Chapter XXVI: Part 26

[FN#319] The great prototype of the Flying Carpet is that of Sulayman bin Dáúd, a fable which the Koran (chap. xxi. 81) borrowed from the Talmud, not from "Indian fictions." It was of green sendal embroidered with gold and silver and studded with precious stones, and its length and breadth were such that all the Wise King's host could stand upon it, the men to the left and the Jinns to the right of the throne; and when all were ordered, the Wind, at royal command, raised it and wafted it whither the Prophet would, while an army of birds flying overhead canopied the host from the sun. In the Middle Ages the legend assumed another form. "Duke Richard, surnamed 'Richard sans peur,' walking with his courtiers one evening in the forest of Moulineaux, near one of his castles on the banks of the Seine, hearing a prodigious noise coming towards him, sent one of his esquires to know what was the matter, who brought him word that it was a company of people under a leader or King. Richard, with five hundred of his bravest Normans, went out to see a sight which the peasants were so accustomed to that they viewed it two or three times a week without fear. The sight of the troop, preceded by two men, who spread a cloth on the ground, made all the Normans run away, and leave the Duke alone. He saw the strangers form themselves into a circle on the cloth, and on asking who they were, was told that they were the spirits of Charles V., King of France, and his servants, condemned to expiate their sins by fighting all night against the wicked and the damned. Richard desired to be of their party, and receiving a strict charge not to quit the cloth, was conveyed with them to Mount Sinai, where, leaving them without quitting the cloth, he said his prayers in the Church of St. Catherine's Abbey there, while they were fighting, and returned with them. In proof of the truth of this story, he brought back half the wedding-ring of a knight in that convent, whose wife, after six years, concluded him dead, and was going to take a second husband." (Note in the Lucknow Edition of The Nights.)

[FN#320] Amongst Eastern peoples, and especially adepts, the will of man is not a mere term for a mental or cerebral operation, it takes the rank of a substance; it becomes a mighty motive power, like table-turning and other such phenomena which, now looked upon as child's play, will perform a prime part in the Kinetics of the century to come. If a few pair of hands imposed upon a heavy dinner-table can raise it in the air, as I have often seen, what must we expect to result when the new motive force shall find its Franklin and be shown to the world as real "Vril"? The experiment of silently willing a subject to act in a manner not suggested by speech or sign has been repeatedly tried and succeeded in London drawing-rooms; and it has lately been suggested that atrocious crimes have resulted from overpowering volition. In cases of paralysis the Faculty is agreed upon the fact that local symptoms disappear when the will-power returns to the brain. And here I will boldly and baldly state my theory that, in sundry cases, spectral appearances (ghosts) and abnormal smells and sounds are simply the effect of a Will which has, so to speak, created them.

[FN#321] The text has "But-Khanah" = idol-house (or room) syn. with "But-Kadah" = image-cuddy, which has been proposed as the derivation of the disputed "Pagoda." The word "Khánah" also appears in our balcony, origin. "balcony," through the South-European tongues, the Persian being "Bálá-khánah" = high room. From "Kadah" also we derive "cuddy," now confined to nautical language.

[FN#322] Europe contains sundry pictures which have, or are supposed to have, this property; witness the famous Sundarium bearing the head of Jesus. The trick, for it is not Art, is highly admired by the credulous.

[FN#323] i.e. the Hindu Scripture or Holy Writ, e.g. "Káma-Shastra" = the Cupid-gospel.

[FN#324] This shifting theatre is evidently borrowed by Galland from Pliny (N. H. xxxvi., 24) who tells that in B. C. 50, C. Curio built two large wooden theatres which could be wheeled round and formed into an amphitheatre. The simple device seems to stir the bile of the unmechanical old Roman, so unlike the Greek in powers of invention.

[FN#325] This trick is now common in the circuses and hippodromes of Europe, horses and bulls being easily taught to perform it: but India has as yet not produced anything equal to the "Cyclist elephant" of Paris.

[FN#326] This Arab.-Pers. compound, which we have corrupted to "Bezestein" or "Bezettein" and "Bezesten," properly means a market-place for Baz or Bazz = cloth, fine linen; but is used by many writers as = Bazar, see "Kaysariah," vol. i. 266.

[FN#327] The origin of the lens and its applied use to the telescope and the microscope are "lost" (as the Castle-guides of Edinburgh say) "in the glooms of antiquity." Well ground glasses have been discovered amongst the finds of Egypt and Assyria: indeed much of the finer work of the primeval artists could not have been done without such aid. In Europe the "spy-glass" appears first in the Opus Majus of the learned Roger Bacon (circa A. D. 1270); and his "optic tube" (whence his saying "all things are known by perspective"), chiefly contributed to make his wide-spread fame as a wizard. The telescope was popularised by Galileo who (as mostly happens) carried off and still keeps, amongst the vulgar, all the honours of invention. Some "Illustrators" of The Nights confound this "Nazzárah," the Pers. "Dúr-bín," or far-seer, with the "Magic Mirror," a speculum which according to Gower was set up in Rome by Virgilius the Magician hence the Mirror of Glass in the Squire's tale; Merlin's glassie Mirror of Spenser (F. Q. ii. 24); the mirror in the head of the monstrous fowl which forecast the Spanish invasion to the Mexicans; the glass which in the hands of Cornelius Agrippa (A. D. 1520) showed to the Earl of Surrey fair Geraldine "sick in her bed;" to the globe of glass in The Lusiads; Dr. Dee's show-stone, a bit of cannel-coal; and lastly the zinc and copper disk of the absurdly called "electro-biologist." I have noticed this matter at some length in various places.

