Supplemental Nights to The Book of the Thousand and One Nights - Sir Richard Francis Burton (great books of all time .TXT) 📗

marriage, commanded his steward to remain single. The latter, however, one day saw a beautiful girl named Vigna and married her secretly. Although he kept her closely confined in her chamber, the king became suspicious, and sent the steward on an embassy. After his departure the king entered the apartment occupied by him, and saw his wife asleep. He did not disturb her, but in leaving the room accidentally dropped one of his gloves on the bed. When the husband returned he found the glove, but kept a discreet silence, ceasing, however, all demonstration of affection, believing his wife had been unfaithful. The king, desirous to see again the beautiful woman, made a feast and ordered the steward to bring his wife. He denied that he had one, but brought her at last, and while every one else was talking gaily at the feast she was silent. The king observed it and asked the cause of her silence, and she answered with a pun on her own name, “Vineyard I was, and Vineyard I am.

I was loved and no longer am. I know not for what reason the Vineyard has lost its season.” Her husband, who heard this, replied, “Vineyard thou wast, and Vineyard thou art: the Vineyard lost its season, for the lion’s claw.” The king, who understood what he meant, answered, “I entered the Vineyard; I touched the leaves; but I swear by my crown that I have not tasted the fruit.” Then the steward understood that his wife was innocent, and the two made peace, and always after lived happy and contented.

 

So far as I am aware, this tale of “The Lion’s Track” is not popularly known in any European country besides Italy; and it is not found in any of the Western versions of the Book of Sindib�d, generally known under the title of the “History of the Seven Wise Masters,” how, then, did it reach Venice, and become among the people “familiar in their mouths as household words?” I answer, that the intimate commercial relations which long existed between the Venetian Republic and Egypt and Syria are amply sufficient to account for the currency of this and scores of other Eastern tales in Italy. This is not one of those fictions introduced into the south of Europe through the Ottomans, since Boccaccio has made use of the first part of it in his “Decameron,” Day I.

nov. 5; and it is curious to observe that the garbled Venetian popular version has preserved the chief characteristic of the Eastern story—the allegorical reference to the king as a lion and his assuring the husband that the lion had done no injury to his “Vineyard.”

 

KING SHAH BAKHT AND HIS WAZIR AL-RAHWAN.—Vol. XI. p. 127.

 

While the frame-story of this interesting group is similar to that of the Ten Waz�rs (vol. i. p. 37), insomuch as in both a king’s favourite is sentenced to death in consequence of the false accusations of his enemies, and obtains a respite from day to day by relating stories to the king, there is yet a very important difference: Like those of the renowned Shahrazad, the stories which Al-Rahwan tells have no particular, at least no uniform, “purpose,” his sole object being to prolong his life by telling the king an entertaining story, promising, when he has ended his recital, to relate one still “stranger” the next night, if the king will spare his life another day. On the other hand, Bakhty�r, while actuated by the same motive, appeals to the king’s reason, by relating stories distinctly designed to exhibit the evils of hasty judgements and precipitate conduct—in fact, to illustrate the maxim,

 

Each order given by a reigning king, Should after long reflection be expressed; For it may be that endless woe will spring From a command he paused not to digest.

 

And in this respect they are consistent with the circumstances of the case, like the tales of the Book of Sindib�d, from which the frame of the Ten Waz�rs was imitated, and in which the Waz�rs relate stories showing the depravity and profligacy of women and that no reliance should be placed on their unsupported assertions, and to these the lady opposes equally cogent stories setting forth the wickedness and perfidy of men. Closely resembling the frame-story of the Ten Waz�rs, however, is that of a Tamil romance entitled, “Alakeswara Kath�,” a copy of which, written on palm leaves, was in the celebrated Mackenzie collection, of which Dr. H. H. Wilson published a descriptive catalogue; it is “a story of the R�j� of Alakespura and his four ministers, who, being falsely accused of violating the sanctity of the inner apartments, vindicate their innocence and disarm the king’s wrath by relating a number of stories.” Judging by the specimen given by Wilson, the well-known tale of the Lost Camel, it seems probable that the ministers’ stories, like those of Bakhty�r, are suited to their own case and illustrate the truth of the adage that “appearances are often deceptive.” Whether in the Siamese collection “Nonthuk Pakkaranam” (referred to in vol.

i. p. 127) the stories related by the Princess Kankras to the King of Pataliput (Palibothra), to save her father’s life, are similarly designed, does not appear from Benfey’s notice of the work in his paper in “Orient and Occident,” iii. 171 ff. He says that the title of the book, “Nonthuk Pakkaranam,” is taken from the name of a wise ox, Nonthuk, that plays the principal part in the longest of the tales, which are all apparently translated from the Sanskrit, in which language the title would be Nandaka Prakaranam, the History of Nandaka.

