This story is another version of the tales numbered 9 and 12 in vol. i, at the end of which the outlines of some variants are given.
There is also a Khassonka story of West Africa extremely like the later incidents of No. 10, in Contes Soudanais (C. Monteil), p. 67. When his mother continually interrupted a young thief who was being questioned by a King, the son stabbed her with his dagger, in reality merely piercing a bottle of ox’s blood which was concealed under her cloth. She fell down, the blood poured out, and she seemed to be dead. The son then, uttering spells, three times sprinkled the deceased’s face with a cow’s tail dipped in water. She recovered, and the son sold the cow’s tail to the King for two thousand slaves. When the King cut the throat of his favourite wife and failed to restore her to life, he ordered the thief to be thrown into the river sewn up in an ox-hide. While the slaves who carried him left their bundle on the roadside, the thief, hearing the voices of a pious Muhammadan priest and his pupils and servants, began to cry out that he preferred a life on earth to one in Paradise. The priest opened the skin, and learning that the youth was being forcibly taken to Paradise, gladly exchanged places with him, and was drowned. The thief then took some gold that he found in the priest’s house, and reported to the King that the King’s father had sent him with it for the King, adding that there was much more to be got in Paradise. The King gave him half the gold, and got himself and his relatives sewn up in hides and thrown into the deepest part of the river. As they did not return the people made the thief King.
[1] Feminine adjective of Siṭānā, a nobleman, or in some cases a Treasurer. [↑]
[4] Tirisana is “one of the lower animals.” In a variant of the Western Province he terms the stick a Tirihan cudgel. [↑]
[6] This resembles the cry, “Mok, Mok,” made when driving cattle especially cart-bulls and pack-bulls. [↑]