And when the chamberlain took the youth into his own house, he said to him: “O youth, know you not that the harem of the king is the sanctuary of security? What great treachery is this that thou hast perpetrated?” The youth replied: “That queen is my mother, and I am her true son. Because of her natural delicacy, she said not to the king that she had a son by another husband. And when yearning came over her, she contrived to bring me here from Rome; and while the king was engaged in the chase maternal love stirred, and she called me to her and embraced me.” On hearing this, the chamberlain said to himself: “What is passing in his mother’s breast? What I have not done I can yet do, and it were better that I preserve this youth some days, for such a rose may not be wounded through idle words, and such a bough may not be broken by a single breath. For some day the truth of this matter will be disclosed, and it will become known to the king, when repentance may be of no avail.” Another day he went before the king, and said: “That which was commanded have I fulfilled.” On hearing this the king’s wrath was to some extent removed, but his trust in the kaysar’s daughter was departed; while she, poor creature, was grieved and dazed at the loss of her son.
Now in the palace harem there was an old woman, who said to the queen: “How is it that I find thee sorrowful?” And the queen told the whole story, concealing nothing. The old woman was a heroine in the field of craft, and she answered: “Keep thy mind at ease: I will devise a stratagem by which the heart of the king will be pleased with thee, and every grief he has will vanish from his heart.” The queen said, that if she did so she should be amply rewarded. One day the old woman, seeing the king alone, said to him: “Why is thy former aspect altered, and why are traces of care and anxiety visible on thy countenance?” The king then told her all. The old woman said: “I have an amulet of the charms of Solomon, in the Syriac language, in the the writing of the jinn [genii]. When the queen is asleep do thou place it on her breast, and, whatever it may be, she will tell all the truth of it. But take care, fall thou not asleep, but listen well to what she says.” The king wondered at this, and said: “Give me that amulet, that the truth of this matter may be learned.” So the old woman gave him the amulet, and then went to the queen and explained what she had done, and said: “Do thou feign to be asleep, and relate the whole of the story faithfully.”
When a watch of the night was past, the king laid the amulet upon his wife’s breast, and she thus began: “By a former husband I had a son, and when my father gave me to this king, I was ashamed to say I had a tall son. When my yearning passed all bounds, I brought him here by an artifice. One day that the king was gone to the chase, I called him into the house, when, after the way of mothers, I took him in my arms and kissed him. This reached the king’s ears, and he unwittingly gave it another construction, and cut off the head of that innocent boy, and withdrew from me his own heart. Alike is my son lost to me and the king angry.” When the king heard these words he kissed her and exclaimed: “O my life, what an error is this thou hast committed? Thou hast brought calumny upon thyself, and hast given such a son to the winds, and hast made me ashamed!” Straightway he called the chamberlain and said: “That boy whom thou hast killed is the son of my beloved and the darling of my beauty! Where is his grave, that we may make there a guest-house?” The chamberlain said: “That youth is yet alive. When the king commanded his death I was about to kill him, but he said: ‘That queen is my mother; through modesty before the king she revealed not the secret that she had a tall son. Kill me not; it may be that some day the truth will become known, and repentance profits not, and regret is useless.’” The king commanded them to bring the youth, so they brought him straightway. And when the mother saw the face of her son, she thanked God and praised the Most High, and became one of the Muslims, and from the sect of unbelievers came into the faith of Islám. And the king favoured the chamberlain in the highest degree, and they passed the rest of their lives in comfort and ease.
This tale is also found in the Persian Bakhtyár Náma (or the Ten Vazírs), the precise date of which has not been ascertained, but a MS. Túrkí (Uygúr) version of it, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, bears to have been written in 1434; the Persian text must therefore have been composed before that date. In the text translated by Sir William Ouseley, in place of the daughter of the kaysar of Rome it is the daughter of the king of Irák whom the king of Abyssinia marries, after subduing the power of her father; and, so far from a present of jewels to her being the occasion of her mentioning her son, in the condition of a slave, it is said that one day the king behaved harshly to her, and spoke disrespectfully of her father, upon which she boasted that her father had in his service a youth of great beauty and possessed of every accomplishment, which excited the king’s desire to have him brought to his court; and the merchant smuggled the youth out of the country of Irák concealed in a chest, placed on the back of a camel. In Lescallier’s French translation it is said that the youth was the fruit of a liaison of the princess, unknown to her father; that his education was secretly entrusted to certain servants; and that the princess afterwards contrived to introduce the boy to her father, who was so charmed with his beauty, grace of manner, and accomplishments, that he at once took him into his service. Thus widely do manuscripts of the same Eastern work vary!
The King and his Seven Vazírs.
On the Eighth Night the Parrot relates, in a very abridged form, the story of the prince who was falsely accused by one of his father’s women of having made love to her, and who was saved by the tales which the royal counsellors related to the king in turn during seven consecutive days. The original of this romance is the Book of Sindibád, so named after the prince’s tutor, Sindibád the sage: the Arabic version is known under the title of the Seven Vazírs; the Hebrew, Mishlé Sandabar; the Greek, Syntipas; and the Syriac, Sindbán; and its European modifications, the Seven Wise Masters. In the Parrot-Book the first to the sixth vazírs each relate one story only, and the damsel has no stories (all other Eastern versions give two to each of the seven, and six to the queen); the seventh vazír simply appears on the seventh day and makes clear the innocence of the prince. This version, however, though imperfect, is yet of some value in making a comparative study of the several texts.
VI
THE TREE OF LIFE—LEGEND OF RÁJÁ RASÁLÚ—CONCLUSION.
Many others of the Parrot’s stories might be cited, but we shall merely glance at one more, as it calls up a very ancient and wide-spread legend: