Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 4 (of 6)
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 4 (of 6)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
Oxford and her education are thoroughly disappointing; but the
sorest point therein is that this sham University satisfies the
hapless Public, which knows nothing about its fainéance. It is a
mere stumbling-block in the way of Progress especially barring
the road to one of the main wants of English Education, a great
London University which should not be ashamed to stand by Berlin,
Paris and Vienna.
Had the good knight and "Pious Founder," Sir Thomas Bodley, who
established his library upon the ruins of the University
Bibliotheca wrecked by the "Reformation," been able to foresee
the condition of Oxford and her libraries?Bodleian and
Radcliffean?in this latter section of the XIXth century, he
would hardly, I should hope, have condemned English students and
Continental scholars to compulsory residence and labour in places
so akin to the purgatorial.
Appendix B.
THE THREE UNTRANSLATED TALES IN MR. E. J. W. GIBB'S "FORTY
VEZIRS."
THE THIRTY-EIGHTH VEZIR'S STORY.
(Page 353 of Mr. Gibb's translation.)
There was in the city of Cairo a merchant, and one day he bought
a slave-girl, and took her to his house. There was in his house
an ape; this the merchant fetched and dragged up to the
slave-girl. He said, "Yield thyself over to this, and I will set
thee free." The slave-girl did so of necessity, and she conceived
by him. When her time was come she bare a son all of whose
members were shaped like those of a man, save that he had a tail
like an ape. The merchant and the slave-girl occupied themselves
bringing up this son. One day, when the son was five or six
months old, the merchant filled a large cauldron with milk, and
lighted a great fire under it. When it was boiling, he seized the
son and cast him into the cauldron; and the girl began to lament.
The merchant said, "Be silent, make no lamentation; go and be
free;" and he gave her some sequins. Then he turned, and the
cauldron had boiled so that not even any bones were left. The
merchant took down the cauldron, and placed seven strainers, one
above the other; and he took the scum that had gathered on the
liquid in the cauldron and filtered it through the seven
strainers, and he took that which was in the last and put it into
a bottle. And the slave-girl bare in her heart bitter hatred
against the merchant, and she said in herself, "Even as thou hast
burned my liver will I burn thee;" and she began to watch her
opportunity. (One day) the merchant said to her, "Make ready some
food," and went out. So the girl cooked the food, and she mixed
some of that poison in the dish. When the merchant returned she
brought the tray and laid it down, and then withdrew into a
corner. The merchant took a spoonful of that food, and as soon as
he put it into his mouth, he knew it to be the poison, and he
cast the spoon that was in his hand at the girl. A piece, of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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