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
Here the twelve wild men represent the forty robbers, and, as in Ali
Baba, it is the hero’s brother who falls a victim to his own cupidity.
In the Arabian tale the hero climbs up into a tree when he sees the
robbers approach; in The Dummburg he hides himself behind a tree to
watch the proceedings of the monk; and in Grimm’s version he hides in a
tree. On this last-cited story W. Grimm has the following note: “It is
remarkable that this story, which is told in the province of Münster, is
told also in the Hartz, about The Dummburg, and closely resembles the
Eastern story of ‘The Forty Thieves,’ where even the rock Sesam, which
falls open at the words Semsi and Semeli, recalls the name of the
mountain in the German saga. This name for a mountain is, according to a
document in Pistorius (3, 642), very ancient in Germany. A mountain in
Grabfeld is called Similes, and in a Swiss song a Simeliberg is again
mentioned. This makes us think of the Swiss word ‘Sinel,’ for ‘sinbel,’
round. In Meier, No. 53, we find ‘Open, Simson.’ In Pröhle’s ‘Märchen
für die Jugend,’ No. 30, where the story is amplified, it is
Simsimseliger Mountain. There is also a Polish story which is very like
it.” Dr. Grimm is mistaken in saying that in the Arabian tale the “rock
Sesam” falls open at the words Semsi and Semeli: even in his own
version, as the brother finds to his cost, the word Simeli does not open
the rock. In Ali Baba the word is “Simsim” (Fr. Sesame), a species of
grain, which the brother having forgot, he cries out “Barley.” The
“Open, Simson” in Meier’s version and the “Semsi” in Grimm’s story are
evidently corruptions of “Simsim,” or “Samsam,” and seem to show that
the story did not become current in Germany through Galland’s work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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