[FN#328] D'Herbelot renders Soghd Samarkand = plain of Samarkand. Hence the old "Sogdiana," the famed and classical capital of Máwaránnahr, our modern Transoxiana, now known as Samarkand. The Hindi translator has turned "Soghd" into "Sadá" and gravely notes that "the village appertained to Arabia." He possibly had a dim remembrance of the popular legend which derives "Samarkand" from Shamir or Samar bin Afrikús, the Tobba King of Al-Yaman, who lay waste Soghd-city ("Shamir kand" = Shamir destroyed); and when rebuilt the place was called by the Arab. corruption Samarkand. See Ibn Khallikan ii. 480. Ibn Haukal (Kitáb al Mamálik wa al-Masálik = Book of Realms and Routes), whose Oriental Geography (xth century) was translated by Sir W. Ouseley (London, Oriental Press, 1800), followed by Abú 'l-Fidá, mentions the Himyaritic inscription upon an iron plate over the Kash portal of Samarkand (Appendix No. iii.).

[FN#329] The wish might have been highly indiscreet and have exposed the wisher to the resentment of the two other brothers. In parts of Europe it is still the belief of the vulgar that men who use telescopes can see even with the naked eye objects which are better kept hidden; and I have heard of troubles in the South of France because the villagers would not suffer the secret charms of their women to become as it were the public property of the lighthouse employ⁄s.

[FN#330] "Jám-i-Jamshíd" is a well worn commonplace in Moslem folk-lore; but commentators cannnot agree whether "Jám" be = a mirror or a cup. In the latter sense it would represent the Cyathomantic cup of the Patriarch Joseph and the symbolic bowl of Nestor. Jamshíd may be translated either Jam the Bright or the Cup of the Sun: this ancient King is Solomon of the grand old Guebres.

[FN#331] This passage may have suggested to Walter Scott one of his descriptions in "The Monastery."

[FN#332] In the text "Lájawardí," for which see vols. iii. 33, and ix. 190.

[FN#333] In Galland and the H. V. "Prince Husayn's."

[FN#334] This is the "Gandharba-lagana" (fairy wedding) of the Hindus; a marriage which lacked only the normal ceremonies. For the Gandharbas = heavenly choristers see Moor's "Hindú Pantheon," p. 237, etc.

[FN#335] "Perfumed with amber" (-gris?) says Galland.

[FN#336] The Hind term for the royal levée, as "Selám" is the Persian.

[FN#337] Arab. "'Ilm al-Ghayb" = the Science of Hidden Things which, says the Hadis, belongeth only to the Lord. Yet amongst Moslems, as with other faiths, the instinctive longing to pry into the Future has produced a host of pseudo-sciences, Geomancy, Astrology, Prophecy and others which serve only to prove that such knowledge, in the present condition of human nature, is absolutely unattainable.

[FN#338] In folk-lore and fairy tales the youngest son of mostly three brothers is generally Fortune's favourite: at times also he is the fool or the unlucky one of the family, Cinderella being his counterpart (Mr. Clouston, i. 321).

[FN#339] The parasang (Gr. {Greek}), which Ibn Khall. (iii. 315) reduces to three miles, has been derived wildly enough from Fars or Pars (Persia proper) sang = (mile) stone. Chardin supports the etymology, "because leagues are marked out with great tall stones in the East as well as the West, e.g., ad primam (vel secundam) lapidem."

[FN#340] A huge marquee or pavilion-tent in India.

[FN#341] The Jinn feminine; see vol. i. 10. The word hardly corresponds with the Pers. "Peri" and Engl. "Fairy," a creation, like the "Dív," of the so-called "Aryan," not "Semitic," race.

[FN#342] Galland makes the Fairy most unjustifiably fear that her husband is meditating the murder of his father; and the Hindí in this point has much the advantage of the Frenchman.

[FN#343] Pers. = "Light of the World"; familiar to Europe as the name of the Grand Moghul Jehángír's principal wife.

[FN#344] The Arab stirrup, like that of the Argentine Gaucho, was originally made of wood, liable to break, and forming a frail support for lancer and sworder. A famous chief and warrior, Abú Sa'íd al-Muhallab (ob. A. H. 83 = 702) first gave orders to forge foot-rests of iron.

[FN#345] For this Egyptian and Syrian weapon see vol. i. 234.

[FN#346] See vol. vii. 93, where an error of punctuation confounds it with Kerbela,--a desert with a place of pilgrimage. "Samáwah" in Ibn Khall. (vol. i. 108) is also the name of a town on the Euphrates.

[FN#347] Nazaránah prop. = the gift (or gifts) offered at visits by a Moslem noble or feoffee in India to his feudal superior; and the Kalichah of Hindú, Malabar, Goa and the Blue Mountains (p. 197). Hence the periodical tributes and especially the presents which represent our "legacy-duty" and the "succession-duty" for Rajahs and Nabobs, the latter so highly lauded by "The Times," as the logical converse of the Corn-laws which ruined our corn. The Nazaránah can always be made a permanent and a considerable source of revenue, far more important than such unpopular and un-Oriental device as an income-tax. But our financiers have yet to learn the A. B. C. of political economy in matters of assessment, which is to work upon familiar lines; and they especially who, like Mr. Wilson "mad as a hatter," hold and hold forth that "what is good for England is good for the world." These myopics decide on theoretical and sentimental grounds that a poll-tax is bad in principle, which it may be, still public opinion sanctions it and it can be increased without exciting discontent. The same with the "Nazaránah;" it has been the custom of ages immemorial, and a little more or a little less does not affect its popularity.

[FN#348] Pers. = City-queen.

