APPENDIX. (continued 3)

The Trick of the Bazár-Master’s Wife

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

The Trick of the Kutwál’s Wife

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

Whatever may be the source of this diverting story, it was known in France as early at least as the 13th century, in the form of fabliau by Haisiau the Trouvère, under the title “Des Trois Dames qui trouverent un Anel” (Méon’s edition of Barbazan, 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.[300]

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.”[301]

“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 Facetiæ Bebelianæ, 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 Facetiæ 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 Señor 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.

The Kázi and the Merchant’s Wife—p. 414.

The latter part of this story will at once remind the reader of the tale of Alí Khoja and the Merchant of Baghdád in our common English version of the Arabian Nights,[302] in which Alí Khoja, before setting out on the pilgrimage to Makka, places a thousand gold pieces in a jar and fills it up with olives, and gives it into the custody of a merchant with whom he was intimate, as a jar of olives merely; and the merchant after the Khoja had prolonged his absence far beyond the usual time opened the jar to take out of it some olives for his wife, who had wished for that fruit, and finding the gold underneath abstracted it, and substituted fresh olives. The story is too well known to require the repetition of the subsequent details—how judgment was at first given in favour of the merchant, but was afterwards reversed, as in our story of the Kází, by the acuteness of a boy.

It seems to have been a favourite pastime from ancient times for Asiatic youngsters to play at “the King and his Ministers.” In the apocryphal Arabic gospel of the Saviour’s Infancy we read: “In the month of Adar, Jesus, after the manner of a king, assembled the boys together. They spread their clothes on the ground and he sat down on them. Then they put on his head a crown made of flowers, and like chamber-servants stood in his presence, on the right and on the left, as if he was a king, and whoever passed that way was forcibly dragged by the boys, saying: ‘Come hither and adore the king; and then go away.’” This passage finds a very remarkable parallel in the Mongolian tales of Ardshi Bordshi—the second part of Miss Busk’s Sagas from the Far East, derived from Jülg’s Mongolische Märchen, as follows: “In the neighbourhood of his [i.e. Ardshi Bordshi’s] residence was a hill where the boys who were tending the calves were wont to pass the time by running up and down. But they had also another custom, and it was that whichever of them won the race was king for the day—an ordinary game enough, only that when it was played in this place the boy-king thus constituted was at once endowed with such extraordinary importance and majesty that every one was constrained to treat him as a real king. He had not only ministers and dignitaries among his play-fellows, who prostrated themselves before him, and fulfilled all his behests, but whoever passed that way could not choose but pay him homage also.”

The Rev. J. Hinton Knowles, in a note to his Folk-Tales of Kashmír, thus describes the game of “Vazír Pádisháh,” also called “Suhul,” as it is played by the boys in Kashmír:

“It is generally played by four youngsters. Four little sticks are provided, of which the bark on one side is peeled off. Any of the four children throws first. If one should throw three sticks so that they all fall on the bark side, then he is appointed pádisháh, or king; but if not, they all try and throw till some one succeeds. The next thing is to find out the vazír. He who throws the sticks so that one of them falls with the bark side up, but the other three with the peeled sides up, is appointed to this office. Then an asúr, or thief, has to be fixed upon. He who throws so that two of his sticks fall with the bark side upwards is proclaimed the thief. Lastly a sayd, or honest man, has to be found. This part he has to play who throws the sticks so that three of them fall with the bark side upwards. If it should happen that all four of them fall with the bark sides up, that thrower has to try again.[303]

“Pádisháh, vazír, asúr, and sayd being known, the real play begins. The asúr, or thief, is brought before the king by the vazír, who says: ‘O king, peace and health to you; here is a thief.’ The king replies: ‘Whence has he come?’ Then the vazír tells him the whole case, and punishment has to be inflicted on the criminal. This is the most amusing part of the whole play. ‘Give him Bangálí cannon,’ says the king, and the vazír kicks the prisoner’s buttocks; or the king says: ‘Bring a dog in his place from the Ladák,’ when the vazír takes the prisoner a short distance, and then holding him by the ear pulls him back, while the prisoner barks like a dog; or the king says: ‘Take out the spindle,’ when the vazír draws a line with his thumb-nail on the inside of the arm from the elbow-joint to the wrist, and then hits the arm over the line as hard as he can with the first and second fingers of his right hand. There are many other words of punishment too numerous to mention here.”

