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
She deserted him, and he found two date-trees, one bearing red and the other
yellow dates. On eating a yellow date, a horn grew from his head[FN#443] and
twisted round the two date-trees. A red date removed it. He filled his
pockets, and travelled night and day for two months.[FN#444] He cried dates
out of season, and the princess bought sixteen yellow ones, and ate them all;
and eight [sixteen ?] horns grew from her head, four to each wall. They could
not be sawn off, and the king offered his daughter to whoever could remove
them. When the musician's son married the princess, and became wazir, he said
to his bride, "Where is my carpet, &c." She replied, "Is it you?" "Yes," said
he, "Is my trick or yours the best?" She admitted that she was beaten, and
they lived together in harmony.
X.--Histoire du rossignol chanteur.
Three brothers built a palace for their mother and sister after their father's
death. The sister loved someone of whom the brothers disapproved. An old woman
advised the sister to send her brothers for the singing nightingale. The two
eldest would not wait till the bird was asleep, but while they were trying to
shut his cage, he dusted sand over them with his claws, and sunk them to the
seventh earth. The beads and the ring gave warning of their deaths at home;
but the third, who left a rose with his mother, to fade if he died captured
the bird, and received sand from under the cage. When he scattered it on the
ground, more than a thousand men rose up, some negroes and some Turks. The
brothers were not among them, so the youngest was told to scatter white sand,
when 500 more people emerged, including the brothers. Afterwards the eldest
brother was sitting in his ship when a Maghrebi told him to clean his turban;
which his mother interpreted to mean that his sister had misconducted herself,
and he should kill her. He refused, and fled with her to the desert. Hearing
voices, he entered a cave where thirty nine robbers were dividing rations; and
he contrived to appropriate a share, and then to return it when missed; but as
he was detected, he gave himself out as a fellow-robber, engaged himself to
them, and watching his opportunity, slew them. Afterwards he brought his
sister two young lions. She found a wounded negro in the cave, whom she
nursed, and after having had two children by him, plotted against her brother.
She pretended to be ill, and sent him to find the grapes of Paradise. He met a
Ghúleh who gave him a ball which directed him to Paradise, and he returned
safely. Then his sister sent him for the Water of Life when the two young
lions followed him, and he could not drive them back. After travelling for a
year the brother reached the Sea of the Water of Life, and while resting under
a tree heard two pigeons telling each other that the king's daughter was ill,
and every doctor who failed to restore her was put to death, and she could
only be cured by the Water of Life. "Mohammed l'Avisé" filled two bottles and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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