[Page 499]—Mr. James Moir, Rector, Grammar School, Aberdeen, is the authority (after his mother) for a story in the Folk-Lore Journal, 1884, vol. ii, pp. 68-71, which presents an interesting parallel to the tale from Salsette, with a clever girl in place of Little John: Three young girls are abandoned in a wood by their poverty-stricken parents, because they have too many mouths to feed. The little maidens arrive at a giant’s house and are granted shelter for the night. The giant resolves to kill them and have them cooked for his breakfast in the morning. In order to distinguish in the dark his own three daughters from the stranger girls, he places “strae rapes” round the necks of the latter and gold chains round his daughters’ necks, with the result that he puts his own offspring to death. Mally Whuppie, the heroine, wakes her sisters softly and they all escape. They next come to a king’s house, and Mally and her sisters are to be married to the three sons of the king, provided he should obtain possession of three wonderful things from the giant: (1) his sword from the back of his bed; (2) his purse from beneath his pillow; and (3) the ring from off the giant’s finger. Mally is successful in her two first adventures, and though she is caught by the giant when drawing off his ring, she ultimately escapes by a clever ruse.
[Page 510]—The story of the King and his Falcon occurs in many collections, and perhaps one of the oldest versions of it is found in Capt. R. C. Temple’s Legends of the Panjáb, vol. i, p. 467, in the story of “Princess Niwal Dai,” where a snake is seen by the falcon to drop poison into the cup.
[Page 519]—The Rose of Bakáwalí.—I find my conjectures regarding the construction of this romance are borne out by Garcin de Tassy (Histoire de la Littèrature Hindouie, second edition, Paris, 1870, tome i, p. 606), in his account of a version in the Hindústání Selections by the Sayyíd Husain, compiled by order of the Military Examiners’ Committee, and published at Madras in the year 1849, in 2 vols. He says: “Le second volume offre la reproduction, en 64 p., des deux tiers du Gul-i Bakâwalî d’après la rédaction de Nihâl Chand, dont j’ai donné la traduction en français. Huçain s’arrête au mariage de Tâj ulmulûk et de Bakâwalî, où devrait en effet finir de récit, le reste étant un hors-d’œuvre tout à fait hindou.”
He describes a similar romance (tome ii, pp. 531, 532) by Rayhán ed-Dín, of Bengal, written in rhymed couplets (masnaví) and entitled Khiyabán-i Rayhán, or Parterres of the Divine Grace, A.H. 1212 (A.D. 1797-1798): “Cet ouvrage,” he says, “roule sur le même sujet que le Gul-i Bakâwalî; mais, outre qu’il est tout en vers, il est beaucoup plus long. Il se divise en quarante chapitres, intitulés chacun Gul-gaschnî (Abondance de roses).… Au surplus, il est bon de rappeler ici ce que j’ai dit ailleurs, que le Gul-i Bakâwalî est une légende indienne qui est reproduite dans plusieurs rédactions différentes et même dans le dialecte des Laskars du Bengale.”
Another tale, in Persian, entitled Kissa-i Fírúz Sháh, if not identical with our romance, seems to be on the same plan, judging from the all-too brief account given of it by Dr. H. H. Wilson in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Mackenzie Collection of Oriental MSS., vol. ii, p. 137: “The story of Firoz Shah, son of the king of Badakshán, who sought a marvellous flower to cure his father.”
[Page 520]—In the so-called Suite des Mille et Une Nuits, by Chavis and Cazotte (Story of Habíb, the Arabian Knight), the Amír Salamis weeps himself blind on hearing a false report of his son Habíb’s death. The hero, when he comes to know of this sore affliction, is told that the only remedy is to be found among the treasures of Solomon, preserved in a cavern, and going there he finds two flat opals fixed as eyes into a visor, which he takes away, and with them restores his father’s sight. And the Rabbins say that Jacob wept himself totally blind from grief at the reported death of his son Joseph, and he recovered his sight many years afterwards by applying to his eyes the garment of Joseph, which his brethren brought from Egypt.
[Page 529]—There can be no doubt that the Panjábí legend of Rasálú’s game with Sirikap and the story of the Prince and Dilbar are cousins, so to say, not far removed. In the former Rasálú makes it one of the conditions of sparing the life of the vanquished Sirikap that he must consent to have his forehead branded with a red-hot iron, “in token of his vassalage,” and another condition is that he forgive his daughter whom he had imprisoned. In the latter the hero compels Dilbar to liberate his four brethren, but she insists on first branding them on their backs, “in token of the state of slavery to which they had been reduced.”—It seems to me that in the earlier part of the Panjábí legend something must have dropped out in connection with Rasálú’s rescuing the ants and the hedgehog from the river (p. [525]), since it is usual in folk-tales for “thankful animals” to requite their benefactor by rendering him signal services.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Story-telling has been quite an art in the East time out of mind. Mrs. Meer Hasan Ali, in her Observations on the Mussulmans of India, vol. ii, pp. 81, 82, says: “Many of the ladies entertain women companions, whose chief business is to tell stories and fables to their employer when she is composing herself to sleep. When the lady is fairly asleep the story is stayed, and the companion resumes her employment when the next nap is sought by her mistress. Among the higher classes the males also indulge in the same practice of being talked to sleep by their men slaves, and it is a certain introduction, with either sex, to the favour of their employer when one of these dependants has acquired the happy art of ‘telling the khánie’ (fable) with an agreeable voice and manner. The more they embellish a tale by flights of their versatile imaginations, so much the greater the merit of the rehearser in the opinion of the listeners.”—In the Book of Esther, ch. vi, 1, we read that on a certain night “could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of the records of the chronicles, and they were read before the king.” Well was it for the Hebrew bondsmen that Ahasuerus did not call for a story-teller instead of the “state journal”!—The practice of sleepless khalífs and sultans sending for story-tellers is referred to in many Eastern tales. For an account of public reciters of tales and romances see Lane’s Modern Egyptians.