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[ The affection of parents for their children is often a blind instinct, and sometimes selfish, though, after all, there is doubtless truth in these lines:
"A mother's love!
If there be one thing pure,
Where all beside is sullied,
That can endure
When all else pass away:
If there be aught
Surpassing human deed, or word, or thought,
It is a mother's love!">[
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[ Surma is a collyrium applied to the edges of the eyelids to increase the lustre of the eyes. A Persian poet, addressing the damsel of whom he is enamoured, says, "For eyes so intoxicated with love's nectar what need is there of surma?"— This part of the story seems to be garbled; in another text of the romance of Hatim Ta'í it is only after the surma has been applied to the covetous man's eyes that he beholds the hidden treasures.]
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[ The first part of the story of the Young King of the Black Isles, in The Nights, bears some analogy to this, but there the paramour is only "half-killed" and the vindictive queen transforms her husband from the waist downwards into marble.]
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[ On the Sources of some of Galland's Tales. By Henry Charles Coote, F.S.A. "Folklore Record," 1881, vol. iii. Part 2, p. 186.]
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[ See Thorpe's "Yule Tide Stories," Bohn's ed., pp. 481- 486.ûThorpe says that "for many years the Dummburg was the abode of robbers, who slew the passing travellers and merchants whom they perceived on the road from Leipsig to Brunswick, and heaped together the treasures of the plundered churches and the surrounding country, which they concealed in subterranean caverns." The peasantry would therefore regard the spot with superstitious awe, and once such a tale as that of Ali Baba got amongst them, the robbers' haunt in their neighbourhood would soon become the scene of the poor woodcutter's adventure.]