‘What are you talking about, watchmaker? A robe cost ten thousand ducats!’[22]
‘But look you, you rogue, what sort of robe it is. For when you step on it, it will carry you whither you will. So you may fancy he cries “Done!” Meanwhile the youngest also arrived in a city and found a Jew, and bought an apple from him. And the apple was such that when a dead man ate it he revived. He took it and came to his brothers. And when they were all come home they saw their sweetheart dead. And they gave her the apple to eat and she arose. And whom then did she choose? She chose the youngest. What do you say?’
And the emperor’s daughter spoke. And the watchmaker took her to wife. And they made a marriage.
This story, though well enough told, is very defective. Of course, by rights the eldest brother looks in his mirror, and sees the princess dead or about to die; then the middle brother transports the three of them on his travelling robe; and only then can the youngest brother make use of his apple of life. ‘The Watchmaker’ is a corrupt version of ‘The Golden Casket’ in Geldart’s Folk-lore of Modern Greece, pp. 106–125, which should be carefully compared with it, to render it intelligible. Compare also Clouston’s chapter on ‘The Four Clever Brothers’ (i. 277–288), where he cites with others a Sanskrit version, and Grimm’s No. 129 (ii. 165, 428). Apropos of the magic mirror here, and of the telescope in European folk-tales, Burton has this note on the ivory tube bought by Prince Ali in the Arabian tale of ‘Prince Ahmad and the Peri Bánú’:—‘The origin of the lens and its applied use to the telescope and the microscope “are lost” (as the Castle guides of Edinburgh say) “in the gloom of antiquity.” Well-ground glasses have been discovered amongst the finds in Egypt and Assyria; indeed, much of the finer work of the primeval artist could not have been done without such aid. In Europe the “spy-glass” appears first in the Opus Majus of the learned Roger Bacon (circa A.D. 1270); and his “optic tube” (whence his saying, “All things are known by perspective”) chiefly contributed to make his widespread fame as a wizard. The telescope was popularised by Galileo, who, as mostly happens, carried off and still keeps amongst the vulgar all the honours of the invention.’ With the travelling robe compare the saddle in the Polish-Gypsy ‘Tale of a Girl who was sold to the Devil’ (No. 46) and the wings in the Bukowina-Gypsy ‘Winged Hero’ (No. 26); and with the apple of life, which occurs also in the Icelandic version of this story, the other-world apple in the Roumanian-Gypsy ‘Bad Mother’ (No. 8). See also Clouston on ‘Prince Ahmad’ in his Variants of Sir R. F. Burton’s Supplemental Arabian Nights, pp. 600–616.
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No. 14.—The Red King and the Witch
It was the Red King, and he bought ten ducats’ worth of victuals. He cooked them, and he put them in a press. And he locked the press, and from night to night posted people to guard the victuals.
In the morning, when he looked, he found the platters bare; he did not find anything in them. Then the king said, ‘I will give the half of my kingdom to whoever shall be found to guard the press, that the victuals may not go amissing from it.’
The king had three sons. Then the eldest thought within himself, ‘God! What, give half the kingdom to a stranger! It were better for me to watch. Be it unto me according to God’s will.’