According to the many versions of this popular story in Europe and Asia, it would seem that its origin originally was of Buddhist extraction. In our common English version of "Aladdin," in "The Arabian Nights," which was taken from Galland's French version, it is doubtless an Eastern picture. It does not occur, however, in any known Arabian text (says Mr. Clouston, in "Popular Tales," and to whose work I am indebted for much of the information for this chapter) of "The Thousand and One Nights" (_Elf Laila wa Laila_), although the chief incidents are found in many Asiatic fictions, and it had become orally current in Greece and Italy before it was published by Galland. A popular Italian version, which presents a close analogy to the familiar story of "Aladdin" (properly "_Alá-u-d-Din_," signifying "Exaltation of the Faith") is given by Miss M.H. Busk, in her "Folklore of Rome," under the title of "How Cajusse was married." A good natured looking old man one day knocks at the door of a poor tailor out of work; his son, opening the door, is told by the old man that he is his uncle, and he gives him half a piastre to buy a good dinner. When the tailor comes home--he was absent at the time--he is surprised to hear the old man claim him as a brother, but finding him so rich he does not dispute the matter. After the old man had lived some time with the tailor and his family, literally defraying all the household expenses, he finds it necessary to depart, and with the tailor's consent takes the boy Cajusse with him, in order that he may learn some useful business. But no sooner do they get outside the town than he tells Cajusse that it is all a dodge. "I'm not your uncle," he says, "I want a strong, daring boy to do something I am too old to do. I'm a wizard--don't attempt to escape for you can't." Cajusse, not a bit frightened, asks him what it is he wants him to do; and the wizard raises a flat stone from the ground, and orders him to go down, and after he gets to the bottom of the cave to proceed until he comes to a beautiful garden, where he will see a fierce dog keeping watch. "Here's bread for him. Don't look back when you hear sounds behind you. On a shelf you will see an old lantern; take it down, and bring it to me." So saying the wizard gave Cajusse a ring, in case anything awkward should happen to him after he had got the lantern, when he had only to rub the ring, and wish for deliverance. Cajusse finds precious stones hanging like frost from the trees in the garden underground, and he fills his pocket with them. Returning to the entrance of the cave, he refuses to give up the lantern till he has been drawn out; so the wizard thinking merely to frighten him replaces the stone. Cajusse finding himself thus entrapped rubs the ring, when instantly the Slave of the Ring appears, and the youth at once orders the table to be laid for dinner. He then calls for his mother and father, and they all have an unusually good meal.