil's Tela Ignea Satana', 1681—is an aërial conflict between Jeshu and Rabbi Judas before Queen Helena: “And when Jeshu had spoken the incommunicable Name,476 there came a wind and raised him between heaven and earth. Thereupon Judas spake the same Name, and the wind raised him also between heaven and earth. And they flew, both of them, around in the regions of the air, and all who saw it marvelled. Judas then spake again the Name, and seized Jeshu and sought to cast him to the earth. But Jeshu also spake the Name, and sought to cast Judas down, and they strove one with the other.” Ultimately Judas prevails and casts Jeshu to the ground, and the elders seize him; his power leaves him; and he is subjected to the tauntings of his captors. Being rescued by his disciples, he hastened to the Jordan; and when he had washed therein his power returned, and with the Name he again wrought his former miracles.476a This “story”— to employ the term in its nursery sense—strongly resembles the equally apocryphal legend of the aërial contest at Rome between St. Peter and Simon Magus, in which the apostle overthrew the magician.
calls for but slight remark. The fairies who alighted in succession on the tree in the form of doves, and putting off their feather-dress appeared as the most beautiful damsels, belong, of course, to the Bird-Maiden class, and the Washerman, by his own showing, did not deserve to possess any one of them. Could he have decided—but perhaps the trial was too much for him—he might have secured even the last and most bewitching of the three, by taking possession of her feather-robe, when she would have no alternative but to follow him wheresoever he might go: but evidently he did not know this. (See the chapter on “Bird-Maidens” in my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. i. p. 182 ff.)
differs considerably from its representative in the Romance, the story of the blind man Hamír in the cage (ante p. 464 ff.); and it is also observable that in our story Hatim does nothing to mitigate the poor man's wretchedness. Both versions agree in treasure being found in a dwelling house; but in our story it is the geomancer who is the blind man, and his eyes are blinded in mistake by a vindictive neighbour of the friend whom he thought to entrap;—while in the other story it is the man in whose house the treasure was discovered who is blinded by the geomancer, in revenge of the ill-treatment he had received at his hands; and it is by the application of surma to his eyes, by means of which he expected to behold all the hidden treasure of the world, that he is deprived of sight. The analogous tale in our common version of the Arabian Nights, of the Blind Man Baba Abdullah (it has not yet been found in any Arabic text of the collection), is wholly different in all its details until it reaches the catastrophe, when the greedy cameleer, after getting back from the darvesh all his share of the treasure, returns to request the box of salve, which, after having had applied to his left eye and thereby been enabled to see all concealed treasure, he insists—in spite of the repeated warning of the darvesh—on being also applied to his right eye, whereupon he instantly becomes stone-blind. Widely as the three stories differ one from the other, in details, however, it is very evident, I think, that they have been independently adapted from a common source.
The very climax of absurdity is surely reached by the author of our version of the story of Hatim when he represents the benevolent Lady as saying (p. 50) that she is so jealous of the wide-spread fame of Hatim for liberality that she wishes him to be killed; and when, on his return, she reproaches him for not having brought her Hatim's head, he replies that he is himself Hatim and that his head is at her disposal, whereupon the lady, struck with such magnanimity, at once consents to marry him.
According to tradition, an enemy of Hatim despatched one of his officers to slay him and bring his head. When he reached the encampments of the tribe of Ta'í, he was courteously greeted by an Arab, and invited into his tent, where he was treated most hospitably; and in the morning he told his host that he had been sent thither by his master to slay Hatim and bring back his head. The host smilingly replied: “I am Hatim; and if my head will gratify your master, smite it off without delay.” The man hastened away in confusion; and returning to his master told him of his adventure, and the enemy of Hatim ever afterwards loved and esteemed him. — This seems to be the tradition adapted so incongruously by our author.
The idea of our tale of Hatim and the Benevolent Lady may have been partly taken from the Story of the Third Darvesh in the Persian work, Kissa-i Chehár Darvesh (Romance of the Four Darveshes), an anonymous book, of uncertain date,478 where the narrator, a Persian prince, tells how he tried to imitate the generosity of Hatim, by causing a great palace to be erected with four gates, at each of which he distributed gold and silver to all comers. One day a wandering darvesh receives money at each of the gates in succession, and then begins to beg again at the first gate, upon which the prince upbraids him for his greediness, and the darvesh retorts, as in our story, that there is a lady to whose liberality there is absolutely no bound. The prince learns that this generous lady is the princess of Basra, and donning the robe of a darvesh he sets out for that city, where he is sumptuously entertained for several days by the servants of the princess, after which he writes her a letter, declaring his rank and offering her marriage. He is told that the princess has resolved to marry only him who should bring her the explanation of the singular conduct of a youth in the city of Namrúz who appeared once a month riding on a bull, carrying a vase of gold and jewels in his hand, which he smashed in the market-place, and then smote off the head of one of his slaves, immediately afterwards riding away again, foaming at the mouth. The royal mendicant undertakes to ascertain the cause of the youth's madness (he proves to be in love with a fairy, like the Painter in our tale), and before setting out for Namrúz is admitted into the private chamber of the princess, who is concealed behind a curtain, where a slave-girl relates the history of her mistress: how she was one of seven daughters of a king, and was driven out of the palace because she would not acknowledge that she derived her good fortune from her father, but maintained that it was from God. In the wilderness she meets a darvesh, and discovers underground immense treasures, and so forth.— This story of the princess of Basra is one of the numerous parallels or analogous tales cited by my friend Mr. E. Sidney Hartland in a very able and interesting paper on the “Outcast Child” cycle, in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1886, vol. iv, p. 308 ff.
THE latter part of this tale — where the merchant Sadullah befriends the imprudent prince, bestows his own wife on him, afterwards becomes ruined in fortune, and visits the now prosperous sovereign, on whom he had lavished such favours (pp. 89-97)—has long been current in Europe as well as in the East, in various forms. It occurs in the collection of Persian Tales translated into French by Petis de la Croix, under the title of Les Mille et un Jours (first published in 1710-12, 5 vols.), where it is entitled: “Histoire de Nasiraddole, roi de Mousel; d'Abderrahmane, marchand de Baghdad; et de la belle Zeineb,” and it is to the following effect:
A rich young merchant named Abd er-Rahman, meets with a stranger in a confectioner's shop in Baghdád, and the two soon become very intimate friends. After some time the stranger informs the merchant that he must now return to Mosul. The merchant says that he himself may soon have to visit that town, and begs to know his friend's name, so that he may be able to inquire for him there. The stranger bids him to come and see him at the palace. Abd er-Rahman goes to Mosul on business and discovers that the stranger is no less a personage than King Nasír ad-Dole, who is delighted to see him and entertains him in the palace for a whole year, after which he returns to Baghdád, the king parting with him very reluctantly. Arrived in Baghdád, the merchant regales his friends and acquaintances in the most sumptuous manner, and purchases a number of slave-girls, with one of whom, a Circassian beauty called Zaynib, he becomes greatly enamoured. The king of Mosul comes again to Baghdád, without attendants, and is the honoured and cherished guest of his friend the merchant Abd er-Rahman. One day the king boasts of some beautiful slave-girls in his haram in Mosul, when the merchant, inflamed with wine, leads the king into an inner apartment, magnificently furnished, where are seated thirty lovely damsels, adorned profusely with the rarest diamonds. The king is perfectly amazed on beholding the peerless beauty of Zaynib, and on the following day, in a melancholy tone, informs his friend that he intends returning at once to Mosúl. “Has your majesty aught to complain of, that you have formed this sudden resolution?” the merchant inquired anxiously. “All my complaint,” replied the king, “is of my destiny”; but when he is about to depart his friend learns from him that he is desperately in love with the fair Zaynib, and then the king takes his leave and sets out for Mosul. Abd er-Rahman then reflects that he should not have shown Zaynib to the king, who must now lead a sorrowful life. At length he resolves to send the damsel to his royal friend, and, having ordered her litter to be prepared, sends for Zaynib and tells her that she does not now belong to him, but to the king of Mosul, whom she saw yesterday;—“he is in love with you, and is himself lovely.” Zaynib bursts into tears and exclaims: “Ah, you no longer love me—some other damsel has taken your heart from me!” “Not so,” says he. “I swear that I have never loved you so much as I do at this moment.” “Why, then, do you part with me?” “Because I cannot bear the thought of my friend's sorrow.” So a number of attendants are sent with Zaynib to Mosul, but the king had arrived there before them. When she is ushered into the palace, the king perceives that she is sorrowful, and that his presence is distasteful to her—evidently she cannot forget the merchant.
Meanwhile Abd er-Rahman falls into a languishing condition, and one day the grand vazír sends officers to apprehend him on a trumped-up charge of having spoken disrespectfully of the Khalíf in his cups, made by two envious courtiers, his enemies. The merchant's house is razed, his wealth is confiscated, and he is to be put to death the next day. But the gaoler, whom the merchant had formerly befriended, takes pity on him and secretly sets him at liberty. When the vazír learns of this he sends for the gaoler and tells him that if the merchant is not re-captured in the course of twenty-four hours he will certainly suffer in his place. The gaoler answers that he believes the merchant to be innocent of the crime charged against him. In the meantime Abd er-Rahman is concealed in a friend's house and the police are scouring the country in search of him, and during their absence from the city he escapes and takes the road to Mosul. When he enters the palace there, the king simply orders his treasurer to give him two hundred gold sequins. The poor merchant is surprised that the king should bestow such a paltry sum on him, after the sacrifice he had made by presenting the fair Zaynib to his majesty. He takes the money, however, and tries all means of increasing it by trade. At the end of six months he returns to the king and informs him that he has lost fifty of the two hundred sequins by his unfortunate speculations. The king bids his treasurer give him fifty more sequins, again to the surprise of the merchant, who departs once more on a trading expedition, but this time he gains a hundred sequins and returning to Mosul he acquaints the king of his success. “Misfortunes are contagious,” said the king. “I had heard of your disgrace and dared not receive you into my palace again, fearing that your ill luck should affect me and put it out of my power to assist you when your star should look more favourably on you. But now you shall live with me.” Next day the king tells the merchant that he purposes giving him a good wife. “Alas,” says he, “I cannot think of any woman after my beloved Zaynib.” But the king insists, and that same night the merchant is agreeably surprised to find that the wife given him by his royal friend is none other than Zaynib, whom the king has all along regarded as a sister. Not long after this Abd er-Rahman learns that one of his accusers has confessed, and he goes to Baghdád and recovers part of his wealth, and passes the rest of his life at the court of Mosul.482
In another form the tale of the Two Friends is found in the Disciplina Clericalis of Peter Alphonsus, a Spanish Jew, of the twelfth century, whence it was probably taken into the Gesta Romanorum, the celebrated mediæval monkish collection of “spiritualised” stories for the use of preachers (page 196 of Herrtage's edition, published by the Early English Text Society). It is also found in Boccaccio's Decameron (Day x, novelle 8); and Lydgate, the monk of Bury, of the fifteenth century, turned it into verse under the title of “Fabula duorum mercatorum,” beginning:
“In Egipt whilom as I rede and fynde”
(Harleian MS. 2251, If. 56, preserved in the British Museum); and it forms one of the Fabliaux in Le Grand's collection, of which this is a translation:
Two merchants had been for a long time connected in business. They had never seen each other, one residing at Baldak [Baghdád?] and the other in Egypt; notwithstanding which, from their long correspondence and mutual services, they entertained a reciprocal esteem and friendship as if they had passed their lives together. The Syrian merchant at last became very desirous to have an interview with his correspondent, and set out on his journey with that intention, after having apprised his friend of it. The Egyptian rejoiced heartily at the news, and on his friend's approach went out several leagues to meet him. On his arrival he lodged the Syrian in his own house, and, making a display of his riches and all that he possessed, told him that everything was at his disposal. In order to amuse his guest, he invited several persons successively to his table. For a week together there was nothing but feasting and pleasure; but in the midst of their enjoyment the traveller was so struck with the beauty of a lady who had one day been present that he fell dangerously ill. Immediately all the best physicians of the country were sent for. At first, neither by his pulse nor by any other symptom could they discover the nature of the merchant's disorder; but at length by his profound melancholy they conjectured that love was the cause. The Egyptian on hearing this conjured him to disclose his secret, that the remedy might if possible be found. His guest, thus called upon and pressed to declare it, acknowledged that he was in love and that without possession of the object of his affection he could not endure life. “But where to find her I know not. I am wholly unacquainted with her name and abode. My eyes beheld her once, to my great misfortune, but day and night her image is present and without her I shall certainly die.” He then fainted away. For several hours he continued in this trance, and was even thought dead. Awaking at length, he cast his eyes about the room to discover the object of his passion, but in vain. She was not among the persons present. His friend at last, in order to obtain for him, if possible, a sight of his beloved, thought of bringing successively to his bedside all the ladies who had been invited to the feasts, or whom he could have seen since his arrival in the country. But she was not of the number. Ultimately the people of the house recollected that there was in an inner chamber a young lady whom the Egyptian merchant loved to distraction, and had brought up with the greatest care, intending her soon to be his wife. She was by his desire introduced. Instantly on seeing her the Syrian exclaimed: “That is she to whom I am to owe either my life or my death!” The Egyptian merchant demurred for some time; but, with a heroic resolution sacrificing his passion to his friendship, he presented the lady to his guest. He not only consented to their union but even insisted on giving her a marriage portion. He made her presents of rich stuffs and money, and himself took charge of the nuptials, to which he did not fail to invite minstrels, who sang pantomimic songs and enlivened the feast with all manner of gaiety.
When all these carousals were ended the merchant proceeded to take leave of his generous host and to return into his own country. His friends on his arrival pressed forward to congratulate him. There was a fresh celebration of the nuptials with rejoicings which lasted for a fortnight, after which the merchant and his spouse lived happily together. But in the meantime sad misfortunes occurred to the Egyptian merchant: he met with such losses that he was entirely ruined. In this deplorable situation he thought of having recourse to his friend at Baldak, and determined to visit him there, reckoning on his gratitude for the eminent services which he had rendered him. He was obliged to make this long journey on foot and to suffer both hunger and thirst, to endure both heat and cold, extremes of misery to which he had hitherto been unaccustomed. At length after much fatigue he arrived about nightfall at Baldak. But at the moment when he was about to enter the city the state of wretchedness in which he was excited in him a feeling of shame at proceeding farther. He thought that if he presented himself in the dark to his friend in that miserable state he would not recollect him, and therefore he judged it better to wait till morning. With this intention he entered a temple which was hard by. No sooner did he find himself in this dismal, lonely place than a multitude of melancholy ideas assailed him. “Good God!” cried he, “to what a wretched condition has thy will reduced me! Alas, my former affluence renders it still more miserable. I had all that I could desire, and now I find myself an outcast, without property and without friends! Surely in such circumstances death is preferable to existence.” While he was speaking thus to himself he suddenly heard a great noise in the temple. A murderer had taken flight thither and some of the citizens were following to seize him. They asked the Egyptian whether he had seen the assassin. He, who wished to die and thus terminate at once his shame and his sufferings, declared himself the guilty person. He was instantly seized, bound, and thrown into prison. The next day he was brought before the judge and being convicted was condemned to the gallows. When the time for the execution arrived a great number of people flocked to the place, and amongst them the friend whose life he had saved and in quest of whom he had left his native country. He had not forgotten the obligation, and luckily he recognised his friend. But what could he do at this juncture to save his life? He could think only of one method, and that was to devote himself for his friend. Having taken this sudden resolution, he exclaimed: “Good people, take care what you are about, and do not be guilty of the sin of punishing an innocent man. It was I who committed the murder.” This declaration astonished the assembly. The execution was suspended, the merchant was arrested, and they began to unloose the stranger. But the real assassin happened to be there, and when he saw them binding the merchant he was seized with remorse. “What!” cried he to himself, “shall this honest man die for my crimes whilst I escape? I cannot escape the vengeance of God! No! I will not charge my conscience with a second offence, but will rather expiate my crime by suffering here than subject myself to the indignation of the Deity, who can punish for ever.” He then made a full confession and was rought before the judges, who, being puzzled at this extraordinary case, referred it to the king, who, no less perplexed than they, sent for the three prisoners, and promising them pardon if they would declare the truth, interrogated them himself. Each then recounted with fidelity what had happened, and the consequence was that they were all three pardoned and discharged. The Syrian went home with his friend, whom he in his turn had had the good fortune to save. He ordered some refreshments to be served up to him, and said: “If you choose to reside here, my friend, I call God to witness that you shall never be in want of anything, but shall be as much master as myself of all I possess. If you prefer returning to your own country, I offer you the half of my wealth, or whatever part you may please to take of it.” The Egyptian declared his desire was rather to return home, and he departed, charged with presents.
