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

misery of his condition had again driven him back to the city. He went to the convent because fear hindered him from going to the house. His wife happened one day to catch a glimpse of him from her window, and perceived him sitting in the same dress with a company of kalandars. She felt compassion for him, called the servant and said, “The superintendent has had enough of this!” She made a loaf of bread and put some opiate into it, and said, “When the kalandars are asleep, you must go and place this loaf under the pillow of the superintendent.” The servant obeyed, and when the gentleman awoke in the middle of the night he was surprised to find the loaf. He fancied that when his companions had during the night returned from begging, they had placed it there, and so he ate some of it. During the same night the servant went there by the command of the lady, took his master on his back and carried him home. When it was morning, the lady took off the kalandar’s clothes from her husband and dressed him in his own garments, and began to make sweetmeats as on the former occasion. After some time he began to move, and his wife exclaimed, “O superintendent, do not sleep so much. I have told you that we shall spend this day in joy and pleasure, and it was not fair of you to pass the time in this lazy way. Lift up your head and see what beautiful sweetmeats I have baked for you.” When he opened his eyes, and saw himself dressed in his own clothes and at home, the rosebush of his amazement again brought forth the flowers of astonishment, and he said, “God be praised! What has happened to me?” He sat up, and exclaimed, “Wife, things have happened to me which I can scarcely describe.” She replied, “From the uneasy motions which you have made in your sleep, it appears you must have had extraordinary dreams.” “Dreams, forsooth,” said he, “since the moment I lay down I have experienced the most strange adventures.” “Certainly,” rejoined the lady, “last night you have been eating food disagreeing with your constitution, and to-day the vapours of it have ascended into your brains, and have caused you all this distress.” The superintendent said, “Yes last night we went to a party in the house of Serjeant Bahman, and there was roasted pillau, of which I ate somewhat more than usual, and the vapour of it has occasioned me all this trouble.”[FN#597]

 

Strikingly similar to this story is the trick of the first lady on her husband in the “Fabliau des Trois Dames qui trouverent un Anel.” Having made him drunk, she causes his head to be shaved, dresses him in the habit of a monk, and carries him, assisted by her lover, to the entrance of a convent. When he awakes and sees himself thus transformed he imagines that God by a miraculous exercise of His grace had called him to the monastic life. He presents himself before the abbot and requests to be received among the brethren. The lady hastens to the convent in well-feigned despair, and is exhorted to be resigned and to congratulate her husband on the saintly vow he has taken. “Many a good man, ‘ says the poet, “has been betrayed by woman and by her harlotry. This one became a monk in the abbey, where he abode a very long time. Wherefore, I counsel all people who hear this story told, that they ought not to trust in their wives, nor in their households, if they have not first proved that they are full of virtues. Many a man has been deceived by women and by their treachery. This one became monk against right, who would never have been such in his life, if his wife had not deceived him.”[FN#598]

 

The second lady’s trick in the fabliau is a very close parallel to the story in The Nights, vol. v. p. 96.[FN#599] She had for dinner on a Friday some salted and smoked eels, which her husband bade her cook, but there was no fire in the house. Under the pretext of going to have them cooked at a neighbour’s fire she goes out and finds her lover, at whose house she remains a whole week. On the following Friday, at the hour of dinner, she enters a neighbour’s house and asks leave to cook the eels, saying that her husband is angry with her for having no fire, and that she did not dare to go back, lest he should take off her head. As soon as the eels are cooked she carries them piping hot to her own house. The husband asks her where she has been for eight days, and commences to beat her. She cries for help and the neighbours come in, and amongst them the one at whose fire the eels had been cooked, who swears that the wife had only just left her house and ridicules the husband for his assertion that she had been away a whole week. The husband gets into a great rage and is locked up for a madman.

 

The device of the third lady seems a reflection of the “Elopement,” but without the underground tunnel between the houses of the wife and the lover. The lady proposes to her lover to marry him, and he believes that she is only jesting, seeing that she is already married, but she assures him that she is quite in earnest, and even undertakes that her husband will consent. The lover is to come for her husband and take him to the house of Dan Eustace, where he has a fair niece, whom the lover is to pretend he wishes to espouse, if he will give her to him.

The wife will go thither, and she will have done her business with Eustace before they arrive. Her husband cannot but believe that he has left her at home, and she will be so apparelled that he cannot recognise her. This plan is accordingly carried out.

The lover asks the husband for the hand of his niece in marriage, to which he joyously consents, and without knowing it makes a present of his own wife. “All his life long the lover possessed her, because the husband gave and did not lend her; nor could he ever get her back.”

 

Le Grand mentions that this fabliau is told at great length in the tales of the Sieur d’Ouville, tome iv. p. 255. In the “Faceti� Bebelian�,” p. 86, three women wager which of them will play the best trick on her husband. One causes him to believe he is a monk, and he goes and sings mass, the second husband believed himself to be dead, and allows himself to be carried to that mass on a bier; and the third sings in it quite naked.

