Tale of the Two kings and the Wazir's Daughters

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" is that of Shahrazad told in the third person, in fact a rechauff of the Introduction. But as some three years have passed since the marriage, and the dnoement of the plot is at hand, the Princess is made, with some art I think, to lay the whole affair before her husband in her own words, the better to bring him to a “sense of his duty.”

[FN#447] Bresl. Edit., vol. xii. pp. 384-412.

[FN#448] This clause is taken from the sequence, where the elder brother’s kingdom is placed in China.

[FN#449] For the Tobbas = “Successors” or the Himyaritic kings, see vol. i. 216.

[FN#450] Kaysirah, opp. to Aksirah, here and in many other places.

[FN#451] See vol. ii. 77. King Kulayb (“little dog”) al-W’il, a powerful chief of the Banu Ma’ad in the Kasn district of Najd, who was connected with the war of Al-Bass. He is so called because he lamed a pup (kulayb) and tied it up in the midst of his Him (domain, place of pasture and water), forbidding men to camp within sound of its bark or sight of his fire. Hence “more masterful than Kulayb,” A.P. ii. 145, and Al-Hariri Ass. xxvi. (Chenery, p. 448). This angry person came by his death for wounding in the udder a trespassing camel (Sorab) whose owner was a woman named Bass. Her friend (Jass) slew him; and thus arose the famous long war between the tribes W’il Bakr and Taghlib. It gave origin to the saying, “Die thou and be an expiation for the shoe-latchet of Kulayb.”

[FN#452] Arab. “Mukhaddart,” maidens concealed behind curtains and veiled in the Harem.

[FN#453] i.e. the professional Rwis or tale-reciters who learned stories by heart from books like “The Arabian Nights.” See my Terminal Essay, vol. x. 163.

[FN#454] Arab. “Bid’ah,” lit. = an innovation, a new thing, an invention, any change from the custom of the Prophet and the universal practice of the Faith, whether it be in the cut of the beard or a question of state policy. Popularly the word = heterodoxy, heresy; but theologically it is not necessarily used in a bad sense. See vol. v. 167.

[FN#455] About three parts of this sentence have been supplied by Mr. Payne, the careless scribe having evidently omitted it.

[FN#456] Here, as in the Introduction (vol. i. 24), the king consummates his marriage in presence of his virgin sister-in-law, a process which decency forbids amongst Moslems.

[FN#457] Al-Mas’udi (vol. iv. 213) uses this term to signify viceroy in “Shahryr Sajastn.”

[FN#458] i.e. his indifference to the principles of right and wrong, which is a manner of moral intoxication.

[FN#459] i.e. hath mentioned the office of Wazir (in Koran xx. 30).

[FN#460] i.e. Moslems, who practice the Religion of Resignation.

[FN#461] Koran xxxiii. 35. This is a proemium to the “revelation” concerning Zayd and Zaynab.

[FN#462] i.e. I have an embarras de richesse in my repertory.

[FN#463] The title is from the Bresl. Edit. (vol. xii. pp. 398-402). Mr. Payne calls it “The Favourite and her Lover.”

[FN#464] The practice of fumigating gugglets is universal in Egypt (Lane, M. E., chapt. v.); but I never heard of musk being so used.

[FN#465] Arab. “Laysa fi ’l-diyri dayyr”–a favourite jingle.

[FN#466] Arab. “Khayr Kathir” (pron. Katr) which also means “abundant kindness.”

[FN#467] Dozy says of “Hunayn” (Han), Il semble tre le nom d’un vtement. On which we may remark, Connu!

[FN#468] Arab. Harsah: see vol. i. 131. Westerns make a sad mess of this dish when they describe it as une sorte d’olla podrida (the hotch-pot), une pte de viandes, de froment et de lgumes secs (Al-Mas’udi viii. 438). Whenever I have eaten it, it was always a meat-pudding, for which see vol. i. 131.

[FN#469] Evidently one escaped because she was sleeping with the Caliph, and a second because she had kept her assignation.

