One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  The other story referred to is No. xx of Miss Stokes’ “Indian Fairy Tales,” which Mr. Coote could not have read, else he would not have been at the trouble to maintain it was impossible that Galland derived his tale from it: “so long,” says he, “as that story remained in the country of its birth — India — it was absolutely inaccessible to him, for great traveller as he was, he never visited that far-off portion of the East.” The fact is, this Hindu story only resembles Galland’s, and that remotely, in the opening portion Seven daughters of a poor man played daily under the shady trees in the king’s garden with the gardener’s daughter, and she used to say to them, “When I am married I shall have a son — such a beautiful boy as he will be has never been seen. He will have a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin,” and they all laughed at her. The king, having overheard what she so often repeated, married her, though he had already four wives. Then follows the golden bell affair again, with a kettledrum substituted. When the young queen is about to be confined her co-wives tell her it is the custom to bind the eyes of women in her condition, to which she submits, and after she has borne the wonderful boy she promised to do, they tell her she has been delivered of a stone. The king degraded her to the condition of a kitchen servant and never spoke to her. The nurse takes the baby in a box and buries it in the jungle. But the king’s dog had followed her, and when she went off he took the box out of the earth and swallowed the baby. Six months after the dog brings him up, caresses him and swallows him again. He does likewise at the end of the year, and the dog’s keeper, having seen all told the four wives. They say to the king the dog had torn their clothes, and he replies, he’ll have the brute shot to-morrow. The dog overhears this and runs off to the king’s cow; he induces her to save the child by swallowing him, and the cow consents. Next day the dog is shot, and so on: the cow is to be killed and induces the king’s horse to swallow the child, and so on. — There may have been originally some mystical signification attached to this part of the tale, but it has certainly no connection with our story.443

  I had nearly omitted an Arabian version of the outcast infants which seems to have hitherto escaped notice by story-comparers. Moreover, it occurs in a text of The Nights, to wit, the Wortley-Montague MS., Nights 472-483, in the story of Abou Neut and Abou Neeuteen = Ab· Niyyet and Ab· Niyyeteyn, according to Dr. Redhouse; one of those translated by Jonathan Scott in vol. vi. of his edition of the “Arabian Nights,” where, at , the hero marries the King’s youngest daughter and the King in dying leaves him heir to his throne, a bequest which is disputed by the husbands of the two elder daughters. The young queen is brought to bed of a son, and her sisters bribe the midwife to declare that she has given birth to a dog and throw the infant at the gate of one of the royal palaces. The same occurs when a second son is born. But at the third lying-in of the princess her husband takes care to be present, and the beautiful daughter she brings forth is saved from the clutches of her vindictive sisters. The two little princes are taken up by a gardener and reared as his own children. In course of time, it happened that the King (Ab· Neeut) and his daughter visited the garden and saw the two little boys playing together and the young princess felt an instinctive affection for them, and the King, finding them engaged in martial play, making clay-horses, bows and arrows, &c., had the curiosity to inquire into their history. The dates when they were found agreed with those of the queen’s delivery; the midwife also confessed; and the King left the guilty parties to be punished by the pangs of their own consciences, being convinced that envy is the worst of torments. The two young princes were formally acknowledged and grew up to follow their father’s example.

  We must go back to India once more if we would trace our tale to what is perhaps its primitive form, and that is probably of Buddhist invention; though it is quite possible this may be one of the numerous fiction which have been time out of mind the common heritage of nearly all peoples, and some of which the early Buddhists adapted to their own purposes. Be this as it may, in the following tale, from Dr. Mitra’s “Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepßl” (Calcutta: 1882), p, 66, we seem to have somewhat like the germ of the Envious Sisters:

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  BUDDHIST VERSION.

  King Brahmadatta picked up in Kampilla a destitute girl named Padmßvati, who scattered lotuses at every step she moved, and made her his favourite queen. She was very simple-minded. Other queens used to play tricks upon her, and at the time of her first delivery cheated her most shamefully. The wicked ladies said to her on that occasion, “Dear Padma, you are a rustic girl; you do not know how to give birth to a royal child. Let us help you.” She yielded. They covered her eyes, threw into the river the twin boys she had brought forth, and smeared her face with blood. They deceived her by telling her that it was only a lump of flesh that she had given birth to, and it had been thrown into the river. At the same time they informed her husband that Padma had eaten up her two new-born sons. The King enraged at her inhuman conduct, ordered her to instant execution. But there was a shrewd man in the court who privately saved her life. A divinity appeared to the King in a dream, and revealed the whole truth to him. The King made a strict investigation in the harem, and found that Padmßvati had been perfectly innocent. He became disconsolate, and gave vent to loud lamentations. Soon after some fishermen appeared at court and presented the King with two infants, who betrayed their royal lineage by the resemblance which their features bore to those of the King. They were reported to have been found in a vessel floating on the river. The courtier who saved Padma’s life now wished to produce her before the King, but she refused to return and proceeded to her father’s hermitage. After the death of her father she travelled through various places in the habit of a devotee; and in the course of her peregrinations she stopped at Banßres, from whence Brahmadatta conducted her to his capital with great honour.

