Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 6 (of 6)
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
they should disguise themselves and set out in search of the princess and her
children; and the wazir could not refuse. Meantime, the brother of the
princess had admitted to her father that he had not slain her, and they also
set out in search of her, taking the Kazi with them. They all met at the café,
where she recognised them, and offered to tell them a story. She related her
own, and was restored to her friends. They seized the Kazi and the wazir, and
sent for the old woman, when they burned them all three, and scattered their
ashes in the air.
VII.--Histoire du prince qui apprit un métier.
A prince named Mohammed l'Avisé went to seek a wife, and fell in love with the
daughter of a leek-grower. She would not accept him unless he learned a trade,
so he learned the trade of a silk weaver, who taught him in five minutes, and
he worked a handkerchief with the palace of his father embroidered upon it.
Two years afterwards, the prince and the wazir took a walk, when they found a
Maghrabi seated at the gate of the town, who invited them to take coffee. But
he was a prisoner (or rather a murderer) who imprisoned them behind seven
doors; and after three days he cooked the wazir, and was going to cook the
prince, but he persuaded him to take his handkerchief to market where it was
recognised, and the prince released from his peril. Two years later the king
died, and the prince succeeded to the throne. The latter had a son and
daughter, but he died when the boy was six and the girl eight, warning the boy
not to marry until the girl was married, lest his wife should ill-use her.
After two years the sister said, "Brother, if I show you the treasures of your
father and mother, what will you do?" He answered, "I will buy a slipper for
you and a slipper for me, and we will play with them among the stones." "No,"
said she, "you are still too little," and waited a year before she asked him
again. This time he answered, "I will buy a tambourine for you, and a flute
for myself and we will play in the street." She waited two more years, and
this time he answered, "We will use them to repair the water-wheels and my
father's palaces, and we will sow and reap." "Now you are big," said she, and
gave him the treasures, which he used to erect buildings in his father's
country. Soon afterwards, an old woman persuaded the youth to marry her
daughter; but she herself went into the mountains, collected eggs of the bird
Oumbar, which make virgins pregnant if they eat them, and gave them to the
sister. The old woman reported the result to the king, who visited his sister
to satisfy himself of the truth of the matter, and then left her, but sent her
food by a slave. When the sister's time came, four angels descended from
heaven, and took her daughter, bringing the child to her mother to be nursed.
The mother died of grief, and the angels washed and shrouded her and wept over
her; and when the king heard it, he opened the door, and the angels flew away
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