[FN#470] Mr. Payne entitles it, “The Merchant of Cairo and the Favourite of the Khalif el Mamoun el Hakim bi Amrillah.”

[FN#471] See my Pilgrimage (i. 100): the seat would be on the same bit of boarding where the master sits or on a stool or bench in the street.

[FN#472] This is true Cairene chaff, give and take; and the stranger must accustom himself to it before he can be at home with the people.

[FN#473] i.e. In Rauzah-Island: see vol. v. 169.

[FN#474] There is no historical person who answers to these name, “The Secure, the Ruler by Commandment of Allah.” The cognomen applies to two soldans of Egypt, of whom the later Abu al-Abbas Ahmad the Abbaside (A.D. 1261-1301) has already been mentioned in The Nights (vol. v. 86). The tale suggests the earlier Al-Hakim (Abu Ali al-Mansr, the Fatimite, A.D. 995-1021), the God of the Druze “persuasion;” and the tale-teller may have purposely blundered in changing Mansr to Maamn for fear of offending a sect which has been most dangerous in the matter of assassination and which is capable of becoming so again.

[FN#475] Arab. “‘Al kulli hl” = “whatever may betide,” or “willy-nilly.” The phrase is still popular.

[FN#476] The dulce desipere of young lovers, he making a buffoon of himself to amuse her.

[FN#477] “The convent of Clay,” a Coptic monastery near Cairo.

[FN#478] i.e. this is the time to show thyself a man.

[FN#479] The Eastern succedaneum for swimming corks and other “life-preservers.” The practice is very ancient; we find these gourds upon the monuments of Egypt and Babylonia.

[FN#480] Arab. “Al-Khalj,” the name, still popular, of the Grand Canal of Cairo, whose banks, by-the-by, are quaint and picturesque as anything of the kind in Holland.

[FN#480a] A few lines higher up it was “her neck”; but the jar may have slipped down.

[FN#481] We say more laconically “A friend in need.”

[FN#482] Arab. “Nzir al-Mawrs,” the employ charged with the disposal of legacies and seizing escheats to the Crown when Moslems die intestate. He is usually a prodigious rascal as in the text. The office was long kept up in Southern Europe, and Camoens was sent to Macao as “Provedor dos defuntos e ausentes.”

[FN#483] Sir R. F. Burton has since found two more of “Galland’s” tales in an Arabic text of The Nights, namely, Aladdin and Zeyn al-Asnam.

[FN#484] i.e. wondering; thus Lady Macbeth says:

“You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, With most admired disorder.”—Macbeth, iii. 4

[FN#485] Ludovicus Vives, one of the most learned of Spanish authors, was born at Valentia in 1492 and died in 1540.

[FN#486] There was an older “Tt Nma,” which Nakhshab modernised, made from a Sanskrit story-book, now lost, but its modern representative is the “Suka Saptat,” or Seventy (Tales) of a Parrot in which most of Nakhshabi’s tales are found.

[FN#487] According to Lescallier’s French translation of the “Bakhtyr Nma,” made from two MSS. = “She had previously had a lover, with whom, unknown to her father, she had intimate relations, and had given birth to a beautiful boy, whose education she secretly confided to some trusty servants.”

[FN#488] There is a slight mistake in the passage in p. 313 supplied from the story in vol. vi. It is not King Shah Bakht, but the other king, who assures his chamberlain that “the lion” has done him no injury.

[FN#489] Such was formerly the barbarous manner of treating the insane.

[FN#490] From “Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatorie.”

[FN#491] A basket

[FN#492] In the fabliau “De la Dame qui atrappa un Prtre, un Prvt, et un Forestier” (or Constant du Hamel), the lady, on the pretext that her husband is at the door, stuffs her lovers, as they arrive successively, unknown to each other, into a large tub full of feathers and afterwards exposes them to public ridicule.

[FN#493] Until.

[FN#494] Requite.

[FN#495] Accidents.

