A more definite variant of the bird-maiden legend is found in "The Arabian Nights." Janshah enters a pavilion and mounting the throne falls asleep. But presently awaking he walks forth and sees flying in mid-sky, three birds, in dove-form but as large as eagles. They alight on the brink of the basin of the fountain. There they become maidens, plunge into the basin and play and swim in the water. Janshah, struck by their beauty, rises and follows them when they come to land, saying, "Who are ye, O illustrious princesses, and whence come ye?" The youngest maiden replies, "We are from the invisible world of Almighty Allah, and we come hither to divert ourselves."
Still marvelling at her beauty, Janshah said to the youngest, "Have ruth on me and deign kindness to me and take pity on my case and all that hath befallen me in my life." But she will not hearken to his pleadings, and though he recites love poems to them all they only laugh and sing and make merry. They stay with him feasting till morning and then, resuming dove-shape, fly off and are seen no more. Janshah, deprived of their company, well-nigh loses his reason and falls into a swoon.
Eventually he wins the princess by seizing her feather robe and refusing to return it in spite of the fact that the fair lady, Shamsah by name, beseeches him with all her wiles to do so. They decide to go back to the princesses' motherland to be married, and Janshah returns the feather suit, which she dons, telling him to mount her back and shut his eyes and ears, so that he "may not hear the roar of the revolving sphere," and, she adds, "keep fast hold of my feathers lest thou fall off."
They return to his home happily wedded and Janshah places the feather-vest of the princess in a white marble chest, which is sealed with melted lead and buried under the palace walls. But Shamsah when she enters the new palace smells the scent of her flying feather-gear, and when her husband is asleep she gets out the garment and flies away. Then Janshah has to search for the Castle of Jewels, where he meets his fair bride once more.[137]
A very similar story is told by Charles Swynnerton in "Romantic Tales from the Panjab, with Indian Nights' Entertainment,"[138] about Prince Bairam and his fairy bride. The Prince, sitting down in a beautiful garden, watches four milk-white doves who settle in the shape of four fairies by the edge of a tank of clear crystal water. There they bathe and when they come out to dress three of them resume their dove-shape, but the fourth fairy, whose name is Ghulab Bano, cannot find her clothes and bids farewell to her sisters, saying, "It is my kismet. Some different destiny awaits me here and we shall never meet again."