[FN#349] Compare with this tale its modern and popular version Histoire du Rossignol Chanteur (Spitta-Bey, No. x, p. 123): it contains the rosary (and the ring) that shrinks, the ball that rolls and the water that heals; etc. etc. Mr. Clouston somewhere asserts that the History of the Envious Sisters, like that of Prince Ahmad and the Perí-Banu, are taken from a MS. still preserved in the "King's Library," Paris; but he cannot quote his authority, De Sacy or Langlès. Mr. H. C. Coote (loc. Cit. P. 189) declares it to be, and to have been, "an enormous favourite in Italy and Sicily: no folk-tale exists in those countries at all comparable to it in the number of its versions and in the extent of its distribution." He begins two centuries before Galland, sith Straparola (Notti Piacevoli), proceeds to Imbriani (Novajella Fiorentina), Nerucci (Novelle Montalesi), Comparetti (Nivelline Italiane) and Pitre (Fiabe Novelle e Racconti popolari Italiani, vol. I.); and informs us that "the adventures of the young girl, independently of the joint history of herself and her brother, are also told in a separate "Fiaba" in Italy. A tale called La Favenilla Coraggiosa is given by Visentini in his Fiabe Mantovane and it is as far as it is a counterpart of the second portion of Galland's tale." Mr. Coote also finds this story in Hahn's "Griechische Märchen" entitled "Sun, Moon and Morning Star"--the names of the royal children. The King overhears the talk of three girls and marries the youngest despite his stepmother, who substitutes for her issue a puppy, a kitten and a mouse. The castaways are adopted by a herdsman whilst the mother is confined in a henhouse; and the King sees his offspring and exclaims, "These children are like those my wife promised me." His stepmother, hearing this, threatens the nurse, who goes next morning disguised as a beggar-woman to the girl and induces her to long for the Bough that makes music, the Magic Mirror, and the bird Dickierette. The brothers set out to fetch them leaving their shirts which become black when the mishap befalls them. The sister, directed by a monk, catches the bird and revives the stones by the River of Life and the denouement is brought about by a sausage stuffed with diamonds. In Miss Stokes' Collection of Hindu Stories (No. xx.) "The Boy who had a moon on his brow and a star on his chin" also suggests the "Envious Sisters."

[FN#350] Pop. "Ghaut" = The steps (or path) which lead down to a watering-place. Hence the Hindí saying concerning the "rolling stone"--Dhobi-ka kuttá; na Gharká na Ghát-ká, = a washerwoman's tyke, nor of the house nor of the Ghát-dyke.

[FN#351] Text "Khatíbah" more usually "Khutbah" = the Friday sermon preached by the Khatíb: in this the reigning sovereign is prayed for by name and his mention together with the change of coinage is the proof of his lawful rule. See Lane, M. F., chap. iii.

[FN#352] This form of eaves-dropping, in which also the listener rarely hears any good of himself is, I need hardly now say, a favourite incident of Eastern Storiology and even of history, e.g. Three men met together; one of them expressed the wish to obtain a thousand pieces of gold, so that he might trade with them; the other wished for an appointment under the Emir of the Moslems; the third wished to possess Yusuf's wife, who was the handsomest of women and had reat political influence. Yusuf, being informed of what they said, sent for the men, bestowed one thousand dinars on him who wished for that sum, gave an appointment to the other and said to him who wished to possess the lady: "Foolish man! What induced you to wish for that which you can never obtain?" He then sent him to her and she placed him in a tent where he remained three days, receiving, each day, one and the same kind of food. She had him brought to her and said, "What did you eat these days past?" He replied: "Always the same thing!"--"Well," said she, "all women are the same thing." She then ordered some money and a dress to be given him, after which, she dismissed him. (Ibn Khallikan iii. 463-64.)

[FN#353] This ruthless attempt at infanticide was in accordance with the manners of the age nor has it yet disappeared from Rajput-land, China and sundry over-populous countries. Indeed it is a question if civilisation may not be compelled to revive the law of Lycurgus which forbade a child, male or female, to be brought up without the approbation of public officers appointed ad hoc. One of the curses of the XIXth century is the increased skill of the midwife and physician, who are now able to preserve worthless lives and to bring up semi-abortions whose only effect upon the breed is increased degeneracy. Amongst the Greeks and ancient Arabs the Malthusian practice was carried to excess. Poseidippus declares that in his day--

A man, although poor, will not expose his son;
But however rich, will not preserve his daughter.

See the commentators' descriptions of the Wa'd al-Banát or burial of Mauúdát (living daughters), the barbarous custom of the pagan Arabs (Koran, chaps. Xvi. And lxxxi.) one of the many abominations, like the murderous vow of Jephtha, to which Al- Islam put a summary stop. (Ibn Khallikan, iii. 609-606) For such outcast children reported to be monsters, see pp. 402-412 of Mr. Clouston's "Asiatic and European versions of four of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," printed by the Chaucer Society.

[FN#354] Hind. Chhuchhundar (Sorex c£rulescens) which occurs repeatedly in verse; e.g., when speaking of low men advanced to high degree, the people say:--

Chhuchhúndar-ke sir-par Chambelí-ka tel.
The Jasmine-oil on the musk-rat's head.

In Galland the Sultánah is brought to bed of un morceau de bois; and his Indian translator is more consequent, Hahn, as has been seen, also has the mouse but Hahn could hardly have reached Hindostan.

[FN#355] This title of Sháhinshah was first assumed by Ardashír, the great Persian conqueror, after slaying the King of Ispahán, Ardawán. (Tabari ii. 73.)

[FN#356] This imprisonment of the good Queen reminds home readers of the "Cage of Clapham" wherein a woman with child was imprisoned in A.D. 1700, and which was noted by Sir George Grove as still in existence about 1830.

[FN#357] Arab. Ayyám al-Nifás = the period of forty days after labour during which, according to Moslem law, a woman may not cohabit with her husband.

[FN#358] A clarum et venerabile nomen in Persia; meaning one of the Spirits that preside over beasts of burden; also a king in general, the P.N. of an ancient sovereign, etc.

[FN#359] This is the older pronunciation of the mod. (Khusrau) "Parvíz"; and I owe an apology to Mr. C.J. Lyall (Ancient Arabian Poetry) for terming his "Khusrau Parvêz" an "ugly Indianism" (The Academy, No. 100). As he says (Ibid. vol. x. 85), "the Indians did not invent for Persian words the sounds ê and ∂, called majhúl (i.e. 'not known in Arabic') by the Arabs, but received them at a time when these wounds were universally used in Persia. The substitution by Persians of î and π for ê and ∂ is quite modern."

