Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/199

Rh edition the only known copy is at St. John's College, Cambridge. The earliest manuscript of the collection is dated 1326. Between 1600 and 1703 fifteen editions of the book prove its popularity. One English version is by Sir Frederick Madden, who lived 1801–73. The author of the Gesta Romanorum is unknown, but was likely a German. The stories included are miscellaneous and vary in different editions. Among its stories are Oriental tales, tales of the deeds of Roman Emperors, an early form of Guy of Warwick, the casket episode of The Merchant of Venice, a story of the Jew's bond, a tale of the Emperor Theodosius, being a version of King Lear, the story of the Hermit, and a tale of Aglas, the daughter of the Roman Emperor Pompey, being a version of Atalanta and her Race.

1000 A.D. (about). Shah-Nameh, or King-book of Persia, by Ferdousee, born about 940 A.D. This book is the pride and glory of Persian literature. It was written by the Persian poet at the command of the king, who wished to have preserved the old traditions and heroic glories of Persians before the Arabian conquest. Ferdousee declared that he invented none of his material, but took it from the Bostan-Nameh or Old-Book.

The King-Book is very ancient, it is the Persian Homer. It was the labor of thirty years. It consisted of 56,000 distichs or couplets, for every thousand of which the Sultan had promised the poet one thousand pieces of gold. Instead of the elephant-load of gold promised, the Sultan sent in payment 60,000 small silver coins. This so enraged the poet that