Note 510 — Chapter III

It is interesting in this connection to find in the translation of Lane a passage from the Aǵáïb-el-Makhlooḳát (Marvels of Creation), a work of the thirteenth century: "The tortoise is a sea and land animal. As to the sea tortoise it is very enormous, so that the people of the ship imagine it to be an island. One of the merchants relates as follows regarding it: 'We found in the sea an island elevated above the water, having upon it green plants, and we went forth to it, and dug [holes for fire] to cook; whereupon the island moved, and the sailors said, "Come ye to your place, for it is a tortoise, and the heat of the fire hath hurt it, lest it carry you away." By reason of the enormity of its body,' said he [i.e., the narrator above mentioned], 'it was as though it were an island, and earth collected upon its back in the length of time, so that it became like land, and produced plants.'" Evidently here the tortoise occupies the same place as, in popular tradition, the lunar whale recorded by us in the chapter on the Fishes. Cfr. Lane, The Thousand and One Nights, London, 1841, vol. iii. chap. xx. n. 1 and 8, p. 80 seq.—Grein, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie, Göttingen, 1857, 1, 235, the Celtic legend of St Brandan and the Pseudo-Callisthenes.