[FN#360] i.e. Fairy-born, the {Greek} (Parysatis) of the Greeks which some miswrite {Greek}.

[FN#361] In Arab. Usually shortened to "Hazár" (bird of a thousand tales = the Thousand), generally called "'Andalíb:" Galland has Bulbulhezer and some of his translators debase it to Bulbulkezer. See vol. v. 148, and the Hazár-dastán of Kazwíní (De Sacy, Chrest. iii. 413). These rarities represent the Rukh's egg in "Alaeddin."

[FN#362] These disembodied "voices" speaking either naturally or through instruments are a recognized phenomenon of the so-called "Spiritualism," See p. 115 of "Supra-mundane Facts," &c., edited by T.J. Nichols, M.D., &c., London, Pitman, 1865. I venture to remark that the medical treatment by Mesmerism, Braidism and hypnotics, which was violently denounced and derided in 1850, is in 1887 becoming a part of the regular professional practice and forms another item in the long list of the Fallacies of the Faculty and the Myopism of the "Scientist."

[FN#363] I may also note that the "Hátif," or invisible Speaker, which must be subjective more often than objective, is a common- place of Moslem thaumaturgy.

[FN#364] It may have been borrowed from Ulysses and the Sirens.

[FN#365] Two heroes of the Shahnámeh and both the types of reckless daring. The monomachy or duel between these braves lasted through two days.

[FN#366] The "Bágh" or royal tiger, is still found in the jungles of Mázenderán and other regions of Northern Persia.

[FN#367] In addressing the Shah every Persian begins with the formula "Kurbán-at básham" = may I become thy Corban or sacrifice. For this word (Kurbán) see vol. viii. 16.

[FN#368] The King in Persia always speaks of himself in the third person and swears by his own blood and head, soul, life and death. The form of oath is ancient: Joseph, the first (but not the last) Jew-financier of Egypt, emphasises his speech "by the life of Pharaoh." (Gen. xiii. 15, 16.)

[FN#369] Another title of the Shah, making him quasi-divine, at any rate the nearest to the Almighty, like the Czar and the Emperor of China. Hence the subjects bow to him with the body at right angles as David did to Saul (I Sam. xxiv, 8) or fall upon the face like Joshua (v. 14).

[FN#370] A most improbable and absurd detail: its sole excuse is the popular superstition of "blood speaking to blood." The youths being of the royal race felt that they could take unwarrantable liberties.

[FN#371] This is still a Persian custom because all the subjects, women as well as men, are virtually the King's slaves.

[FN#372] i.e. King of kings, the {Greek}.

[FN#373] Majlis garm karna, i.e. to give some life to the company.

[FN#374] In Arabic "'Ilm al-Mukáshafah" = the science by which Eastern adepts discover man's secret thoughts. Of late years it has appeared in England but with the same quackery and imposture which have ruined "Spiritualism" as the Faith of the Future.

[FN#375] Nor are those which do occur all in the same order: The first in the Turkish book "Of 'Ebú-'l-Kásim of Basra, of the 'Emír of Basra, and of 'Ebú-'l-Faskh of Wásit," is probably similar to the first of Petis, "History of Aboulcasem of Basra." The second "Of Fadzlu- 'llah of Mawsil (Moser), of 'Ebú-'l-Hasan, and of Máhyár of Wásit," is evidently the seventh in Petis, "History of Fadlallah, Son of Bin Ortoc, King of Moussel." The fourth, "Of Ridzwán-Shah of China and the Shahristáni Lady," is the second in Petis, "History of King Razvanschad and of the Princess Cheheristany." The eleventh, "Of the Sovereign without a care and of the Vazír full of care," is the eighth in Petis History of King Bedreddin Lolo and of his Vizier Altalmulc." The third, "Of the Builder of Bemm with the two Vazírs of the king of Kawáshar," the seventh, "Of the Rogue Nasr and the son of the king of Khurásán," and the tenth, "The Three Youths, the Old Man, and the Daughter of the King," I cannot, from these titles, recognise in Petis; while the fifth, "Farrukh-Shád, Farrukh-Rúz, and Farrukh-Náz," may be the same as the frame story of the "Hazár ú Yek Rúz," where the king is called Togrul-bey, his son Farrukrouz, and his daughter Farruknaz, and if this be the case, the Turkish book must differ considerably from the Persian in its plan.--Although "The Thousand and One Nights" has not been found in Persian, there exists a work in that language of which the plan is somewhat similar--but adapted from an Indian source. It is thus described by Dr. Rieu, in his Catalogue of Persian MSS. in the British Museum, vol. ii. p. 773: Tale of Shírzád, son of Gurgahan, emperor of China, and Gulshád, daughter of the vazír Farrukhzád (called the Story of the Nine Belvideres). Nine tales told by Gulshad to Shírzád, each in one of the nine belvideres of the royal palace, in order to save the forfeited life of her father.

[FN#376] A translation of this version, omitting the moral reflections interspersed, is given by Professor E. B. Cowell in the "Journal of Philology," 1876, vol. vi. p. 193. The great Persian mystic tells another story of a Dream of Riches, which, though only remotely allied to our tale, is very curious:

The Fakir and the Hidden Treasure.

