[1]. See Thoms’ Lays and Legends of Germany; Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories; Roscoe’s German Novelists.
[2]. Grimm’s German Popular Tales.
[3]. Dasent’s Popular Tales from the Norse.
[4]. Perhaps one of the most curious instances of the migrations of popular tales is the following. In Taylor’s Wit and Mirth, an excellent jest-book, compiled by the celebrated Water-Poet (temp. James I of England), we are told of a countryman who had come up to London on a visit, and some wags having set a big dog at him in sport, the poor fellow stooped to pick up a stone to throw at the brute, but finding them all rammed hard and fast into the ground, he exclaimed in astonishment: “What strange folk are these, who fasten the stones and let loose their dogs!” More than three centuries before Taylor heard this jest, the Persian poet Sa`dī related it in his Gulistān, or Rose-Garden (ch. iv, story 10 of Eastwick’s translation): “A poet went to the chief of a band of robbers, and recited a panegyric upon him. He commanded them to strip off his clothes, and turn him out of the village. The dogs, too, attacked him in the rear. He wanted to take up a stone, but the ground was frozen. Unable to do anything, he said: ‘What a villanous set are these, who have untied their dogs, and tied up the stones!’”—Here we have a jest, at the recital of which, in the 14th century, “grave and otiose” Easterns wagged their beards and shook their portly sides, finding its way, three centuries later, to London taverns, where Taylor probably heard it told amidst the clinking of cans and fragrant clouds blown from pipes of Trinidado! But how came it thither?—that is the question.
[5]. Of the numerous English translations of the Arabian Nights which have been published, that of the learned Arabist, Mr William Edward Lane, made direct from the original text, is by far the best, and will probably never be surpassed; while his elaborate and highly interesting Notes to the translation furnish the most complete account which we possess of the manners, customs, superstitions, &c., of the modern Arabians in Egypt, with which his residence in that country, and familiarity with the language as it is spoken, enabled him to become intimately acquainted.
[6]. For example: before one story (1) is ended another (2) is begun, and before it is finished another (3), springing out of the second, is commenced; then out of story 3 springs yet another story (4), which ended, number 3 is resumed and brought to an end, then number 2, after which number 1 is resumed and concluded; and then the thread of the leading story—which runs throughout the whole work, like a brook through a meadow, but often out of sight—is taken up once more;—to lead presently to a fresh complication of stories, which “beget one another to the end of the chapter!” The arrangement of the Tales in the Arabian Nights is on this plan; though not to be compared for elaboration with that of the Indian Fables, above-mentioned, still less so with the frame of Kathá Sarit Ságara.
[7]. A complete and unabridged translation of the Thousand and One Nights (the first that has appeared in English), by Mr John Payne, author of “The Masque of Shadows,” “Poems of Francis Villon,” &c., is in course of publication. The first volume, now issued to subscribers, is well printed on hand-made paper, and elegantly bound in gilt parchment. This edition is limited to 500 copies, numbered, most of which, I understand, have already been taken up.
[8]. The word Nāma (often written Namah and Nameh) signifies Book, or History.
[9]. It is probably this version that is quoted by Sa`dī, in his Bustān, book iii: