The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Volume 01Anonymous
General
The Arabian Nights Entertainments - Volume 01
Anonymous
Arabs -- Folklore; Fairy tales; Folklore -- Arab countries
This smoke mounted as high as the clouds, and extending itself
along the sea, and upon the shore, formed a great mist, which, we
may well imagine, did mightily astonish the fisherman. When the
smoke was all out of the vessel, it reunited itself, and became a
solid body, of which there was formed a genie twice as high as
the greatest of giants. At the sight of a monster of such
unsizeable bulk, the fisherman would fain have fled, but was so
frightened that he could not go one step.
Solomon, cried the genie immediately, Solomon, the great prophet,
pardon, pardon; I will never more oppose your will: I will obey
all your commands.--Scheherazade, perceiving it day, broke off
her story.
Upon which Dinarzade said, Dear sister, nobody can keep their
promise better than you can keep yours. This story is certainly
more surprising than the former. Sister, replies the sultaness,
there are more wonderful things yet to come, if my lord the
sultan will allow me to tell them you. Schahriar had too great a
desire to hear out the story of the fisherman to deprive himself
of that pleasure, and therefore put off the sultaness's death
another day.
The Tenth Night.
Dinarzade called her sister next night when she thought it was
time, and prayed her to continue the story of the fisherman; and
the sultan being also impatient to know what concern the genie
had with Solomon, Scheherazade continued her story thus;
Sir, the fisherman, when he heard these words of the genie,
recovered his courage, and says to him, Thou proud spirit, what
is this that you talk? it is above eighteen hundred years since
the prophet Solomon died, and we are now at the end of time: Tell
me your history, and how you came to be shut up in this vessel.
The genie, turning to the fisherman with a fierce look, says, You
must speak to me with more civility; thou art very bold to call
me a proud spirit. Very well, replies the fisherman, shall I
speak to you with more civility, and call you the owl of good
luck? I say, answers the genie, speak to me more civilly, before
I kill thee. I have only one favour to grant thee. And what is
that, says the fisherman? It is, answers the genie, to give you
your choice in what manner you wouldst have me to take thy life.
But wherein have I offended you, replies the fisherman? Is this
the reward for the good service I have done you. I cannot treat
you otherwise, says the genie; and that you may be convinced of
it, hearken to my story.
I am one of those rebellious spirits that opposed themselves to
the will of Heaven; all the other genies owned Solomon, the great
prophet, and submitted to him. Sacar and I were the only genies
that would never be guilty of so mean a thing: And, to avenge
himself, that great monarch sent Asaph, the son of Barakia, his
chief minister, to apprehend me. That was accordingly done; Asaph
seized my person, and brought me by force before his master's
throne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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