Appendix

Appendix I.

CATALOGUE OF WORTLEY MONTAGUE MANUSCRIPT CONTENTS.

I here proceed to offer a list of the tales in the Wortley Montague MS. (Nos. 550–556), beginning with

VOL. I.,

which contains 472 pages = 92 Nights. It is rudely written, with great carelessness and frequent corrections, and there is a noted improvement in the subsequent vols. which Scott would attribute to another transcriber. This, however, I doubt: in vol. i. the scribe does not seem to have settled down to his work. The MS. begins abruptly and without caligraphic decoration; nor is there any red ink in vol. i. except for the terminal three words. The topothesia is in the land of Sásán, in the Isles of Al-Hind and Al-Sind; the elder King being called “Báz” and “Shár-báz” and the younger “Kahramán” (p. 1, ll. 5–6), and in the same page (l. 10) “Saharbán, King of Samarkand”; while the Wazir’s daughters are “Shahrzádah” and “Dunyázádah” (p. 8). The Introduction is like that of the Mac. Edit. (my text); but the dialogue between the Wazir and his Daughter is shortened, and the “Tale of the Merchant and his Wife,” including “The Bull and the Ass,” is omitted. Of novelties we find few. When speaking of the Queen and Mas’úd the Negro (called Sa’id in my text, p. 6) the author remarks:—

Take no black to lover; pure musk tho’ he be ✿ Carrion-taint shall pierce to the nose of thee.

And in the “Tale of the Trader and the Jinni” (MS. 1, 9: see my transl. 1, 25) the ’Ifrit complains that the Merchant had thrown the date-stones without exclaiming “Dastúr!”—by thy leave.

The following is a list of the Tales in vol. i.:—

PAGE.
Introductory Chapter1–9
Tale of the Trader and the Jinni, Night i.–ii.9
The First Shaykh’s Story, Night ii.14
The Second Shaykh’s Story, Night ii.23
The Third Shaykh’s Story, Night iv.34