Turkish Literature; Comprising Fables, Belles-lettres, and Sacred Traditions
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Turkish Literature; Comprising Fables, Belles-lettres, and Sacred Traditions
Turkey -- Literary collections; Turkish literature -- Translations into English
“When the youth returned with the clothes he found not the woman there,
and he cried and asked of the passers-by. No one had seen her. The poor
man, asking and asking, met the prince’s servants. These asked the
tailor why he wept. He replied, ‘For a time my wife was dead; but now,
praise be to God, she is become alive through the prayer of the
messenger Jesus; I went to fetch her clothes, but she has disappeared:
therefore do I weep.’ They answered, ‘The prince sent that lady to the
palace this day.’ Thereupon the tailor went before the prince and
complained, saying, ‘The woman thou hast taken is my wife.’ The prince
asked the lady, she denied and said, ‘This is the robber who stripped me
of my clothes and made off; praise be to God, if thou kill him now, thou
shalt gain great reward.’ The prince commanded that they bound both the
tailor’s hands behind his back. Although the poor tailor cried aloud, it
was no avail; they put a rope round his neck and led him to the gallows.
“Then they perceived Saint Jesus on the road, and they waited. When he
came near he asked of their case, and they told him. Then he bade them
stop and went himself to the prince; they called the woman, and he said,
‘This woman is the wife of yonder youth; I prayed and she became alive.’
When the woman saw the messenger she was unable to deny, but spake the
truth. Jesus (peace on him!) prayed again, and that woman died; and the
youth was rescued from the abyss whereinto he had fallen, and he
repented of his having wept so long a time.
“Now, O king, I have told this story for that thou mayst know that the
inclinations of women are ever to works of evil, craft, and wickedness.”
And he kissed the ground and made intercession for the prince’s life.
When the king heard this story from the vezir he sent the prince to the
prison, and went himself to the chase.
In the evening he returned from the chase and came to the palace, and
the lady rose to greet him, and they sat down. After the repast the lady
fell to speaking about the youth. The king said, “To-day such an one of
my vezirs made intercession for him, so I have again sent him to the
prison.” Quoth the lady, “O king, thou dost not believe my words; but at
length, in the near future, some hurt will befall thee from the youth;
for this night I saw a vision, which it is, as it were, a duty on me to
tell my king, and incumbent on thee to hear.” Said the king, “Tell on,
let us hear.” The lady said, “This night thou wast holding in thy hand a
golden ball, and that ball was adorned and set round with rubies and
jewels, and its brilliancy lit up the world; and thou wast playing,
throwing up the ball and catching it in thy hand. And this youth was
sitting by thy side watching, and ever and anon he asked for the ball,
but thou gavest him it not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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