Notwithstanding the clear evidence of God's bounty, engendering those spiritual tastes in men, philosophers and learned men, wise in their own conceit, obstinately shut their eyes to it, and look afar off for what is really close to them, so that they incur the penalty of being "branded on the nostrils" [Kurán, lxviii. 16], adjudged against unbelievers. This is illustrated by the story of the poor Fakír who prayed to God that he might be fed without being obliged to work for his food. A divine voice came to him in his sleep and directed him to go to the house of a certain scribe and take a certain writing he should find there. He did so, and on reading the writing found that it contained directions for discovering a hidden treasure. The directions were as follows: "Go outside the city to the dome which covers the tomb of the martyr, turn your back to the tomb and face towards Mecca, place an arrow in your bow, and where the arrow falls dig for the treasure." But before the Fakír had time to commence the search the rumour of the writing and its purport had reached the King, who at once sent and took it away from the Fakír, and began to search for the treasure on his own account. After shooting many arrows and digging in all directions the King failed to find the treasure, and got weary of searching, and returned the writing to the Fakír. Then the Fakír tried what he could do, but failed to hit the spot where the treasure was buried. At last despairing of success by his own unaided efforts, he cast his care upon God, and implored the divine assistance. Then a voice from heaven came to him saying, "You were directed to fix an arrow in your bow, but not to draw your bow with all your might, as you have been doing. Shoot as gently as possible, that the arrow may fall close to you, for hidden treasure is indeed 'nearer to you than your neck-vein'" [Kurán, l. 15]. Men overlook the spiritual treasures close to them, and for this reason it is that prophets have no honour in their own countries.--Mr. F: H. Whinfield's Abridgment of "The Masnavi-i Ma'navi." (London, 1887.)

[FN#377] See Mr. Gibb's translation (London: Redway), p. 278

[FN#378] "Rem qu contigit patrum memoriâ ut veram ita dignam relatu et s penumero mihi assertam ab hominibus fide dignis apponam."

[FN#379] Thorpe says that a nearly similar legend is current at Tanslet, on the island of Alsen.

[FN#380] The common tradition is, it was in English rhyme, viz.

"Where this stood
Is another as good;"

or, as some will have it:

"Under me doth lie
Another much richer than I."

[FN#381] Apropos to dreams, there is a very amusing story, entitled "Which was the Dream ?" in Mr. F. H. Balfour's "Leaves from my Chinese Scrap Book," p. 106-7 (London: Tr≥bner, 1887).

[FN#382] The story in the Turkish collection, "Al-Faraj ba'd al-Shiddah," where it forms the 8th recital, is doubtless identical with our Arabian version, since in both the King of the Genie figures, which is not the case in Mr. Gibb's story.

[FN#383] Although this version is not preceded, as in the Arabian, by the Dream of Riches, yet that incident occurs, I understand, in separate form in the work of 'Alí Azíz.

[FN#384] Sir Richard has referred, in note 1, p. 18, to numerous different magical tests of chastity, etc., and I may here add one more, to wit, the cup which Oberon, King of the Fairies, gave to Duke Huon of Bordeaux (according to the romance which recounts the marvellous adventures of that renowned Knight), which filled with wine in the hand of any man who was out of "deadly sin" and attempted to drink out of it, but was always empty in the hands of a sinful man. Charlemagne was shown to be sinful by this test, while Duke Huon, his wife, and a companion were proved to be free from sin.--In my "Popular Tales and Fictions" the subject of inexhaustible purses etc. is treated pretty fully--they frequently figure in folk-tales, from Iceland to Ceylon, from Japan to the Hebrides.

[FN#385] "The Athenaeum," April 23,1887, p. 542.

[FN#386] See M. Eugene L⁄vêque's "Les Mythes et les L⁄gendes de l'Inde et la Perse" (Paris, 1880), p. 543, where the two are printed side by side. This was pointed out more than seventy years ago by Henry Weber in his Introduction to "Tales of the East," edited by him.

[FN#387] Also in the romance of Duke Huon of Bordeaux and the old French romance of the Chevalier Berinus. The myth was widely spread in the Middle Ages.

[FN#388] Cf. the magic horn that Duke Huon of Bordeaux received from Oberon, King of the Fairies, which caused even the Soudan of Babylon to caper about in spite of himself, and similar musical instruments in a hundred different tales, such as the old English poem of "The Friar and the Boy," the German tale (in Grimm) of "The Jew among Thorns," the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," &c.

[FN#389] Not distantly related to stories of this class are those in which the hero becomes possessed of some all-bestowing object--a purse, a box, a table-cloth, a sheep, a donkey, etc.-- which being stolen from him he recovers by means of a magic club that on being commended rattles on the pate and ribs of the thief and compels him to restore the treasure.

[FN#390] The Dwarf had told the soldier, on leaving him after killing the old witch, that should his services be at any other time required, he had only to light his pipe at the Blue Light and he should instantly appear before him. The tobacco-pipe must be considered as a recent and quite unnecessary addition to the legend: evidently all the power of summoning the Dwarf was in the Blue Light, since he tells the soldier when he first appears before him in the well that he must obey its lord and master.

[FN#391] Belli signifies famous, or notorious.

[FN#392] This young lady's notion of the "function" of Prayer was, to say the least peculiar, in thus addressing her petition to the earth instead of to Heaven.

[FN#393] The gentle, amiable creature!

[FN#394] Chamley-bill was, says Dr. Chodzko, a fort built by Kurroglú, the ruins of which are still to be seen in the valley of Salmas, a district in the province of Aderbaijan.

[FN#395] i.e. Kuvera, the god of wealth.

[FN#396] The attendants of Kuvera. a Buddhistic idea.

[FN#397] That every man has his "genius" of good or evil fortune is, I think, essentially idea.

[FN#398] Such being the case, what need was there for the apparition presenting itself every morning?--but no matter!

[FN#399] Pandit S. M. Nat⁄sa Sástrí, in "Indian Notes and Queries," for March, 1887, says that women swallow large numbers of an insect called pillai-puchchi (son-insect: gryllas) in the hope of bearing sons, they will also drink the water squeezed from the loin-cloth of a sanyásí [devotee] after washing it for him!--Another correspondent in the same periodical. Pandit Putlíbái K. Raghunathj⁄, writes that Hindu women, for the purpose of having children, especially a son, observe the fourth lunar day of every dark fortnight as a fast and break their fast only after seeing the moon, generally before 9 or 10 p.m. A dish of twenty-one small, marble-like balls of rice is prepared, in one of which is put some salt. The whole dish is then served up to the woman, and while eating it she should first lay her hands on the ball containing salt, as it is believed to be a positive sign that she will be blessed with a son. In that case she should give up eating the rest, but otherwise she should go on eating till she lays her hands on the salted ball. The Pandit adds, that the observance of this ball depends on the wish of the woman. She may observe it on only one, five, seven, eleven, or twenty-one lunar fourth days, or chaturthí. Should she altogether fail in picking out the salted ball first, she may be sure of remaining barren all her life long.

