The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 13 - Sir Richard Francis Burton (large screen ebook reader .txt) 📗

cheer, for he would at once endeavour to relieve him. By the aid of the fairies, who carry him through the air for the space of seven days, he arrives in the desert where the Flowers of Light shine brilliant as lamps on a festival night, diffusing the sweetest perfume far and wide; and recking naught for the serpents, scorpions, and beasts of prey which infested the place (for he had a talisman that protected him), he advances and plucks three of the largest and most brilliant flowers. Returning in the same manner as he had gone thither, he reaches the spot where the blind man Hamir is imprisoned; taking down the cage, he releases the wretched man, compresses the stalk of the flower so that the juice drops upon his sightless eyeballs, and when this has been repeated three times Hamir opens his eyes, and seeing Hatim falls prostrate at his feet with a profusion of thanks.

 

Although there are some differences in the details of the story of Baba Abdullah and that of Hamir, as above, yet the general similarity between them is sufficient to warrant the conclusion that if one was not adapted from the other, both must have been derived from the same source; and here we have, I think, clear evidence of the genuineness of another of the tales which Galland was believed to have invented himself.

 

History of Sidi Nu’man—p. 187.

 

It is curious to find this current as a folk-tale at Palena, in the Abruzzi, without any material variation except in the conclusion. My friend, Mr. E.

Sidney Hartland, has favoured me with the following abstract of the Italian version, as given in vol. iii. of the “Archivio per lo studio delle Tradizioni Popolari” (Palermo, 1882), p. 222:

 

There was once a husband and wife. The wife says that she cannot eat anything, and only picks a few grains of rice with a large pin. Her husband asks why she eats nothing, and she answers that she does not want to eat. Meantime she goes out secretly every night, and the husband begins to have suspicions of her.

One night he follows her softly and finds she goes to the burial ground, where she meets with certain female companions. They open a grave and feed on the flesh of the dead. The next morning the husband cooks rice again, and the wife picks up a few grains of it with a pin as before. The husband exclaims, “What!

you enjoy the flesh of dead men, and over rice you are so finical as to eat it with a pin!” The wife is so enraged at learning that her husband knows of her doings that she goes to the water-bucket, fills a small bottle from it, and having muttered certain words over the water flings it upon him and he instantly becomes transformed into a dog. A provision merchant sees him running about, and takes and sets him on his counter. When the people come to buy provisions the dog examines the money to see if it be good, and the false coin he throws on the ground. One day a man comes to buy bacon and offers false coin. The provision merchant refuses to take it; they dispute over the matter, and it is referred to the dog, who throws the money on the ground. The man is astonished, and returning home tells his wife, who at once says that the dog is not a dog, and desires her husband to bring her the animal that she may see it. The man returns to the provision merchant and begs him to lend him the dog for a little while, and takes it home. The wife, who is a companion of the wife of him who has been changed into a dog, and understands witchcraft, fills a bottle with water, pronounces certain words over it, and throws the water upon the dog, who immediately becomes a man again, and she advises him to do to his wife as she had done to him, and imparts the secret to him. As soon as he returns home he fills the bottle with water from the bucket, says the words he had learned, and throws the water over his wife, who becomes a mare. He drives her out of the house and beats her as flax is beaten. To every one who asks why he is thrashing the mare he tells his story, and the people say, “Serve her right!” This goes on for some time. At last, when the husband sees that his wife has voided enough foam from the mouth, with another dash of water he changes her back to her proper form, and henceforward she eats whatever is set before her, obeys her husband in all things, and never goes out by night again. So they live long, happy and contented.

 

This version from the Abruzzi so closely resembles the story of Sidi Nu’m�n that we should perhaps be justified in concluding it to have been directly derived from Galland’s Nights, in the absence of any Venetian version, which might well have been imported independently from the East, but however this may be, the story in Galland bears unquestionable internal evidence that it is a genuine Arabian narrative, having nothing peculiarly European in its details.