Not a few Eastern stories turn upon the wonderful acuteness of boys in solving difficult questions which have perplexed the profound minds of their “grave and reverend” seniors. The reader will find a number of examples cited in my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii, pp. 10, 12-14, one of which, a Mongolian tale, is analogous to that of the Arabian story of Alí Khoja’s “pot of olives.”

The Hidden Treasure—p. 442.

The indirect source of this story is probably the following tale, from the Kathá Sarit Ságara, vol. i, p. 298, of Prof. C. H. Tawney’s translation, published at Calcutta a few years ago:

There is a city named Srávastí, and in it there lived in old time a king of the name of Prasenajit, and one day a strange Bráhman arrived in that city. A merchant, thinking he was virtuous because he lived on rice in the husk, provided him a lodging there in the house of a Bráhman. There he was loaded by him every day with presents of unhusked rice and other gifts, and gradually by other great merchants also, who came to hear his story. In this way the miserly fellow gradually accumulated a thousand dínars, and going to the forest he dug a hole and buried it in the ground, and he went every day and examined the spot. Now one day he saw that the hole in which he had hidden his gold had been re-opened, and that all the gold was gone. When he saw that hole empty, his soul was smitten, and not only was there a void in his heart, but the whole universe seemed to be a void also. And then he came crying to the Bráhman in whose house he lived, and when questioned he told him his whole story; and he made up his mind to go to a holy bathing-place and starve himself to death. Then the merchant who supplied him with food, hearing of it, came there with others, and said to him: “Bráhman, why do you long to die for the loss of your wealth? Wealth, like an unseasonable cloud, suddenly comes and goes.” Though plied by him with these and similar arguments, he would not abandon his fixed determination to commit suicide, for wealth is dearer to the miser than life itself. But when the Bráhman was going to the holy place to commit suicide, the king Prasenajit himself, having heard of it, came and asked him: “Bráhman, do you know of any mark by which you can recognise the place where you buried your dínars?” When the Bráhman heard that, he said: “There is a small tree in the wood there; I buried that wealth at its foot.” When the king heard that he said: “I will find the wealth and give it back to you, or I will give it you from my own treasury; do not commit suicide, Bráhman.” After saying that, and so diverting the Bráhman from his intention of committing suicide, the king entrusted him to the care of the merchant, and retired to his palace. There he pretended to have a headache, and sending out the doorkeeper he summoned all the physicians in the city by proclamation with beat of drum. And he took aside every single one of them and questioned him privately in the following words: “What patients have you here, and how many, and what medicines have you prescribed for each?” And they thereupon, one by one, answered all the king’s questions. Then one among the physicians, when his turn came to be questioned, said this: “The merchant Mátridatta has been out of sorts, O king, and this is the second day that I have prescribed for him nágabalá” [the plant Uraria Lagopodioides]. When the king heard that he sent for the merchant and said to him: “Tell me who fetched you the nágabalá?” The merchant said: “My servant, your highness.” When the king got this answer from the merchant he quickly summoned the servant and said to him: “Give up that treasure belonging to a Bráhman, consisting of a store of dínars, which you found when you were digging at the foot of a tree for nágabalá.” When the king said this to him the servant was frightened, and confessed immediately; and bringing those dínars, left them there. So the king for his part summoned the Bráhman, and gave him, who had been fasting in the meanwhile, his dínars, lost and found again, like a second soul external to his body. Thus the king by his wisdom recovered to the Bráhman his wealth, which had been taken away from the tree, knowing that that simple grew in such spots.