[FN#496] A boarding.

[FN#497] The letter I is very commonly substituted for “ay” in 16th century English books.

[FN#498] Oesterley mentions a Sanskrit redaction of the Vampyre Tales attributed to Sivadsa, and another comprised in the “Kathrnava.”

[FN#499] And well might his sapient majesty “wonder”! The humour of this passage is exquisite.

[FN#500] In the Tamil version (Babington’s translation of the “Vedla Kadai”) there are but two brothers, one of whom is fastidious in his food, the other in beds: the latter lies on a bed stuffed with flowers, deprived of their stalks. In the morning he complains of pains all over his body, and on examining the bed one hair is found amongst the flowers. In the Hind version, the king asks him in the morning whether he had slept comfortably. “O great King,” he replied; “I did not sleep all night.” “How so?” quoth he. “O great King, in the seventh fold of the bedding there is a hair, which pricked me in the back, therefore I could not sleep.” The youth who was fastidious about the fair sex had a lovely damsel laid beside him, and he was on the point of kissing her, but on smelling her breath he turned away his face, and went to sleep. Early in the morning the king (who had observed through a lattice what passed) asked him, “Did you pass the night pleasantly?” He replied that he did not, because the smell of a goat proceeded from the girl’s mouth, which made him very uneasy. The king then sent for the procuress and ascertained that the girl had been brought up on goat’s milk.

[FN#501] Mlusine: Revue de Mythologie, Littrature Populaire, Traditions, et Usages. Dirige par H. Gaidoz et E. Rolland.– Paris.

[FN#502] The trick of the clever Magyar in marking all the other sleepers as the king’s mother had marked himself occurs in the folk-tales of most countries, especially in the numerous versions of the Robbery of the King’s Treasury, which are brought together in my work on the Migrations of Popular Tales and Fictions (Blackwood), vol. ii., pp. 113-165.

[FN#503] A mythical saint, or prophet, who, according to the Muslim legend, was despatched by one of the ancient kings of Persia to procure him some of the Water of Life. After a tedious journey, Khizr reached the Fountain of Immortality, but having drank of its waters, it suddenly vanished. Muslims believe that Khizr still lives, and sometimes appears to favoured individuals, always clothed in green, and acts as their guide in difficult enterprises.

[FN#504] “Spake these words to the king”–certainly not those immediately preceding! but that, if the king would provide for him during three years, at the end of that period he would show Khizr to the king.

[FN#505] Mr. Gibb compares with this the following passage from Boethius, “De Consolatione Philosophi,” as translated by Chaucer: “All thynges seken ayen to hir propre course, and all thynges rejoysen on hir retourninge agayne to hir nature.”

[FN#506] In this tale, we see, Khizr appears to the distressed in white raiment.

[FN#507] In an old English metrical version of the “Seven Sages,” the tutors of the prince, in order to test his progress in general science, secretly place an ivy leaf under each of the four posts of his bed, and when he awakes in the morning–

“Par fay!” he said, “a ferli cas! Other ich am of wine y-drunk, Other the firmament is sunk, Other wexen is the ground, The thickness of four leavs round! So much to-night higher I lay, Certes, than yesterday.”

[FN#508] See also the same story in The Nights, vols. vii. and viii., which Mr. Kirby considers as probably a later version. (App. vol. x. of The Nights, p. 500).

[FN#509] So, too, in the “Bahr-i-Dnish” a woman is described as being so able a professor in the school of deceit, that she could have instructed the devil in the science of stratagem: of another it is said that by her wiles she could have drawn the devil’s claws; and of a third the author declares, that the devil himself would own there was no escaping from her cunning!

