But it is not contended that the folk-tales of Europe owe much, if indeed anything at all, to the “Arabian Nights,” which is not only as it now exists a comparatively modern work—Baron de Sacy has adduced good reasons for placing the date of its composition in the middle of the 9th century of the Hijra, or about 1446 A.D.—but was first made known in Europe so late as the first quarter of the last century. Several of the tales, and incidents of the tales, in the “Thousand and One Nights” were current in Europe in the 12th century—imported by the Moors of Spain, and by European travellers, pilgrims, and minstrels from the East. Thus the Arabian tale of the Ebony (or Enchanted) Horse is virtually identical with the Hispano-French romance of Cleomades and Claremonde; that of Prince Kamar al-Zaman is fairly represented by the romance of Peter of Provence and the Fair Maguelone. The episode of Astolphe and Joconde in Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” is identical with the opening story of The Nights which constitutes the frame of the collection.[[135]] The Magnetic Rock (or rock of adamant) which figures in the adventures of Sindbád occurs in the popular German story of “Herzog Ernst von Baiern,” which is extant in a Latin poem that cannot be later than the 13th century and is probably a hundred years earlier.[[136]] The Valley of Diamonds in the History of Sindbád is described by Marco Polo, who travelled in the East in the 13th century; moreover, it had been known in Europe from the 4th century, when the story connected with it was related by Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, who lays the scene in Scythia, while Marco Polo and the author of Sindbád’s Voyages both place it in India, where the fiction probably had its origin.
When we find a popular (i.e. oral) European tale reproduce the most minute details of a story found in The Nights, we should conclude that it has been derived therefrom and within quite recent times, and such I am now disposed to think is the case of the Roman version of Aladdin given by Miss Busk under the title of “How Cajusse was Married,” notwithstanding the circumstance that the old woman from whom it was obtained was almost wholly illiterate. A child who could read might have told the story out of Galland to his or her nurse, through whom it would afterwards assume local colour, with some modifications of the details. But stories having all the essential features of the tale of Aladdin were known throughout Europe long before Galland’s work was published, and in forms strikingly resembling other Asiatic versions, from one of which the Arabian tale must have been adapted. The incidents of the Magician and Aladdin at the Cave, and the conveying of the Princess and the vazír’s son three nights in succession to Aladdin’s house (which occurs, in modified forms, in other tales in The Nights), I consider as the work of the Arabian author. Stripped of these particulars, the elements of the tale are identical in all versions, Eastern and Western: a talisman, by means of which its possessor can command unlimited wealth, &c.; its loss and the consequent disappearance of the magnificent palace erected by supernatural agents who are subservient to the owner of the talisman; and finally its recovery together with the restoration of the palace to its original situation. The Arabian tale is singular in the circumstance of the talisman (the Lamp) being recovered by human means—by the devices of the hero himself, in fact; since in all the European and the other Asiatic forms of the story it is recovered by, as it was first obtained from, grateful animals. To my mind, this latter is the pristine form of the tale, and points to a Buddhist origin—mercy to all living creatures being one of the leading doctrines of pure Buddhism.
The space at my disposal does not admit of the reproduction in extenso of the numerous versions or variants of Aladdin: a brief outline of their features will however serve my purpose. In the tale of Marúf the Cobbler, which concludes the Búlák and Calcutta printed texts of The Nights, we have an interesting version of Aladdin. The hero runs away from his shrewish wife and under false pretences is married to a king’s daughter. He confesses his imposture to the princess, who loves him dearly, and she urges him to flee from her father’s vengeance and not to return until his death should leave the throne vacant; and having furnished him with money, he secretly quits the city at daybreak. After riding some distance, he begins to feel hungry, and seeing a peasant ploughing a field he goes up to him and asks for some food. The peasant sets off to his house for eatables, and meanwhile Marúf begins to plough a furrow, when presently the ploughshare strikes against something hard, which he finds to be an iron ring. He tugs at the ring and raises a slab, which discovers a number of steps, down which he goes and comes into a cavern filled with gold and precious stones, and in a box made of a single diamond he finds a talismanic ring, on placing which on his finger a monstrous figure appears and expresses his readiness and ability to obey all his commands. In brief, by means of this genie, the hero obtains immense wealth in gold and jewels, and also rich merchandise, which enable him to return to the city in the capacity of a merchant, which he had professed himself when he married the princess. The vazír, who had from the first believed him to be an arrant impostor, lays a plot with the King to worm out of him the secret of his wealth, and succeeds so well at a private supper, when Marúf is elevated with wine, that he obtains possession of the ring, summons the genie, and causes him to carry both the King and Marúf into a far distant desert. He then compels the other ministers and the people to acknowledge him as king, and resolves to marry the princess. She temporises with him; invites him to sup with her; plies him with wine, induces him to throw the ring into a corner of the room, pretending to be afraid of the demon who is held captive in it; and when he has become insensible (in plain English, dead drunk), she seizes the ring, summons the genie, and commands him to secure the vazír and bring back her father and husband, which he does “in less than no time.” The vazír is of course put to death, and the princess takes charge of the ring for the future, alleging that neither the King nor her husband is to be trusted with the custody of such a treasure.