Many stories of hidden treasure being stolen and recovered by a clever device are current in Europe as well as in the East. For example, in No. 74 of the Cento Novette Antiche, the oldest Italian collection of tales, a blind beggar conceals 100 florins under the floor of a church, and is observed by a sharper who next day takes the money away. When the blind man finds his treasure gone, he stands at the church-door at the time of service and bids his boy watch all who enter the church and let him know if any one should regard him (the beggar) as if with peculiar interest. The sharp-witted boy observes a man looking at his father and smiling, and when the beggar learns the name of the man, he scrapes acquaintance with him, tells him that he has 100 florins concealed under the floor of the church, and expects to receive 100 more in the course of a day or two, which he had lent out; and begs his new friend to meet him on such a day when they would lift the stone and deposit the additional money. The sharper, thinking to get this other sum as well, went privily and replaced the 100 florins he had stolen, and the blind man, anticipating he would do so, returned at night and took away his money, resolving to part with it no more.—The same story is found in the Breslau printed Arabic text of the ‘Thousand and one Nights’, and is translated by Mr. John Payne in his Tales from the Arabic, and also by Sir Richard F. Burton in the first volume of his Supplemental Nights, under the title of “The Melancholist and the Sharper.” A short version is given in Gladwin’s Persian Moonshee; and another analogous story of buried treasure will be found in Roscoe’s Spanish Novelists, ed. 1832, vol. iii, p. 215-234, entitled “A Prodigious Adventure,” by Isidro de Robles.

The Deaf Man and his Sick Friend—p. 446.

Readers who are not familiar with the Kurán may like to see in English the Muslim “Lord’s Prayer,” called Al-Fátihá, which the Deaf Man recited in presence of his sick friend, so this is it, from Rodwell’s translation, p. 11:

This sura is esteemed as the quintessence of the Kurán, and is recited several times in the course of each of the five daily prayers, and on many other occasions.

It is well known that men afflicted with partial deafness are generally unwilling to acknowledge their infirmity, and even resent being talked to in a loud tone of voice; though they often betray themselves by the answers they give to questions asked of them, much to the amusement of their questioners.—A story is told of a deaf Persian who was taking home a quantity of wheat, and, coming to a river which he must cross, he saw a horseman approach; so he said to himself: “When that horseman comes up he will first salute me, saying, ‘Peace be with thee!’ Next he will ask, ‘What is the depth of this river?’ and then he will ask, how many máns of wheat I have with me.” But the deaf man’s surmises were sadly amiss, for when the horseman came up he cried: “Ho! my man, what is the depth of this river?” The deaf one replied: “Peace be with thee, and the mercy of Allah and his blessing!” At this the horseman laughed and said: “May they cut off thy beard!” to which the deaf one rejoined: “Up to my neck.” The horseman then said: “Dust be on thy mouth!” The deaf one placidly replied: “Eighty máns of it.”

Here we have a very close parallel to the story of the Deaf Man and his Sick Friend, and there is a curious Norwegian variant in Sir George W. Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, under the title of “Goodman Axeshaft,” which is to this purpose:

The wife and daughter of an old ferryman, who was extremely deaf, by their extravagance plunge him into an ocean of debt and run away from home. The sheriff is to come and seize, and the old man wonders what he’ll say to him. “Ah, I’ll begin to cut an axeshaft, and the sheriff will ask me how long it is to be. I’ll answer, ‘Up as far as that twig sticks out.’ Then he’ll ask, ‘What’s become of the ferry boat?’ and I’ll say, ‘I’m going to tar her, and yonder she lies on the strand, split at both ends.’ Then he’ll ask, ‘Where’s your gray mare?’ and I’ll say, ‘She’s standing in the stable, big with foal.’ And then he’ll ask, ‘Whereabouts is your sheepcote?’ and I’ll answer, ‘Not far off; when you get a bit up the hill you’ll soon see it.’” But when the sheriff comes up he says “Good day” to the old man, who answers: “Axeshaft.” Then he asks: “How far off to the river?” to which the ferryman replies: “Up to this twig,” pointing a little way up the piece of timber. The sheriff stares and shakes his head. “Where’s your wife?” “I’m just going to tar her,” and so forth. “Where’s your daughter?” “In the stable,” and so on. “To the deuce with you!” exclaims the sheriff, in a rage. “Very good,” says the old man; “not far off—when you get a bit up the hill you’ll soon see it.” Upon this the sheriff goes off, in sheer despair.

The Gardener and the Little Bird—p. 448.

In mediæval times the ancient fable of the Fowler and the Little Bird was appropriated by several monkish compilers of exempla, designed for the use of preachers; but this version is unique, so far as my knowledge of other forms of the fable extends. It has, exclusively, the scene between the lapwing and the nightingale; the references to the Muslim legend of Solomon’s receiving from a lapwing, or hoopoe, intelligence of the city of Sabá (or Sheba) and Queen Bilkís; and the allegation of the nightingale to the gardener that the fruit the bird had destroyed was poisonous. The fable is found in the spiritual romance of Barlaam and Joasaph (not Josaphat, as the name is commonly written), which is said to have been composed in the first half of the 7th century, by a Greek monk named John, of the convent of St. Sabá, at Jerusalem, and—according to M. Hermann Zotenberg—redacted by Johannes Damascenus, a Greek Father, of the 8th century, and included in his works. It is now certain that the substance of this work was derived from Indian sources: the incidents in the youth of Joasaph correspond with those in the early years of Gautama, the founder of Buddhism; while some of the parables contained in the romance are found in the Játakas, or Buddhist Birth-stories and others in Hindú books. This is how the fable is told in Barlaam and Joasaph:

They who worship idols are like the bird-catcher who caught one of the smallest birds, which they call the nightingale. As he was about to kill and eat it, articulate speech was given to the bird, and it said: “What will the killing of me profit thee, man? Thou canst not fill thy belly with me. But if thou set me free, I will give thee three injunctions, which, if thou observe, will benefit thee all thy life.” He was amazed to hear the bird speak, and promised. Then said the nightingale: “Never try to reach the unattainable. Rue not a thing that is past. Never believe a thing that is beyond belief.” Away flies the bird; but, to test the man’s common sense, it cries to him: “How thoughtless thou art! Inside of my body is a pearl larger than the egg of an ostrich, and thou hast not obtained it!” Then he repented having let the bird go free, and tried to coax it back by fair offers. But the bird rebuked his folly in so soon forgetting all the three injunctions it had given him.

In this form the fable also occurs in the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alphonsus, a Spanish Jew, who was converted to Christianity in 1106, and who avowedly derived the materials for his work from the Arabian fabulists, and from this collection it was taken into the Gesta Romanorum (see Swan’s translation, ed. 1824, vol. ii, p. 87). John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, of the 15th century, turned the fable into English verse, under the title of “The Chorle and the Bird, from a pamflete in Frenche,” which is conjectured to have been the fabliau “Le Lai de l’Oiselet,” but this I think is rather doubtful. According to Lydgate’s poem, a little bird takes up its abode in a laurel-tree in a churl’s garden, and sings merrily all the livelong day. The churl sets a trap (pantere) to catch the bird.

