Reading Notes: Arabian Nights, Part A
Bibliography: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).
Scheherazade volunteers to be married to a Sultan who is killing his wife every morning. Her sister, Dinarzade, is sleeping in the same room as her and her new husband. Before the sun rises, Dinarzade wakes Scheherazade and asks her to tell a story. Scheherazade tells the story of a merchant who sits to eat dates and throws rocks around as he is doing so. Afterwards, he washes his hands and face in the fountain. A genius (genie) rushes up to him, ready to kill the merchant as he says the merchant killed his son. The merchant falls upon the ground, begging for mercy. Here, Scheherazade stops her story. The Sultan allows her to live so he can hear the rest of the story, thinking that he can always kill her tomorrow.
The next morning, Dinarzade wakes Scheherazade and asks her to finish her story. Scheherazade continues. The merchant asks for a change to go home and bid his wife and children farewell and get his affairs in order. He swears he will come back to the fountain so that the genius can kill him. After a year, the merchant goes back to the fountain and waits. While he is waiting, an old man leading a hind comes upon him. After hearing the merchant’s story, the old man decides to wait as well. Then, another old man walks up, with two black hounds. After hearing the story, he decides to wait with them. Another old man, not leading anything, walks up and hears the story. He decides to wait as well.
When the genius comes across them, the first old man leading the hind throws himself at the genie’s feet. He asks that the genie listen to his story, and if it is more marvelous to the genius than the merchant’s, then the genius will do away with a third part of the merchant’s punishment.
The merchant begins his story by saying the hind he leads everywhere is actually his wife. Because they could not have children of their own, the old man adopted the son of a ‘favorite slave’ and made him his heir. The wife was bitterly jealous and learned magic so that she could take the son and change him into a calf. She changed the mother into a cow and gave them both to the steward to take care of. When the old man came back from his journey, he was distraught to find that the slave was dead and his son was missing. At a feast, the old man is about to sacrifice the cow, but cannot. He orders the steward to do it instead. Finding that the cow was mostly bones, the old man ordered a calf brought instead. His son is brought, and the old man cannot kill him. A different calf is killed in his place. The steward’s daughter knows magic and reveals that the cow was the slave and the calf is the son of the old man. The old man asks her to change his son back. The daughter agrees, given that she becomes the son’s wife, and she is allowed to punish the old man’s wife. The old man agrees. The wife is changed into a female deer, a hind, and he leads her around in search of his son, who has since been widowed and gone traveling.
The genius granted one third of a pardon to the merchant, and the second old man stood up, saying that he will make the same deal with the genius in return for his story. The genius agrees.
The second old man begins his tale by telling the genius that he and the two black dogs are brothers. The oldest brother set out to begin traveling, only to return a year later as a beggar. The second brother set out to travel as well, only to return a year later in the same state as the oldest brother. The two brothers began pushing the old man (the third brother) to travel as well. At last he gives in. He divides three thousand sequins among them equally, and buries another three thousand in the corner of his house. While traveling, he meets a beautiful woman whom he eventually marries. However, the two brothers became jealous, and throw the wife and the third brother into the sea. The wife, being a faerie, saves the old man, and punishes his brothers by turning them into dogs for ten years.
The genius grants the merchant another third of a pardon, and the third old man, whose story Scheherazade does not know, gets the last third of the pardon for the merchant.
Scheherazade begins another story, the story of the Fisherman. There was once a fisherman who was having very bad luck. He could barely afford to support his wife and three children. One day, his nets scooped up a jar, with a large seal on the lid. The Fisherman decided that he would sell the jar and be able to provide for his family. When he opened it, there was nothing in it, and the Fisherman was quite perplexed. Then, a great cloud of smoke appeared and took the form of a monstrous genie. This genie threatens to kill the Fisherman, but the Fisherman asks the genie to tell him the story of how he came to be trapped in the jar. The genie, who has been stuck in the jar for over three centuries, has become quite bitter and has vowed to kill the person who frees him. The Fisherman pretends he does not believe the genie could fit in the jar, and the genie goes back into the jar to prove it. The Fisherman traps him there again, and threatens to throw him back in the ocean, and warn all the other Fisherman against retrieving the jar, or he will kill them. The Fisherman then says he will not let out the genie, because of the story of the Greek King and the Physician Douban.
