It is, perhaps, not to be wondered at that when the new edition was actually published, subsequently to Galland’s death, the condemned stories were retained, and the preface withdrawn; though No. 170 still reads as if it followed No. 8.
The information I have been able to collect respecting the disputed tales is very slight. I once saw a MS. advertised in an auction catalogue (I think that of the library of the late Prof. H. H. Wilson) as containing two of Galland’s doubtful tales, but which they were was not stated. The fourth and last volume of the MS. used by Galland is lost; but it is almost certain that it did not contain any of these tales (compare Payne, ix. 265 note).
The story of Zeyn Alasnam (No. 191) is derived from the same source as that of the Fourth Durwesh, in the well-known Hindustani reading-book, the Bagh o Bahar. If it is based upon this, Galland has greatly altered and improved it, and has given it the whole colouring of a European moral fairy tale.
The story of Ali Baba (No. 195) is, I have been told, a Chinese tale. It occurs under the title of the Two Brothers and the Forty-nine Dragons in Geldart’s Modern Greek Tales. It has also been stated that the late Prof. Palmer met with a very similar story among the Arabs of Sinai (Payne, ix. 266).
The story of Sidi Nouman (No 194b) may have been based partly upon the Third Shaykh’s Story (No. 1c), which Galland omits. The feast of the Ghools is, I believe, Greek or Turkish, rather than Arabic, in character, as vampires, personified plague, and similar horrors are much commoner in the folk-lore of the former peoples.
Many incidents of the doubtful, as well as of the genuine tales, are common in European folk-lore (versions of Nos. 2 and 198, for instance, occur in Grimm’s Kinder und Hausmärchen), and some of the doubtful tales have their analogues in Scott’s MS., as will be noticed in due course.
I have not seen Galland’s original edition in 12 vols.; but the Stadt-Bibliothek of Frankfort-on-Main contains a copy, published at La Haye, in 12 vols. (with frontispieces), made up of two or more editions, as follows:—
Vol. i. (ed. 6) 1729; vols. ii. iii. iv. (ed. 5) 1729; vols. v. vi. viii. (ed. 5) 1728; vol. vii. (ed. 6) 1731; vols. ix. to xi, (ed. not noted) 1730; and vol. xii. (ed. not noted) 1731.
The discrepancies in the dates of the various volumes look (as Mr. Clouston has suggested) as if separate volumes were reprinted as required, independently of the others. This might account for vols. v. vi. and viii. of the fifth edition having been apparently reprinted before vols. ii. iii. and iv.
The oldest French version in the British Museum consists of the first eight vols., published at La Haye, and likewise made up of different editions, as follows:—