is a variant of a story found in the Beslau printed Arabic text of the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ of the Fuller, his Wife, and the Trooper. It also occurs in the Historia Septem Sapientum Romæ, the European adaptation of the Book of Sindibád, where a crafty Knight of Hungary plays the part of the carpenter of our story, and a jealous old baron that of the Kází. The plot of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, which is very similar to the tale of the crafty Knight, in all likelihood suggested to Boiardo the amusing episode, in his Orlando Innamorato, of Folderico and Ordauro, which, in its turn, was perhaps adapted in the Seven Wise Masters. In my Book of Sindibád, p. 343 ff., and in my Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii, pp. 214-228, are most of the other known versions and variants of this story.
The Trick of the Bazár-Master’s Wife
has many parallels in Eastern story-books, and the tale seems to have been, time out of mind, a favourite with Asiatics. In one version there is no game of yad est between husband and wife. The lady has her lover concealed in an adjoining apartment, for her husband has come home quite unexpectedly. But she tells him plainly of the fact, upon which he demands the key and approaches to open the door of the room, when the lady bursts into laughter. He pauses in astonishment, and asks the cause of her merriment, to which she replies: “I cannot help laughing at your simplicity, in believing that I should have a lover in the next room, and tell you of it.” The husband returns the key and goes away well pleased.
The Trick of the Kutwál’s Wife
resembles the latter part of the Arabian tale of the Fuller, his Wife, and the Trooper, where the poor husband is also drugged, his hair is cropped, he is dressed as a soldier, and provided with a letter recommending him to be enrolled by the governor of Isfahán. In this case, however, the poor husband is not reclaimed by his artful wife.
Whatever may be the source of this diverting story, it was known in France as early at least as the 13th century, in the form of fabliau by Haisiau the Trouvère, under the title “Des Trois Dames qui trouverent un Anel” (Méon’s edition of Barbazan, 1808, tome iii, p. 220ff., and Le Grand, 1781, tome iv, pp. 163-166), of which the following is the outline:
Three ladies found a ring, and “they swore by Jesu that she should have it who should best beguile her husband to do a good turn to her lover.”
The First Lady, having made her husband drunk, when he is asleep, causes his head to be shaved, dresses him in the habit of a monk, and carries him, assisted by her lover, to the entrance of a convent. When he awakes and finds himself thus transformed he imagines that God, by a miraculous exercise of his grace, had called him to the monastic life. So he presents himself before the abbot and requests to be received among the brethren. The lady hastens to the convent in well-feigned despair, and is exhorted to be resigned and to congratulate her husband on the saintly vow he has taken. “Many a good man,” says the poet, “has been betrayed by woman and her harlotry. This one became a monk in the abbey, where he remained a very long time. Wherefore, I counsel all people who hear this story told, that they ought not to trust in their wives, or in their households, if they have not first proved that they are full of virtues. Many a man has been deceived by women and their treachery. This one became a monk against right, who would never have been such in his life, if his wife had not deceived him.”
The Second Lady had some salted and smoked eels which her husband bade her cook for dinner on a Friday, but there was no fire in the house. Under the pretext of going to have them cooked on a neighbour’s fire, she goes out and finds her lover, at whose house she remains a whole week. On the following Friday, about the hour of dinner, she enters a neighbour’s house and asks leave to cook her eels, saying that her husband is angry with her for having no fire, and that she could not dare to go back lest he should cut off her head. As soon as the eels are cooked she carries them home, “piping hot.” The husband asks her where she has been for the last week, and commences to beat her. She cries for help and the neighbours come in, and amongst them the one at whose fire the eels had been cooked, who swears that the wife had only just left her house, and ridicules the man for his assertion that she had been away a whole week. The poor husband gets into a great rage and is locked up for a madman.[300]