  I am of opinion that this Buddhist tale is the original form of the “Envious Sisters” — that it ended with the restoration of the children and the vindication of the innocence of their mother. The second part of our story has no necessary connection with the first, the elements of which it is composed being found in scores — nay, hundreds — of popular fictions in every country: the quest of wonderful or magical objects; one brother setting out, and by neglecting to follow the advice tendered him by some person he meets on his way, he comes to grief; a second brother follows, with the same result; and it is reserved for the youngest, and the least esteemed, to successfully accomplish the adventure. In the second part of the “Envious Sisters,” the girl, the youngest of the three children, plays the part of the usual hero of folk-tales of this class. There is, generally, a seemingly wretched old man — a hideous, misshapen dwarf — or an ugly, decrepit old woman — who is treated with rudeness by the two elder adventurers, so they do not speed in their enterprise; but the youngest addresses the person in respectful terms — shares his only loaf with him — and is rewarded by counsel which enables him to bring his adventure to a successful end. In the “Envious Sisters,” which I cannot but think Galland has garbled from his original, the eldest clips the beard of the hermit, and presumably the second does the same, since we are told he found the hermit in the like condition (albeit, his beard had been trimmed but a few days before). Each of them receives the same instructions. In a true folk-tale the two elder brothers would treat the old man with contempt and suffer accordingly, while the youngest would cut his nails and his beard, and make him more comfortable in his person. We do not require to go to Asiatic folk-lore for tales in which the elements of the second part of the “Envious Sisters” are to be found. In the German story of the Fox’s Brush there is a quest of a golden bird. The first brother sets off in high hope, on the road he sees a fox, who calls out to him not to shoot at it, and says that farther along the road are two inns, one of which is bright and cheerful looking, and he should not go into it, but rather into the other, even though it doe
s not look very inviting. He shoots at the fox and misses it, then continues his journey, and puts up at the fine inn, where amidst riot and revel he forgets all about the business on which he had set out. The same happens to the second brother. But the youngest says to the fox that he will not shoot it and the fox takes him on its tail to the small inn, where he passes a quiet night, and in the morning is conveyed by the fox to the castle, wherein is the golden bird in a wooden cage, and so on. Analogous stories to this are plentiful throughout Europe and Asia; there is one, I think, in the Wortley Montague MS. of The Nights.

  In Straparoia’s version of the “Envious Sisters,” when the children’s hair is combed pearls and precious stones fall out of it, whereby their foster-parents become rich; this is only hinted at in Galland’s story: the boy’s hair “should be golden on one side and silvern on the other; when weeping he should drop pearls in place of tears, and when laughing his rosy lips should be fresh as the blossom new-blown,” not another word is afterwards said of this, while in the modern Arabic version the children are finally identified by their mother through such peculiarities. The silver chains with which the children are born in the romance of “Helyas, the Knight of the Swan,” correspond with the “gold star” etc. on the forehead in other stories. It only remains to observe that the Bird of our tale who in the end relates the history of the children to their father, is represented in the modern Arabic version by the fairy Arab Zandyk in the modern Greek by Tzitzin na, and in the Albanian by the Belle of the Earth.

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  ADDITIONAL NOTES.

  The Tale of Zayn Al-asnam,

  The Dream of Riches. In Croker’s Irish Fairy Legends there is a droll version, of this story, entitled “Dreaming Tim Jarvis.” Honest Tim, we are told, “took to sleeping, and the sleep set him dreaming, and he dreamed all night, and night after night, about crock full of gold. . . . At last he dreamt that he found a mighty great crock of gold and silver, and where, do you think ? Every step of the way upon London Bridge itself! Twice Tim dreamt it, and three times Tim dreamt the same thing; and at last he made up his mind to transport himself, and go over to London, in Pat Mahoney’s coaster and so he did!” Tim walks on London Bridge day after day until he sees a man with great black whiskers and a black cloak that reached down to the ground, who accosts him, and he tells the strange man about his dream. “Ho! Ho!” says the strange man, “is that all, Tim? I had a dream myself and I dreamed that I found a crock of gold in the Fort field, on Jerry Driscoll’s ground at Balledehob, and, by the same token, the pit where it lay was close to a large furze bush, all full of yellow blossom.” Tim hastens back to his old place, sells his cabin and garden, and buys the piece of waste ground so minutely described by the man with black whiskers, finds the pit, jumps into it, and is among the fairies, who give him leave to stuff his pockets with gold; but when he returns to upper earth he discovers that he has got only a handful of small stones mixed with yellow furze blossoms.