[FN#510] There is a similar tale by the Spanish novelist Isidro de Robles (circa 1660), in which three ladies find a diamond ring in a fountain; each claims it; at length they agree to refer the dispute to a count of their acquaintance who happened to be close by. He takes charge of the ring and says to the ladies, “Whoever in the space of six weeks shall succeed in playing off on her husband the most clever and ingenious trick (always having due regard to his honour) shall possess the ring; in the meantime it shall remain in my hands.” (See Roscoe’s “Specimens of the Spanish Novelists,” Chandos edition, p. 438 ff.) This story was probably brought by the Moors to Spain, whence it may have passed into France, since it is the subject of a faliau, by Haisiau the trouvre, entitled “Des Trois Dames qui trouverent un Anel,” which is found in Mon’s edition of Barbazan, 1808, tome iii. pp. 220-229, and in Le Grand, ed. 1781, tome iv. pp. 163-165.

[FN#511] Idiots and little boys often figure thus in popular tales: readers of Rabelais will remember his story of the Fool and the Cook; and there is a familiar example of a boy’s precocity in the story of the Stolen Purse–“Craft and Malice ofWomen,” or the Seven Wazirs, vol. vi. of The Nights.

[FN#512] I have considerably abridged Mr. Knowles’ story in several places.

[FN#513] A species of demon.

[FN#514] This is one of the innumerable parallels to the story of Jonah in the “whale’s” belly which occur m Asiatic fictions. See, for some instances, Tawney’s translation of the “Kath Sarit Sgara,” ch. xxxv. and lxxiv.; “Indian Antiquary,” Sept. 1885, Legend of Ahl; Miss Stokes’ “Indian Fairy Tales,” pp. 75, 76; and Steel and Temple’s “Wide-Awake Stories from the Panjb and Kashmr,” p. 411. In Lucian’s “Vera Historia,” a monster fish swallows a ship and her crew, who live a long time in the extensive regions comprised in its internal economy. See also Herrtage’s “Gesta Romanorum” (Early English Text Society), p. 297.

[FN#515] In the Arabian version the people resolve to leave the choice of a new king to the royal elephant because they could not agree among themselves (vol. i., p. 323), but in Indian fictions such an incident frequently occurs as a regular custom. In the “Sivandhi Sthala Purana,” a legendary account of the famous temple at Trichinopoli, as supposed to be told by Gautama to Matanga and other sages, it is related that a certain king having mortally offended a holy devotee, his capital and all its inhabitants were, in consequence of a curse pronounced by the enraged saint, buried beneath a shower of dust. “Only the queen escaped, and in her flight she was delivered of a male-child. After some time, the chiefs of the Chola kingdom, proceeding to elect a king, determined, by the advice of the saint, to crown whomsoever the late monarch’s elephant should pitch upon. Being turned loose for this purpose, the elephant discovered and brought to Trisira-ml the child of his former master, who accordingly became the Chola king.” (Wilson’s Desc. Catal. of Mackenzie MSS., i. 17.) In a Manipur story of two brothers, Turi and Basanta–“Indian Antiquary,” vol. iii.–the elder is chosen king in like manner by an elephant who meets him in the forest, and takes him on his back to the palace, where he is immediately placed on the throne. See also “Wide-Awake Stories from the Panjb and Kashmr,” by Mrs. Steel and Captain Temple, p. 141; and Rev. Lal Behari Day’s “Folk-Tales of Bengal,” p. 100 for similar instances. The hawk taking part, in this story, with the elephant in the selection of a king does not occur in any other tale known to me.

[FN#516] So that their caste might not be injured. A dhob, or washerman, is of much lower caste than a Brhman or a Khshatriya.

[FN#517] A responsible position in a rj’s palace.

[FN#518] “And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” Rj Amb must have been fully twelve years in the stomach of the alligator.

[FN#519] This device of the mother to obtain speech of the king is much more natural than that adopted in the Kashmiri version.

[FN#520] The story of Ab Sbir (see vol. i. p. 81 ff.) may also be regarded as an analogue. He is unjustly deprived of all his possessions, and, with his wife and two young boys, driven forth of his village. The children are borne off by thieves, and their mother forcibly carried away by a horseman. Ab Sbir, after many sufferings, is raised from a dungeon to a throne. He regains his two children and his wife, who had steadfastly refused to cohabit with her captor.

