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

white and plump, the sight of which threw the k�z� into ecstasies and almost caused him to faint. Quoth the lady, “I must tell you, my lord, that with all the beauty I possess, my father, a dyer in the city, keeps me secluded, and declares to all who come to ask me in marriage that I am an ugly, deformed monster, a mere skeleton, lame, and full of diseases.” On this the k�z� burst into a tirade against the brutal father who could thus traduce so much beauty, and vowed that he would make her his wife that same day. The lady, after expressing her fears that he would not find it easy to gain her father’s consent, took her leave and returned home.

 

The k�z� lost no time in sending for the dyer, and, after complimenting him upon his reputation for piety, said to him, “I am informed that behind the curtain of chastity you have a daughter ripe for marriage. Is not this true?” Replied the dyer, “My lord, you have been rightly informed. I have a daughter who is indeed fully ripe for marriage, or she is more than thirty years of age, but the poor creature is not fit to be a wife to any man. She is very ugly, lame, leprous, and foolish. In short, she is such a monster that I am obliged to keep her out of all people’s sight.” “Ha!” exclaimed the k�z�, “you can’t impose on me with such a tale. I was prepared for it. But let me tell you that I myself am ready and willing to marry that same ugly and leprous daughter of yours, with all her defects.” When the dyer heard this, he looked the k�z� full in the face and said, “My lord, you are welcome to divert yourself by making a jest of my daughter.” No,” replied the k�z� “I am quite in earnest. I demand your daughter in marriage.” The dyer broke into laughter, saying, ‘By Allah, some one has meant to play you a trick, my lord. I forewarn you that she is ugly, lame, and leprous.” “True,”

responded the k�z�, with a knowing smile; “I know her by these tokens. I shall take her notwithstanding.” The dyer, seeing him determined to marry his daughter, and being now convinced that he had been imposed upon by some ill-wisher, thought to himself, “I must demand of him a round sum of money which may cause him to cease troubling me any further about my poor daughter.” So he said to the k�z�, “My lord, I am ready to obey your command; but I will not part with my daughter unless you pay me beforehand a dowry of a thousand sequins.” Replied the k�z�, “Although, methinks, your demand is somewhat exorbitant, yet I will pay you the money at once.” which having done, he ordered the contract to be drawn up. But when it came to be signed the dyer declared that he would not sign save in the presence of a hundred men of the law. “Thou art very distrustful,” said the k�z�, “but I will comply in everything, for I am resolved to make sure of thy daughter.” So he sent for all the men of law in the city, and when they were assembled at the house of the k�z�, the dyer said that he was now willing to sign the contract; “But I declare,” he added, “in the presence of these honourable witnesses, that I do so on the condition that if my daughter should not prove to your liking when you have seen her, and you should determine to divorce her, you shall oblige yourself to give her a thousand sequins of gold in addition to the same amount which I have already received from you. “Agreed,” said the k�z�, “I oblige myself to it, and call this whole assembly to be witnesses. Art thou now satisfied?” “I am,” replied the dyer, who then went his way, saying that he would at once send him his bride.

 

As soon as the dyer was gone, the assembly broke up, and the k�z�

was left a house. He had been two years married to the daughter of a merchant of Baghd�d, whom he had hitherto lived on very amicable terms. When she heard that he was arranging for a second marriage, she came to him in a great rage. “How now,” said she, “two hands in one glove! two swords in one scabbard! two wives in one house! Go, fickle man! Since the caresses of a young and faithful wife cannot secure your constancy, I am ready to yield my place to my rival and retire to my own family. Repudiate me—

return my dowry—and you shall never see me more.” “I am glad you have thus anticipated me,” answered the k�z�, “for I was somewhat perplexed how to acquaint you of my new marriage.” So saying, he opened a coffer and took out a purse of five hundred sequins of gold, and putting it into her hands, “There, woman,” said he, “thy dowry is in that purse: begone, and take with you what belongs to you. I divorce thee once; I divorce thee twice, three times I divorce thee. And that thy parents may be satisfied thou art divorced from me, I shall give thee a certificate signed by myself and my nayb.” This he did accordingly, and his wife went to her father’s house, with her bill of divorce and her dowry.

 

The k�z� then gave orders to furnish an apartment sumptuously for the reception of his bride. The floor was spread with velvet carpets, the walls were hung with rich tapestry, and couches of gold and silver brocade were placed around the room. The bridal chamber was decked with caskets filled with the most exquisite perfumes. When everything was in readiness, the k�z� impatiently expected the arrival of his bride, and at last was about to despatch a messenger to the dyer’s when a porter entered, carrying a wooden chest covered with a piece of green taffeta.