(There is a very similar story in Campbell’s “Popular Tales of the West Highlands.”) It is also found, says Le Grand, in the “Convivales Sermones,” tome i. p. 200, in the “Delices de Verboquet,” p. 166; and in the Faceti� of Lod. Domenichi, p. 172.

In the “Comes pour Rire,” p. 197, three women find a diamond, and the arbiter whom they select promises it, as in the fabliau, to her who concocts the best device for deceiving her husband, but their ruses are different.

 

End of Supplemental Nights Volume 2.

 

Arabian Nights, Volume 12

Footnotes [FN#1] Bresi. Edit., vol. xi. pp. 321-99, Nights dccccxxx-xl.

 

[FN#2] Arab. “Ikl�m” from the Gr. {Greek}, often used as amongst us (e.g. “other climes”) for land.

 

[FN#3] Bibars whose name is still famous and mostly pronounced “Baybars,” the fourth of the Baharite Mamelukes whom I would call the “Soldans.” Originally a slave of Al-S�lih, seventh of the Ayyubites, he rose to power by the normal process, murdering his predecessor, in A. D. 1260; and he pushed his conquests from Syria to Armenia. In his day “Saint” Louis died before Tunis (A.

D. 1270).

 

[FN#4] There are sundry S�hils or shore-lands. “Sahil Misr” is the River-side of Cairo often extended to the whole of Lower Egypt (vol. i. 290): here it means the lowlands of Palestine once the abode of the noble Philistines; and lastly the term extends to the sea-board of Zanzibar, where, however, it is mostly used in the plur. “Saw�hil”=the Shores.

 

[FN#5] Arab. “Samm�r” (from Samar,=conversatio nocturna),=the story-teller who in camp or house whiles away the evening hours.

 

[FN#6] “Flag of the Faith:” Sanjar in old Persian=a Prince, a King.

 

[FN#7] “Aider of the Faith.”

 

[FN#8] These policemen’s tales present a curious contrast with the detective stories of M. Gaboriau and his host of imitators.

In the East the police, like the old Bow Street runners, were and are still recruited principally amongst the criminal classes on the principle of “Set a thief,” &c. We have seen that the Barmecide Wazirs of Baghdad “anticipated Fourier’s doctrine of the passionel treatment of lawless inclinations,” and employed as subordinate officers, under the Wali or Prefect of Police, accomplished villains like Ahmad al-Danaf (vol. iv. 75), Hasan Shuuman and Mercury Ali (ibid.) and even women (Dalilah the Crafty) to coerce and checkmate their former comrades. Moreover a gird at the police is always acceptable, not only to a coffee-house audience, but even to a more educated crowd; witness the treatment of the “Charley” and the “Bobby” in our truly English pantomimes.

 

[FN#9] i.e. the Chief of Police, as the sequel shows.

 

[FN#10] About �4.

 

[FN#11] i.e. of the worlds visible and invisible.

 

[FN#12] Arab. “Mukaddam:” see vol. iv, 42.

 

[FN#13] “Faithful of Command;” it may be a title as well as a P.

N. For “Al-Am�n,” see vol. iv. 261.

 

[FN#14] i. e. “What have I to do with, etc.?” or “How great is the difference between me and her.” The phrase is still popular in Egypt and Syria; and the interrogative form only intensifies it. The student of Egyptian should always try to answer a question by a question. His labours have been greatly facilitated by the conscientious work of my late friend Spitta Bey. I tried hard to persuade the late Rogers Bey, whose knowledge of Egyptian and Syrian (as opposed to Arabic) was considerable, that a simple grammar of Egyptian was much wanted; he promised to undertake it) but death cut short the design.

 

[FN#15] Arab. “Naww�b,” plur. of N�ib (lit. deputies, lieutenants)=a Nabob. Till the unhappy English occupation of Egypt, the grand old Kil’ah (Citadel) contained the palace of the Pasha and the lodgings and offices of the various officials.

Foreign rulers, if they are wise, should convert it into a fort with batteries commanding the town, like that of Hyderabad, in Sind.

 

[FN#16] For this famous and time-honoured building, see vol. i.

269.

 

[FN#17] Arab. “Tamk�n,” gravity, assurance.

 

[FN#18] Arab. ” Iy�l-hu” lit. his family, a decorous circumlocution for his wives and concubines.

 

[FN#19] Arab. “Darb,” lit. a road; here a large thoroughfare.

 

[FN#20] When Mohammed Ali Pasha (the “Great”) began to rule, he found Cairo “stifled” with filth, and gave orders that each householder, under pain of confiscation, should keep the street before his house perfectly clean. This was done after some examples had been made and the result was that since that time Cairo never knew the plague. I am writing at Tangier where a Mohammed Ali is much wanted.

 

[FN#21] i.e. Allah forfend!

 

[FN#22] Arab. “Mustauda’”=a strong place where goods are deposited and left in charge.

 

[FN#23] Because, if she came to grief, the people of the street, and especially those of the adjoining houses would get into trouble. Hence in Moslem cities, like Damascus and Fez, the H�r�t or