All this the princess did. She told the wizard that she was now ready to do as he wished. The magician was so delighted that he ordered a great banquet.
‘Here,’ said the princess at the banquet, ‘is a little of my father’s choicest wine, which I had with me in the palace when it was brought hither,’ and she poured out to him to drink of the wine mixed with opium.
After this, when the wizard went to bed, he was heavy and took no notice what she did, and thus she put the stone under his pillow. No sooner did he, therefore, lay his head on the pillow than he gave three terrible yells, turned himself round and round three times, and was dead.
There was no need to call the prince, for he had heard the death yells, and immediately came up. They found the lantern, after they had hunted everywhere in vain, tied on to the magician’s body under all his clothes, for he had hid it there that he might never part with it. By its power Cajusse ordered the palace to be removed back to its place, and there they lived happily for ever afterwards.
[The introduction into this story of the dog to be appeased with a sop, and the hydra to be slain, no trace of either occurring in ‘Aladdin’s Lamp,’ is noticeable; the incident of the unjewelled window loses its point, probably through want of memory. The transporting the palace into the middle of the sea is a novel introduction; but the most remarkable change is in the mode of compassing the death of the magician. This episode as here described enters into a vast number of tales. It occurs in a Hungarian one I have in MS.:—A king directs in dying that his three sons shall go out to learn experience by adventure before they succeed to the throne. The first two nights of the journey the two elder brothers keep watch in turn, while the others sleep, and each kills a dragon. The third night, István (Stephen), the youngest, keeps watch, and is enticed away by the cries for help of a frog, which he delivers, but when he comes back the watch-fire is out. He has now to wander in search of fresh fire; he sees a spark in the distance and makes for it; by the way he meets ‘Dame Midnight,’ who tells him the fire is a week’s journey off, so he binds her to a tree, and the same with ‘The Lady Dawn,’ so that it might not be day before his return. In a week he reaches the fire, but three giants guard it, who are laying siege to a vár (fortress) to obtain possession of three beautiful maidens, whom they destined to be the brides of the King of the Dwarfs and of the very two dragons his brothers had killed. But before they give him of their fire they say he must help them in the siege. He, however, kills them by stratagem, and makes his way into the princesses’ sleeping apartment, takes three pledges of his having been there, and returns to his brothers. They continue their wanderings till they come to an inn where the three princesses and the king their father have established themselves in disguise, and make all who pass that way tell the tale of their adventures as a means of discovering who it was delivered them from the giants. The princes make themselves known, and the king bestows his daughters on them. As they drive home with their brides, they pass the Dwarf-King in a ditch by the roadside, who implores them to deliver him. The two elder brothers take no notice. István stops and helps him out. The dwarf with his supernatural strength thrusts István back into the ditch, and drives off with his bride. István sets out to search after and recover her; he meets the frog he delivered, who gives him supernatural aid, and leads him through heroic adventures in which he does service to other persons and animals, who in turn assist him by directing him to the palace of the Dwarf-King. Here exactly the same scene occurs between István and his bride as between Cajusse and the sultan’s daughter, and they lay the same plan. But the Dwarf-King is more astute than the magician, and he at first tells her that his life’s safety lies in his sceptre, on which she makes him give her the sceptre, ‘that she may take care of it,’ in reality intending to give it up to István. When he sees her so anxious for his safety, he tells her it is not in the sceptre, but he does not yet tell the truth; he next says it is in the royal mantle, and then in the crown (incidents proper to the version of Hungary, which sets so great store by the royal crown and mantle). Ultimately he confides that it resides in a golden cockchafer, inside a golden cock, inside a golden sheep, inside a golden stag, in the ninety-ninth sziget (island). She communicates all this to István. He overcomes the above-named series of golden animals by the aid of the animals he lately assisted, and thus recovers his bride.
All these incidents (somewhat differently worked in), occur in the Norse tale of ‘The Giant who had no Heart in His Body,’ and in the Russian ‘Koschei the Deathless,’ and in many others.
I have other of the ‘Arabian Night’ stories, told with the local colouring of characters and incidents proper to the neighbourhood of Rome; particularly various versions of ‘The Forty Thieves,’ leading to a number of Brigand stories, for which I have not space left in this volume.]
[1] ‘Il Matrimonio di Cajusse,’ I should imagine Caius was the right reading. Italians, though they are so fond of clipping off the final vowel of their own words, whenever they get hold of a foreign word ending in a consonant must needs always add a syllable on to it. The narrator in this instance could not spell, and I write the word as she pronounced it. Meeting with so close a counterpart of ‘Aladdin’s Lamp,’ I cross-questioned the narrator very closely as to whether she had not read it, but she assured me most solemnly that her mother had told it her when she was not more than five years old; that it was impossible she could have read it, as she could only read very imperfectly, only a few easy sentences; she had never in her life read anything long. I further elicited that it was possible her mother might have read it; but I am inclined to think she said this rather to improve my idea of her family, than because she thought it was really the case. [↑]
[2] ‘Piastra.’ In Melchiorri’s ‘Guida Metodica di Roma,’ ed. 1856, in the list of moneys current the half-scudo is put down as ‘commonly called mezza piastra.’ I do not remember to have heard it so used myself, though I have heard old people talk of piastres, the value of which would thus be the same as a scudo, or about five francs: an old inhabitant told me it was 7½ bajocchi, more than a scudo. [↑]