Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/411

 REVIEWS.

Les Cent et Une Nuits. Traduites de I'Arabe. Par M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes. Paris: E. Guilnioto, 1911. 8vo,

pp. XV + 352.

Our first reference to the Thousand and One Nights by name dates back to the work of Masoudi in the tenth century, where it is said to be based on a Persian work. But existing manuscripts, as such, are not earlier than the fifteenth century, and are probably very different from the work referred to by Masoudi. The Htindred and One Nights, which is the work we have now to consider, is a smaller work on very similar lines, here translated from the colla- tion of four Maugrebin (Moroccan) manuscripts. Although they are modern, they probably come nearer to the original form of the Thousand and One Nights as known to Masoudi than does the great Modern Egyptian recension.

Nineteen tales are included in the Hundred and One Nights, of which, (apart from numerous casual resemblances in the others), five, including the Introduction, are practically the same as well- known tales of the Thousand and One Nights, the other four being Histoire du jeune marchand du Caire et de Merveille de Beaicte (Neamah and Noam) ; Histoire du roi, des septvisirs, de la favorite du fits du roi, et du sage Sindabad (The King and his Son and the Seven Vizirs) ; Histoire du chevald'ebene (The Magic Horse) ; and Histoire de la ville de Cuivre et des flacons de Saloffion (The City of Brass). The remainder are mostly short tales, several relating to adventures in strange regions, or to feats of Arab chivalry, — or its opposite, for the moral standard is not usually very high ; a princess dressed as a champion, and vanquished by a prince, at once murders her father, to marry the prince and raise him to the