Note 5 — INTRODUCTION.

The stories related to the king by Prince Bakhtyár, though calculated to caution him against rash judgments, have nothing in common with those contained in the Book of Sindibád; while the tales told by Er-Rahwan (which have been translated by Sir Richard F. Burton, and included in the first volume of his Supplemental Nights) are of a miscellaneous character—grave and gay, wise and witty—his sole object being to prolong his life by thus amusing the king. The Vazír’s recitals are of considerable importance to “storiologists”: we find among them analogues of Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, Pardoner’s Tale, and Merchant’s Tale, and of the well-known legend of St. Eustache (or Placidus), which occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, and from which the mediæval metrical romances of Sir Isumbras, Octavian, Sir Eglamour, and Sir Torrent of Portugal were derived.