The churl puts the little bird into a fine cage and orders it to sing, but says the bird:

“But let me out,” the bird goes on to say, “so that I may perch again on the laurel-tree, and then I will sing to thee, and moreover,

The three “great wisdoms” are the same as those in other versions, and then the little bird says that the churl by setting him free has missed gaining a rare treasure, for in his inside is a stone, fully an ounce in weight, which has many wonderful properties: making its possessor victorious in battle; he should suffer no poverty or indigence but have abundance of wealth; all should do him reverence; it would reconcile foes, comfort the sorrowful, and make heavy hearts light.[304] The churl is beside himself with vexation, and the bird calls him a fool for believing such a rank impossibility.[305]

Husain Vá’iz has re-told the apologue in his Anvár-i Suhaylí, or Lights of Canopus, a Persian rendering, in prose and verse, of the celebrated Fables of Bidpaï with additions, of which this is one. Here, however, the nightingale—having been entrapped by the gardener, because it destroyed his roses—does not, when liberated, give the gardener three maxims, but tells him that beneath such a tree is a vessel full of gold. The villager digs and finds the treasure, and then asks the bird how it was that he could see a vessel full of gold under the earth, yet not discover the snare above ground; to which the nightingale replies, like a good Muslim: “Hast thou not heard that ‘when Fate descends caution is in vain’?”[306]

The fabliau version, “Le Lai de l’Oiselet,” as found in Méon’s edition of Barbazan’s collection, Paris, 1808, t. iii, 114, and (in modern French prose) in Le Grand, ed. 1784, t. iii, 430, can hardly have been the original of Lydgate’s poem, as may be seen from the following free rendering of Le Grand’s abridgment (in which, however, he omits the bird’s statement about the wonderful stone in its body), including a few lines from Way’s agreeable English metrical translation:

Once on a time there was a noble castle surrounded by a wide domain of field and forest, which was first owned by a worthy knight. His son and successor wasted his patrimony in riotous living—“ye know well,” quoth our poet, “that it needs but one spendthrift heir to bring great wealth to nought”; and now the fair castle and domain had become the property of a rich but sordid churl. This lofty and strong castle had been reared by magic art. A pebble-paved stream flowed round a beauteous orchard, where grew tall and shapely trees, flowers of every hue, and odorous plants; and such was the fragrance of the air that it might have arrested a man’s parting breath. In the midst of this fair scene a gushing fountain sparkled in the sunlight, while near it a lofty pine tree’s deathless verdure afforded grateful shade at noontide.

A marvellous bird had fixed his abode in this tufted pine, and ever he sat and sang his lay of love in such sweet and moving strains that, matched against his magic melody, the music of viol and full-toned harp were as nought. Such was the power of this wondrous feathered minstrel that his strains could create unutterable joy in the heart of the despairing lover; and should they cease, and the songster take his flight from this enchanted ground, then would all the goodly scene—castle, trees, flowers, forest—fade away and forever disappear.

The little warbler had no sooner ended his lay of love when he discovered the churl, upon which the bird ordered the river to retire to its source, the flowers to fade, the fruit to wither, and the castle to sink into the earth; for a vile churl should not be suffered to dwell where the beautiful and the brave had once held sweet communion. The churl, having heard the melodious strains of the little bird, resolved to capture him and sell him for a large sum. Accordingly he set his snare and caught the feathered songster. “What injury have I done thee?” cried the little bird. “And why dost thou doom me to death?” “Fear not,” said the churl; “I only desire to hear thy song, and will get thee a fine cage and plenty of seeds and kernels to eat. But sing thou must, else I’ll wring thy neck and pick thy bones.” “Alas,” sighed the pretty captive, “who can sing in prison? And even were I cooked, I could scarce furnish thee with one mouthful.” Finding that all entreaties failed to move the hard-hearted churl, the bird then promised that, if set free, he would tell him three rare and precious secrets. This offer the churl could not resist, so he freed the little bird, who straightway flew to the summit of the pine tree, and then proceeded to disclose the three precious secrets. “First then,” said the bird: “Yield not a ready faith to every tale.” “Is this all your secret?” quoth the fellow, in rising wrath. “I need it not.” “Yet,” said the bird, “you seemed but lately to have forgot it—but now you may hold it fast. My second secret is: What is lost, ’tis wise to bear with patience.” At this the churl chafed more and more. “My third secret,” continued the bird, “is by far the best: What good thou hast, do not cast lightly away.” So saying, the little bird fluttered his wings a moment, and then flew away; and immediately the castle sank into the ground; and the fountain flowed back to its source; and the fruits dropped withered from the trees; and the flowers faded—and all the beauteous scene was melted into thin air.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