  In a note appended to this tale, Croker cites the following from Grimm’s “Deutsche Sagan,” vol. i. : A man once dreamed that if he went to Regensburg and walked on the bridge he should become rich. He went accordingly; and when he had spent near a fortnight walking backwards and forwards on the bridge, a rich merchant came up to him wondering what he was doing here every day, and asked him what he was looking for. He answered that he had dreamed if he would go to the bridge of Regensburg he should become rich. “Ha!” said the merchant, “what do you say about dreams? — Dreams are but froth (Trõume sind Schaume). I too have dreamed that there is buried under yonder large tree (pointing to it) a great kettle full of money; but I gave no heed to this, for dreams are froth.” The man went immediately and dug under the tree, and there he got a treasure, which made a rich man of him, and so his dream was accomplished. — The same story is told of a baker’s boy at Lubeck, who dreamed that he should find a treasure on the bridge; there he met a beggar, who said he had dreamed there was one under a lime-tree in the churchyard of Mollen, but he would not take the trouble of going there. The baker’s boy went, and got the treasure. — It is curious to observe that all the European versions of the story have reference to a bridge, and it must have been brought westward in this form.

  The Quest of the Image. — It has only now occurred to my mind that there is a very similar story in the romance of the Four Dervishes (“Kissa-i-Chehßr- Darwesh”), a Persian work written in the 13th century, and rendered into Urd· about 80 years ago, under the title of “Bagh o Bahßr” (Garden of Spring), of which an English translation was made by L. F. Smith, which was afterwards improved by Duncan Forbes. There the images are of monkeys — circumstance which seems to point to an Indian origin of the story — but the hero falls in love with the spotless girl, and the jinn-king takes possession of her, though he is ultimately compelled to give her up. — The fact of this story of the quest of the lacking image being found in the Persian language is another proof that the tales in The Nights were largely derived from Persian story-books.

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  Aladdin; Or, the Wonderful Lamp.

  There is a distorted reflection of the story in M. Rene Basset’s recently published “Contes Populaires BerbÞres,” No. xxix., which is to this effect: A taleb proclaims, “Who will sell himself for 100 mitqals?” One offers, the KßdÝ ratifies the sale; the (now) slave gives the money to his mother, and follows the taleb. Away they go. The taleb repeats certain words, upon which the earth opens, and he sends down the slave for “the candlestick, the reed, and the box.” The slave hides the box in his pocket and says he did not find it. They go off, and after a time the slave discovers that his master has disappeared. He returns home, hires a house, opens the box, and finds a cloth of silk with seven folds; he undoes one of them, whereupon genii swarm about the room, and a girl appears who dances till break of day. This occurs every night. The king happens to be out on a nocturnal adventure, and hearing a noise, enters the house and is amused till morning. He sends for the box to be brought to the palace, gives the owner his daughter in marriage, and continues to divert himself with the box till his death, when his son-in-law succeeds him on the throne.

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

  My obliging friend, Mr. W. F. Kirby, who contributed to the 10th volume of Sir Richard’s Nights proper the very able Bibliographical Essay, has drawn my attention to an analogue of this tale in Geldart’s Folk-Lore of Modern Greece: There were two brothers, one of whom was wealthy and had four children, who were in feeble health, the other was poor and had seven children, who were in robust health. The poor brother’s wife, begging relief was allowed to come twice a week to the house of the rich brother to bake bread. Her children were starving, but the rich people gave the mother nothing for several days, and all she could do was to wash the dough off her hands for the children, who thrived, and the rich man, discovering the cause, made his wife compel the poor woman to wash her hands before she left the house. The father found his children crying for food, and pretended to go to the wood for herbs, but really purposing to kill himself by falling from a crag. But seeing a great castle, he determined first to ascertain what it was, so he went near, and having climbed a tree, saw forty-nine dragons come out. When they were gone he entered, and found a treasure, filled his bag and hurried away. On his return home he found his wife weeping bitterly, but when he showed her the treasure, she said the first thing was to buy oil to light a lamp to our Lady. Next day they bought a house, and moved into it, but agreed only to buy what they needed for each day’s use and nothing they could do without. For two months they went often to church and helped the poor, till, one day, the wife of the rich man, who had met with losses lately, called for them and was hospitably received. She heard the story of the treasure, and the poor man offered to show his brother the place. The
rich brother miscounted the dragons as they left the castle, and the one left to watch killed and quartered him. Two days afterwards his brother went to look for him, brought home the severed body, and got a tailor to sew the quarters together. Next day the dragons called on the tailor to make them coats and shoes (sic), and heard of his sewing together the body. He showed them the house, and forty-eight dragons got into chests, which the forty-ninth deposited with the poor man. The children, playing about he chests, heard the dragons say, “Would that it were night, that we might eat them all!” So the father took forty-eight spits and made them red hot, and thrust them into the chests, and then said that a trick had been played upon him, and sent his servant to throw them one by one into the sea. As often as the servant returned he pretended to him that he did not throw the chest far enough and it had come back and thus he disposed of the whole number. In the morning when the last dragon came, the poor man told him one chest was found open: he was seized with fear, pushed in and spitted like the others and the poor man became the possessor of the dragons’ castle.