Under the title of the “Mirror of Friends,” the Spanish novelist Matias de los Reyes (1634) relates this favourite story, varying the incidents of the fabliau version as above, and with a tragical catastrophe. This is an abstract of Reyes' tale, following Roscoe's translation, in his Spanish Novelists, ed. 1832, pp. 17-39:
A young man487 is placed at the university of Bologna, under the guardianship of a friend of his father, named Federico, whose son Lisardo and he at once become most intimate friends. There was so close a resemblance between the two youths in person and features that one was often mistaken for the other. Four years after entering the university, he falls in love with a pretty girl whom he saw seated at a balcony—it is not said how he got introduced to her—and she returns his affection, but insists on their engagement being kept a profound secret. Shortly after this, the father of Laura — such was the sweet name of our youth's secret fiancée—proposes that she should marry Lisardo, to which his father Federico most willingly consents, as the young lady's family are of high station and very wealthy. This comes like a thunder-clap upon our poor love-sick youth, but he cannot get himself to confess to Lisardo his devoted attachment to Laura. As the time draws near for the marriage he falls dangerously ill—“sick of love”; and if his friend tried to “stay him with flagons and comfort him with apples,” he did so in vain—albeit we have high authority for the efficacy of such remedies. At length Lisardo comes to him one day, and insists upon knowing the secret cause of his illness and melancholy, otherwise their friendship must be at an end. He then confesses his love for Laura and their private betrothal. Lisardo reproaches him for not having told him of this before, since he would willingly sacrifice his life for his friend; but even now he will contrive means whereby his friend should be united to the young lady instead of himself.
On the morning of the marriage-day Lisardo makes his friend dress himself in his wedding-garments, and, as they were so like each other, none present at the ceremony suspected but that it was Lisardo who led the bride to the altar. Next day, at an early hour, the bridegroom goes into Lisardo's room and receives his hearty congratulations; but now comes the question of how to disclose the affair to Lisardo's father. After some discussion they go to Federico and confess the deception that had been practised. At first he is very angry but at length consents to explain everything to Laura's father, which he does accordingly, at the same time stating that the match is quite as good as was intended, and this is ere long confirmed by the receipt of documents from our youth's father conveying property and money to him. Soon afterwards the loving couple set out for the husband's home.
Two years pass away, during which Lisardo has not once communicated with his friend, who now goes to Bologna to ascertain how he fares. He finds that Lisardo's father is dead and himself gone no one knows where. Then he visits all the chief towns and ports of Italy in quest of him, but without success. Entering Naples for the second time, he perceives a large concourse of people in the great square, where there is a scaffold erected, on which he sees a youth with his arms pinioned, and the executioner, sword in hand, by his side. He recognises in the unhappy young man his friend Lisardo, and, breaking through the crowd, rushes on to the scaffold, exclaiming: “This man is innocent—I am the guilty one!” When the tumult caused by this singular scene is somewhat allayed, the chief magistrate orders both to be taken to prison in the meantime, and, as a favour, they are both placed in the same cell. Lisardo reproaches his friend for casting away his life, and he innocent of any crime, but his friend replies that he is convinced that Lisardo is equally innocent, for which Lisardo expresses his gratitude and then proceeds to tell his story. His father died worth little money, although he had a reputation of being very rich, and with a few jewels Lisardo departed from Bologna. As he journeyed he was attacked by a band of robbers, who plundered him and even stripped off his clothes. A humane cottager gave him a ragged coat, and he wandered on, not knowing or caring whither he went. He thought of his friend, but was ashamed to be seen by him in such a plight. After being sick for six months in a public hospital, he resumed his wanderings, and one night took shelter in a cavern. In the morning he was rudely awakened by some peasants, who pointed to the dead body of a man that lay in the cavern, and accused him of the murder. Presently the police came and led him off to prison. At his trial he said nothing in his own defence—for he was weary of life—and he was duly condemned to death. Having heard this sad story, his friend is now more than ever determined to save him by the sacrifice of his own life. But while they are still conversing the cell door is thrown open, and the prison officials inform them that the real murderers of the man have just been captured in a gang of desperadoes, who were discovered to be the same that had robbed Lisardo, his jewels having been found in their possession. The reaction produced by this sudden intelligence proves too much for Lis-ardo's shattered frame; and, confessing to his friend that he had from the first loved and had never ceased to love the beauteous Laura, his devoted spirit took its flight from this earth, leaving his friend for ever disconsolate: “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me!”
WAS there ever, I wonder, another Shoayb besides the hapless fellow of this story? Not only did good fortune actually run after him and he all the while flee from it, as if the pestilence were behind him, but his very presence anywhere was the cause of manifold disasters! If there be not, however, amidst the multitude of the world's folk-tales an exact parallel to the Story of Shoayb, there is one near akin to it, from Western India, related by M. Putlibai D. H. Wadia, in the Indian Antiquary, 1886, p. 221, as follows:
Once upon a time there lived in a certain country a merchant, who was formerly very prosperous, but having suffered great losses in trade, he came to be in such poor circumstances that starvation stared him in the face. As the king of the country knew him well, his wife advised him to go to court, feeling sure that the king would do something for him. The merchant, however, felt reluctant to go to the king as a suitor, but after suffering great privations for a long time, when he saw that there was nothing left for his family but starvation, he made up his mind to follow his wife's advice, and one morning presented himself at the court, which he found crowded with many persons, who had come there on the same errand as himself. This sight rather unnerved him, and he devoutly hoped the king would not recognise him. When his turn came, however, to be ushered into the royal presence, the king recognised him at once, and asked him what he could do for him. The merchant with great hesitation related his case, and the king, being a very thoughtful man, feared that he would hurt the dignity of one so respectable as the merchant if he gave him pecuniary assistance before so many people. So he requested him to wait till all had left the court, and then going into his private apartments he ordered a water-melon to be brought to him, in which he made a hole, and pouring out its contents, he filled it with gold coins. Then summoning the merchant before him, he gave him the melon and said: “Take this to your family, it is a refreshing fruit, and you will all enjoy it this hot day.” The merchant thanked the king and returned homeward very much grieved at receiving only a water-melon when he expected something more substantial. As he was walking along on his way home, he met two travellers, who were very thirsty and looked wistfully at the melon he was carrying, and, being of a very generous disposition and thinking that they needed the melon more than he did, he gave it to them and walked quickly home empty-handed.
After passing many months of privation and misery, he was persuaded by his wife to go to the king a second time, in the hope of better luck. The king was, however, much surprised at the merchant's paying him a second visit so soon after the first; but when he heard that he was as poor as before, he thought he had invested in trade the money he had given him and lost it. He therefore filled a water-melon once more with gold coins and presented it to him. The merchant was again disappointed at being sent away with such a trifle, but he nevertheless made his obeisance to the king and returned homewards. This time, however, he resolved not to part with the fruit, knowing that it would be welcome to his starving children. He had not gone very far, however, when he met a beggar who asked alms of him, saying that he was very hungry. The merchant could not resist this appeal, and, having no money, gave the melon to the beggar.
When he reached home his wife was sorely vexed at his bad luck, and wondered very much why the king, who was reputed to be very charitable, should treat her husband so shabbily as to send him away with a melon every time he went into his presence. Being, however, of a persevering nature, she once more persuaded him to go to court and ask the king for help. He accordingly went there and stood in presence of the king as before. But this time the king first asked him to explain what use he had made of the two water-melons he had given him. The merchant related how he had given the first to two travellers who were very thirsty, and the second to a hungry beggar who asked him for alms. The king laughed at the merchant for what he considered his folly, and told him what the two melons contained. He then filled another water-melon with jewels in the merchant's presence, and gave it to him, admonishing him to be very careful of it. The merchant went away rejoicing, full of hope that the contents of the fruit would enable him to start in life anew. Now it happened that as his house was situated on the other side of the river which passed through the town he had to cross it, and in doing so his foot slipped and the fruit fell into the water and was carried away by the flood. The poor merchant wept over this misfortune, and returned home, cursing his evil star.
He was now fully persuaded that it was the will of Iswara492 that he should remain poor; and, thinking it useless, therefore, to struggle against Destiny, he resolved never to ask anybody for help again, but to live as best he could till it should please Iswara that he should see better days.
To the same class, also, belongs No. 104 of the selection of monkish Latin Stories edited by Thomas Wright for the Percy Society, of which this is a translation:
There were two blind men in the Roman state. One of them daily cried through the town: “He is well helped whom the Lord wills to help.” The other exclaimed: “He is well helped whom the emperor wills to help.” When they had said this very often, daily, and the emperor had frequently heard it, he caused a cake to be made and many talents to be put into it, and ordered this cake filled with talents to be given to the blind man [who said that he was well helped whom the emperor helped]. Having received it, and feeling the cake heavy, and meeting the other blind man, he sold him the cake for his children. He who bought the cake, coming home and breaking it, finding it full of money, gave thanks to God, and for the rest of his life ceased to beg. But the other continued to be as formerly, and the emperor called him, and said to him: “Where is the cake which I ordered to be given you yesterday?” He replied: “I sold it for a trifle to my companion, because I thought it was raw.” “Truly,” said the emperor, “he is well helped whom God helps!” And he turned away and refused to aid the blind beggar.
A similar story is told by Gower in his Confessio Amantis, Book v, only here the emperor causes two pasties to be made, into one of which he puts some florins and into the other a capon, and the beggars exchange pasties. Another analogue is found in Past Days in India (London: 1874), pp. 169-171, where two fakírs (Hindú religious mendicants) are among the crowd at a grand royal festival, one of whom, to flatter the king, bawls out: “Kings have all sublunary power, and they give to whom they please; what, then, can the Ruler of Destiny do?” The other, an honest fellow, rebuked him, saying: “When the Ruler of Destiny gives, what can the greatest king do?” With limes in place of pasties, the result is the same as in Gower's story.493
THIS most entertaining little romance, which all readers would wish longer, may be considered as exemplifying—if we can allow ourselves to suppose such strange occurrences to be possible—the adage that “it is better to be born lucky than rich.” Unlike most heroes of romance, the troubles of Farrukh-rúz are comparatively few and of very brief duration; and even while he is in tribulation we feel confident that he will presently emerge from it, being so evidently a favourite of Fortune. Several of the incidents in the tale are peculiarly interesting to comparative “storiologists.”
The diabolical treatment of Farrukhrúz by his two brothers was probably adapted from the tale of “The Witch Shamsah and Táhir of Basra,” which occurs in the Turkish story-book, Al- Faraj ba'd al-Shiddah, and of which the following is the outline:
One day three jewels were brought to Harún er-Rashíd, who greatly admired them, but his vazír, Fazl bin Rabí', told him that a merchant of Basra, called Táhir the dog-worshipper, possessed much finer ones. Táhir is sent for, exhibits his thirty unequalled jewels, protests that he is a good Mussulman, but admits that he has two dogs well cared for, and then proceeds to relate his history: His father 'Asim had left a wealthy estate to him and his two brothers, who soon squander their shares and become destitute. He has pity for them and takes them with him on a trading voyage. While he slept on deck, they threw him overboard. He escapes on a plank and is cast ashore on the island of Gang, where he finds his two brothers. They trump up a charge against him before the king, to whom they had made a present of his favourite slave-girl, and he is thrown into a dark pit, where he meets with a youth who is also the victim of a treacherous brother, and whose sweetheart rescues them both. Wandering forth, they fall in with a caravan, and here again Táhir meets his brothers, who leave him wounded and almost dead on the road, where he is found by a princess, who has his wounds dressed, and takes him to her father's palace. She is Kamar al-Bahr, the daughter of the king of Gang, and falls in love with him. They are betrayed to the king, who is about to slay them, but makes them over to his vazír, who puts them in a boat. They fall in with pirates, who take the princess and leave Táhir in the boat, which they send adrift. The pirates fight over their prize and kill each other, all but one, whom the princess contrives to get rid of by poison. Táhir, drifting in his boat is picked up by a passing ship, where once more he finds his rascally brothers. They wish to put him to death, but are persuaded to hand him over to the king of Iram, an island on which they land.494 There the two brothers find the princess of Gang and present her to the king, who immediately becomes madly enamoured of her, but she will not yield to his desires. Then he tries to terrify her into submission by slaying a prisoner before her eyes, who happens to be none other than Táhir. The king was raising his sword to cut off his head but gave way to her entreaties and released him. By the advice and with the help of a kind officer, Táhir crosses the sea to Jazíra-i Firdaus,495 the realm of the mighty sorceress Shamsah, where he finds a paradise indeed, and enters a magnificent but untenanted palace. Suddenly he hears an awful sound, and a dragon appears and ascends the throne. It then changes into an old woman—Shamsah herself. She hears his story, takes pity on him, and sends with him an innumerable host of wild beasts to the conquest of Iram. He returns victorious to pay homage to Shamsah, who gives him his beloved princess in marriage and along with her a string of thirty jewels, and two magic vials of green and red oil, one having the virtue of changing men into beasts, the other that of restoring them to their natural shape. After a while Táhir returns with his wife to Basra, whither he is soon followed by his two brothers, whom he changes to dogs.— At the intercession of the Khalíf Harún er-Rashíd, Táhir consents to forgive his brothers and restores them to their human form.
If the idea of the ungrateful conduct of the two brothers towards Farrukhrúz was derived from the foregoing tale of Táhir, the latter in its turn, seems to have been adapted from the story of the dog-worshipping merchant of Nishapúr, in the Persian Kissa-i Chehár Darvesh, of which the Bagh o Bahár is a modern Urdú version, and in the latter we find the story told at very considerable length and with more details and incidents than in the Turkish version, while all that relates to the sorcerer Sham-sah is peculiar to the latter. It would occupy too much space, in view of what remains to be said regarding other tales in our collection, to give even the outline of the Persian original, but it may be mentioned that in place of the two wicked brothers being changed to dogs they are confined in cages; while the merchant's dog, who had often saved his life when attempted by his brothers, and continued faithful to him through all his vicissitudes, is adorned with a collar set with priceless rubies and attended by two slaves—the merchant thereby indicating, so to say, his approval of the aphorism of the ancient Hindú sage, that “a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man.”—In our tale, it will be observed, the two wicked brothers do not reappear after they cut Farrukhrúz adrift.