“What hast thou brought me there, friend?” asked the k�z�. “My lord,” replied the porter, setting the chest on the floor, “I bring your bride.” The k�z� opened the chest, and discovered a woman of three feet and a half, defective in every limb and feature. He was horrified at the sight of this object, and throwing the covering hastily over it, demanded of the porter, “What wouldst thou have me do with this frightful creature?” “My lord,” said the porter, “this is the daughter of Omar the dyer, who told me that you had espoused her out of pure inclination.”

“O Allah!” exclaimed the k�z�, “is it possible to marry such a monster as this?” Just then, the dyer, well knowing that the k�z�

must be surprised, came in. “Thou wretch,” cried the k�z�, “how cost thou dare to trifle with me? In place of this hideous object, send hither your other daughter, whose beauty is beyond comparison; otherwise thou shalt soon know what it is to insult me.” Quoth the dyer, “My lord, I swear, by Him who out of darkness produced light, that I have no other daughter but this.

I told you repeatedly that she was not for your purpose, but you would not believe my words. Who, then, is to blame?” Upon this the k�z� began to cool, and said so the dyer, “I must tell you, friend Omar, that this morning there came to me a most beautiful damsel, who pretended that you were her father, and that you represented her to everybody as a monster, on purpose to deter all suitors that came to ask her in marriage.” “My lord,”

answered the dyer, “this beautiful damsel must be an impostor; some one, undoubtedly, owes you a grudge.” Then the k�z�, having reflected for a few minutes, said to the dyer, “Bid the porter carry thy daughter home again. Keep the thousand sequins of gold which I gave thee, but ask no more of me, if thou desirest that we should continue friends.” The dyer, knowing the implacable disposition of the k�z�, thought it advisable to content himself with what he had already gained, and the k�z�, having formally divorced his hideous bride, sent her away with her father. The affair soon got wind in the city and everybody was highly diverted with the trick practiced on the k�z�.

 

It will be observed that in the Arabian story there are two clever devices: that of the lady who tricks the boastful merchant, whose motto was that men’s craft is superior to women’s craft, into marrying the ugly daughter of the k�z�; and that of the merchant to get rid of his bad bargain by disgusting the k�z�

with the alliance. The scene at the house of the worthy judge—

the crowd of low rascals piping, drumming, and capering, and felicitating themselves on their pretended kinsman the merchant’s marriage—is highly humorous. This does not occur in the Persian story, because it is the k�z�, who has been duped into marrying the dyer’s deformed daughter, and she is therefore simply packed off again to her father’s house.

 

That the tales of the “Thousand and One Days” are not (as is supposed by the writer of an article on the several English versions of The Nights in the “Edinburgh Review” for July 1886, p. 167) mere imitations of Galland[FN#596] is most certain, apart from the statement in the preface to Petis’ French translation, which there is no reason to doubt—see vol. x. of The Nights, p.

166, note 1. Sir William Ouseley, in his Travels, vol. ii., p.

21, note, states that he brought from Persia a manuscript which comprised, inter alia, a portion of the “Haz�r � Yek R�z,” or the Thousand and One Days, which agreed with Petis’ translation of the same stories. In the Persian collection entitled “Shamsa �

Kuhkuha” occur several of the tales and incidents, for example, the Story of Nasiraddoli King of Mousel, the Merchant of Baghd�d, and the Fair Zeinib, while the Story of the King of Thibet and the Princess of the Naimans has its parallel in the Turkish “Kirk Vaz�r,” or Forty Vaz�rs. Again, the Story of Couloufe and the Beautiful Dilara reminds us of that of Haji the Cross-grained in Malcolm’s “Sketches of Persia.” But of the French translation not a single good word can be said—the Oriental “costume” and phraseology have almost entirely disappeared, and between Petis de la Croix and the author of “Gil Blas”—who is said to have had a hand in the work—the tales have become ludicrously Frenchified. The English translation made from the French is, if possible, still worse. We there meet with “persons of quality,”

“persons of fashion,” with “seigneurs,” and a thousand and one other inconsistencies and absurdities. A new translation is much to be desired. The copy of the Persian text made by Petis is probably in the Paris Library and Ouseley’s fragment is doubtless among his other Oriental MSS. in the Bodleian. But one should suppose that copies of the “Haz�r � Yek R�z” may be readily procured at Ispah�n or Tehr�n, and at a very moderate cost, since the Persians now-a-days are so poor in general that they are eager to exchange any books they possess for the “circulating medium.”

 

NUR AL-DIN AND THE DAMSEL SITT AL-MILAH.—Vol. XII. p. 107.

 

This is an excellent tale, the incidents occur naturally and the reader’s interest in the fortunes of the hero and heroine never flags. The damsel’s sojourn with the old Muezzin—her dispatching him daily to the shroff—bears some analogy to part of the tale of Ghanim the Slave of Love (vol. ii. of The Nights), which, by the way, finds close parallels in the Turkish “Forty Vaz�rs” (the Lady’s 18th story in Mr. Gibb’s translation), the Persian “Thousand and One Days”