Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 2
General
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights — Volume 3 (of 6) Part 2
Fairy tales; Tales -- Arab countries
avaricious brother, envious of his good luck, finds also many
parallels—_mutatis mutandis_—as in the story of the Magic Quern, already
referred to, and the Mongolian tale of the poor man and the Dakinis, the
14th Relation of Siddhí Kúr. Morgiana’s counter-device of marking all
the doors in the street, so that her master’s house should not be
recognised, often occurs, in different forms: in my work on Popular
Tales and Fictions, vol. ii. pp. 164, 165, a number of examples are
cited. The pretended merchant’s objecting to eat meat cooked with salt,
which fortunately aroused Morgiana’s suspicions of his real
character—for robber and murderer as he was, he would not be “false to
his salt”[159]—recalls an anecdote related by D’Herbelot, which may find
a place here, in conclusion: The famous robber Yacúb bin Layth,
afterwards the founder of a dynasty of Persian monarchs called
Soffarides, in one of his expeditions broke into the royal palace and
having collected a large quantity of plunder, was on the point of
carrying it off when his foot struck against something which made him
stumble. Supposing it not to be an article of value, he put it to his
mouth, the better to distinguish it. From the taste he found it was a
lump of salt, the symbol and pledge of hospitality, on which he was so
touched that he retired immediately without carrying away any part of
his booty. The next morning the greatest astonishment was caused
throughout the palace on the discovery of the valuables packed up and
ready for removal. Yacúb was arrested and brought before the prince, to
whom he gave a faithful account of the whole affair, and by this means
so ingratiated himself with his sovereign that he employed him as a man
of courage and ability in many arduous enterprises, in which he was so
successful as to be raised to the command of the royal troops, whose
confidence in and affection for their general induced them on the
prince’s death to prefer his interest to that of the heir to the throne,
from whence he afterwards spread his extensive conquests.
* * * * *
Since the foregoing was in type I discovered that I had overlooked
another German version, in Grimm, which preserves some features of the
Arabian tale omitted in the legend of The Dummburg:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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