It is a very usual occurrence in folk-tales, as well as in tales of more elaborate construction, for the hero, after becoming the king's chief favourite, to be the mark for the shafts of envy and malice. Plots are laid in order to bring about his destruction, and, commonly through the suggestions of his enviers, the king is induced to despatch him on most perilous adventures—almost invariably three in succession, as in our little romance. Sometimes it is the hero's brothers who are envious of his good fortune and thus seek to cause his death; sometimes a courtier whom he has supplanted in the king's favour and patronage. We have examples of both kinds of enviers in Geldart's Folk-Lore of Modern Greece, an entertaining collection, as well as useful to such as are interested in the study of popular fictions. Thus, in the tale of “Constantes and the Dragon,” the hero's elder brother is jealous of his favour with the king, and it is at his suggestion that Constantes is sent to procure for the king (1) the Dragon's diamond ring; (2) the Dragon's horse and bell; (3) the very Dragon himself. And in the tale of “Little John, the Widow's Son,” the hero, thus styled, becomes the king's hunter, and one day kills (1) a wild beast, whose skin was all covered with precious gems. The king shows this treasure to his courtiers, who declare they have seen nothing like it under heaven. The vazír, however, says the skin is all very well, but if the king had the bones of elephants to build a church with, all the kings of the earth would come to admire it, and the skin as well. So the young hero is despatched to procure (2) a sufficient quantity of elephants' bones to build a church with, and returns successful. He is then sent, at the suggestion of the vazír, to bring the Dragon's daughter to the king, in which, of course, he also succeeds, and thus the vazír's malice comes all to naught.
We have three examples from Sweden in Thorpe's Yule-Tide Stories. In No. 1 of “The Boy that stole the Giant's Treasures” a peasant dies and leaves his small property to his three sons. The two elder (as in the story of the merchant of Nishapúr in the Chehar Darvesh, referred to, page 495) take all that was valuable, leaving the youngest an old split kneading-trough for his share. The lads all enter the service of a king—the youngest helps in the royal kitchen and is liked by everybody. His two elder brothers are envious of him and induce the king to send him (1) for the Troll's seven silver ducks; (2) his gold and silver bed-quilt; and (3) his golden harp.497 —In No. 11 three brothers set out in quest of their fortune, and the two elder obtain employment as helpers in the royal stables, while the youngest is taken as page to the king's young son. His brothers are sorely nettled at his preferment, and consult how they might compass his disgrace. They tell the king of a wonderful golden lantern that shed light over both land and water, and add that it ill beseemed a king to lack so precious a treasure. The king asks, excitedly, where this lamp is to be found and who could procure it for him. The brothers reply: “No one can do that, unless it be our brother Pinkel. He knows best where the lantern is to be found.” So the king despatches Pinkel to get him the golden lantern, promising to make him the chief person at court should he bring it. Pinkel goes off and returns in safety with the (1) lantern; and the king made him the chief person at court, as he had promised. The brothers, hearing of his success, become more envious than before, and at their suggestion the king sends him to procure (2) the beautiful goat that had horns of the purest gold, from which little gold bells were suspended, which gave forth a pleasing sound whenever the animal moved; and next (3) the Troll-crone's fur cloak, that shone like the brightest gold, and was worked with golden threads in every seam; after which the king gave him his daughter in marriage, and he thus became heir to the kingdom, but his brothers continued to be helpers in the royal stable as long as they lived.—In No. 111 two poor lads roam about the country in search of a livelihood. At length the younger is received by the king among his pages, but the elder goes about begging as before: through the influence of his brother, however, he is shortly taken into the king's service as a stable-boy. The elder brother is continually thinking of how he might get the younger disgraced. One day when the king visits his stables he praises a favourite horse, upon which the stable-lad tells him that he knows of a golden horse that excels all horses in the world, but only his brother could procure it. In brief, the hero procures for the king (1) the golden horse; (2) the moon lantern; and (3) a princess who had been enchanted.
In No. 8 of M. Legrand's Contes Populaires Grecs (Paris, 1881) the hero, at the suggestion of the Beardless Man, is sent by the king (1) for the ivory chamber; (2) for the nightingale and wall swallow; and (3) for the belle of the world.—And in M. Renè Basset's Contes Populaires Berbères (Paris, 1887), No. 27, the hero is despatched by the king, at the instigation of his enemies, to procure (1) the coral tree; (2) the palm tree of the wild beasts; (3) the woman with silver attire; and, of course, returns successful from each perilous expedition. M. Renè Basset in his Notes, pp. 163-166, refers to several parallels or analogues from Brittany, Lorraine, the West Highlands of Scotland, etc.
A story from Salsette, entitled “Karne da Pequeno João,” by Geo. Fr. D'Penha, in the Indian Antiquary, 1888, p. 327 ff., is full of interest to folk-lorists, apart from its connection with the “envious brothers” cycle: Three brothers, of whom Little John, the youngest, is as usual the only clever one, set out to seek their fortunes. They rest for the night in the abode of an ogre, who resolves to kill them while they are asleep and eat all three for breakfast. The ogre has three daughters, and he puts white caps on them and red caps on the youths. The two elder brothers are soon fast asleep, not so Little John. He suspects mischief is brewing, and changes caps with the ogre's daughters, who are consequently killed by their father in mistake for the three lads. Little John rouses his two brothers and they cross the river, which the ogre cannot do, being unable to swim. In the morning the ogre sees them, and cries out that he will make John pay for it yet! They take service with a king: John is made a shepherd, the others are given places of trust. John puts on one of the caps (he had taken all of them with him) on his head and begins to play on his pipe, whereupon all the sheep begin to caper and dance. The princess sees this, and gets the cap from him, and so on till she has got the sixth, on the promise of her love. The king, at the instigation of the princess, pays John better wages, and his brothers are envious of his good fortune. Soon after this the king falls ill, and the two elder brothers suggest to him that John should be sent to fetch (1) the ogre's parrot. John manages to carry off the bird, and the ogre cries after him that he'll make him pay for it yet! But John says he'll come again. In short, John afterwards procures (2) the ogre's mare; (3) his diamond ring; (4) his sword; (5) his blanket; and (6) the ogre himself. After each expedition John is promoted to a still higher station till he is made vazír and finally marries the princess. He does not punish his brothers, the good young man, but raises them to high offices of state.
In many instances, as in the case of Farrukhrúz, the hero is assisted by fairies or other superhuman beings, but with the means by which the seemingly impossible tasks are accomplished we have no present concern and so I have passed them over. The third and last expedition of Farrukhrúz, suggested by the envious vazírs of the king of Yaman—who was, like the monarchs of Eastern fictions generally, a credulous blockhead—by which they made sure to cause the death of the favourite, but which ended so disastrously for themselves—thus illustrating the saying that “he who digs a pit for another,” and so forth: the proverb is somewhat musty—namely,
has its close parallel in the Kalmuk Relations of Siddhí Kúr,500 which form the first part of Miss Busk's Sagas from the Far East, a work chiefly derived from Jülg's German translation. In Miss Busk's book, the story is No. VIII and entitled “How Ananda the Woodcarver and Ananda the Painter strove together,” and, pruned of some redundancies of language, this is how it goes:
Long ago there lived two men, a wood-carver and a painter, both named Ananda. While they appeared to be on very friendly terms, in reality jealousy reigned in their hearts. One day the painter presented himself before the Khán, and told him that his father of blessed memory had been re-born in the kingdom of the gods, in proof of which he handed the Khán a letter, forged by himself, which stated such to be the fact, and directed the Khán to send forthwith Ananda the Woodcarver to the kingdom of the gods, to adorn with his cunning a temple which he was building—“the way and means of his coming shall be explained by Ananda the Painter.” The Khán, believing all this to be true, at once sent for the Woodcarver, informed him of his father the late Khán's message, and commanded him to prepare forthwith to depart for the kingdom of the gods. The Woodcarver knew that this was the device of the Painter, and resolved to meet craft with craft, but, dissembling his feelings, asked by what means he was to win thither. Hereupon the Khán sent for the Painter, and ordered him to declare the way and manner of the journey to the kingdom of the gods. The Painter replied, addressing the Woodcarver: “When thou hast collected all the materials and instruments appertaining to thy calling, and hast gathered them at thy feet, thou shalt order a pile of beams of wood well steeped in spirit distilled from sesame grain to be heaped around thee. Then, to the accompaniment of every solemn-sounding instrument, kindle the pile, and rise to the gods' kingdom, borne on the obedient clouds of smoke as on a swift charger.”
The Woodcarver durst not refuse the Khán's behest, but obtained an interval of seven days in order to collect the materials and implements of his calling, and also to devise some plan of avenging himself upon the Painter. Returning home he consulted with his wife, who proposed a means of evading while seeming to obey the Khán's command. In a field belonging to her husband, not far from the house, she caused a large flat stone to be laid, on which the sacrifice was to be consummated, and, at night, beneath it she had an underground passage made communicating with the house. And when the eighth day came, the Khán and all the people were assembled round the pile of wood steeped in spirit distilled from sesame grain in the Woodcarver's field, and in the midst of it stood the Woodcarver, calm and impassable, while all kinds of musical instruments sent forth their solemn-sounding tones. And when the smoke began to rise in concealing density, the Woodcarver pushed aside the stone with his feet and returned to his house by the underground passage. The Painter, never doubting but that he must have fallen a prey to the flames, rubbed his hands, and, pointing to the curling smoke, cried to the people: “Behold the spirit of Ananda the Woodcarver ascending to the kingdom of the gods!” And all the people, believing him, echoed his words.
For the space of a whole month the Woodcarver remained secluded in his house, daily washing his face with milk and keeping out of the sunshine. Then his wife brought him a garment of white gauze, with which he covered himself, and, taking with him a letter which he had forged, he went into the presence of the Khán, who when he saw him said: “Thou art returned from the kingdom of the gods—how didst thou leave my father?” Then he gave the forged letter to the Khán, who caused it to be read aloud to the people. The letter stated that the Woodcarver had executed the sculptures well, but it was necessary that they should send thither Ananda the Painter, in order that they should be suitably decorated. When the Khán heard this letter read he was overjoyed, and he loaded the Woodcarver with rich presents. And then he sent for Ananda the Painter, and told him how his father in the kingdom of the gods required his services. On hearing this the Painter was seized with great fear, but when he looked at the Woodcarver, all white and radiant from the milk-washing, and clad in celestial raiment, as if the light of the gods' kingdom yet clove to him, and that the fire had not burnt him, neither should it burn himself: moreover, if he refused to go, death must be his portion, while if he went he should, like the Woodcarver, also receive great wealth on his return. So he consented to have his gear in readiness in seven days. And when the prescribed day arrived, the Khán, in his robes of state, and attended by his ministers and officers, and all the people assembled in the Painter's field, where was a great pile of wood steeped as before in spirit, and in the midst of it they placed the Painter; and, amidst the sound of all sorts of musical instruments, they set fire to the pile. At first the Painter bore the torture, expecting to rise on the clouds of smoke, but soon the extreme pain caused him to shout to the people to come and release him. But the sound of the music—his own device to drown the cries of the Woodcarver—prevailed against him: no one could hear his cries, and he perished miserably in the flames.
This story is doubtless of Buddhist extraction; but it is not very probable that our author was indebted to any Mongolian version such as the foregoing for the materials of the tale he has told so well, in which he represents the vile complotters against the life of Farrukhrúz as crying out for mercy when they saw the awful doom they had brought upon themselves, and the silly King of Yaman as still firm in the belief that they should really go to Paradise and return in safety with his beatified ancestors' grand presents.
As a pendant, I may reproduce, from Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain's interesting collection of Aino Folk-Tales, privately printed for the Folk-Lore Society, 1888, the story of “The Wicked Wizard Punished” (No. XXV):
One day a wizard told a man whom he knew that if any one were to climb a certain mountain-peak and jump off on to the belt of clouds below, he would be able to ride about on them as on a horse and see the whole world. Trusting in this, the man did as the wizard had told him, and in very truth was enabled to ride about on the clouds. He visited the whole world in this manner, and brought back a map which he had drawn of the whole world, both of men and gods. On arriving back at the mountain-peak in Aino-land, he stepped off the cloud on to the mountain, and, descending to the valley, told the wizard how successful and delightful the journey had been, and thanked him for the opportunity kindly granted him of seeing sights so numerous and so strange. The wizard was overcome with astonishment. For what he had told the other man was a lie— a wicked lie, invented with the sole intention of causing his death, for he hated him. Nevertheless, seeing that what he had simply meant for an idle tale was apparently an actual fact, he decided to see the world himself in this easy fashion. So, ascending the mountain-peak, and seeing a belt of clouds a short way below, he jumped off on to it, but was instantly dashed to pieces in the valley below. That night the god of the mountain appeared to the good man in a dream, and said: “The wizard has met with the death which his fraud and folly deserved. You I kept from hurt, because you are a good man. So when, obedient to the wizard's advice, you leapt off on to the cloud I bore you up, and showed you the world to make you a wiser man. Let all men learn from this how wickedness leads to condign punishment!”
Such a tale as this is not at all likely to have been invented by a race so low in the scale of humanity as the Ainos; and we must, I think, consider it as one of the tales and legends which they derived from the Japanese. As it is, the story presents a remarkable general resemblance to the Mongolian tale of the Woodcarver and the Painter, of which one might almost say it is a reflection or an adaptation.
UNDER the title of “Strike, but Hear,” a considerably abridged and modified version of this Tale is given in the Rev. Lal Behári Day's Folk-Tales of Bengal (London: Macmillan & Co., 1883), of which this is the substance:
A king appoints his three sons to patrol in turn the streets of his capital during the night. It happens that the youngest prince in going his rounds one night sees a very beautiful woman issuing from the palace, and he asks to know what business she is bent upon at such an hour. She replies: “I am the guardian deity of this palace. The king will be killed this night, and therefore I am going away.” The prince persuades the goddess to return into the palace and await the event. He enters his father's bed-chamber and discovers a huge cobra near the royal couch, and at once cuts the deadly snake into many pieces, which he puts into a brass vessel that was in the room. Then seeing that some drops of the serpent's blood had fallen on his step-mother's bosom, he wraps a piece of cloth round his tongue to protect it from the poison, and licks off the blood. The lady awakes, and recognises him as he is leaving the room. She accuses him to the king of having used an unpardonable freedom with her. In the morning the king sends for his eldest son and asks him: “If a trusted servant should prove faithless, how should he be punished?” The prince replies: “Surely his head should be parted from his body. But before doing so, you should ascertain whether the man is actually guilty.” And then he proceeds to relate the
There was in former times a goldsmith who had a grown-up son, whose wife was acquainted with the language of animals, but she kept secret from her husband and all others the fact of her being endowed with such a rare gift. It happened one night that she heard a jackal exclaim: “There is a dead body floating on the river; would that some one might give me that body to eat, and for his pains take the diamond ring from the finger of that dead man.” The woman arose from her bed and went to the bank of the river, and her husband, who had not been asleep, got up and followed her unobserved. She went into the water, drew the corpse on to the land, and, being unable to loose the ring from the dead man's finger, which had swelled, she bit off the finger, and, leaving the corpse on the bank of the river, returned home, whither she had been preceded by her husband. Almost petrified by fear, the young goldsmith concluded from what he had seen that his wife was not a human being but a rákshasí; and early in the morning he hastened to his father and related the whole affair to him—how the woman had got up during the night and gone to the river, out of which she dragged a dead body on to the land, and was busy devouring it when he ran home in horror at the loathsome sight. The old man was greatly shocked, and advised his son to take his wife on some pretext into the forest, and leave her there to be destroyed by wild beasts. So the husband caused the woman to get herself ready to go on a visit to her parents, and after a hasty breakfast they set out. In going through a dense jangal, where the goldsmith purposed abandoning his wife, she heard a serpent cry: “O passenger, I pray thee to seize and give me that croaking frog, and take for thy reward the gold and precious stones concealed in yonder hole.” The woman at once seized the frog and threw it towards the serpent, and then began digging into the ground with a stick. Her husband quaked with fear, thinking that his ghúl-wife was about to kill him; but she called to him, saying: “My dear husband, gather up all the gold and precious gems.” Approaching the spot with hesitation, he was surprised to perceive an immense treasure laid bare by his wife, who then explained to him how she had learned of it from the snake that lay coiled up near them, whose language she understood. Then said he to his wife: “It is now so late that we cannot reach your father's house before dark, and we might be slain by wild beasts. Let us therefore return home.” So they retraced their steps, and approaching the house, the goldsmith said to his wife: “Do you, my dear, go in by the back door, while I enter by the front and show my father all this treasure.” The woman accordingly went in by the back door and was met by her father-in-law, who, on seeing her, concluded that she had killed and devoured his son, and striking her on the head with a hammer which he happened to have in his hand she instantly fell down dead. Just then the son came into the room, but it was too late.