There once was a King who was a leper. No physician had been able to cure him. One day, a physician came to court and told the King that if the King did exactly what he said, his leprosy would be cured. The physician took a polo club, hollowed out the handle, and put in a drug. Then, he took a ball and went back to the King. The physician told the King he wanted to play him at polo. The Physician told the King to play polo until his whole body glowed, and then take a bath and go to bed. When the King woke, his leprosy would be cured. The King did so, and when he woke, he was cured.
Now, this King had a grand-vizir who was quite jealous of the physician, and the status he now enjoyed. The grand-vizir tried to sow discord between the two, only to be rebuffed by the King. The King then tells the grand-vizir the story of the Husband and the Parrot.
Now, this Husband had a wife, whom he loved very dearly. When he had to leave, he bought her a parrot, who could speak and could also tell everything that he had seen. The wife kept the parrot in her rooms, and when the Husband got back, the parrot told on the wife. When the wife found out it was the parrot, she had slaves make the parrot think there was a storm, and therefore, the parrot did not see anything that night. When the parrot told the Husband he did not see anything because there was a storm, the Husband thought the parrot was lying. He threw it to the ground so hard it died.
And so the King told the grand-vizir that he would not listen turn on the Physician. The grand-vizir told the King that the Physician was planning to assassinate him, and if he was wrong, then he deserved to be punished as a vizir once was. And then the grand-vizir told the King the story of the Ogress.
There was a Prince who loved hunting. The King allowed his son to hunt, as long as the grand-vizir went with him to keep him safe. One day, the Prince chased after a stag, and got lost in the woods without the grand-vizir. He came across a beautiful woman, who was crying. The woman told the Prince she was the daughter of a King, and had gotten lost. The Prince boosted her onto his horse and set off. When they reached an abandoned building, the woman dismounted. The Prince followed her, only to overhear her promising her children that she had found a nice fat youth for them to eat. The Prince fled back to his horse, and the Ogress, seeing that she had lost her prey, told him how to find the road. When the Prince reached the castle, the King had the grand-vizir strangled for his carelessness.
The vizir told the King the Physician was an assassin once again (and because the King was ‘naturally weak’,), the King believed the vizir. The King sent for the Physician and told him he was going to take his life. The Physician told the King that he had a rare book he wanted the King to have, and if the King kept his head, the head would answer any question the King liked. The King did so, and then the head told the King to open the rare book. The King did so, turning the pages, sticking his finger in his mouth each time to ensure that the pages turned. Eventually, the poison on the pages sank in, and the King died.
The Fisherman says that is what the genie has tried to do to him, and the genie says that if the Fisherman lets him out, he will make the Fisherman rich. The genie took the Fisherman to a large lake between four hills and told him to cast his net. The Fisherman caught four fish—one white, one red, one yellow, and one blue. The genie told him to take the fish to the Sultan, and that he could return to the lake and cast his nets once a day, and he would be rich. Though if he cast his nets more than once, something horrible would befall him.
When the Sultan saw the fish, he, his men, and the Fisherman rode out to the lake. The Sultan determined that he was going to go alone and try to find something that explained the fish. Eventually, the Sultan came across a castle filled with finery and gold, and a young man sitting on a throne. The young man was marble from the waist down, and he told the Sultan that he would tell his story.
The young man was the King of the Black Isles, and the capitol was where the lake now lies. The King married his cousin, only to hear two of her maids talking about how the Queen did not love the King anymore, and could kill him, as she was an enchantress. When the King fatally wounded a ‘favorite slave’ of the Queen’s, the Queen turned him into a half marble, half flesh man. Then, she turned the isles into the four hills, and the capitol into the lake, and the people into the fish. Then, the King told the Sultan that the enchantress comes and beats him with a buffalo whip every day. The Sultan resolved to help free the King. The Sultan killed the slave, and laid down on the couch where the slave had been. After the enchantress beat the King, she came to see her ‘favorite slave’. The Sultan told the enchantress that he could not be better until she freed the King and the people in the lake. When she had done so, the Sultan killed her. The Sultan adopted the King and awarded the Fisherman much gold and riches.
Part A ends here.
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