Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/199

 Rh him these three bits of advice: (1) "Set not out on a journey till thou have found a good fellow-traveller; for the Apostle of God [i.e., Mahommed] has said, 'The companion, then the road.' (2) Light not in a waterless place. (3) Enter great cities when the sun is rising."

After a time the cobbler finds some suitable travelling companions, and they set out. One day, in the afternoon, they approach Aleppo, and the cobbler, remembering the third advice of the darivesh, refuses to accompany them into the city, but his companions go on, leaving him to shift for himself without the walls. The rest of the story is analogous to the tale of "Ghanim", the slave of love, in the Arabian Nights, and both have probably been derived from a tale in an old version of the story-book, entitled Kissa-i Chehár Darivesh (Story of the Four Dervishes), written by Amir Khusrau, who died A.D. 1324, a Hindustani version of which, entitled Bagh o Bahár (Garden and Spring), was made early in the present century.

It is very evident that the Turkish tale is a compound of a story of three maxims, and the Persian story from which the Arabian tale of "Ghanim" was also adapted; and that the first part is imperfect, since we do not find that the hero profited by the first and second maxims of the darivesh, while in observing the third his life was not in danger. Moreover, we are not told that the hero's companions had cause to regret entering the city. I conclude, therefore, that the Turkish compiler had a confused recollection of the story of the "Three Maxims", and prefixed as much of it as he knew to what is elsewhere a distinct story of a youth, outside a city after dark, discovering two men enter a cemetery carrying a great box between them; his resuscitating an inanimate lady they had there buried; his concealing her, and so on. I had almost omitted to mention that this tale forms one (or part of one) of the Persian tales of the "Thousand and One Days" (Hazár ú Yek Rúz), said to have been compiled by a darivesh called Mukhlis of Ispahan, a work which was partly done into French early