Another Arabian version is found—as Sir Richard Burton points out, note 2, p. [159]—in “The Fisherman’s Son,” one of the tales translated by Jonathan Scott from the Wortley-Montague MS. text of The Nights, where the hero finds a magic ring inside a cock: like Aladdin, he marries the King’s daughter and has a grand palace built for him by the genii. The ring is afterwards disposed of to a Jew, in the same manner as was the Lamp to the Magician, and the palace with the princess is conveyed to a distant desert island. The fisherman’s son takes to flight. He purchases of a man who offered them for sale a dog, a cat, and a rat, which turn out to be well-disposed magicians, and they recover the ring from the Jew’s mouth while he is asleep. The ring is dropped into the sea accidentally while the animals are crossing it to rejoin their master, but is brought to the hero by a fish which he had returned to the sea out of pity in his fisherman days. The genie conveys the palace back again, and so on.—In a Mongolian version (“Siddhí Kúr”) a young merchant parts with all his wares to save a mouse, an ape, and a bear from being tortured to death by boys. One of those creatures procures for him a wishing-stone, by means of which he has a grand palace built and obtains much treasure. He foolishly exchanges his talisman with the chief of a caravan for all their gold and merchandise, and it is afterwards restored to him by the grateful and ingenious animals.—In a Tamil version—referred to by Sir Richard, p. [51], note 1—which occurs in the “Madanakámarájankadai,” a poor wandering young prince buys a cat and a serpent; at his mother’s suggestion, he sets the serpent at liberty and receives from its father a wishing ring. He gets a city built in the jungle—or rather where the jungle was—and marries a beautiful princess. An old hag is employed by another King to procure him the princess for his wife. She wheedles herself into the confidence of the unsuspecting young lady, and learning from her the properties of the ring, induces her to borrow it of her husband for a few minutes, in order that she (the old trot) might apply it to her head to cure a severe headache. No sooner has she got possession of the ring than she disappears, and having delivered it to the other King, he “thought” of the princess, and in the twinkling of an eye she is carried through the air and set down before him. The ring is recovered by means of the cat which the hero had fostered, and so on.
Sir Richard has referred to a number of Italian versions (p. [51], note 1), which will be found epitomised in a most valuable and interesting paper, by my late friend Mr. H. C. Coote, on the sources of some of M. Galland’s Tales, in the First Part of the Folk-Lore Record for 1880; and, in conclusion, I may briefly glance at a few other European variants. Among those which not only bear a close analogy one to another but also to the Asiatic versions cited above are the following: No. 15 of M. Leger’s French collection of Slav Tales is a Bohemian version, in which the hero, Jenik, saves a dog, a cat, and a serpent from being killed. From the serpent’s father he gets an enchanted watch (evidently a modern substitute for a talismanic stone, or ring), which procures him a splendid palace and the King’s daughter for his bride. But the young lady, unlike the Princess Badr al-Badúr with Aladdin, does not love Jenik, and having learned from him the secret of his great wealth, she steals the talisman and causes a palace to be built in the middle of the sea, where she goes to live, after making Jenik’s palace disappear. Jenik’s faithful dog and cat recover the talisman, which, as in the Arabian story of the Fisherman’s Son, is dropped in the sea while they are swimming back and restored by a fish.—In No. 9 of M. Dozon’s “Contes Albanais” the hero saves a serpent’s life and gets in return a wishing-stone and so on. The talisman is stolen by a rascally Jew on the night of the wedding, and the palace with the princess is transported to the distant sea-shore. The hero buys a cat and feeds it well. He and his cat arrive at the spot where the palace now stands, and the cat compels the chief of a colony of mice to steal the talisman from the Jew while he is asleep.—A popular Greek version in Hahn’s collection combines incidents found in Aladdin and in the versions in which grateful animals play prominent parts: The hero rescues a snake which some boys are about to kill and gets in reward from the snake’s father a sealring, which he has only to lick and a black man will present himself, ready to obey his orders. As in Aladdin, the first use he makes of the talisman is to have his mother’s cupboard filled with dainty food. Then he bids his mother “go to the King, and tell him he must give me his daughter in marriage.” After many objections, she goes to deliver her message to the King, who replies that if her son build a castle larger than his, he shall have the princess to wife. The castle is built that same night, and when the mother goes next morning to require the King’s performance of his promise, he makes a farther stipulation that her son should first pave the way between the two castles with gold. This is done at once, and the King gives the hero his daughter. Here the resemblance to the Aladdin story ceases and what follows (as well as what precedes) is analogous to the other Asiatic forms. The princess has a black servant of whom she is enamoured. She steals the ring and elopes with her sable paramour to an island in the sea, where she has a castle erected by the power of the ring. The black man sleeps with the ring under his tongue, but the hero’s dog takes the cat on his back and swims to the island; and the cat contrives to get the ring and deliver it to her master, who straightway causes the castle to be removed from the island, then kills the black man, and afterwards lives happily with the princess.—In a Danish version (Prof. Grundtvig’s “Danske Folkeäventyr”) a peasant gets from an aged man a wishing-box, and henceforward lives in grand style. After his death the steward and servants cheat his son and heir, so that in ten years he is ruined and turned out of house and home. All the property he takes with him is an old sheepskin jacket, in which he finds the wishing-box, which had been, unknown to him, the cause of his father’s prosperity. When the “slave” of the box appears, the hero merely asks for a fiddle that when played upon makes everybody who hears it to dance.[[137]] He hires himself to the King, whose daughter gives him, in jest, a written promise to marry him, in exchange for the fiddle. The King, when the hero claims the princess, insists on her keeping her promise, and they are married. Then follows the loss of the wishing-box, as in the Greek version, only in place of a black man it is a handsome cavalier who is the lady’s paramour. The recovery of the box is accomplished by very different means, and may be passed over, as belonging to another cycle of tales.[[138]]
It is perhaps hardly worth while to make a critical analysis of the tale of Aladdin, since with all its gross inconsistencies it has such a hold of the popular fancy that one would not wish it to be otherwise than it is. But it must have occurred to many readers that the author has blundered in representing the Magician as closing the Cave upon Aladdin because he refused to give up the Lamp before he had been helped out. As the lad was not aware of the properties of the Lamp, he could have had no object in retaining it for himself, while the Magician in any case was perfectly able to take it by force from him. And if he wished to do away with Aladdin, yet incur no “blood-guiltiness” (see ante, p. [78] and note), he might surely have contrived to send him down into the Cave again and then close it upon him. As to the Magician giving his ring to Aladdin, I can’t agree with Sir Richard in thinking (p. [72], note 3) that he had mistaken its powers; this seems to me quite impossible. The ring was evidently a charm against personal injury as well as a talisman to summon an all-powerful and obedient genie. It was only as a charm that the Magician placed it on Aladdin’s finger, and, as the Hindustani Version explains, he had in his rage and vexation forgot about the ring when he closed the entrance to the Cave. It appears to me also incongruous that the Lamp, which Aladdin found burning, should afterwards only require to be rubbed in order to cause the genie to appear. One should have supposed that the lighting of it would have been more natural or appropriate; and it is possible that such was in the original form of the Aladdin version before it was reduced to writing, since we find something of the kind in a Mecklenburg version given in Grimm, under the title of “Das blaue Licht.” A soldier who had long served his King is at last discharged without any pay. In the course of his wanderings he comes to the hut of an old woman, who proves to be a witch, and makes him work for her in return for his board and lodging. One day she takes him to the edge of a dry well, and bids him go down and get her the Blue Light which he would find at the bottom. He consents, and she lets him down by a rope. When he has secured the Light he signals to the old witch to draw him up, and when she has pulled him within her reach, she bids him give her the Light; he refuses to do so until he is quite out of the well, upon which she lets him fall to the bottom again. After ruminating his condition for some time he bethinks him of his pipe, which is in his pocket—he may as well have a smoke if he is to perish. So he lights his pipe at the Blue Light, when instantly there appears before him a black dwarf, with a hump on his back and a feather in his cap, who demands to know what he wants, for he must obey the possessor of the Blue Light. The soldier first requires to be taken out of the well, and next the destruction of the old witch, after which he helps himself to the treasures in the hag’s cottage, and goes off to the nearest town, where he puts up at the best inn and gets himself fine clothes. Then he determines to requite the King, who had sent him away penniless, so he summons the Dwarf[[139]] and orders him to bring the King’s daughter to his room that night, which the Dwarf does, and very early in the morning he carries her back to her own chamber in the palace. The princess tells her father that she has had a strange dream of being borne through the air during the night to an old soldier’s house. The King says that if it was not a dream, she should make a hole in her pocket and put peas into it, and by their dropping out the place where she was taken to could be easily traced. But the Dwarf when he transports her the second night discovers the trick, and strews peas through all the other streets, and the only result was the pigeons had a rare feast. Then the King bids the princess hide one of her shoes in the soldier’s room, if she is carried there again. A search is made for the shoe in every house the next day, and when it is found in the soldier’s room he runs off, but is soon caught and thrown into prison. In his haste to escape he forgot to take the Blue Light with him. He finds only a ducat in his pocket, and with this he bribes an old comrade whom he sees passing to go and fetch him a parcel he had left at the inn, and so he gets the Blue Light once more. He summons the Dwarf, who tells him to be of good cheer, for all will yet be well, only he must take the Blue Light with him when his trial comes on. He is found guilty and sentenced to be hung upon the gallows-tree. On his way to execution he asks as a last favour to be allowed to smoke, which being granted, he lights his pipe and the Dwarf appears. “Send,” says the soldier—“send all these people to the right about; as for the King, cut him into three pieces.” The Dwarf lays about him with a will, and soon makes the crowd scuttle off. The King begs hard for his life, and agrees to let the soldier have the princess for his wife and the kingdom afterwards.