[FN#400] I am glad to see among Messrs. Tr≥bner & Co.'s announcements of forthcoming publications Mr. Knowles' collection of "Folk-Tales of Kashmír" in popular handy volume form.

[FN#401] A holy man whose austerities have obtained for him supernatural powers.

[FN#402] Also called "Story of the King and his Four Ministers." There is another but wholly different Tamil romance entitled the "Alak⁄sa Kathá," in which a king's daughter becomes a disembodied evil spirit, haunting during the night a particular choultry (or serai) for travellers, and if they do not answer aright to her cries she strangles them and vampyre-like sucks their blood.

[FN#403] The Pandit informs me that his "Folk-Lore in Southern India" will be completed at press and issued shortly at Bombay. (London agents, Messrs. Tr≥bner & Co.)

[FN#404] In the "Kathá Sarit Ságara," Book ii., ch. 14, when the King of Vatsa receives the hand of Vasavadatta, "like a beautiful shoot lately budded on the creeper of love," she walks round the fire, keeping it to the right, on which Prof. Tawney remarks that "the practice of walking round an object of reverence, with the right hand towards it, has been exhaustively discussed by Dr. Samuel Fergusson in his paper 'On the ceremonial turn called Desiul,' published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, for March 1877 (vol. i., series ii., No. 12). He shows it to have existed among the ancient Romans as well as the Celts.... Dr. Fergusson is of opinion that this movement was a symbol of the cosmical rotation, an imitation of the apparent course of the sun in the heavens."

[FN#405] The affection of parents for their children is often a blind instinct, and sometimes selfish, though, after all, there is doubtless truth in these lines:

"A mother's love!
If there be one thing pure,
Where all beside is sullied,
That can endure
When all else pass away:
If there be aught
Surpassing human deed, or word, or thought,
It is a mother's love!"

[FN#406] Surma is a collyrium applied to the edges of the eyelids to increase the lustre of the eyes. A Persian poet, addressing the damsel of whom he is enamoured, says, "For eyes so intoxicated with love's nectar what need is there of surma?"-- This part of the story seems to be garbled; in another text of the romance of Hatim Ta'í it is only after the surma has been applied to the covetous man's eyes that he beholds the hidden treasures.

[FN#407] The first part of the story of the Young King of the Black Isles, in The Nights, bears some analogy to this, but there the paramour is only "half-killed" and the vindictive queen transforms her husband from the waist downwards into marble.

[FN#408] On the Sources of some of Galland's Tales. By Henry Charles Coote, F.S.A. "Folklore Record," 1881, vol. iii. Part 2, p. 186.

[FN#409] See Thorpe's "Yule Tide Stories," Bohn's ed., pp. 481- 486.˚Thorpe says that "for many years the Dummburg was the abode of robbers, who slew the passing travellers and merchants whom they perceived on the road from Leipsig to Brunswick, and heaped together the treasures of the plundered churches and the surrounding country, which they concealed in subterranean caverns." The peasantry would therefore regard the spot with superstitious awe, and once such a tale as that of Ali Baba got amongst them, the robbers' haunt in their neighbourhood would soon become the scene of the poor woodcutter's adventure.

[FN#410] A Persian poet says:

"He who violates the rights of the bread and salt
Breaks, for his wretched self, head and neck."

[FN#411] Miss Busk reproduces the proper names as they are transliterated in J≥lg's German version of those Kalmuk and Mongolian Tales--from which a considerable portion of her book was rendered--thus: Ardschi Bordschi, Rakschasas, etc., but drollest of all is "Ramajana" (Ramayana), which is right in German but not in English.

[FN#412] The apocryphal gospels and the Christian hagiology are largely indebted to Buddhism, e.g., the Descent into Hell, of which there is such a graphic account in the Gospel of Nicodemus, seems to have been adapted from ancient Buddhist legends, now embodied in the opening chapters of a work entitled, "Káranda-vyúha," which contain a description of the Boddhisattva Avalokiteswara's descent into the hell Avíchi, to deliver the souls there held captive by Yama, the lord of the lower world. (See a paper by Professor E. R. Cowell, LL.D., in the "Journal of Philology," 1876, vol. vi. pp. 222-231.) This legend also exists in Telugu, under the title of "Sánanda Charitra," of which the outline is given in Taylor's "Catalogue Raisonn⁄ of Oriental MSS. in the Government Library, Madras," vol. ii. p. 643: Sánanda, the son of Purna Vitta and Bhadra Datta, heard from munis accounts of the pains of the wicked, and wishing to see for himself, went to Yama-puri. His coming had been announced by Nárada. Yama showed the stranger the different lots of mankind in a future state, in details. Sánanda was touched with compassion for the miseries that he witnessed, and by the use of the five and six lettered spells he delivered those imprisoned souls and took them with him to Kailasa. Yama went to Siva and complained, but Siva civilly dismissed the appeal.--Under the title of "The Harrowing of Hell," the apocryphal Christian legend was the theme of a Miracle Play in England during the Middle Ages, and indeed it seems to have been, in different forms, a popular favourite throughout Europe. Thus in a German tale Strong Hans goes to the Devil in hell and wants to serve him, and sees the pains in which souls are imprisoned standing beside the fire. Full of pity, he lifts up the lids and sets the souls free, on which the Devil at once drives him away. A somewhat similar notion occurs in an Icelandic tale of the Sin Sacks, in Powell and Magnússon's collection (second series, p. 48). And in T. Crofton Croker's "Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland," ed. 1828, Part. ii. p. 30 ff., we read of Soul Cages at the bottom of the sea, containing the spirits of drowned sailors, which the bold hero Jack Docherty set free.

[FN#413] The Rabbins relate that among the Queen of Sheba's tests of Solomon's sagacity she brought before him a number of boys and girls apparelled all alike, and desired him to distinguish those of one sex from those of the other, as they stood in his presence. Solomon caused a large basin of water to be fetched in, and ordered them all to wash their hands. By this expedient he discovered the boys from the girls, since the former washed merely their hands, while the latter washed also their arms.

[FN#414] Dr. W. Grimm, in the notes to his "Kinder und Hausmärchen," referring to the German form of the story (which we shall come to by and-by), says, "The Parrot, which is the fourth story in the Persian Touti Nameh, bears some resemblance to this"--the Parrot is the reciter of all the stories in the collection, not the title of this particular tale.

[FN#415] To Sir Richard Burton's interesting note on the antiquity of the lens and its applied use to the telescope and microscope may be added a passage or two from Sir William Drummond's "Origines; or, Remarks on the Origin of several Empires, States, and Cities," 1825, vol. ii. pp. 246-250. This writer appears to think that telescopes were not unknown to the ancients and adduces plausible evidence in support of his opinion. "Moschopalus," he says, "an ancient grammarian, mentions four instruments with which the astronomers of antiquity were accustomed to observe the stars--the catoptron, the dioptron, the eisoptron and the enoptron." He supposes the catoptron to have been the same with the astrolabe. "The dioptron seems to have been so named from a tube through which the observer looked. Were the other two instruments named from objects being reflected in a mirror placed within them? Aristotle says that the Greeks employed mirrors when they surveyed the celestial appearances. May we not conclude from this circumstance that astronomers were not always satisfied with looking through empty tubes?" He thinks the ancients were acquainted with lenses and has collected passages from various writers which corroborate his opinion, besides referring to the numerous uses to which glass was applied in the most remote ages. He goes on to say:

"Some of the observations of the ancients must appear very extraordinary, if magnifying glasses had never been known among them. The boldness with which the Pythagoreans asserted that the surface of the moon was diversified by mountains and valleys can hardly be accounted for, unless Pythagoras had been convinced of the fact by the help of telescopes, which might have existed in the observatories of Egypt and Chaldea before those countries were conquered and laid waste by the Persians. Pliny (L. 11) says that 1600 stars had been counted in the 72 constellations, and by this expression I can only understand him to mean the 72 dodecans into which the Egyptians and Chaldeans divided the zodiac. Now this number of stars could never have been counted in the zodiac without the assistance of glasses. Ptolemy reckoned a much less number for the whole heavens The missionaries found many more stars marked in the Chinese charts of the heavens than formerly existed in those which were in use in Europe. Suidas, at the word {Greek} (glass), indicates, in explaining a passage in Aristophanes, that burning mirrors were occasionally made of glass. Now how can we suppose burning mirrors to have been made of glass without supposing the magnifying powers of glass to have been known? The Greeks, as Plutarch affirms, employed metallic mirrors, either plane, or convex, or concave, according to the use for which they were intended. If they could make burning mirrors of glass, they could have given any of these forms to glass. How then could they have avoided observing that two glasses, one convex and the other concave, placed at a certain distance from each other, magnified objects seen through them? Numerous experiments must have been made with concave and convex glasses before burning mirrors made of glass could have been employed. If astronomers never knew the magnifying powers of glass, and never placed lenses in the tubes of the dioptrons, what does Strabo (L. 3, c. 138) mean when he says: 'Vapours produce the same effects as the tubes in magnifying objects of vision by refraction?'"

Mr. W. F. Thompson, in his translation of the "Ahlak-i-Jalaly," from the Persian of Fakír Jání Muhammad (15th century), has the following note on the Jám-i-Jámshid and other magical mirrors: "Jámshíd, the fourth of the Kaianian dynasty, the Soloman of the Persians. His cup was said to mirror the world, so that he could observe all that was passing elsewhere--a fiction of his own for state purposes, apparently, backed by the use of artificial mirrors. Nizámí tells that Alexander invented the steel mirror, by which he means, of course, that improved reflectors were used for telescopy in the days of Archimedes, but not early enough to have assisted Jámshíd, who belongs to the fabulous and unchronicled age. In the romance of Beyjan and Manija, in the "Shah Náma," this mirror is used by the great Khosrú for the purpose of discovering the place of the hero's imprisonment:

"The mirror in his hand revolving shook,
And earth's whole surface glimmered in his look;
Nor less the secrets of the starry sphere,
The what, the when, the bow depicted clear,
From orbs celestial to the blade of grass,
All nature floated in the magic glass."

[FN#416] We have been told this king had three daughters.

[FN#417] See in "Blackwood's Magazine," vol. iv., 1818, 1819, a translation, from the Danish of J. L. Rasmussen, of "An Historical and Geographical Essay on the trade and commerce of the Arabians and Persians with Russia and Scandinavia during the Middle Ages.--But learned Icelanders, while England was still semi-civilized, frequently made very long journeys into foreign lands: after performing the pilgrimage to Rome, they went to Syria, and some penetrated into Central Asia.

[FN#418] This, of course, is absurd, as each was equally interested in the business; but it seems to indicate a vague reminiscence of the adventures of the Princes in the story of The Envious Sisters.

[FN#419] There is a naivete about this that is particularly refreshing.

[FN#420] This recalls the fairy Meliora, in the romance of Partenopex de Blois. who "knew of ancient tales a countless store."

[FN#421] In a Norwegian folk-tale the hero receives from a dwarf a magic ship that could enlarge itself so as to contain any number of men, yet could be earned m the pocket.