 

A somewhat similar story is quite familiar to me, but I cannot at present call to mind whether it occurs in a Persian collection or in The Nights, in which the woman going out when she thinks her husband asleep, the latter follows her to a hut at some distance which she enters, and peeping into the hut, he sees a hideous black give her a severe beating for not coming sooner, while she pleads that she could not venture to quit the house until her husband was sound asleep. The two carouse together, and by-and-by the black going outside for a purpose, the husband strikes off his head with his sword and then conceals himself close by. The woman, after waiting some time, goes out to see what is detaining her paramour, and finding his headless body, she moans over it in great sorrow, and then taking the corpse on her back carries it away and throws it into the river. Her husband hastens home before her, and so she suspects nothing. Some days after, when she refuses to do some light work because of her physical weakness, her husband can no longer control himself, and tells her that she had strength enough to carry on her back the body of her black paramour, and so on.[FN#407]

 

The ghoul-wife of Arabian tales, who eats little or nothing at home, has her in the r�kshas� of Indian fictions, who secretly devours antelopes, etc. There are many parallels in The Nights and other Asiatic story-books to the incident of Sidi Nu’man being changed back into his proper form, the most noteworthy being perhaps the case of the Second Calender in the shape of a monkey, or ape, whom the princess, an adept in white magic, at once recognizes as a man and veils her face, as does the young woman in the case of Sidi Nu’man: but while the Calender is restored to his own form, the princess, alas! perishes in her encounter with the genie who had transformed him.—In most of the Arabian tales of magical transformations of men and women into beasts the victims are ultimately restored to their natural forms, but in the Indian romance of the princess Somasekhara and Chitrasekhara, a wicked king named Ugrab�hu is permanently changed by some water taken from a magic fountain into a monkey and sold to a beggar, who compels him to perform tricks in public for his benefit. Heywood, in his “History of Women” (Book viii.), cites some curious European stories of men being transformed into donkeys by eating a certain kind of cheese,

 

History of Khwajah Hasan Al-habbal—p. 198.

 

How this entertaining story found its way into North Germany—and nowhere else in Europe, so far as I am aware—it is not easy to say, but its twin-brother seems to be orally current there, in all essential details, excepting the marvellous conclusion. For the poor ropemaker, however, a struggling weaver and for the two gentlemen, Sa’d and Sa’d�, three rich students are substituted. There does not appear (according to the version given by Thorpe in his “Yule Tide Stories,” which he entitles, not inaptly, The Three Gifts) to be any difference of opinion among the students regarding the influence of Destiny, or Fate, upon men’s fortunes: they simply give the poor weaver a hundred dollars “to assist him in his housekeeping.” The weaver hides the money in a heap of rags, unknown to his wife, who sells them to a rag-collector for a trifling sum. A year afterwards the students are again passing the house of the weaver and find him poorer than ever. He tells them of his mishap and they give him another hundred dollars warning him to be more careful with the money this time. The weaver conceals the dollars in the ash-tub, again without the cognisance of his wife, who disposes of the ashes for a few pieces of soap. At the end of the second year the students once more visit the wretched weaver, and on being informed of his loss, they throw a bit of lead at his feet, saying it’s of no use to give such a fool money, and go away in a great huff. The weaver picks up the lead and places it on the window sill. By-and-by a neighbour, who is a fisherman, comes in and asks for a bit of lead or some other heavy thing, for his net, and on receiving the lead thrown down by the students promises to give him in return the first large fish he catches. The weaver does get a fine fish, which he immediately cuts open, and finds in its stomach a “large stone,” which he lays on the window-sill, where, as it becomes dark, the stone gives forth a brighter and brighter light, “just like a candle,” and then he places it so that it illuminates the whole apartment. “That’s a cheap lamp,” quoth he to his wife: “wouldst not like to dispose of it as thou didst the two hundred dollars?” The next evening a merchant happening to ride past the weaver’s house perceives the brilliant stone, and alighting from his horse, enters and looks at it, then offers ten dollars for it, but the weaver says the stone is not for sale.

“What! not even for twenty dollars?” “Not even for that.” The merchant keeps on increasing his offers till he reaches a thousand dollars, which was about half its real value, for the stone was a diamond, and which the weaver accepts, and thus he becomes the richest man in all the village. His wife, however, took credit to herself for his prosperity, often saying to him, “How well it was that I threw away the money twice, for thou hast me to thank for thy good luck!”—and here the German story ends. For the turban of the ropemaker and the kite that carried it off, with its precious lining, we have the heap of rags and the rag-collector; but the ashes exchanged for soap agrees with the Arabian story almost exactly.

 

The incident of the kite carrying off the poor ropemaker’s turban in which he had deposited the most part of the gold pieces that he received from the gentleman who believed that “money makes money”—an unquestionable fact, in spite of our story—is of very frequent occurrence in both Western and Eastern fictions. My readers will recollect its exact parallel in the abstract of the romance of Sir Isumbras, cited in Appendix to the preceding volumes: how the Knight, with his little son, after the