(2.) Turkish. A merchant took his son to a certain house, and said, If you waste the wealth I leave, do not beg, but get a rope and hang yourself from this ring. The son squandered his inheritance with sycophants, who reviled him after he was stripped. He got a rope, went to the house, mounted a stool, fastened one end of the rope to the ring, the other about his neck, and threw himself from the stool. A board in which the ring was fastened gave way, the young man fell to the ground, and gold and jewels came pouring upon him. He repented of his profligacy, and reformed his ways. ‘The Forty Vezirs,’ Gibb, p. 244; Behrnauer, p. 253.
(3.) Arabic. A man charged his son not to beg if he should come to want, for he had hidden a treasure in his house, which, however, he was not to resort to until compelled by dire necessity. After his father’s death, the son, without delay, broke into the place where the treasure had been said to be concealed, but found only an empty room, with a rope hanging from the ceiling. Under the rope was a pile of bricks, and a paper recommending him to get up on the bricks and hang himself. The young man went off, and with the assistance of parasites, was soon rid of all his wealth. After a taste of the sharpness of poverty and of the baseness of summer friends, he went to the room where he had expected to find the treasure, stepped on the pile of bricks, tied the rope round his neck, and kicked away the bricks. The rope parted, and a quantity of precious things tumbled from overhead. His false friends promptly returned with prosperity, but were put to shame. Tausend und eine Nacht, Deutsch von Habicht, v. d. Hagen u. Schall, 1840, XIV, 65-68.
(4.) The same story, with some of the details of both 2 and 3, in Pauli’s Schimpf und Ernst, Oesterley, p. 400, from the edition of 1533. In Pauli’s tale, the young man, after a year of exemplary life in the world, gives all his goods to the poor and turns hermit.
(5.) Persian. Atalmulc’s extravagances cause his father great anxiety. The father, when near his end, charges his son, if he should be so unhappy as to dissipate the fortune he will receive, to hang himself to a branch of a tree in the middle of the garden. The bough breaks, and the trunk is found to be full of precious stones. Petis de la Croix, Les Mille et un Jour, Cabinet des Fées, XIV, 457.
There is another and seemingly an independent story, summarized in two distichs in the Greek Anthology (IX, 44, 45, translated by Ausonius, Epigrammata, 22, 23), how a man, who was about to hang himself, found some money, and left his rope behind, and how the owner of the money, coming for it and not finding it, hanged himself with the rope.[21] La Fontaine’s fable, ‘Le Trésor et les deux Hommes,’ IX, 16, is this story, with a wall falling, not by precontrivance, but from its ruinous condition.
The eighth tale in the ninth decade of Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, 1565, II, 563, is a modification of what may be called the Greek story. “Chera hid a treasure. Elisa, going about to hang herself, and tying the halter about a beam, found that treasure, and in place thereof left the halter. Philene, the daughter of Chera, going for that treasure, and busily searching for the same, found the halter, wherewithal, in despair, she would have hanged herself, but,” etc. (Painter’s argument to his translation of Cinthio’s tale in the Palace of Pleasure, 2d Tome (1567), 11th novel, ed. Jacobs, II, 264.)
The Greek Syntipas has another variety. A man, reduced to want, takes a sword and goes to a lonely place to end his misery. He finds in a deep hole or fosse a quantity of gold which has been hidden there by a cyclops, takes it, and goes back to his house very happy. The cyclops, coming to the spot and not finding his gold, but seeing the sword lying about, slays himself. Matthæi, Syntipæ Fabulæ, 1781, p. 38, μη; Coray, Æsop, p. 246, No 384.[22]
A tale in Anvár-i Suhailí has been cited in connection with the foregoing, which has only a general and remote resemblance to ‘The Heir of Linne.’ A wise king, perceiving that his two unpromising sons would misuse his treasures, buries them in a hermitage. After his death, his sons quarrel about the succession. The younger is worsted, and brought so low that he abandons the world, and selects this hermitage for his retirement. Here he learns wisdom that is better than riches, and also discovers the buried treasure. Both the elder brother and a king with whom he is at variance are killed in a fight, and the younger is offered a double kingdom. (Chapter I, story II, Eastwick, p. 74; also, Contes et Fables Indiennes de Bidpaï et de Lokman (Galland), Cabinet des Fées, XVII, 122; The Fables of Pilpay, London, 1818, p. 51.)
Percy’s ballad is translated by Bodmer, II, 117, and by Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, p. 78.