In a fair maiden’s sight.”
He also refers to the Netherlandish ballad, ‘Vogelritter,’ where a knight goes to Cyprus and wins the king’s daughter, whom he had previously visited in the form of a bird, having in his possession a stone which effects transformations; and to the ‘Lai d’Iwenec’, by Marie de France.
The Three Deceitful Women—p. [355].
[Page 357]—The crafty mother of the bathman is said to have “practised for years under the sorceress Shamsah”; probably the witch of the same name who figures in the story of Táhir, an extract of which will be found in pp. [494, 495].
[Page 370]—The story of ‘The Sun and the Moon’ (Mihr ú Máh), which the carpenter brags that he knows, is probably the Persian romance of Mihr, the son of Káhvar Sháh, described in Dr. Rieu’s Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. ii, p. 765 (Add. 15,099), which also occurs in Hubbí’s collection, entitled Hikáyát-i’Ajíb ú Gharíb, (already cited on p. [474]), of which Dr. Rieu, in the same Catalogue (ii, 759, Or. 237), gives the titles of the first nineteen stories, No. 3 being Mihr ú Máh. Dr. Rieu has kindly furnished me with the first part of this tale:
In the kingdom of the East was a mighty king named Khávar Sháh, who had no son. He is told by his astrologers that he is predestined to have a son, provided the mother be a parí (or fairy). On the advice of his vazír, Rushan Ráï, he asks the help of a devotee called Faylasúf, who tells him that he should obtain possession of the book of magic which is kept by the witch Naskas in her castle. All three set out with this intent, and by means of the Most Great Name (see ante, note on p. [163]) obtain entrance into the castle, and on their way release a dove from its cage. Deceived by the wiles of the witch, they are transformed: the king, into a lion, the vazír, into a lynx, and the devotee, into a fox; but plunging into the waters of the Spring of Job, they are restored to their natural shape, seek refuge in a hollow tree, and are taken out of it by the bird Rukh (or roc) and carried to the top of a mountain. In the meanwhile the released dove, who was no other than Rúz-afrúz, daughter of Farrukhfál, king of the parís, returns to her parents and tells them of her rescue. Then she goes in search of her deliverers; finds them asleep, and has them conveyed to her father’s court. Farrukhfál waives his objection to a marriage which he deemed a mésalliance, and the result in due time is the birth of a prince, called Mihr. The astrologers prophesy that at the age of eighteen grief will come to him through a piece of paper. And, in fact, the young man, while out hunting, meets a youth called Mukhtarí, a rich merchant from Maghrab, who has suffered shipwreck and has saved nothing but the portrait of Máh, the fair daughter of Hilál, king of the West. The remainder of the tale deals with the adventures of the love-struck prince in search of the fair one, ending, of course, with their happy union.[299]
The tale of ‘Sayf ul-Mulúk and Bady’á ul-Jumál,’ which the carpenter says he had also heard, occurs in the Arabian Nights; the Turkish story-book Al-Faraj ba’d al-Shiddah, or Joy after Distress; the Persian Tales translated into French by Petis de la Croix, under the title of Les Mille et un Jours; and it also exists as a separate story in MSS. preserved in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It recounts how a young prince discovers in his father’s treasury the portrait of a very beautiful damsel and sets out in quest of her. After many perilous adventures he finally learns from a jinni that the fair original of the portrait was one of the concubines of King Solomon and had, of course, been dead for many ages.
Whether the ‘Road to the Mosque’, which the carpenter says he has “seen,” be the title of a story, or (as is more likely) that of a devotional work, I am unable to say, never having seen it alluded to elsewhere.