Volume 14 — History of Mohammed, Sultan of Cairo (pp. 37-49).

P. 37.—A few years ago, a travelling menagerie exhibited a pair of dog-faced baboons in Dublin as "two monstrous gorillas!"

P. 40.—Ma'aruf's jewel has been already referred to. The present incident more resembles the demand made by the king and the wazir from Aladdin and his mother, though that was far more extravagant.

Pp. 42, 43.—A more terrible form of these wedding disillusions, is when the bridegroom is entrapped into marriage by an evil magician, and wakes in the morning to find the phantom of a murdered body in the place of his phantom bride, and to be immediately charged with the crime. Compare the story of Naerdan and Guzulbec (Caylus' Oriental Tales; Weber, ii. pp. 632-637) and that of Monia Emin (Gibb's Story of Jewad, pp. 36, 75). Compare my Appendix, Nights, x. pp. 502, 508, 509.

Pp. 44, 45.—There is a Western story (one of the latest versions of which may be found in Moore's Juvenile Poems under the title of "The Ring") in which a bridegroom on his wedding-day places the ring by accident on the finger of a statue of Venus; the finger closes on it, and Venus afterwards interposes continually between him and his bride, claiming him as her husband on the strength of the ring. The unfortunate husband applies to a magician, who sends him by night to a meeting of cross-roads, where a procession similar to that described in the text passes by. He presents the magician's letters to the King (the devil in the mediæval versions of the story) who requires Venus to surrender the ring, and with it her claim to the husband.

One of the most curious stories of these royal processions is perhaps the Lithuanian (or rather Samoghitian) story of