Thus, it will be seen, popular tales containing all the essential elements of the story of Aladdin are spread over Europe, though hardly any of the versions was probably derived from it; and the conclusion at which I have arrived is that those elements, or incidents, have been time out of mind the common property of European and Asiatic peoples, and that the tale of Aladdin may be considered as an almost unique version. The Mecklenburg legend is the only variant which has the incident of the Magician requiring the Lamp before helping the hero out of the Cave and that of the transporting of the princess from her palace to the hero’s house during the night, but these are not, I think, sufficient evidence that it was adapted from Galland.
The royal command that all shops are to be closed and everybody must keep within doors while the Princess Badr al-Badúr proceeds to the bath and Aladdin’s playing the part of Peeping Tom of Coventry occur in many Eastern stories and find a curious analogue in the Adventures of Kurroglú, the celebrated robber-poet, as translated by Dr. Alexander Chodzko in his “Popular Poetry of Persia,” printed for the Oriental Translation Fund, and copies of that work being somewhat scarce, I daresay the story will be new to most of my readers:
Listen now to the tale about the Princess Nighara, daughter of the Turkish sultan Murád. In the neighbourhood of Constantinople lived a man who was known there under the name of Belli Ahmad. One day the Princess Nighara went out for a walk through the bazárs of Constantinople. At the same time Kurroglú’s fame spread over all Turkey; everybody was telling stories about him, and all were struck with wonder. The Princess Nighara’s fond heart particularly was filled with an ardent wish of seeing this extraordinary hero, and she often thought in her mind, “O my God, when will you allow me to behold Kurroglú?” It happened that while Belli Ahmad was taking a walk in the bazars of Istambúl, he looked and beheld on the platform of the building daroghs beating drums, whilst all the inmates of the bazár, the workmen as well as the merchants, were flying in a great hurry after having left their shops ajar. “Why are they thus running?” inquired Belli Ahmad of a Turk. “Dost thou know nothing? Then listen: Our king, Sultan Murad, is gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. His son Burji Sultan reigns until his father’s return. He has a sister whose name is the Princess Nighara. Every Friday she goes to pray in the great mosque. The Sultan’s will is that during the passage of the princess through the bazárs, no man should remain there, but that all the shops be left open. This is the reason of this panic and flight. As soon as the princess has passed, the merchants and workmen will return to their shops again.”
Belli Ahmad said in his heart, “Thy name is Belli Ahmad, and shalt thou not see this beautiful Princess Nighara? If not, thou art unworthy of the name of Belli[[140]] Ahmad.” He then looked to the right and left and entered stealthily into a greengrocer’s shop enclosed within a few boards. The train of the princess now appeared. First passed with their whips farashes and yassáls, who led the procession and were followed by eunuchs with canes of office (chogan) in their hands. At last appeared the Princess Nighara, surrounded by a score of waiting-women. She walked with a downcast countenance in front of them, and bending her head towards the ground said to herself, “O thou earth on which my foot is treading, I beseech thee, receive my prayer!”[[141]] Belli Ahmad saw and heard her through the chinks of the boards behind which he sat concealed. When Nighara saw the shop with vegetables she wondered why it should be the only shop enclosed with boards whilst all the other shops were standing open. She then said to her waiting-women, “What is the reason of this? Whilst goldsmiths who possess a capital of a hundred thousand tomans have left their shops open, how is it that this petty merchant of vegetables, whose poor shop used always to be open, has shut it up to-day? There must be something extraordinary in all this. Break down the enclosure, my girls, and throw the boards aside.”