The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 13 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (summer reading list txt) 📕

had read the letter he bade the king, his brother-in-law, stand up, and declared that he was ready to comply with his sister’s wish and to go off at once without delay. He seized his staff and started away, but stopped now and then for his brother-in-law and his suite, to whom he gave a good chiding for their slowness.[FN#423] They continued thus their march until they came to the palace of the queen, the ugly king’s sister; but when they arrived there the one-eyed king cried with a roaring voice to his sister, and asked her what she wished, as she had troubled him to come so far from home. She then told him all the matter as it really was and begged him to help her husband out of the trial put before him. He said he was ready to do so, but would brook no delay.

 

Now both kings went off, and nothing is told of their journey until they came to the old king. The young king announced to his father his coming and that he brought with him what he had ordered last year. He wished his father to call together a ting[FN#424] in order that he might show openly how he had performed his tasks. This was done, and the king and the queen and other great folk were assembled. First the tent was put forward and nobody could find fault with it. Secondly the young king gave the wondrous healing water to his father. The queen was prayed to taste it and see if it was the right water, taken at the right time. She said that both things were as they should be.

Then said the old king, “Now the third and heaviest of all the tasks is left: come, and have it off your hands quickly.” Then the young king summoned the king with one eye, and as he appeared on the ting he waxed so hideous that all the people were struck with fright and horror, and most of all the king. When this ugly monarch had shown himself for a while there he thrust his staff against the breast of the queen and tilted her up into the air on the top of it, and then thrust her against the ground with such force that every bone in her body was broken. She turned at once into the most monstrous troll ever beheld. After this the one eyed king rushed away from the ting and the people thronged round the old king in order to help him, for he was in the very jaws of death from fright. The healing water was sprinkled on him and refreshed him.

 

After the death of the queen, who was killed of course when she turned into a troll, the king confessed that all the tasks which he had given his son to perform were undeserved and that he had acted thus, egged on by the queen. He called his son to him and humbly begged his forgiveness for what he had done against him. He declared he would atone for it by giving into his hand all that kingdom, while he himself only wished to live in peace and quiet for the rest of his days. So the young king sent for his queen and for the courtiers whom he loved most. And, to make a long story short, they gave up their former kingdom to the king with one eye, as a reward, for his lifetime, but governed the realm of the old king to a high age, in great glee and happiness,

The Two Sisters Who Envied Their Cadette—p. 313.

 

Legends of castaway infants are common to the folk-lore of almost all countries and date far back into antiquity. The most usual mode of exposing them—to perish or be rescued, as chance might direct—is placing them in a box and launching them into a river. The story of Moses in the bulrushes, which must of course be familiar to everybody, is not only paralleled in ancient Greek and Roman legends (e.g. Perseus, Cyrus, Romulus), but finds its analogue in Babylonian folk-lore.[FN#425] The leading idea of the tale of the Envious Sisters, who substituted a puppy, a kitten, and a rat for the three babes their young sister the queen had borne and sent the little innocents away to be destroyed, appealing, as it does to the strongest of human instincts, is the theme of many popular fictions from India to Iceland. With a malignant mother-in-law in place of the two sisters, it is the basis of a medi val European romance entitled “The Knight of the Swan,” and of a similar tale which occurs in “Dolopathus,” the oldest version of the “Seven Wise Masters,” written in Latin prose about the year 1180: A king while hunting loses his way in a forest and coming to a fountain perceives a beautiful lady, whom he carries home and duly espouses much against the will of his mother, Matabrun. Some time after, having to lead his knights and men-at-arms against an enemy, he commits the queen, now far advanced in pregnancy to the care of his mother, who undertakes that no harm shall befall her during his absence.