“I have told your majesty this story,” adds the eldest prince, “in order that, before putting the man to death, you should make sure that he is guilty.”
The king then calls his second son, and asks him the same question as he had asked his brother, to which he replies by relating the
Once a king while engaged in the chase was separated from his attendants, and seeing what he conceived to be rain-water dropping from the branch of a tree, being very thirsty, he held his drinking-cup under it until it was nearly filled, and as he was about to put it to his lips his horse purposely moved so as to cause the contents to be spilled on the ground, upon which the king in a rage drew his sword and killed the faithful animal. But afterwards discovering that what he had taken for rainwater was poison that dropped from a cobra in the tree, his grief knew no bounds.
Calling his third son, the king asks him what should be done to the man who proved false to his trust, and the prince tells the
which bestowed perennial youth on him who ate of it, with some unimportant variations from the same story in our Romance.
Then the youngest prince explained the occasion of his presence in the royal bed-chamber, and how he had saved the king and his consort from the cobra's deadly bite. And his majesty, overjoyed and full of gratitude, strained his faithful son to his heart, and ever afterwards cherished and loved him with all a father's love.
Another version is orally current in Kashmír, and, under the title of “The Four Princes,” a translation of it is given by the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles in his excellent collection, Folk-Tales of Kashmír, from which are extracted the following details:
Four clever and handsome young princes are hated by their step-mother, who persuades her husband the king to cease his personal and secret inspection of the city and adjacent towns and villages—which had long been his custom, going about at night in disguise—and appoint his four grown-up, idle sons to the duties. But still the queen is jealous of them, and poisons the king's mind against them, so that he speaks harshly to his worthy sons, without any apparent cause. One night the four princes met together and discussed the altered conduct of the king towards them, and the three younger proposed that they should privily quit the country, but this was strenuously opposed by the eldest brother, who suggested that they should rather take turn and patrol the city, one of them each night, to which they agreed. It happened that the eldest prince, in the course of his perambulation one night, came past the hut of a Bráhman, whom he saw gazing out of the open window towards the heavens, and presently heard him say to his wife that he had just observed the king's star obscured by another star, which indicated that his majesty would die in seven days. His wife asked him how he should die then, and he replied that a black snake would descend from the sky on the seventh day, enter the royal bed-chamber by the door that opened into the courtyard, and bite the king's toe, thus causing his death. Then the Bráh-man made a sacrifice, and, after prayers and incantations, he told his wife farther, that the king's life would be saved if one of his relations dug pits in the courtyard on the east side of the palace, filled some with water and the others with milk, and scattered flowers on the ground between the ponds and the door of the king's room. He must be ready, sword in hand, outside the door at the appointed time, when the snake will come and swim across the ponds and pass over the flowers, after which it will become comparatively harmless. Then he must strike and slay the snake with his sword, and taking some of its warm blood smear it over the king's toes—thus will he be preserved from evil. The prince, having treasured these directions in his memory, on the seventh day follows them exactly, and having taken some of the snake's blood, gently opens the door of the king's chamber and enters, having first tied a bandage over his eyes, that he should not see the queen. But being thus blindfolded he smears the blood on the queen's toes instead of those of the king, which causes her to awake, and to shriek on seeing a man glide out of the room, which awakes the king, who recognises his eldest son as the intruder. The queen, on discovering the blood on her feet concludes that it was a rákshasa, and becomes frantic with fright, but her husband sets her mind at rest by telling her that he is now assured of the wickedness of his sons, who had employed a demon to destroy them both, and he would have them all executed on the morrow, at which the queen was highly delighted. Then the king causes the four princes to be stripped of their royal robes and thrown into a dungeon. In the morning they are brought into the presence of the king, who gives order for their immediate execution, and they are being led away when one of them made signs and prostrated himself before the throne, as if he wished to say something. “Let him speak,” said the king. “Perhaps he wants to relieve his heart of some foul secret—let him speak.” The prince then began to relate the
which differs materially from our story of the Hunter and his Dog (p. 206), but agrees with some versions current in various parts of India: A young merchant meets four men who are quarrelling over the possession of a poor dog, which they are dragging about most unmercifully. They tell him it is not an ordinary dog, for their late father charged them not to sell it for less than 20,000 rupís. He gives them the money and takes the dog with him. By-and-by he loses all his wealth through a series of unfortunate transactions, and borrows 15,000 rupís of another merchant on the security of his dog. One night a gang of robbers break into the merchant's house and carry off all his valuables. They are followed unobserved by the dog, who watches them dig a pit and bury the treasure in it, intending to return and share their booty when they might do so with safety. Next day the dog, by means of signs, leads the merchant to the spot where his wealth was hidden, and when it is discovered, full of gratitude to the faithful animal, he writes out an acquittance of the young merchant's loan, and having related the great service the dog had done him expressed a wish to purchase the dog, for which he enclosed a draft for 30,000 rupís, and putting the letter in the dog's mouth, sends him back to his master. As the dog is trotting along he meets his master, who, concluding that he had run away, and that the merchant would quickly follow, determined to kill the animal, and if the merchant should come, he would say: “Give me back my dog, and I will return the money.” But when he had killed his dog and was about to take the carcase up, in order to conceal it, the letter dropped from his mouth, and the young merchant, stricken with remorse, fell down insensible.
Another of the princes then steps forward and relates the
which does not differ very much from the same tale in the Bengalí collection, cited on p. 505, above, excepting that in place of a goldsmith the husband is a shikárí, or hunter; it is a bracelet set with five precious stones, not a diamond ring that the woman takes off the corpse in the river, and a crow, not a serpent, that tells of the treasure underground; and it is her father-in-law, not her husband, who accompanies her, and it is her husband who kills her when she comes home, thinking that she had devoured his father.
The youngest prince next makes his obeisance to his majesty and obtains leave to relate the
which is similar to that of the King and his Faithful Horse in the Bengalí version: The king is about to drink of some water he had drawn from a spring, when his falcon dashed the cup out of his hand, whereupon the thirsty and enraged king drew his sword and killed his favourite bird. Afterwards a huge and deadly snake was found coiled up at the head of the spring, and too late the king saw that the falcon had saved his life.
His majesty having heard these stories, now began to suspect that his wife had deceived him regarding his four sons, and when the eldest prince had explained the whole affair, and shown the king the pits of water and milk and the body of the serpent, he was fully reconciled to them, and abdicating the throne in favour of his eldest son, and appointing the others to be governors of provinces, he retired to the wilderness and became a hermit.
FEW stories are more widely spread than that of the Lost Camel, which occurs in the opening of our romance. It was formerly, and perhaps is still, reproduced in school-books as a reading exercise. Voltaire, in chapter iii of Zadig, ou la Destinée, (the substance of which he is said to have derived from Geuelette's Soirées Bretonnes), gives a version in which a lost palfrey and a she-dog are accurately described by the “sage” from the traces they had left on the path over which they passed.
The oldest known written form of the story of the Lost Camel is in the great work of Mas'udí, the celebrated Arabian historian, ‘Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems,’ which has not yet been completely translated into English.—In an Arabic MS. text of the Alf Layla wa Layla (Thousand and one Nights), brought from the East by Wortley Montague, and now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, it forms an incident in the tale of the Sultan of Yaman's Three Sons: After their father's death the three royal youths quarrel over the succession to the throne, and at length agree to submit their respective claims to one of their father's tributary princes. On the road one of them remarks: “A camel has lately passed this way, loaded with grain on one side and with sweetmeats on the other.” The second observes: “And the camel is blind of one eye.” The third adds: “And it has lost its tail.” The owner comes up to them, and on hearing their descripton of his beast forces them to go with him before the king of the country, to whom they explain how they discovered the defects of the camel and its lading. In this form it also occurs in the Turkish collection translated under the title of Turkish Evening Entertainments—see ante, p. 472—with the addition of a woman riding on the back of the camel, she having got off the animal during a temporary halt, and left her small footprints in the sand.
In a Siberian version three youths are met by a man, who asks them if they have seen his camel, to which they reply by describing the colour and peculiarities of the animal so exactly that he accuses them to the prince of the country of having stolen it. “I have lost a camel, my lord,” says he; “and when I met these three young men we saluted, and I told them of my loss. One of these youths asked me: ‘Was thy camel of a light colour?’ The second: ‘Was thy camel lame?’ And the third: ‘Was thy camel not blind of an eye?’ I answered ‘Yes’ to their questions. Now decide, my lord. It is evident that these young men have stolen my camel.” Then the prince asked the eldest: ‘How did you know that the camel was of a light colour?’ He answered: “By some hairs which had fallen on the ground when it rubbed itself against the trees.” The two others gave answers similar to those in our version. Then said the prince to the man: “Thy camel is lost; go and look for it.” So the stranger mounted his horse and departed.512
Captain (now Sir) Richard F. Burton, in his Scinde, or the Unhappy Valey, vol. i, p. 142, thus describes how a paggi, or tracker, sets about discovering a strayed camel: “He ties on his slippers with packthread, winds his sheet tight round his waist, and squatting upon the ground scrutinises the footprint before he starts, with all the air of a connoisseur, making meanwhile his remarks aloud: ‘He is a little, little camel—his feet are scarcely three parts grown—he treads lightly with the off foreleg, and turns this toe in—his sole is scarred—he is not laden—there he goes—there—there, he is off to the jungles of Shaykh Radhan’.”
A variant of this story is cited from a Cawnpore newspaper in the Asiatic Journal, vol xv (new series), Part II, October, 1834, p. 78, which is to the following effect: A man named Dabí had a dog called Bhyro, the faithful companion of his travels, who guarded his goods from robbers while he slept. He wished to go to a distant part of the country on a speculation in grain, but had not sufficient funds for this purpose. After much cogitation he at length resolved to pledge his dog for 1000 rupís, and when he applied to several persons was laughed at for his folly; but a wealthy merchant named Dyarám gave the money, on condition that it should be paid back within twelve months, taking the dog Bhyro in pledge. When eleven months had passed the merchant began to bewail the stupidity which had induced him to lend so large a sum on so precarious a security. His relentings were, however, premature. One dark and dreary night he was aroused from his slumbers by a great noise, occasioned by the clashing of swords and the barking of Bhyro. A band of armed men had entered the house with intent to plunder, but before they could effect their purpose they had been observed by the faithful Bhyro, who commenced an attack upon them. Before Dyarám could render any assistance Bhyro had laid two of the robbers dead at his feet; a third, on the approach of Dyarám, aimed a blow at his head, which was prevented from taking effect by Bhyro seizing the ruffian by the throat and laying him prostrate on the ground. After peace was restored Dyarám congratulated himself on having received Bhyro in pledge for Dabí, by which act he not only escaped being plundered, but in all probability murdered. Next morning Dyarám called Bhyro, and, after caressing him, said: “The service you rendered me last night is more than an equivalent for the 1000 rupís I lent your master; go, faithful creature, I give you a free discharge from your obligation as security for him.” Bhyro shook his head in token that it was impossible for him to go until his master returned; but Dyarám, comprehending his meaning, soon arranged matters, by writing a statement of the circumstances, and giving a voucher for the 1000 rupís. This document he tied round Bhyro's neck, which done, Bhyro expressed his delight by leaping about in every direction, and, after licking the hands of Dyarám, darted out of the house and set off in quest of his master. While these scenes were transpiring in Dyarám's house, Dabí was not unmindful of the pledge he had left behind him, and, having succeeded in his speculation, was returning with all haste to redeem it. At his last stage homewards he was surprised to see Bhyro approaching him with every demonstration of joy, but at sight of him Dabí's rage was kindled, and repulsing Bhyro as he fawned upon him he thus addressed him: “O ungrateful wretch! is this the return you have made for my kindness to you? and is this the manner in which you have established my character for veracity? You remained faithful to your trust during eleven months—could you not have held out for thirty short days? You have, by your desertion from your post, entailed dishonour upon me, and for this you shall die.” And, so saying, he drew his sword and slew him. After having committed this deed, he observed a paper tied round Bhyro's neck, and having read it, his grief was indescribable. To atone in some measure for his rash act, he caused poor Bhyro to be buried on the spot where he fell, and a superb monument to be erected over his remains. To the grave of Bhyro, even at the present day, resort natives who have been bitten by dogs, they believing that the dust collected there, when applied to the wounds, is an antidote for hydrophobia.
It will be observed, on comparison, that the chief difference between this version and the Kashmírí story, cited in p. 509, is that in the latter the dog does not venture to attack the robbers, but follows them to the place where they conceal their plunder and next day leads his temporary master to the spot, while in the foregoing the dog Bhyro boldly flies at the rascals, and slays or disables three of them, thus preserving the house from being robbed. The Tamil version has the dog's killing the paramour of the merchant's wife in place of the robbery, and the tragical catastrophe of the suicides of all the characters.
A version given from Oudh, by Mr. G. H. Roberts, of Sítápúr, in Indian Notes and Queries, 1887, p. 150, agrees exactly with the Kashmírí story.
This story is of world-wide popularity, and the preceding tale of the Hunter and his Faithful Dog must be considered as an offshoot from it. In this country the form in which it is generally known is the legend of Llewellyn and his hound Gellert, which has been so finely versified by Spencer. I have adduced many variants of the story in the Appendix to my Book of Sindibád, and have treated it still more fully in my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii. pp. 166-186, where, besides versions found in the Sindibád cycle (including, of course, the European Seven Wise Masters),515 are given several Indian forms of the story, and lastly the oldest known version, from the Vinaya Pitaka of the Chinese collection of Buddhist books, which, according to Dr. S. Beal—one of the greatest living authorities on Chinese Buddhist literature—probably dates from the time of Asoka's Council, B.C. 230. But indeed the story may be many thousands of years old, for there is no reason to suppose it to be of Buddhist invention; and we need not be surprised should it be discovered some day in an Egyptian papyrus.