[FN#422] The Water of Life, the Water of Immortality, the Fountain of Youth--a favourite and wide-spread myth during the Middle Ages. In the romance of Sir Huon of Bordeaux the hero boldly encounters a griffin, and after a desperate fight, in which he is sorely wounded, slays the monster. Close at hand he discovers a clear fountain, at the bottom of which is a gravel of precious stones. "Then he dyde of his helme and dranke of the water his fyll, and he had no sooner dranke therof but incontynent he was hole of all his woundys." Nothing more frequently occurs in folk tales than for the hero to be required to perform three difficult and dangerous tasks--sometimes impossible, without supernatural assistance.

[FN#423] "Say, will a courser of the Sun
All gently with a dray-horse run?"

[FN#424] Ting: assembly of notables--of udallers, &c. The term survives in our word hustings; and in Ding-wall--Ting-val; where tings were held.

[FN#425] The last of the old Dublin ballad-singers, who assumed the respectable name of Zozimus, and is said to have been the author of the ditties wherewith he charmed his street auditors, was wont to chant the legend of the Finding of Moses in a version which has at least the merit of originality:

"In Egypt's land, upon the banks of Nile,
King Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe in style;
She took her dip, then went unto the land,
And, to dry her royal pelt, she ran along the strand.

A bulrush tripped her, whereupon she saw
A smiling baby in a wad of straw;
She took it up, and said, in accents mild--
Tare an' agurs, girls! which av yez owns this child?"

The Babylonian analogue, as translated by the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce, in the first vol. of the "Folk-Lore Journal" (1883), is as follows:

"Sargon, the mighty monarch, the King of Aganè, am I. My mother was a princess; my father I knew not, my father's brother loved the mountain-land. In the city of Azipiranu, which on the bank of the Euphrates lies, my mother, the princess, conceived me, in an inaccessible spot she brought me forth. She placed me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not. The river bore me along, to Akki, the irrigator, it brought me. Akki, the irrigator, in the tenderness of his heart, lifted me up. Akki, the irrigator, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the irrigator, as his gardener appointed me, and in my gardenership the goddess Istar loved me. For 45 years the kingdom I have ruled, and the black headed (Accadian) race have governed."

[FN#426] This strange notion may have been derived from some Eastern source, since it occurs in Indian fictions; for example, in Dr. Rájendralála Mitra's "Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepál," p. 304, we read that "there lived in the village of Vásava a rich householder who had born unto him a son with a jewelled ring in his ear." And in the "Mahábhárata" we are told of a king who had a son from whose body issued nothing but gold-- the prototype of the gold-laying goose.

[FN#427] Connected with this romance is the tale of "The Six Swans," in Grimm's collection-- see Mrs. Hunt's English translation, vol. i. p. 192.

[FN#428] Mahbúb. a piece of gold, value about 10 francs, replaces the dinár of old tales. Those in Egypt are all since the time of the Turks: 9, 7, or 6 1/2 frs. according to issue.--Note by Spitta Bey.

[FN#429] Here again we have the old superstition of "blood speaking to blood," referred to by Sir Richard, ante, p. 347, note 1. It often occurs in Asiatic stories. Thus in the Persian "Bakhtyár Náma," when the adopted son of the robber chief is brought with other captives, before the king (he is really the king's own son, whom he and the queen abandoned in their flight through the desert), his majesty's bowels strangely yearned towards the youth, and in the conclusion this is carried to absurdity: when Bakhtyár is found to be the son of the royal pair, "the milk sprang from the breasts of the queen," as she looked on him--albeit she must then have been long past child-bearing!

[FN#430] The enchanted pitcher does duty here for the witches' broomstick and the fairies' rush of European tales, but a similar conveyance is, I think, not unknown to Western folk-lore.

[FN#431] In a Norse story the hero on entering a forbidden room in a troll's house finds a horse with a pan of burning coals under his nose and a measure of corn at his tail, and when he removes the coals and substitutes the corn, the horse becomes his friend and adviser.

[FN#432] M. Dozon does not think that Muslim customs allow of a man's marrying three sisters at once; but we find the king does the same in the modern Arab version.

[FN#433] London: Macmillan and Co., p. 236 ff.

[FN#434] This recalls the biblical legend of the widow's cruse, which has its exact counterpart in Singhalese folk-lore.

[FN#435] This recalls the story of the herd-boy who cried "Wolf! wolf!"

[FN#436] Again the old notion of maternal and paternal instincts; but the children don't often seem in folk-tales, to have a similar impulsive affection for their unknown parents.

[FN#437] Colotropis gigantea.

[FN#438] Rákshashas and rákshasís are male and female demons or ogres, in the Hindú mythology.

[FN#439] Literally, the king of birds, a fabulous species of horse remarkable for swiftness, which plays an important part in Tamil stories and romances.

[FN#440] Here we have a parallel to the biblical legend of the passage of the Israelites dryshod

[FN#441] Demons, ogres, trolls, giants, et hoc genus omne, never fail to discover the presence of human beings by their keen sense of smelling. "Fee, faw, fum! I smell the blood of a British man," cries a giant when the renowned hero Jack is concealed in his castle. "Fum! fum! sento odor christianum," exclaims an ogre in Italian folk tales. "Femme, je sens la viande fraîche, la chair de chr⁄tien!" says a giant to his wife in French stories.

[FN#442] In my popular "Tales and Fictions" a number of examples are cited of life depending on some extraneous object--vol. i. pp. 347-351.

[FN#443] In the Tamil story-book, the English translation of which is called "The Dravidian Nights' Entertainments," a wandering princess, finding the labour-pains coming upon her, takes shelter in the house of a dancing-woman, who says to the nurses, "If she gives birth to a daughter, it is well [because the woman could train her to follow her own profession'], but if a son, I do not want him;--close her eyes, remove him to a place where you can kill him, and throwing a bit of wood on the ground tell her she has given birth to it."--I daresay that a story similar to the Bengali version exists among the Tamils.

[FN#444] It is to be hoped we shall soon have Sir Richard Burton's promised complete English translation of this work, since one half is, I understand, already done.