The queen is delivered at one birth of seven lovely children, six boys and one girl, each of whom has a silver chain around its neck.[FN#426] The king’s mother plots with the midwife to do away with the babes and place seven little dogs in bed beside the poor queen. She gives the children to one of her squires, charging him either to slay them or cast them into the river. But when the squire enters the forest his heart relents and laying the infants wrapped in his mantle, on the ground, he returns and tells his mistress that he has done her behest. When the king returns, the wicked Matabrun accuses his wife to him of having had unnatural commerce with a dog, and shows him the seven puppies. The scene which follows presents a striking likeness to that in the Arabian story after the birth of the third child. King Oriant is full of wrath, and at once assembles his counsellors, “dukes, earls knights and other lords of the realm, with the bishop and prelate of the church,” and having stated the case, the bishop pleads in favour of the queen, and finally induces him not to put her to death, but confine her in prison for the rest of her life. Meanwhile the children are discovered by an aged hermit, who takes them to his dwelling, baptises them and brings them up. After some years it happens that a yeoman in the service of the king’s mother, while hunting in the forest, perceives the seven children with silver chains round their necks seated under a tree. He reports this to Matabrun, who forthwith sends him back to kill the children and bring her their silver chains. He finds but six of them one being absent with the hermit, who was gone alms seeking; and, touched by their innocent looks, he merely takes off the silver chains, whereupon they become transformed into pretty white swans and fly away. How the innocence of the queen is afterwards vindicated by her son Helyas—he who escaped being changed into a swan—and how his brethren and sister are restored to their proper forms would take too long to tell, and indeed the rest of the romance has no bearing on the Arabian tale.[FN#427]

 

In another mediaeval work, from which Chaucer derived his Man of Law’s Tale, the Life of Constance, by Nicholas Trivet, an English Dominican monk, the saintly heroine is married to a king, in whose absence at the wars his mother plots against her daughter-in- law. When Constance gives birth to a son, the old queen causes letters to be written to the king, in which his wife is declared to be an evil spirit in the form of a woman and that she had borne, not a human child, but a hideous monster. The king, in reply, commands Constance to be tended carefully until his return. But the traitress contrives by means of letters forged in the king’s name to have Constance and her son sent to sea in a ship, where she meets with strange adventures. Needless to say, the old queen’s wicked devices come to naught.

 

The story of the Envious Sisters as told by Galland was known in Italy (as Dr.

W. Grimm points out in the valuable notes to his K. u. H.M.) many generations before the learned Frenchman was born, through the “Pleasant Nights” of Straparola. That Galland took his story from the Italian novelist it is impossible to believe, since, as Mr. Coote has observed, Straparola’s work “was already known in France for a couple of centuries through a popular French translation,” and Galland would at once have been an easily convicted copyist. Moreover the story, imitated from Straparola, by Madame d’Aulnois, under the title of “La Belie Etoile et Le Prince Cheri,” had been published before Galland’s last two volumes appeared, and both those writers had the same publisher. It is clear, therefore, that Galland neither invented the story nor borrowed it from Straparola or Madame d’Aulnois. Whence, then, did he obtain it?—that is the question. His Arabic source has not yet been discovered, but a variant of the world-wide story is at the present day orally current in Egypt and forms No. xi. of “Comes Arabes Modernes. Recueillis et Traduits par Guillaume Spitta Bey” (Paris, 1883), of which the following is a translation:

 

MODERN ARABIC VERSION.

 

There was once a King who said to his vaz�r, “Let us take a walk through the town during the night.” In walking about they came to a house where they heard people talking, and stopping before it they heard a girl say, “If the King would marry me, I would make him a tart (or pie) so large that it would serve for him and his army.” And another said, “If the King would marry me, I would make him a tent that would shelter him and his whole army.” Then a third said, “If the King would marry me, I would present him with a daughter and a son, with golden hair, and hair of hyacinth colour alternately; if they should weep, it would thunder, and if they should laugh, the sun and moon would appear.” The King on hearing these words went away, and on the following day he sent for the three girls and made the contract of marriage with them. He passed the first night with the one who had spoken first, and said to her, “Where is the tart that would be sufficient for me and my army?” She answered him, “The words of the night are greased with butter: when day appears they melt away.” The next night he slept with the second, saying to her, “Where is the tent which would be large enough for me and my army?” She answered him, “It was an idea that came into my mind.” So the King ordered them to go down into the kitchen among the slaves. He passed the third night with the tattle one, saying, “Where are the boy and girl whose hair is to be like gold and hyacinth?” She replied, “Tarry with me nine months and nine minutes.” In due time she became pregnant, and on the night of her confinement the midwife was sent for. Then the other wife of the King went and met her in the street and said to her, “When she has been delivered, how much will the King give you ?”

She answered, “He will issue orders to give me fifteen mahb�bs.[FN#428] The other said, “Behold, here are forty mahh�bs from me. Take these two little blind puppies, and when she has given birth to a son