This Tamil version is one of three known to me in which it is the mother, not the father, who kills the faithful animal, the others being one current in Ceylon, and one from the North-West Provinces, cited in a very entertaining work entitled Past Days in India, and also in the small collection of Indian tales appended by Vermieux to his Hermit of Mottee Jhurna, second edition, p. 101; it is, moreover, singular in representing the woman as destroying herself and her husband then killing his little son and afterwards himself—tragic incidents added by the author probably to enable the supposed narrator to more forcibly impress on the king's mind the terrible consequences of acting in affairs of moment with inconsiderateness and precipitation.
Among the Malays the story is told in this manner: A man left a tame bear in charge of his house and of his sleeping child while he was absent from home. On his return he missed the child and found the house in great disorder, as if some desperate struggle had taken place, and the floor was smeared with blood. Hastily concluding that the bear had killed his child, the enraged father slew the animal with his spear, but almost immediately afterwards found the carcase of a tiger, which the faithful bear had defeated and killed, and the child emerged unharmed from the jangal, where it had taken refuge.
Two very bad characters, and the less my readers have to do with such, the better for their own peace of mind, I trow!— There is a tale in the Kathá Sarit Ságara of a woman who cruelly abandoned her helpless husband in the jangal, and went off with a lusty young fellow, but I am unable to say in which chapter of that most valuable and entertaining collection it occurs, though I made a special search for it.
As a set-off to the faithless wife of the blind man—who afterwards proves to be himself an arrant scoundrel—read the touching address of Damayanti to her husband the ruined Rájá Nala, when he proposes in the jangal that she should return to her parents and leave him to his fate: “O king, thinking of thy purpose, my heart trembleth, and all my limbs become faint. How can I go, leaving thee in the lone woods, despoiled of thy kingdom and deprived of thy wealth, thyself without a garment on, and worn with hunger and toil? When, in the deep woods, fatigued and afflicted with hunger, thou thinkest of thy former bliss, I will, O great monarch, soothe thy weariness. In every sorrow, there is no medicine equal unto the wife, say the physicians. It is the truth, O Nala, that I speak unto thee!”517
A story somewhat resembling the incident of the blind man and the honest Setti will be found in the notes on the ROSE OF BAKAWALI, under the heading of ‘The Bráhman and the Lion.’
Analogues of this story are found in a Canarese collection entitled Kathá Manjarí, with a magpie in place of a parrot as the bearer of the youth-renewing fruit, and in the Tútí Náma (or Parrot-Book) of Nakhshabí, a work written A.D. 1329, which has not yet been completely translated into English, and is now generally known from Káderi's abridgment.
Fruits having the property of restoring the youth and vigour of those who ate of them figure in many Asiatic stories—there is a notable instance in the opening of the Indian collection entitled Sinhasana Dwatrinsati, or Thirty-two (Tales) of a Throne. And from the East the notion was introduced into the European mediæval romances; for example, in the Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, “at the bidding of an angel,” I quote from Mr. Sydney L. Lee's notes to his edition of the work printed for the Early English Text Society, “Huon gathers three of the Apples of Youth, each of which when eaten by a man of eighty or a hundred years old transforms him to a young man of thirty. Huon bestows one of the apples on the admiral of Tauris and his white hair and beard grow yellow as he eats it, and he suddenly becomes a youth of strength and beauty. The second is eaten by the abbot of Cluny, who is 114 years old, with similar results. The third rejuvenates Thierry, emperor of Germany.”
This is the third instance in the romance of food being poisoned by serpents, and it is of very common occurrence in Eastern fictions. The oldest known form of the story is found in a Sanskrit collection entitled Vetálapanchavinsati, or Twenty-five (Tales) of a Vetála, or Vampyre, which is given fully in the Appendix to my Book of Sindibád, and the story occurs in all the Eastern texts of the Sindibád cycle. This Tamil version is peculiar in representing an old man as falling a victim to the poison dropped from a snake's mouth into food given him by a young pilgrim, and the imprisoning of the latter in the village temple of Kálí and so forth. In all other versions known to me, the poison is dropped into an open dish of milk carried by a slave-girl on her head, and her master's guests, partaking of the milk, all perish.
With an important difference, this tale resembles that of the Bráhman and the Lion, p. 254, which is a variant of the worldwide fable of the Hunter and the Serpent—the difference being that in this case the snake ultimately rewards its rescuer. In the story of Nala and Damayanti, the rájá rescues a snake from a jangal fire and carries it some distance and is about to set it down when the snake says: “Carry me ten steps farther, and count them as you go.” So Nala proceeds, counting the steps— one, two, three; and when he says “ten” (Sansk. dasa, which means “bite” as well as “ten”) the snake takes him at his word and bites the rájá on the forehead, upon which he becomes black. But this the snake does for Nala's own benefit, that he should not be recognised in his degradation.
IN the Introduction to the present collection will be found the few particulars which are known regarding this romance and its original Persian author. There is, I think, strong evidence of its being of Hindú extraction. In the absence of any similar work in Sanskrit or one of the vernacular languages of India, we can only suppose that the author of the Gul-i Bakáwalí drew his materials from various and more or less distinct, or separate, fictions; and this supposition seems fully borne out by the somewhat loose arrangement of the later incidents. The narrative down to the end of the sixth chapter (p. 315), as I have divided it, is complete in itself: the Prince wins at backgammon the immense wealth of Dilbar, and her own person besides; he is married to the beauteous damsel Mahmúda; he procures the magical Rose; he has a splendid palace erected for him by the fairies, becomes reconciled to his father, and puts his false brothers to shame; and after a number of wondrous adventures is united to the fairy Bakáwalí, and “passed his time with these rosy-lipped beauties, immersed in a sea of bliss.” Surely this is the usual conclusion of a romance, and all that follows was an afterthought. It is, of course, quite in keeping with “the fitness of things” romantic that the hero should have to undergo some tribulation before becoming possessed of Bakáwalí; but that fairy's subsequent punishment by the deity Indra; the hero's marriage with the princess Chitrawat; the re-birth of Bakáwalí— which, as I have already remarked, is quite out of place in a Muslim work, though very proper in a Hindú story; and the love-affair of Bahrám are evidently incidents which have been taken out of different tales, albeit we should be sorry to have them omitted, for they are all very entertaining.
The quest of a wonderful flower, or other object, having the virtue of restoring sight to the blind, or of bestowing perennial youth, or of bringing back the dying to life and health, is the theme of many folk-tales. Besides the magical Rose from the garden of the fairy Bakáwalí, which cured the king's blindness (p. 271), we have another instance in the romantic adventures of Hatim Taï (ante, p. 467), in the case of the blind man confined in a cage; and in the same work—but not mentioned in my epitome of it—we are told that in the course of Hatim's Second Adventure he came to the capital of Mahparí, the king of the fairies, and learned that his son had become blind. Hatim tries the effect of his talisman on the eyes of the young prince, and it removes the pain, but not the blindness. He is then informed that “there is a tree that grows amidst the shades of Zulmát [or region of darkness, where is also the Water of Life], which is named Nandar; and from this tree distils a liquid of such rare virtue that if even a drop of it could be procured it would be the means of restoring the prince's sight. A fairy in love with Hatim gives him a guard of seven thousand troops, and he at once sets out on his dangerous journey. Having arrived in the region of darkness, Hatim takes some of the wondrous liquid, and returning in safety applies a few drops to the prince's eyes, when his sight is immediately restored.
The myth of the Water of Life is of ancient date, and it was probably introduced into Europe from the East during the Crusades. In Rabbinical lore it is said that Solomon sent one of his officers for the Water of Immortality, but when he returned successful the sage monarch would have none of it, because he did not wish to survive all his female favourites! According to the Muslim legend, Alexander despatched the mythical prophet Al-Khizar on a similar errand, but no sooner had he drank of the water than it disappeared, and this is how Al-Khizar possesses everlasting youth.
A Fountain of Youth figures prominently in the fabliau which chants the delights of the Land of Cockaigne; and in Conrad of Wartzburg's Trojan War (of the 13th century) Medea obtains water from Paradise to renew the youth of Jason's father. In the romance of Huon of Bordeaux, the doughty hero finds the Fount of Youth on Alexander's Rock, and bathing in it is at once restored to vigorous health.
The quest of the Rose in the garden of Bakáwalí, to cure the king's blindness, finds an analogue in the German tale of the Water of Life, in the collection of the Brothers Grimm— indeed, they are very closely allied: A king is sick unto death. The first and the second of his sons set out in succession to procure for him the Water of Life, but they behave rudely to a dwarf on the road and he enchants them. The third son next undertakes the adventure, and meeting the dwarf is civil and courteous towards him, and in reward the dwarf directs the youth on his way. Following all the instructions of the dwarf, he comes to a castle, which he enters, unhurt by the two lions at the gate. In one room he finds a number of knights in a trance, and taking the rings off their fingers he puts them on his own. Going into another room he sees on a table a sword and a loaf, which he also takes. In a third room he discovers a beautiful damsel on a couch, who welcomes him joyfully, and says that he should have the kingdom if he would free her from the spell by which she is bound, and come back in a year and marry her. Returning homeward, the dwarf tells him that the sword would at a single blow slay a whole army, and the bread would never fail him. But the brave youth will not go home without his brothers, and so the dwarf sets them free. While the three brothers are sailing in a ship, the two elder substitute for the Water of Life a bottle of sea water, which makes the king worse when he drinks some of it. Then the two elder brothers give him the real water and he is cured. But in the end, as in our Tale, the hero turns the tables on his brethren and marries the princess.
Readers of the Arabian Nights will recollect that Prince Ahmed is required by his father, at the suggestion of an envious vazír, to get him some water from the Lion's Spring, and his bride, the Parí Bánú, directs him how to win past the lions, and so forth. There can be little doubt that both the German and the Arabian stories have a common origin. Again, in the tale of the Envious Sisters, with which our ordinary English version of the Arabian Nights concludes, the Fountain of Golden Water has the property of disenchanting all the princes and nobles who had been turned to stone.—But it were tedious to farther multiply examples.
From the most remote times of which any records have been preserved, wine, music, dancing, and dice seem to have gone together in the East. The ancient Arabs were passionately addicted to gaming, till Muhammed strictly forbade all games of chance; a prohibition which—like that against wine-bibbing— has not been so strictly observed by all his followers, though Muslims are not, perhaps, so much given to gambling as most other Asiatic peoples. They are excessively fond of chess, which, however, cannot be included amongst games of pure chance. Of all races, the Chinese are probably the most inveterate gamblers: they will play at hazard till they have lost all their possessions, wives, and children, and finally their own freedom. In our own country the mania for dice-play was fatally common among the upper and middle classes until within comparatively recent years, and if all stories be true, gaming with cards or dice, though forbidden by law, is still only too prevalent, to the speedy ruin of the deluded votaries of the Goddess of Chance. For it would appear that, though some gamesters may win and others of course lose, yet nobody is ever a gainer in the end, and hence we must conclude that all the winnings go to—the Devil!
The Hindús have always been infatuated gamesters, and of this we have ample evidence in the noble Indian epic, the Mahábhárata, out of which one or two notable examples may suffice. In the Second Book (Sabha Parva—Effort Chapter), sections lix-lxvi, Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, plays at dice with Shakuni, who by foul means523 wins all his wealth, then his kingdom, then his brothers one by one, then Yudhis-thira himself, and finally his spouse Draupadi. In the Third Book (Vana Parva—Forest Chapter), sections lix-lxi, Rájá Nala, infatuated by Kali, who had possessed him, plays at dice with his brother Pushkara and loses his wealth and his kingdom, but refusing to stake his sweet queen Damayanti he goes accompanied by her into exile. Ultimately, having exchanged with Vahuka his skill in dice-play for his own wonderful knowledge of horses, Nala plays again with his brother and wins back his kingdom.523a
European fiction furnishes analogous incidents to those above cited. For example, in the mediæval romance of Guerni de Monglave, the hero loses his kingdom at a game of chess. In W. Harrison Ainsworth's novel (or “romance”) of Old Saint Paul's, in the chapter entitled “The Bully and the Gamester” the latter, after losing all his money, is induced to stake his wife on a “cast of the ivories”—and his opponent wins. In Prior's Danish Ballads, ‘Sir Thor and the Maiden Silvermor,’ vol. iii, p. 151 ff., a damsel stakes her own person on a single throw of dice, and loses.—Other instances occur in the early European romances.
In the latter portion of “All for a Pansa,” in the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles' Folk-Tales of Kashmír, we have a pretty close parallel to the incident of the Prince and Dilbar at the game of nard, or backgammon, but a very ancient version is found in the following Panjábí legend,524 which recounts
News was once brought to King Rasálú that at Kot Bhitaur on the Indus lived a certain Rájá, Sirikap by name, who was notorious for his ferocity, and renowned for his skill in chess-playing. King Sirikap only played with those who would accept his conditions, which were: In the first game the stakes were to be horse, clothes, and lands. In the second game the stake was to be the loser's head. King Rasálú, who could not bear the thought of a rival in anything, resolved to visit him. So he called his captains together and said: “I am going to try my luck against King Sirikap. But if I lose the game and forfeit my head, say, what will you, my followers, do?” One of the officers answered: “You may lose the game, and you may lose your head, O king, but one thing is very certain—if you lose your head, the head of Rájá Sirikap will be forfeited too. Of this he shall be certified.”
Then the king mounted his horse and rode to Kot Bhitaur, the castle of the “handsome” Sirikap the Beheader. King Sirikap welcomed his brother king with every demonstration of affection, and conducted him into his palace. “O youth,” said he, “you must have come from a long distance. What is the purpose of your visit?” “My kingdom is Siálkot,” answered Rasálú. “Your fame as a chess-player kindled my ambition, and I have come to play with you; only, as I am now fatigued, let us play, if it please you, to night.” To this-Sirikap agreed, and King Rasálú, having refreshed himself, descended from the mountain rock on which the castle stood, and walked to the bank of the river. There he saw struggling in the water some small clusters of ants which were being washed away, and stooping down he saved them. Then he saw a drowning hedgehog, and, being a humane man, he saved it also, and one of the attendants begged for it to amuse the servants in the castle above. Going a few steps farther, he came to a breakwater, which was close to the castle-rock, and there he heard a voice proceeding from the cliff: “O sir, you have come to Kot Bhitaur to play at chess with Rájá Sirikap. But I warn you that he is a magician.” The astonished attendants looked about them and cried: “What voice is this?” but they perceived no one. Then they saw on the sand a representation of the game, well figured, and they said to the king: “O king—see, here is the game. It is an omen of good fortune. This is your conquering day.” At this moment the mysterious voice again issued from the rock: “O prince—for such I perceive you to be—I have been witness of your humanity. To you I may confide my life, being satisfied that you will not betray me. Rájá Sirikap is a man of blood— deep, sudden, and treacherous; but observe what I say, and your life will be saved.” “Speak on, O hidden one,” answered King Rasálú. “First of all,” continued the voice, “do you walk along the bank until you see a rat with a black head. Catch him and bring him here.” The king obeyed, and returning to the crag he said: “The rat, O friend, I have found, as you said, but now I would find you.” Climbing up the ledges of the steep rocks, he came to a roughly-fashioned cell in the face of the cliff, in which he discovered a lady of noble birth, chained by her feet to the floor. “Who are you?” said he; “and whence came you here?” She answered him: “I am one of the five daughters of King Sirikap. My fault was one which I will not reveal to you now, but my punishment is imprisonment in this rocky cell. Yet I knew, by my power of divination, that a prince would come from a distant kingdom, strong and young, and that, having cut off my father's head, he would release me. In you I behold the prince of my prophetic dreams.” “And I will release you,” cried the king; “but first inform me how I am to be conqueror at the chess-board.”
The princess then gave him full instructions how he should proceed in the trial of skill which awaited him. “First of all,” said she, “play with the king only on a Tuesday, as to-day; and, secondly, play only once, and let the stake be the head of him who loses. You will proceed thus: Tie the rat with a string, and keep him near you, as you both sit on the floor, but keep him so that he may be visible. That King Sirikap may not suspect your design, lean your cheek upon your hand, and call out now and then: ‘O Rájá Núl! O Rájá Núl!’ for he was the inventor of the game of Chaupúr,526 in which you will be engaged. There are two sets of men of eight pieces each, and they are of two different colours. Now at the critical point of the game Rájá Sirikap will give a certain signal, and straightway from his capacious sleeve will issue his magic cat. On her head she bears a light which renders her invisible, and which is also invisible to all but the king himself. The effect of the mysterious light is to throw a glamour over the king's adversary and to dazzle his eyes, so that he is unable to see, and during this interval the cat dexterously disposes the pieces in such a way that at the next move King Sirikap wins the game, and his adversary forfeits his wager. But do you, O Prince, in order to guard against surprise, keep the rat secure, and now and then put your disengaged hand upon it, and now and then take it off, patting it playfully. The moment the cat comes forth she will make a dash at the rat, and, coming in contact with your hand, the light will fall to the ground. Then keep her at bay, and the game will be yours for the cowardly heart of King Sirikap will begin to quake, and his disordered mind will ensure his discomfiture.”
Having received his instructions, King Rasálú returned to the palace, and that night, being the eve of Tuesday, the two kings sat down to play. The issue of the game for some time was doubtful; but at last it was evident that a few more moves would decide the result in favour of Rájá Rasálú; when his rival made a secret signal, and the magic cat, unseen by any but himself, stole from his sleeve. The moment she did so she caught sight of the black-headed rat, and, forgetting her duty to her master, she instantly sprang towards it, but the hand of Rájá Rasálú, chanced to smite the light from her head and to keep her occupied until he had won the game.
Then sprang the mighty king to his feet and cried to his trembling rival: “The game is won and your head is my prize”; and drawing his long sword he was about to strike off his head, when Sirikap, lifting up his hands, implored a short respite, that he might enter his inner apartments and bid farewell to his family. That moment a messenger brought news to him that his queen had been delivered of a daughter. But he heeded it not. His perturbed soul was full of schemes as to how he might escape his impending fate. As he walked sadly from room to room, he said to himself: “If I hide in my own chambers I shall be discovered.” So this idea he dismissed from his mind. But in an unfrequented corner his anxious eye caught sight of a large disused drum, and, disregarding his kingly dignity, he crept under that, and began to feel himself a little secure.
Rájá Rasálú was meanwhile pacing the hall with impatient strides, waiting for the return of his adversary. At last he could tarry no longer, so, calling his captains, he summoned King Sirikap to appear. But no answer was made to his call. He then began a careful search of the whole of the castle, feeling satisfied that the king could not have passed his guards who were on the watch at every post. When he came to the drum, the quick eye of Rasálú detected that it had been recently moved. “Aha!” cried he, “the caitiff must be skulking here,” and in another moment he dragged the dishonoured monarch forth by the heels. Then he handed him over to his officers. “As he was a king,” said he, “lodge him in his own palace, but guard him well, for at sunset he must die.” Then turning to Sirikap, he spurned him, saying: “O villain! hundreds of heads you have smitten off in your time with your own hand, and all for pastime, yet you never grieved or shed a tear. And now, when the same fate is to be your own, you sneak away and hide yourself in a drum.”
Some time after this there entered the royal soothsayers, and they, addressing their fallen master, said: “Sir, we have sought for the interpretation of this mystery, why ruin should have visited your house, and we conclude that all this calamity is on account of your daughter, whose baneful star has crossed your own. She has come in an evil hour. Let her now be slain, and let her head be thrown into the Indus, and your life will be saved.” Sirikap answered: “If my life depends on her, bring me her head, and mine may yet be saved.” So a slave-girl was despatched to bring the infant to its father.” And as she carried it along from the apartments of the queen she said: “O what a pretty child! I should like to save it.” Rájá Rasálú, overhearing her, said: “Whither are you taking that child?” The slave-girl answered: “This is Rájá Sirikap's child, born only this very night. The Bráhman soothsayers have told my master that his child is the cause of all his misfortunes, and that her head is to be taken off to save his own.” When Rájá Rasálú looked at the child he loved it, and became very sorrowful, knowing the power of divination. So he returned and said: “O Rájá Sirikap, your head shall be spared on certain conditions: First, you must surrender this infant princess in betrothal to me. Secondly, you must become my vassal and pay me an annual tribute. Thirdly, you must consent to have your forehead branded with a red hot iron, in token of your vassalage. And fourthly, you must discontinue your bloody games at chess.” To all these conditions King Sirikap was only too glad to agree. So a treaty was drawn up between the two kings, and it was confirmed and ratified in the presence of their principal officers.
After this Rájá Rasálú mounted his horse and was riding away when he thought of the princess in her lonely cell. Turning his horse's head, he sought the foot of the cliff and ascended to the cavern. “Of course,” cried she, when she saw him, “you have won the game? But tell me, have you cut off my father's head?” “No,” said he, “I have not.” “What!” replied she, “have you beaten your antagonist in the game of death, yet not exacted the penalty of his failure? What luckless man are you?” Then King Rasálú explained to the princess all the circumstances of his adventure. “But,” concluded he, “one thing I omitted, namely, to stipulate for your deliverance from captivity.”
The princess, who expected no less than to be espoused to this handsome stranger, was overcome with distress. Seeing this, the king, who pitied her misfortunes, took up a piece of rock and broke her chain, and then, lifting her over his shoulder, he descended with her from the cavern, and carried her up to the palace of Rájá Sirikap, her father, who, seeing company returning and fearing some new calamity, once more endeavoured to conceal himself. But King Rasálú reassured him, and brought him forth, and said to him: “Behold, here is your daughter;— now say for what crime was she imprisoned?” “A certain prince,” answered Sirikap, “came to play with me, and my rebellious daughter gave him, to sit upon, my fortunate carpet of state. ‘Aha,’ said I to myself, ‘so, my lady, there's treason afloat?’ upon which I ordered her to be perpetually chained and imprisoned.” “One more condition,” said Rájá Rasálú, with a stern air, “must be added to the others; it is, that you forgive her, and that you let me know within three months that you have made a suitable match for her.” Nor could Rájá Sirikap dare to dispute his new lord's will, but he received his daughter and provided suitably for her in accordance with his pledged word.
Once more King Rasálú mounted his charger, and at the head of his brave companions, whose lance-heads glittered in the sunlight, and whose accoutrements clashed merrily, he rode proudly away to his own capital. With him, in a magnificent litter, travelled the infant daughter of Sirikap, whose name was Kokilan.530 She it was, who, in after years, when she grew to woman's estate, became his beautiful but ill-fated consort.530a
It is not likely that our author adapted his story of the Prince and Dilbar the courtesan from the foregoing legend of Rájá Rasálú: the fact that a similar tale is current in Kashmír, as already mentioned, would seem to indicate that, in more or less different forms, it is known in various countries of Hindústán. But the Prince's game with Dilbar, mainly to rescue his brothers who had fallen into her toils, finds a curious analogue in the mediæval European romance which recounts the adventures of four brothers, Agravain, Gueret, Galheret, and Gauvain, all of whom set out, in different directions, in quest of Lancelot du Lac, according to the analysis given by Dunlop, in his History of Fiction: Agravain, as a coup d'essai, kills Druas, a formidable giant, but is in turn vanquished by Sorneham, the brother of Druas. His life is spared at the request of the conquerer's niece, and he is confined in a dungeon, where his preserver secretly brings him refreshments. Gueret also concludes a variety of adventures by engaging Sorneham, and being overcome is shut up in the same dungeon with his brother. Galheret, the third of the fraternity, comes to a castle where he is invited to play with the lady at chess, on the condition that if he wins he is to possess her person and castle, but losing, should become her slave. The chessmen are ranged in compartments on the floor of a fine hall, are as large as life, and glitter with gold and diamonds. Each of them is a fairy and moves on being touched with a talisman. Galheret loses the game, and is confined with a number of other checkmated wights. Gauvain, however, soon after arrives, and vanquishes the lady at her own arms; but only asks the freedom of the prisoners, among whom he finds his brother. Having learned from an elfish attendant of the lady the fate of his two other brothers, he equips himself in the array of the chess-king. In this garb he engages Sorneham, who, being dazzled with the brightness of his attire, is easily conquered, by which means Agravain and Gueret are delivered from confinement.
There are few fables more widely spread than this, certainly in various forms, but always with the same result. In another work I have adduced a number of versions European and Asiatic,531 and shall content myself with citing in this place a rather unique version from Mrs. Meer Hasan Ali's Observations on the Mussul-mans of India, vol. ii, p. 330ff.:
A certain man is travelling on horseback through an immense forest, and observes fire consuming some bushes, in the centre of which is a great snake, who implores the traveller to save him. The traveller throws down his horse-bag and the snake creeps into it, and when the horseman takes it up and releases the snake the latter is about to bite him, and so forth. Having appealed to the pípal-tree and received the same answer as that of the banyan in our version, the two meet a camel-driver, who says the snake is right—it is “the way of the world” to return evil for good, and tells his own story: “I was,” says he, “sole proprietor of a very fine strong camel, by whose labour I earned a handsome livelihood, in conveying goods, and sometimes travellers, from place to place, as fortune served me. One day, returning home through an intricate wood, I approached a poor blind man, who was seated on the ground lamenting his hard fate. Hearing my camel's feet advance he redoubled his cries of distress, calling loud for help. He told me that he had been attacked by robbers, and that his boy-guide had been forced from him and taken as a slave. I seated him on my beast and proceeded with him to the city where he said he resided. Arriving there, I offered to assist the poor man to alight, but to my astonishment he began abusing me for my barefaced wickedness, collected a crowd about us by his cries for help from his persecutor, declared himself the master of the camel, and accused me of attempting to rob him now, as I had done his brother before. Hearing this plausible speech, the people dragged me before the judge, who sentenced me to be thrust out of the city with threat of greater punishment should I ever return. Therefore I say, the reward of good is evil.” The fox is then appealed to with the usual result of leaving the ungrateful snake in the flames, there “to fry in his own fat.”—This story of the camel-driver is somewhat analogous to that of the Setti and the Blind Man—ante, p. 215 ff.
This droll story is of Hindú extraction, and in much the same form is still current in Southern India. In the “Exposition” prefixed to the Abbè Dubois' French translation of the Tamil version of the Panchatantra, p. 15, it is given with a few unimportant variations: The name of the king is Nihla-Kéton,532 his country is called Anga-Dessa, and his capital, Barty-Poura. His wife was long sterile, and after many vows and prayers she at length gave birth to daughters only. Enraged at this, the king tells his prime minister, Vahaca, that he purposes divorcing his wife and taking another, and Vahaca tries to dissuade him from such a course. When the queen is again pregnant the minister offers to take her to his own house and treat her with every care, to which the king consents. The queen once more gives birth to a girl, and the prime minister announces it as a boy, greatly to the king's delight. He fixes the twelfth day for the nama-carna (name-giving) and intimates his intention of being present at the ceremony. But the minister bribes the púhorita, or royal astrologer, to tell the king that in consequence of the unfavourable aspect of his horoscope he must not see this child or allow it to be produced in public until it is grown up and married, otherwise dire calamities threaten both king and country. During 16 years the king must have his child educated at a distance from the palace, and this is undertaken by the prime minister. When the child is 15 the minister tells the king that a wife must be sought out for “him,” and, taking the girl with him, he leads an army against the city of Pattaly-Poura, and there demands the king's daughter as wife to the “son” of King Nihla-Kéton, the marriage to take place in five days. These terms are accepted.—Meanwhile a giant-Bráhman (un géant Brahme), whose abode is in a large tree in the vicinity of the invading army, falls in love with the young princess, and demands her of the prime minister, but Vahaca explains that she is already betrothed, and therefore cannot be given to him. He then tells the giant the whole story of the girl's birth, the concealment of her sex, and so forth, imploring his aid, and suggesting that he should give the girl his sex and take hers for five or six nights, till the wedding and its festivities be over. The good-natured giant consents and exchanges sexes with the princess. The marriage is duly celebrated, soon after which the minister, the metamorphosed prince, and the real princess set out to return home. On the way they visit the giant, and the minister asks him to resume his proper sex. But he replies that “a neighbouring genie” had fallen in love with him, as a woman—and so on, as in our story.
Here, it will be seen on comparing the two versions, the chief differences are: the minister takes the place of the mother in deceiving the king as to the sex of the child; the foreign king is compelled to give his daughter in fear of an invading army; the minister prevails with the “giant” to exchange sexes with the princess, who does not, as in our story, go into the forest with the intention of destroying herself from shame. But in respect of this last incident, we shall find that our tale adheres more closely to the original than the Tamil version. The story occurs in the “Udyoga Parva” (Effort Book—the fifth) of the Mahá-bhárata, sections cxc-cxciii:
The first and best beloved wife of King Drupada had never borne him a child, and the king paid his adorations to Siva for years, in order to obtain the boon of a son. He practised the most austere penances, saying: “Let a son, and not a daughter, be born unto me, O Mahádeva! I desire a son, that I may revenge myself on Bhishma.” At length the great deity said to him: “Thou shalt have a child who shall be female and male. Desist, O king! It will not be otherwise.” Returning to his wife, he informed her of this decision of the great Siva— that his child should be first female and afterwards become male. In due time the wife of Drupada gave birth to a daughter, in accordance with the decree of Destiny, and she gave out that the child was a son. Then Drupada caused all the rites for a male child to be performed in respect of that concealed daughter as if she were really a son, and the child was named Sikhandin. And no man in all Kámpilya, save Drupada himself, knew the real sex of the child. Drupada bestowed great pains on the education of his child, teaching her writing, and painting, and the like arts. And in arrows and weapons the child became a disciple of Drona.
Then that royal couple fixed upon the daughter of Hiranya-varman, the king of the Dasárnas for wife to Sikhandin. And he gave his daughter to Sikhandin, who, after the marriage, returned to Kámpilya. The daughter of Hiranyavarman soon came to know that Sikhandin was a woman like herself, and bashfully informed her nurses and companions of the fact. Then the nurses sent to the king and represented to him everything about the imposture, upon which the king was filled with wrath. He was a powerful monarch, with a great army, not easily to be overcome. And he despatched a messenger to Drupada, who, taking the king aside, said to him: “The king of the Dasárnas, O monarch, deceived by thee and wroth at the insult that thou hast offered him, hath said these words unto thee: ‘Thou hast humiliated me! Without doubt, it was not wisely done by thee. Thou didst, from folly, solicit my daughter for thy daughter! O wicked one, reap now the consequence of that act of deception! I will now slay thee, with all thy relatives and advisers!’” Thus addressed, Drupada, like a thief caught in a net, could not at first speak. At length he sent a sweet speech, saying: “This is not so,” in order to pacify the king of the Dasárnas. But he was not thus to be pacified; and, after consulting with his ministers, he again sent an envoy to Drupada, saying: “I will slay thee!” Now King Drupada was not naturally courageous, and the consciousness of his offence filled him with fear. He took counsel with his wife as to how they might best escape the wrath of the king of the Dasárnas, for he was already on the march against him with a large army.