Page 206—Five hundred pons.—It is possible that pon, like hun, is another name of a pagoda, a gold coin of the value of 3½ rupís, which has not been coined in the mints of India since the early part of this century.

Page 212—The Want of Children.—In the note on this subject I omitted to include Hannah, mother of Samuel, the illustrious Hebrew seer (First Book of Samuel, ch. i, v, 9-11, and 20).—Asiatics consider a son as the “light,” or the “lamp,” of the household; and so it is said of a king, in the opening of the Persian romance entitled Bahár-i Dánish, or Garden and Spring, by ’Ináyatu-’lláh: “In the house of his prosperity the light [i.e. a son], which is the hope of descending life, beamed not, as the blossoms of his house [i.e. his women] produced not the fruit of his wishes; for which he made grief his companion, and sat lonely, like a point in the centre of the circle of sorrow”—poor fellow!

Page 391—The Story of the Envious Vazír.—I cannot call to mind any close parallel to this, but the incident upon which it turns, that of the old hag’s artifice in procuring the lady’s dress, recalls the story of “The Burnt Veil” in the Book of Sindibád, where a youth, desperately in love with the virtuous wife of a merchant, employs a crone—who, like too many of her sex in Muslim countries, went about evil-doing, in the guise of a devotee—to cause the lady’s husband to put her away on suspicion of her being unfaithful. But this slight resemblance is doubtless merely fortuitous. The tale of the Envious Vazír exhibits more art than is usually found in Eastern fictions, especially the dénouement, where the Khoja’s wife cleverly causes the malignant Vazír to convict himself of gross falsehood.

Page 430—The sentiment expressed to Sultan Mahmúd by the Independent Man has its analogue in one of the countless traditions of Hatim Taï, which goes thus: They asked Hatim: “Hast thou ever seen in the world any one more noble-minded than thyself?” He replied: “One day I had offered a sacrifice of 40 camels, and had gone out with some other chiefs to a corner of the desert. I saw a thorn-cutter, who had gathered together a bundle of thorns. I said to him: ‘Why goest thou not to share the hospitality of Hatim Taï, when a crowd has assembled at his feast?’ He replied: ‘Whoever can eat of the bread of his own labour will not put himself under an obligation to Hatim Taï.’ This man, in mind and magnanimity, I consider greater than myself.”

Page 483—For the original of the story of the Two Merchants see Méon’s edition of Barbazan’s collection of Fabliaux, Paris, 1808, tome i, 52, “Des Deux Bons Amis Loiax,” and for the modern French prose version see Le Grand’s Fabliaux, edition 1781, iii, 262.

Page 499—Mr. James Moir, Rector, Grammar School, Aberdeen, is the authority (after his mother) for a story in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1884, vol. ii, pp. 68-71, which presents an interesting parallel to the tale from Salsette, with a clever girl in place of Little John: Three young girls are abandoned in a wood by their poverty-stricken parents, because they have too many mouths to feed. The little maidens arrive at a giant’s house and are granted shelter for the night. The giant resolves to kill them and have them cooked for his breakfast in the morning. In order to distinguish in the dark his own three daughters from the stranger girls, he places “strae rapes” round the necks of the latter and gold chains round his daughters’ necks, with the result that he puts his own offspring to death. Mally Whuppie, the heroine, wakes her sisters softly and they all escape. They next come to a king’s house, and Mally and her sisters are to be married to the three sons of the king, provided he should obtain possession of three wonderful things from the giant: (1) his sword from the back of his bed; (2) his purse from beneath his pillow; and (3) the ring from off the giant’s finger. Mally is successful in her two first adventures, and though she is caught by the giant when drawing off his ring, she ultimately escapes by a clever ruse.

