In German folk-lore the story of the dog “Sultan” sounds as if it were
invented by some happy-souled humorist who had the Llewellyn motive in
his mind, but who wanted to tell a merry tale instead of a sad one.
“Sultan” is so old that his master wishes to kill him, though much
against the advice of his wife. So “Sultan” consults a wolf of his
acquaintance, who proposes the stratagem of pretending that he is going
to eat the good people’s child, while “Sultan” pretends to come up just
at the nick of time to save it. The plan is carried out with complete
success, and “Sultan” lives out his days surrounded by respect and
gratitude.
There are several Eastern tales which are of the same family as
Llewellyn’s hound, but in which the animal, instead of saving a child,
confers some other benefit on its possessor. In a Persian fable a king
kills his falcon because it spilled a cup of water which he is about to
drink: of course, the water was really poisoned. A current folk-tale of
Bengal makes a horse the victim of its devotion in preventing its master
from drinking poisonous water.
Rather different is the following Chinese tale, which is to be found,
told at more length, in Dr. Herbert H. Giles’s delightful book, “Strange
Stories from a Chinese Studio”:—
There was a man of Lu-ngan who had scraped together enough money to
release his father from prison, where he was like to die of all the
untold miseries of Chinese durance. He got on a mule and set out for the
town where his father was languishing, taking the silver with him. When
he was well on his way, he was much annoyed to see that a black dog
which belonged to the family was following him; he tried in vain to make
it go back. After riding on for some time, he got off the mule to rest
and he took the opportunity for throwing a large stone at the dog, which
ran away, but as soon as he was on the road again the dog trotted up and
took hold of the mule’s tail, as if trying to stop it. The man beat it
off with the whip, but it only ran round in front of the mule, and
barked frantically so as to impede its progress. The man now reflected,
“This is a very bad omen,” and he got fairly into a rage and beat the
dog off with such violence that it did not come back. So he continued
his journey without further incidents, but when he reached the city in
the dark of the evening, what was not his despair on finding about half
his money gone! He did not doubt that he must have dropped it on the
way, and after passing a night of terrible distress he remembered,
towards dawn, the strange way in which the dog behaved, and he began to
think that there might be some connexion between this and the loss of
his money. Directly the gates were open he retraced his steps along the
road, though he hardly hoped to find any clue to his loss, as the route
was traversed by many travellers. But at the spot where, on the previous
day he dismounted from his mule to rest, he saw the dog stretched dead
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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