Meanwhile Sikhandin, filled with grief, and saying to herself that it was solely on her account that her parents were now in such tribulation, resolved on putting an end to her own life. Having formed this determination, she left home, full of heavy sorrow, and went into a dense and solitary forest which was the haunt of a very powerful Yaksha, called Sthunákarna. From fear of that Yaksha,535 man never went into that forest. And within it stood a mansion with high walls and a gateway, plastered over with powdered earth, and rich with smoke bearing the fragrance of fried paddy.536 Entering that mansion, Sikhandin, the daughter of Drupada, began to reduce herself by foregoing all food for many days. Thereupon the Yaksha, who was endued with kindness, showed himself unto her. And he enquired of her, saying: “For what object is this endeavour of thine? I will accomplish it—tell me without delay.” Thus asked, the maiden answered him, repeatedly saying: “Thou art unable to accomplish it.” The Yaksha, however, rejoined: “I am a follower of the Lord of Treasures [i.e. Kuvera]. I can grant boons, O princess! I will grant thee even that which cannot be given! Tell me what thou hast to say.” Thus assured, Sikhandin represented, in detail, everything that had happened, unto that chief of Yakshas called Sthunákarna. And she answered: “My father, O Yaksha, will soon meet with destruction. The ruler of the Dasárnas marcheth against him in rage. That king cased in golden mail is endued with great might and great courage. Therefore, O Yaksha, save me, my mother, and my father! Indeed, thou hast already pledged thyself to relieve my distress. Through thy grace, O Yaksha, I would become a perfect man! As long as that king may not depart from my city, so long, O great Yaksha, show me grace!” Hearing these words of Sikhandin, that Yaksha, afflicted by Destiny, said, after reflection: “Blessed lady, I will certainly do what thou wishest. Listen, however, to the condition I make: For a certain period I will give thee my manhood. Thou must, however, come back to me in due time. Pledge thyself to do so. Possessed of immense power, I am a ranger of the skies, wandering at pleasure, and capable of accomplishing whatever I wish. Through my grace, save thy city and thy kinsmen wholly! I will bear thy womanhood, O princess! Pledge thy troth to me, and I will do what is agreeable to thee.” Sikh-andin answered: “O holy one of excellent vows! I will give thee back thy manhood. O wanderer of the night! bear thou my womanhood for a short time. After the ruler of the Dasárnas has departed from my city, I will once more become a maiden and thou wilt become a man.” Then they both made a covenant, and imparted into each other's body their sexes. And the Yaksha became a female, while Sikhandin obtained the blazing form of the Yaksha.
Then Sikhandin, having obtained manhood, entered his city in great joy and approached his father, to whom he represented everything that had happened; and Drupada became exceedingly glad, and, along with his wife, recollected the words of the great Siva. And he forthwith sent a messenger to the ruler of the Dasárnas, saying: “This my child is a male. Let it be believed by thee.” Meanwhile the ruler of the Dasárnas had arrived at Kámpilya, and Drupada sent a messenger who was well versed in the Vedas. But Hiranyavarman addressed the envoy in these words: “Say unto that worst of kings: ‘O thou wicked of understanding! having selected my daughter for the wife of thy daughter, thou shalt to-day, without doubt, behold the fruit of that deception.’” When the envoy returned and delivered this message to Drupada, he despatched another Bráhman learned in the Vedas to the ruler of the Dasárnas, who said to him: “Hear, O king, the words of the ruler of the Pánchálas: ‘This my child is really a male. Let it be made clear by means of witnesses.’” Then the king of the Dasárnas sent a number of young ladies of great beauty to ascertain whether Sikhandin was really a male or a female. And those ladies, having ascertained the truth, joyfully told the king of the Dasárnas that Sikhandin was a powerful person of the masculine sex. Hearing this testimony, Hiranyavarman was filled with joy, and going to his brother Drupada passed a few days with him in gladness. And the king, rejoiced as he was, gave Sikhandin much wealth, many elephants, steeds, and kine. And, worshipped by Drupada as long as he stayed, the Dasárna king then departed, having rebuked his daughter. And after Hiranyavarman had departed in joy and with his anger quelled, Sikhandin began to rejoice exceedingly.
Meanwhile [some time after the exchange of sexes had taken place] Kuvera, the protector of all the treasures, in the course of a journey came to the house of Sthuna, the Yaksha, and admiring the garlands of flowers with which it was bedecked, he asked his followers why it was that Sthuna did not come out to greet him. And they told him how Sthuna had given his own manhood to the daughter of Drupada, taking her womanhood in exchange, and therefore he was ashamed to approach him. Hearing this, Kuvera caused Sthuna to be brought before him; and Sthuna, wearing a feminine form, came thither, and stood before him in shame. And Kuvera said: “Since, humiliating all the Yakshas, thou hast, O thou of sinful deeds, given away thy own sex to Sikhandin and taken from her, O thou wicked of understanding, her womanhood—since, O wicked wretch, thou hast done what hath never been done before by anybody;—therefore, from this day, thou shalt remain a woman and she shall remain a man!” At these words all the Yakshas attempted to mollify Kuvera for the sake of Sthuna, saying: “Set a limit to thy curse!” Then the lord of the Yakshas said: “After Sikhandin's death, Sthuna will regain his own form. Therefore let this high-souled Yaksha be freed from his anxiety.” Having said this, Kuvera departed with his followers.
And Sthuna, with that curse denounced on him, continued to live there; and when the time arrived, Sikhandin, without losing a moment, came to that wanderer of the night. And approaching his presence he said: “I have come to thee, O holy one!” Sthuna then repeatedly said unto him: “I am pleased with thee!” Indeed, beholding that prince return to him without guile, Sthuna told Sikhandin everything that had happened, adding: “O son of a king, for thee have I been cursed by Kuvera. Go now, and live happily amongst men, as thou choosest. Thy coming hither and the arrival of Pulastya's son [i.e. Kuvera] were, I think, both ordained from beforehand. And this was incapable of being prevented.” Sikhandin then returned to his city filled with joy.539
It is evident that the Persian and the Tamil versions were not derived directly from the story in the Mahábhárata, but from some modern adaptation, since in both the good-natured dív has a very different reason from that of the Yaksha Sthuna for retaining his adopted sex. The chief features of the Sanskrit original are, however, reproduced in the two variants, if we except the actual marriage of the princess, the discovery of her sex, and her father's cognisance of the whole affair from the first, which do not appear in them.—The story is so singular that I think it must be orally current in different countries of India, as well as exist in collections in many of the vernacular languages; and it would be interesting to see what farther modifications it has undergone, especially in passing by word of mouth to successive generations and from place to place.
In M. Dozon's Contes Albanais No. 14 presents some analogy to the story of the Exchange of Sexes. Here a man with three daughters and no sons is called to the wars; he is old, and has no one to take his place. The first and second daughters express their wish to be married—probably, though it is not expressly stated, in order that one of their husbands should go as the substitute for their aged father. But the youngest assumes a man's dress and goes to the wars in place of him, and slays a lamia that had long made a feast on the people once every year, for which she receives in reward a wonderful talking horse, through whose cleverness she accomplishes a feat by which she wins a king's daughter in marriage. The princess, as in the Sanskrit story and in the well-known Arabian tale, complains to her parents of the coldness of her “husband,” and the king lays various snares in hopes of causing the destruction of the disguised heroine, but her horse saves her from all of them. At last the king sends her to “the church (sic) full of serpents,” to demand payment of their arrears of tribute, hoping they would kill the objectionable spouse of his daughter. The money is paid, however, but the serpents, enraged at having to part with so much treasure, cry out: “If thou art a girl, become a boy; if thou art a boy, become a girl,” and there and then the heroine found herself actually changed into a man; so the serpents thus did her a good turn, instead of the evil one they intended.—M. Dozon, in his rapprochements, cites No. 58 of Hahn's collection of Greek popular tales, in which a man is first changed to a girl, and afterwards, by a giant, back to a man again.
Precisely the same incident occurs in the Comte de Caylus' interesting collection of Contes Orientaux, with, strange to say, instead of a snake, a black bull (“un taureau noir”), and the hero, “having been brought up in the midst of jewels,” knew that the stone was a real carbuncle, and it was of a size he had never before seen.540
I have already offered some remarks on the common belief in the East from the most ancient times that serpents have precious stones in their heads and are the guardians of treasures concealed in the earth (pp. 232 and 297), but the subject is so interesting as being a survival, or rather relic, of serpent-worship, that I think the following observations by Mr. M. J. Walhouse, the veteran scholar, in the Indian Antiquary for 1875, pp. 45, 46, may be reproduced here:
“In the Life of Apollonius Tyanæus [B.C. 3—A.D. 98] are some marvellous stories of large Indian serpents, which the Indians are said to destroy as follows: ‘They spread a silken robe, inwoven with golden letters, before the entrance of the serpent's cave, and those letters, being magical, bring on sleep, so that the eyes of the serpent are overcome. Then with powerful incantations they so allure it as to be able to cast over it the magical robe, which induces sound sleep. Rushing in, the Indians cut off its head with an iron axe and take out certain stones found therein; for the heads of most serpents are said to contain small stones, very beautiful and endowed with a peculiar lustre and wonderful virtues. Such a stone was in the ring that Gyges is said to have possessed.’ This is probably an exaggerated version of the Indian snake-charming, and one of the earliest notices of it… The American Indian tribes believe that in the mountains is a secret valley, inhabited by chiefs of the rattlesnake species, which grow to the size of large trees and bear in their foreheads brilliant gems. In Peru is an animal called carbunculo, which appears only at night. When pursued a valve opens in its forehead, and a brilliant object becomes visible, dispelling the darkness and dazzling the pursuers.”
This singular mode of concealing jewels—into which Asiatics still very commonly convert their wealth—is said to have been formerly, and perhaps is yet occasionally, adopted by travellers. We have another instance in the story of the Young Man who fell in love with a Picture, which occurs only in the Breslau printed Arabic text of the “Thousand and One Nights,” where the hero has luckily some jewels in the flesh of his forearm.— And in the Toldoth Jeshu (already cited in connection with the conflict between the white and black serpents—p. 475) is the following most veracious narrative:
“Now at this time the unutterable Name542 of God was engraved in the temple on the corner-stone. For when King David dug the foundations he found there a stone on which the Name of God was engraved, and he took it and placed it in the Holy of Holies. But as the wise men feared lest some ignorant youth should learn the Name and be able to destroy the world— which God avert!—they made by magic two brazen lions, which they set before the entrance of the Holy of Holies, one on the right, the other on the left. Now if any one were to go within and learn the holy Name, then the lions would begin to roar as he came out, so that from alarm and bewilderment he would lose his presence of mind and forget the Name.
“And Jeshu left Upper Galilee and came secretly to Jerusalem, and he went into the Temple and learned there the holy writing; and after he had written the incommunicable Name on parchment he uttered it, with intent that he might feel no pain, and then he cut into his flesh and hid the parchment with its inscription therein. Then he uttered the Name once more, and made so that his flesh healed up again. And when he went out at the door the lions roared and he forgot the Name. Therefore he hasted outside the town, cut into his flesh, took the writing out, and when he had sufficiently studied the signs he retained the Name in his memory.”542a
If there ever was a deliberately trumped-up story, this assuredly is one—it is altogether absurd and inconsistent. When, I wonder, did King David dig the foundation of the Temple? Moreover, the temple referred to by this miserable, malignant scribbler was not that built by the son of David, but the gorgeous pile erected by King Herod. But indeed nothing more is needed to show that this idle tale was written for one sole purpose than the words “lest some ignorant youth should learn the Name.” Why “some youth” only? Was there not any danger of ignorant, or curious, or evil-minded grown men attempting to acquire this knowledge?—Then we have the magic lions of brass that were placed on either side of the entrance of the Holy of Holies! The only “graven images” we read of as being in the Temple are the cherubim, whose wings canopied the Ark. It is very evident that this most wretched tract—of which it is said the Jews themselves are now ashamed—was written during the later Middle Ages, when belief was so rife in magic images of metal as guardians of treasure or of some other magical contrivance.
The classical story is well known of Zeus, dreading the wrath of Hera when Semele gave premature birth to Dionysus (Bacchus), sewing up the infant in his thigh, where he came to maturity. And we have an interesting example of the prevalence in India—mutatis mutandis—of Greek and Roman legends, known to every schoolboy, in a folk-tale contributed to the Indian Antiquary for 1886, p. 367, by (Miss?) Putlabi D. H. Wadia, in which seven brothers go on a trading voyage, leaving their little sister, Sunábaí Jái, with their wives, who in their absence ill-treat her shamefully and appoint her tasks very similar to those which Venus gave Psyche to do, the last being to bring them some sea-foam. The poor little maid goes to the shore, and observes her brothers' ship coming in, and runs to meet them. One of the brothers, when she has told her story, cuts open his thigh and having placed her inside the opening sews it up. When they reach home they ask for their sister and the wives give an evasive reply, upon which they are threatened with dire punishment should any accident have happened to the little one, and the women having confessed their wickedness, the brother draws Sunábaí Jái out of his thigh.
In the Tamil romance entitled Madnakámarájankadai, which has been translated by my friend Pandit Natésa Sástrí, of Madras, under the title of Dravidian Nights Entertainments, a prince one day sees the daughter of Indra bathing in a tank, and having purloined her garment takes it home, cuts open his thigh and puts the celestial robe inside, and then sews the flesh together. The nymph, like others of the Bird-Maiden class, had no resource but to follow the hero and become his wife.
From the East, doubtless, the idea was brought to Europe and utilised in the romance of Huon of Bordeaux, where we read that the beard and molars of the Saracen amír—the procuring of which was the condition of the hero's pardon by Charlemagne— were sewed up by Oberon, King of the Fairies, in the side of Gerames, the uncle of Duke Huon.544
In the Kashmírí tale of Gullala Sháh (Mr. Knowles' collection), a fair princess, Panj Phúl, falls in love with the hero, and her father, when he comes to know of this, transforms her to wood and causes her to be placed in a public garden, as a warning to other fairy damsels not to bestow their affections on human beings. Gullala Sháh, instructed by the vazír, whose daughter he had already married, burns the wood, and pouring water on the ashes, Panj Phúl, as in Bakáwalí's case, is restored to life.
In No. 16 of the Burmese collection of tales entitled Decisions of the Princess Thoodhamma Tsari—which has been translated into English by Capt. T. P. Sparks (Maulmain, 1851), and again by Chr. J. Bandow (Rangoon, 1881)—a youth is changed into a small parrot by a magic thread being tied round his neck, and in that form is captured by some bird-catchers in the king's garden, and presented as a pet to the princess, who discovers and removes the thread, when he becomes once more a handsome young man. Early every morning the princess replaces the thread and he is again changed to a parrot; at night she takes off the thread; and thus she continues to amuse herself until the consequences could not be any longer concealed, but in the sequel the youth is publicly acknowledged as her husband.
Sometimes the hero of a popular fiction has the power of transforming himself into a bird or of quitting his own body and animating that of any dead animal, as in Mr. Natésa Sástrí's Dravidian Nights Entertainments, pp. 8-18, and the idea is also known to European ballads and romances. For instance, in Prior's Danish Ballads, iii, 206, we are told how a knight, to gain access to a lady's bower, becomes a bird and flies in. In his notes, Prior refers to the ballad of ‘The Earl of Mar's Daughter’ (Buchan, i, 49):
“I am a doo the live-lang day,
A sprightly youth at night;
This aye gars me appear mair fair
In a fair maiden's sight.”
