Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/159

Rh would equally explain their presence in the Armenian, if this were an isolated addition. But as we find many similar additions in the Armenian we must reject it. Here is another example from the parable of the four boxes. In the Greek we read that the king closed the caskets containing the stinking bones of dead animals with golden clasps, while he bound round the pitch-besmeared box with ropes of hair. That exactly this detail is omitted both by the Armenian and by the old Arabic and Hebrew forms of the apologue can be no accident, because another detail in the story, namely that when the golden boxes were opened the magnates fled from the horrible stench, is omitted in the Greek, whereas the Armenian and the old Arabic and Hebrew forms agree in retaining it.

Again, in the apologue of the hunter and the bird the Armenian relates, that when the hunter let it go, the sparrow flew away and perched on a bough and then began to soar in the air. Now in the Greek text nothing is said about the bird's perching on a bough (Rehatzek, p. 148); but in the old Arabic text we read: "Then he let go the bird, which flew away and perched on a branch." It may also be noticed that in the Arabic and Armenian the bird is a sparrow, in the Greek a nightingale.

Again, early in the tale we read in the Greek that on the birthday festival of the newly-born heir there came together to the king about 50 picked men who had studied the star-gazing wisdom of the Chaldees. But the Armenian says: "he brought together 50 men who were astrologers and wise men." Here the Georgian also has: "He called together the multitude of astrologers and of philosophers and of magicians." In the old Arabic we read that the king "brought together the astrologers and the U'lama," which best reflects the Armenian. Like the Greek, the Armenian specifies that there were 50 of them, and then goes on to agree with the Arabic and Georgian in its description of them. One turns with curiosity to the speech of Nachovr in