Sir Richard has referred to a number of Italian versions (p. 51, note 1), which will be found epitomised in a most valuable and interesting paper, by my late friend Mr. H. C. Coote, on the sources of some of M. Galland’s Tales, in the First Part of the Folk-Lore Record for 1880; and, in conclusion, I may briefly glance at a few other European variants. Among those which not only bear a close analogy one to another but also to the Asiatic versions cited above are the following: No. 15 of M. Leger’s French collection of Slav Tales is a Bohemian version, in which the hero, Jenik, saves a dog, a cat, and a serpent from being killed. From the serpent’s father he gets an enchanted watch (evidently a modern substitute for a talismanic stone, or ring), which procures him a splendid palace and the King’s daughter for his bride. But the young lady, unlike the Princess Badr al-Badúr with Aladdin, does not love Jenik, and having learned from him the secret of his great wealth, she steals the talisman and causes a palace to be built in the middle of the sea, where she goes to live, after making Jenik’s palace disappear. Jenik’s faithful dog and cat recover the talisman, which, as in the Arabian story of the Fisherman’s Son, is dropped in the sea while they are swimming back and restored by a fish.—In No. 9 of M. Dozon’s “Contes Albanais” the hero saves a serpent’s life and gets in return a wishing-stone and so on. The talisman is stolen by a rascally Jew on the night of the wedding, and the palace with the princess is transported to the distant sea-shore. The hero buys a cat and feeds it well. He and his cat arrive at the spot where the palace now stands, and the cat compels the chief of a colony of mice to steal the talisman from the Jew while he is asleep.—A popular Greek version in Hahn’s collection combines incidents found in Aladdin and in the versions in which grateful animals play prominent parts: The hero rescues a snake which some boys are about to kill and gets in reward from the snake’s father a sealring, which he has only to lick and a black man will present himself, ready to obey his orders. As in Aladdin, the first use he makes of the talisman is to have his mother’s cupboard filled with dainty food. Then he bids his mother “go to the King, and tell him he must give me his daughter in marriage.” After many objections, she goes to deliver her message to the King, who replies that if her son build a castle larger than his, he shall have the princess to wife. The castle is built that same night, and when the mother goes next morning to require the King’s performance of his promise, he makes a farther stipulation that her son should first pave the way between the two castles with gold. This is done at once, and the King gives the hero his daughter. Here the resemblance to the Aladdin story ceases and what follows (as well as what precedes) is analogous to the other Asiatic forms. The princess has a black servant of whom she is enamoured. She steals the ring and elopes with her sable paramour to an island in the sea, where she has a castle erected by the power of the ring. The black man sleeps with the ring under his tongue, but the hero’s dog takes the cat on his back and swims to the island; and the cat contrives to get the ring and deliver it to her master, who straightway causes the castle to be removed from the island, then kills the black man, and afterwards lives happily with the princess.—In a Danish version (Prof. Grundtvig’s “Danske Folkeäventyr”) a peasant gets from an aged man a wishing-box, and henceforward lives in grand style. After his death the steward and servants cheat his son and heir, so that in ten years he is ruined and turned out of house and home. All the property he takes with him is an old sheepskin jacket, in which he finds the wishing-box, which had been, unknown to him, the cause of his father’s prosperity. When the “slave” of the box appears, the hero merely asks for a fiddle that when played upon makes everybody who hears it to dance.[137] He hires himself to the King, whose daughter gives him, in jest, a written promise to marry him, in exchange for the fiddle. The King, when the hero claims the princess, insists on her keeping her promise, and they are married. Then follows the loss of the wishing-box, as in the Greek version, only in place of a black man it is a handsome cavalier who is the lady’s paramour. The recovery of the box is accomplished by very different means, and may be passed over, as belonging to another cycle of tales.[138]
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The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night -- Volume 03 part 2 [Supplement] — Part 99
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