He also refers to the Netherlandish ballad, ‘Vogelritter,’ where a knight goes to Cyprus and wins the king's daughter, whom he had previously visited in the form of a bird, having in his possession a stone which effects transformations; and to the ‘Lai d'Iwenec’, by Marie de France.
Page 357—The crafty mother of the bathman is said to have “practised for years under the sorceress Shamsah”; probably the witch of the same name who figures in the story of Táhir, an extract of which will be found in pp. 494, 495.
Page 370—The story of ‘The Sun and the Moon’ (Mihr ú Máh), which the carpenter brags that he knows, is probably the Persian romance of Mihr, the son of Káhvar Sháh, described in Dr. Rieu's Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. ii, p. 765 (Add. 15,099), which also occurs in Hubbí's collection, entitled Hikáyát-i 'Ajíb ú Gharíb, (already cited on p. 474), of which Dr. Rieu, in the same Catalogue (ii, 759, Or. 237), gives the titles of the first nineteen stories, No. 3 being Mihr ú Máh. Dr. Rieu has kindly furnished me with the first part of this tale:
In the kingdom of the East was a mighty king named Khávar Sháh, who had no son. He is told by his astrologers that he is predestined to have a son, provided the mother be a parí (or fairy). On the advice of his vazír, Rushan Ráï, he asks the help of a devotee called Faylasúf, who tells him that he should obtain possession of the book of magic which is kept by the witch Naskas in her castle. All three set out with this intent, and by means of the Most Great Name (see ante, note on p. 163) obtain entrance into the castle, and on their way release a dove from its cage. Deceived by the wiles of the witch, they are transformed: the king, into a lion, the vazír, into a lynx, and the devotee, into a fox; but plunging into the waters of the Spring of Job, they are restored to their natural shape, seek refuge in a hollow tree, and are taken out of it by the bird Rukh (or roc) and carried to the top of a mountain. In the meanwhile the released dove, who was no other than Rúz-afrúz, daughter of Farrukhfál, king of the parís, returns to her parents and tells them of her rescue. Then she goes in search of her deliverers; finds them asleep, and has them conveyed to her father's court. Farrukhfál waives his objection to a marriage which he deemed a mésalliance, and the result in due time is the birth of a prince, called Mihr. The astrologers prophesy that at the age of eighteen grief will come to him through a piece of paper. And, in fact, the young man, while out hunting, meets a youth called Mukhtarí, a rich merchant from Maghrab, who has suffered shipwreck and has saved nothing but the portrait of Máh, the fair daughter of Hilál, king of the West. The remainder of the tale deals with the adventures of the love-struck prince in search of the fair one, ending, of course, with their happy union.547
The tale of ‘Sayf ul-Mulúk and Bady'á ul-Jumál,’ which the carpenter says he had also heard, occurs in the Arabian Nights; the Tùrkish story-book Al-Faraj ba'd al-Shiddah, or Joy after Distress; the Persian Tales translated into French by Petis de la Croix, under the title of Les Mille et un Jours; and it also exists as a separate story in MSS. preserved in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It recounts how a young prince discovers in his father's treasury the portrait of a very beautiful damsel and sets out in quest of her. After many perilous adventures he finally learns from a jinni that the fair original of the portrait was one of the concubines of King Solomon and had, of course, been dead for many ages.
Whether the ‘Road to the Mosque’, which the carpenter says he has “seen,” be the title of a story, or (as is more likely) that of a devotional work, I am unable to say, never having seen it alluded to elsewhere.
is a variant of a story found in the Beslau printed Arabic text of the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ of the Fuller, his Wife, and the Trooper. It also occurs in the Historia Septem Sapientum Romœ, the European adaptation of the Book of Sindibád, where a crafty Knight of Hungary plays the part of the carpenter of our story, and a jealous old baron that of the Kází. The plot of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, which is very similar to the tale of the crafty Knight, in all likelihood suggested to Boiardo the amusing episode, in his Orlando Innamorato, of Folderico and Ordauro, which, in its turn, was perhaps adapted in the Seven Wise Masters. In my Book of Sindibád, p. 343 ff., and in my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii, pp. 214-228, are most of the other known versions and variants of this story.
has many parallels in Eastern story-books, and the tale seems to have been, time out of mind, a favourite with Asiatics. In one version there is no game of yad est between husband and wife. The lady has her lover concealed in an adjoining apartment, for her husband has come home quite unexpectedly. But she tells him plainly of the fact, upon which he demands the key and approaches to open the door of the room, when the lady bursts into laughter. He pauses in astonishment, and asks the cause of her merriment, to which she replies: “I cannot help laughing at your simplicity, in believing that I should have a lover in the next room, and tell you of it.” The husband returns the key and goes away well pleased.
resembles the latter part of the Arabian tale of the Fuller, his Wife, and the Trooper, where the poor husband is also drugged, his hair is cropped, he is dressed as a soldier, and provided with a letter recommending him to be enrolled by the governor of Isfahán. In this case, however, the poor husband is not reclaimed by his artful wife.
Whatever may be the source of this diverting story, it was known in France as early at least as the 13th century, in the form of a fabliau by Haisiau the Trouvère, under the title “Des Trois Dames qui trouverent un Anel” (Meon's edition of Bar-bazan, 1808, tome iii, p. 220ff., and Le Grand, 1781, tome iv, pp. 163-166), of which the following is the outline:
Three ladies found a ring, and “they swore by Jesu that she should have it who should best beguile her husband to do a good turn to her lover.”
The First Lady, having made her husband drunk, when he is asleep, causes his head to be shaved, dresses him in the habit of a monk, and carries him, assisted by her lover, to the entrance of a convent. When he awakes and finds himself thus transformed he imagines that God, by a miraculous exercise of his grace, had called him to the monastic life. So he presents himself before the abbot and requests to be received among the brethren. The lady hastens to the convent in well-feigned despair, and is exhorted to be resigned and to congratulate her husband on the saintly vow he has taken. “Many a good man,” says the poet, “has been betrayed by woman and her harlotry. This one became a monk in the abbey, where he remained a very long time. Wherefore, I counsel all people who hear this story told, that they ought not to trust in their wives, or in their households, if they have not first proved that they are full of virtues. Many a man has been deceived by women and their treachery. This one became a monk against right, who would never have been such in his life, if his wife had not deceived him.”
The Second Lady had some salted and smoked eels which her husband bade her cook for dinner on a Friday, but there was no fire in the house. Under the pretext of going to have them cooked on a neighbour's fire, she goes out and finds her lover, at whose house she remains a whole week. On the following Friday, about the hour of dinner, she enters a neighbour's house and asks leave to cook her eels, saying that her husband is angry with her for having no fire, and that she could not dare to go back lest he should cut off her head. As soon as the eels are cooked she carries them home, “piping hot.” The husband asks her where she has been for the last week, and commences to beat her. She cries for help and the neighbours come in, and amongst them the one at whose fire the eels had been cooked, who swears that the wife had only just left her house, and ridicules the man for his assertion that she had been away a whole week. The poor husband gets into a great rage and is locked up for a madman.550
The Third Lady proposes to her lover to marry him, and he thinks that she is merely jesting, seeing she is already married, but she assures him that she is quite in earnest, and even undertakes that her husband will give his consent. The lover is to come for her husband and take him to the house of Dan Eustace, where he has a fair niece, whom the lover is to pretend he wishes to espouse, if he will give her to him. The lady will go thither, and she will have made her arrangements with Dan Eustace before they arrive. Her husband cannot but believe that he has left her at home, and she will be so apparelled that he cannot recognise her. This plan is accordingly carried out. The lover asks the lady's husband for the hand of his niece in marriage, to which he very willingly consents, and thus without knowing it makes him a present of his own wife. “All his life long the lover possessed her, because the husband gave and did not lend her; nor could he ever get her back.”551
“Now tell me true,” adds the poet, “without any lie, and if you would judge rightly and truly, which one of these three best deserved to have the ring?”
Le Grand, at the end of his modern French prose abridgment of this fabliau, says that it is told at great length in the tales of the Sieur d'Ouville, tome iv, p. 255. In the Facetiœ Bebelianœ, p. 86, three women make a wager as to which of them will play the best trick on her husband. One causes her poor spouse to believe he is a monk, and he goes and sings mass; the second husband believes that he is dead and allows himself to be carried on a bier to that mass; and the third sings in it stark naked, believing he is clothed. It is also found in the Convivales Sermones, t. i, p. 200; in the Délices de Verboquet, p. 166; and in the Facetiœ of Lod. Doménichi, p. 172. In the Contes pour Rire, p. 197, three women find a diamond, and the arbiter whom they select promises it to her who concocts the best device for deceiving her husband, but the ruses, according to Le Grand, are different from those in the fabliau. Possibly from this last mentioned version (if not from some old Morisco-Spanish tale, for the idea of the story is certainly of Eastern origin) Isidro de Robles, a Spanish novelist, who wrote about the year 1666, adapted his tale of ‘The Diamond Ring,’ of which a translation is given by Roscoe in his Spanish Novelists, 1832, vol. iii, pp. 163-214, and the outline of which is as follows:
In the fair city of Madrid there lived three ladies who were very intimate friends. One was the wife of Luca Morena, cashier to a wealthy Genoese merchant; the second was the wife of Diego de Morales, a painter, employed in decorating one of the monasteries; the third was the wife of Señor Geloso, an elderly ill-tempered curmudgeon. It happened one day, when the three ladies were standing near a fountain to see a grand public procession, that they simultaneously discovered a diamond ring which glittered under the water, and when one of them took it up, all three laid claim to it, on various grounds, and they squabbled for its possession till one of them proposed they should submit the matter to a count of their acquaintance whom they saw approaching, to which the others agreed. The count takes charge of the ring and says that it should be the prize of “whichever of you shall, within the space of the next six weeks, succeed in playing off upon her husband the most clever and ingenious trick—always having due regard to his honour.”
The Cashier's Wife employs an astrologer to waylay her husband on his road home and tell him that he looks seriously ill; then to feel his pulse and declare that he will be a dead man within 24 hours, so he had better put his affairs in order. Somewhat alarmed, he reaches home, takes little supper and goes to bed, but only to toss restlessly about all the night. He is off to business earlier than usual next day, and coming home in the evening meets the vicar of the parish and some friends, who are also in the plot. They pretend not to see him, but talk to each other aloud of Luca Moreno's sudden death, and express very uncomplimentary opinions as to his state in the other world. In great perplexity, he continues his way and meets the astrologer and the painter (the latter is the husband of the second lady, and, strange as it may seem, is also a party in the plot), talking likewise of his death. He can endure this no longer, and accosts them, saying that he is not dead, but they affect to take him for his own ghost and run away. Now he thinks he must be really dead, though when and how he died he cannot recollect. Arriving at his house, he finds it shut up, and knocks long and loudly at the door before the maidservant appears, who asks: “Who is it? You can't come in, for master is dead.” “Why,” exclaims the poor cashier, “it is I myself, your master.” “Who calls at this hour? This is the house of mourning, for we are all in grief for the loss of our master.” “Hold your tongue, you jade, and let me in, for I am your master.” She replies that he, poor man, is now engaged counting money in another and a worse world. In his rage he bursts open the door and walks in. His wife on seeing him pretends to swoon, but leaving her in the care of the maidservant he goes down to the pantry to stay his ravenous appetite, and there indulges in a hearty supper, washed down with copious draughts of wine, and then goes to bed. In the morning his wife, in gala dress, awakes him, and he thinks that she is dead also, and asks her when he himself died and was buried. She says all that she knows is that he buried last night some of the best wine and dainties provided for the carnival—he must be still drunk to talk such nonsense. The astrologer and the painter come, and when they hear his story declare they had not seen him or been from home last night, and, the vicar and his friends making a similar statement, he is persuaded the whole affair was a dream, and promises to defray the cost of a feast on Shrove Tuesday.
It is now the turn of the Second Lady to play a trick upon her husband, the painter. “For this purpose she concerted a plan with a brother of hers, who possessed a fine genius for amusing himself at other people's expense. In the first place they contrived to have a false door made at the entrance of the house, on such a plan (then frequently adopted) that it might be easily substituted for the real door at short notice. It was brought thither secretly one night, and concealed in a cellar, while the brother and two friends lay ready to carry on the intended plot in an upper chamber of the house.” The painter returns home as usual, and having supped retires to rest. About midnight he is roused from a deep sleep by the cries of his wife, who pretends to be dying, and implores him to go for her confessor, and her old nurse, who knew her constitution. He very reluctantly rises and dresses himself, and then sets out in quest of the nurse, who lived at the other end of the town. Meanwhile the old door is removed and the false one substituted, and above it a sign is placed bearing the words, “House of Public Entertainment.” Then, according to arrangement, friends of the lady and a party of musicians with their instruments arrive, in order to “make a night of it.” The poor painter, after plodding his weary way in quest of the old nurse, through wind and rain, and knocking at the wrong doors, at last returns home, drenched to the skin. But what must have been his amazement to find his house metamorphosed into a tavern and to hear sounds from within of mirth and revelry! He knocks at the door, however, and a head is thrust out of an upper window and a voice orders him to be off, for the house is full. When he says that the house is his own, he is told it has been a tavern for the last 15 years and is finally made to beat a retreat by two dogs being let loose on him. Betaking himself to his friend Senor Geloso (whose turn is yet to come), he relates to him all his strange adventures. His friend thinks he is drunk and accommodates him for the night in his house. Next morning they go to the painter's house, which has been restored to its former appearance, and when he tells them of what had happened to him the previous night, his wife and her friends assure him that the affair must have been the effect of sorcery, at the same time his loving spouse reads him a severe lecture on his debauched way of life, staying out o' nights and so forth. It is finally agreed to say no more about the matter.
The trick played on the jealous, ill-tempered husband of the Third Lady bears a striking resemblance to that of the Kutwál's wife—mutatis mutandis. Having plied him with wine till he is “dead drunk,” she sends for her brother, prior of the convent of Capuchins, who comes (as arranged) with the lay brethren, and, after his head has been shaved and he has been dressed in the monastic garb, they carry him off to the convent and place him in a cell. When he awakes he is perplexed at the change that has taken place in his person and place of abode. In brief, he is flogged next day for contumacy and sentenced to eight days' imprisonment, with bread and water. This term expired, he is sent out with one of the monks to beg alms, and in the course of their rounds they come to his own house, where seeing his wife at a window he rushes in and embraces her. The lady, of course, raises a great outcry, and the servants and neighbours hasten to her assistance. The monk explains that he is a crazy brother who fancies every pretty woman he sees is his wife, and leads him back to the convent, where he is again soundly flogged and put upon a new course of bread and water, so long that his hair and beard were grown again. One night he is treated to a fine supper and a bottle of wine containing an opiate, and, when he is asleep, is carried back to his house, and on awaking next morning and telling his wife of all that he had undergone as a monk, she persuades him that it was but a distempered dream, and he, glad to find himself in his own house, promises to treat her in future with all respect and full confidence in her virtue.
The three ladies proceed next day to the dwelling of the count and relate the tricks they had played their husbands. He says that he cannot possibly give the preference to any one of them— they are all equally clever—but as the ring is really one he had himself lost the very day when they found it, he must ask them to accept and divide amongst themselves a purse containing three hundred pistoles, and so the ladies take their leave of the count, in every way satisfied.
“Ha, Lord, wel may the man be riche
Whom that a king list for to riche”;
the other exclaims:
↩“But he is riche and wel bego
Whom that God wold sende wele.”