Page 510—The story of the King and his Falcon occurs in many collections, and perhaps one of the oldest versions of it is found in Capt. R. C. Temple’s Legends of the Panjáb, vol. i, p. 467, in the story of “Princess Niwal Dai,” where a snake is seen by the falcon to drop poison into the cup.

Page 519—The Rose of Bakáwalí.—I find my conjectures regarding the construction of this romance are borne out by Garcin de Tassy (Histoire de la Littèrature Hindouie, second edition, Paris, 1870, tome i, p. 606), in his account of a version in the Hindústání Selections by the Sayyíd Husain, compiled by order of the Military Examiners’ Committee, and published at Madras in the year 1849, in 2 vols. He says: “Le second volume offre la reproduction, en 64 p., des deux tiers du Gul-i Bakâwalî d’après la rédaction de Nihâl Chand, dont j’ai donné la traduction en français. Huçain s’arrête au mariage de Tâj ulmulûk et de Bakâwalî, où devrait en effet finir de récit, le reste étant un hors-d’œuvre tout à fait hindou.”

He describes a similar romance (tome ii, pp. 531, 532) by Rayhán ed-Dín, of Bengal, written in rhymed couplets (masnaví) and entitled Khiyabán-i Rayhán, or Parterres of the Divine Grace, A.H. 1212 (A.D. 1797-1798): “Cet ouvrage,” he says, “roule sur le même sujet que le Gul-i Bakâwalî; mais, outre qu’il est tout en vers, il est beaucoup plus long. Il se divise en quarante chapitres, intitulés chacun Gul-gaschnî (Abondance de roses).… Au surplus, il est bon de rappeler ici ce que j’ai dit ailleurs, que le Gul-i Bakâwalî est une légende indienne qui est reproduite dans plusieurs rédactions différentes et même dans le dialecte des Laskars du Bengale.”

Another tale, in Persian, entitled Kissa-i Fírúz Sháh, if not identical with our romance, seems to be on the same plan, judging from the all-too brief account given of it by Dr. H. H. Wilson in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection of Oriental MSS., vol. ii, p. 137: “The story of Firoz Shah, son of the king of Badakshán, who sought a marvellous flower to cure his father.”

Page 520—In the so-called Suite des Mille et Une Nuits, by Chavis and Cazotte (Story of Habíb, the Arabian Knight), the Amír Salamis weeps himself blind on hearing a false report of his son Habíb’s death. The hero, when he comes to know of this sore affliction, is told that the only remedy is to be found among the treasures of Solomon, preserved in a cavern, and going there he finds two flat opals fixed as eyes into a visor, which he takes away, and with them restores his father’s sight. And the Rabbins say that Jacob wept himself totally blind from grief at the reported death of his son Joseph, and he recovered his sight many years afterwards by applying to his eyes the garment of Joseph, which his brethren brought from Egypt.

Page 529—There can be no doubt that the Panjábí legend of Rasálú’s game with Sirikap and the story of the Prince and Dilbar are cousins, so to say, not far removed. In the former Rasálú makes it one of the conditions of sparing the life of the vanquished Sirikap that he must consent to have his forehead branded with a red-hot iron, “in token of his vassalage,” and another condition is that he forgive his daughter whom he had imprisoned. In the latter the hero compels Dilbar to liberate his four brethren, but she insists on first branding them on their backs, “in token of the state of slavery to which they had been reduced.”—It seems to me that in the earlier part of the Panjábí legend something must have dropped out in connection with Rasálú’s rescuing the ants and the hedgehog from the river (p. 525), since it is usual in folk-tales for “thankful animals” to requite their benefactor by rendering him signal services.