[FN#521] Introduction to the romance of “Torrent of Portingale,” re-edited (for the Early English Text Society, 1886) by E. Adam, Ph.D., pp. xxi. xxii.

[FN#522] Morning.

[FN#523] Bird.

[FN#524] Mean; betoken.

[FN#525] Thee.

[FN#526] Tho: then.

[FN#527] Yede: went.

[FN#528] Case.

[FN#529] Avaunced: advanced; promoted.

[FN#530] Holpen: helped.

[FN#531] Brent: burnt.

[FN#532] But if: unless.

[FN#533] To wed: in pledge, in security.

[FN#534] Beth: are.

[FN#535] Or: either.

[FN#536] Lever dey: rather die.

[FN#537] Far, distant.

[FN#538] Unless.

[FN#539] Oo: one.

[FN#540] Ayen: again.

[FN#541] Or: ere, before.

[FN#542] Army; host.

[FN#543] Part.

[FN#544] That.

[FN#545] Grief, sorrow.

[FN#546] Poor.

[FN#547] Gathered, or collected, together.

[FN#548] Arms; accoutrements; dress.

[FN#549] Bravely.

[FN#550] Those.

[FN#551] Done, ended.

[FN#552] Their lodgings, inn.

[FN#553] Since.

[FN#554] Comrades.

[FN#555] Truly.

[FN#556] Lodged.

[FN#557] Inn.

[FN#558] Hem: them.

[FN#559] Chief of the army.

[FN#560] I note: I know not.

[FN#561] Nor.

[FN#562] Place.

[FN#563] That is by means of his hounds.

[FN#564] A wood.

[FN#565] Those.

[FN#566] Her: their.

[FN#567] Looks towards; attends to.

[FN#568] Give.

[FN#569] Excepting; unless.

[FN#570] Face; countenance.

[FN#571] Care; close examination.

[FN#572] Palata, Lat. (Paletot, O. Fr. ), sometimes signifying a particular stuff, and sometimes a particular dress. See Du Cange.

[FN#573] Cut; divided

[FN#574] Wept.

[FN#575] Sailing.

[FN#576] More.

[FN#577] Much.

[FN#578] Sultan.

[FN#579] Name.

[FN#580] Voice, i.e., command.

[FN#581] Slew.

[FN#582] Labour.

[FN#583] Drew.

[FN#584] Went.

[FN#585] Burning coal.

[FN#586] Pray; beg.

[FN#587] Recovered.

[FN#588] Head.

[FN#589] Weeping.

[FN#590] Saw.

[FN#591] Waving.

[FN#592] Began to climb.

[FN#593] Against.

[FN#594] More.

[FN#595] From an early volume of the “Asiatic Journal,” the number of which I did not “make a note of–thus, for once at least, disregarding the advice of the immortal Captain Cuttle.

[FN#596] “It was no wonder,” says this writer, “that his (i.e. Galland’s) version of the ‘Arabian Nights’ achieved a universal popularity, and was translated into many languages, and that it provoked a crowd of imitations, from ‘Les Mille et Un Jours’ to the ‘Tales of the Genii.’”

[FN#597] This is a version of The Sleeper and the Waker–with a vengeance! Ab Hasan the Wag, the Tinker, and the Rustic, and others thus practiced upon by frolic-loving princes and dukes, had each, at least, a most delightful “dream.” But when a man is similarly handled by the “wife of his bosom”–in stories, only, of course–the case is very different as the poor chief of police experienced. Such a “dream” as his wife induced upon him we may be sure he would remember “until that day that he did creep into his sepulchre!”

[FN#598] I call this “strikingly similar” to the preceding Persian story, although it has fewer incidents and the lady’s husband remains a monk; she could not have got him back even had she wished; for, having taken the vows, he was debarred from returning to “the world " which a kalandar or dervish may do as often as he pleases.

[FN#599] “The Woman’s trick against her Husband.”