 

Most of the tales related by the wazir Al-Rahwan are not only in themselves entertaining, but are of very considerable importance from the story-comparer’s point of view, since in this group occur Eastern forms of tales which were known in Italy in the 14th century, and some had spread over Europe even earlier. The reader will have seen from Sir R. F. Burton’s notes that not a few of the stories have their parallels or analogues in countries far apart, and it is interesting to find four of them which properly belong to the Eastern texts of the Book of Sindibad, with the frame-story of which that of this group has so close an affinity.

 

THE ART OF ENGARGING PEARLS.—Vol. XI. p.131.

 

“Quoth she, I have a bangle; sell it and buy seed pearls with the price; then round them and fashion them into great pearls.”

 

For want of a more suitable place, I shall here reproduce an account of the “Method of making false pearls” (nothing else being meant in the above passage), cited, from Post. Com. Dict.

In vol. xxvi. Of Rees’ Cyclopaedia,” London, 1819: “Take of thrice distilled vinegar two pounds, Venice turpentine one pound, mix them together into a mass and put them into a cucurbit, fit a head and receiver to it, and after you have luted the joints set it when dry on a sand furnace, to distil the vinegar from it; do not give it too much heat, lest the stuff swell up. After this put the vinegar into another glass cucurbit in which there is a quantity of seed pearls wrapped in a piece of thin silk, but so as not to touch the vinegar; put a cover or head upon the cucurbit, lute it well and put it in bal. Mari�, where you may let it remain a fortnight. The heat of the balneum will raise the fumes of the vinegar, and they will soften the pearls in the silk and bring them to the consistence of a paste, which being done, take them out and mould them to what bigness, form, and shape you please. Your mould must be of fine silver, the inside gilt; you must also refrain from touching the paste with your fingers, but use silver-gilt utensils, with which fill your moulds. When they are moulded, bore them through with a hog’s bristle or gold wire, and then tread them again on gold wire, and put them into a glass, close it up, and set them in the sun to dry. After they are thoroughly dry, put them in a glass matrass into a stream of running water and leave them there twenty days; by that time they will contract the natural hardness and solidity of pearls. Then take them out of th matrass and hang them in mercurial water, where they will moisten, swell, and assume their Oriental beauty; after which shift them into a matrass hermitically closed to prevent any water coming to them, and let it down into a well, to continue there about eight days.

Then draw the matrass up, and in opening it you will find pearls exactly resembling Oriental ones.” (Here follows a recipe for making the mercurial water used in the process, with which I need not occupy more space.)

 

A similar formula, “To make of small pearls a necklace of large ones,” is given in the “Lady’s Magazine” for 1831, vol. iv., p.

119, which is said to be extracted from a scarce old book. Thus, whatever mystery may surround the art is Asiatic countreis there is evidently none about it in Europe. The process appears to be somewhat tedious and complicated, but is doubtless profitable.

 

In Philostratus’ Life of Appolonius there is a curious passage about pearl-making which has been generally considered as a mere “traveller’s tale”: Apollonious relates that the inhabitants of the shores of the Red Sea, after having calmed the water by means of oil, dived after the shell-fish, enticed them with some bait to open their shells, and having pricked the animals with a sharp-pointed instrument, received the liquor that flowed from them in small holes made in an iron vessel, in which is hardened into real pearls.—It is stated by several reputable writers that the Chinese do likewise at the present day. And Sir R. F. Burton informs me that when he was on the coast of Midian he found the Arabs were in the habit of “growing” pearls by inserting a grain of sand into the shells.

 

THE SINGER AND THE DRUGGIST.—Vol. XI. p. 136.

 

The diverting adventures related in the first part of this tale should be of peculiar interest to the student of Shakspeare as well as to those engaged in tracing the genealogy of popular fiction. Jonathan Scott has given—for reasons of his own—a meagre abstract of a similar tale which occurs in the “Bah�r-i-D�nish” (vol. iii. App., p. 291), as follows: PERSIAN VERSION

 

A young man, being upon business in a certain city, goes on a hunting excursion, and, fatigued with the chase, stops at a country house to ask refreshment. The lady of the mansion receives him kindly, and admits him as her lover. In the midst of their dalliance the husband comes home, and the young man had no recourse to escape discovery but to jump into a basin which was in the court of the house, and stand with head in a hollow gourd that happened to be in the water. The husband, surprised to see the gourd stationary in the water, which was itself agitated by the wind, throws a stone at it, when the lover slips from beneath it and holds his breath till almost suffocated.

Fortunately, the husband presently retires with his wife into an inner room of the house, and thus the young man was enabled to make good his escape.

 

The next day he relates his adventure before a large company at a coffee-house. The husband happens to be one of the audience, and, meditating revenge, pretends to admire the gallantry of the young man and invites him to his home. The lover accompanies him, and on seeing his residence is overwhelmed with confusion; but, recovering himself, resolves to