[257] I have read an Indian story very similar to this, in which a brother and sister, children of a king, are accidentally separated, and the young prince falls into the hands of a rascal like the Jew in the above; but I cannot recollect the particular story-book in which it occurs.
[258] The first chapter of the Kurán; employed by Muslims as the Paternoster is among Christians.
[259] The Turks have the proverb: “Patience is of God; haste is of the Devil.”
[260] According to the Kurán, it was a hoopoe, or lapwing, that brought Solomon a description of Sabá (or Sheba) and of Bilkís, its celebrated queen.
[261] Yet once more the number forty, which the Jews and their Arabian cousins seem always to have regarded with peculiar veneration—see pages [140], [155], [188], and to the instances there noted I may here add a few others. In the Arabian tale of the Third Calender, his voyage is prosperous for forty days, and he is entertained by forty fairy damsels, who absented themselves for forty days. In the tale of Aladdin and his Lamp, when his magic palace has disappeared the sultan allows him forty days to find it and the princess.—Among other Biblical instances, “Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife,” Gen. xxv, 20, and Esau was of the same age when he wedded two Hittite damsels, Gen. xxvi, 34. Eli judged Israel forty years, 1 Samuel, iv, 18. David and Solomon each reigned forty years, 2 Samuel, v, 4; 1 Kings, ii, 11, xi, 42. The “curious” reader may farther refer to Exodus xxvi, 19; Joshua xiv, 7; Judges iii, 11, viii, 28, xiii, 1; 2 Samuel, xv, 7; 1 Kings, vi, 17, vii, 38; 2 Kings, viii, 9; Ezekiel xxix, 11, 12; Acts xxiii, 21; 2 Corinthians, xi, 24.—In Wales forty loaves of bread and forty dishes of butter are a common quantity in the records of rents paid to the bishops of Llandaff. The fee of a bard for his vocal song at a festival was forty pence when he was a disciple, and twice forty for a master. The “unthrifty Heir of Linne,” according to the fine old ballad, tried to borrow forty pence of John o’ the Scales, who had become the owner of his lands. And who is not familiar with Wamba’s song, in praise of “Forty Years,” in Thackeray’s Rebecca and Rowena, where we are told that
“Forty times over let Michaelmas pass,
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear;
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you’ve come to Forty Year!”