Four of Straparola’s fables are slightly altered versions of four of the stories in the “Thousand and One Nights,”[9] which, as it will scarcely be necessary to remark, were not translated into any European language till Galland brought out his work at the beginning of the eighteenth century. One of these, the third Fable of the fourth Night, is substantially the same as the story of the Princess Parizade and her envious sisters, given in Galland’s translation. To account for this close resemblance we may either assume that Galland may have looked at Straparola’s fable, or that Straparola may have listened to it from the mouth of some wandering oriental or of some Venetian traveller recently come back from the East—the tale, as he heard it, having been faithfully taken from the same written page which Galland afterwards translated. Another one, the story of the Three Hunchbacks—the third Fable of the fifth Night—has less likeness to the original, and has been imitated by Gueulette in his “Contes Tartares.” The treatment of the story of the Princess Parizade by Straparola furnishes an illustration to prove that, bad as his style was, he was by no means deficient in literary skill and taste. He brings into due prominence the wicked midwife, who is _particeps criminis_ with the queen-mother and the sisters in the attempted murder of the children, and who has on this account full and valid motive for acting as she did, seeing that interest and self-preservation as well would have prompted her to compass their destruction. On the other hand, in the Arabian tale it is hard to understand why the female fakir should have been led to persuade the princess to send her brothers off on their quest. Again, in the fable of Prince Guerrino[10] Straparola has displayed great ingenuity in weaving together a good story out of some half dozen of the widely-known fairy motives, any one of which might well have been fashioned into a story by itself.