Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/91

 ws.m.jAx.28,1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

71

THE ENVIED FAVOURITE. (10 th S. ii. 505.)

ALL students of folk-lore will be grateful to MR. KUMAGUSU MINAKATA for furnishing what is apparently the earliest version of the incident which may be termed ' The Foul Breath ' occurring in the above well-known story. The following references to various Eastern and Western sources I give from a collection of notes made for a work on the subject of the origin and diffusion of the tales in Boccaccio's ' Decameron,' which I hope may some day see the light, and which may perhaps be useful to the readers of <N. &Q.'

The incident is found in the old 'Conte Devot,' ' D'un Roi qui voulpit faire bruler le Fils de son Senechal,' which is printed by Meon in his ' Nouveau Recueil de Fabliaux et Oontes Inedits des XII., XIII., XIV., et XV. Siecles,' 2 vols., Paris, 1823, vol. ii. p. 331, and of which an abstract is given by Legrand in his 'Fabliaux ou Contes,' tc., third ed., 1829, vol. v. p. 56. Here the master of the king's sons causes enmity with the king, who has adopted the son of the seneschal, by telling the youth that the king complained of his breath, and that when he served the king he must turn his head. He does so, and the king, noticing his altered demeanour, asks of the master the cause ; he is informed that the youth is obliged to do so owing to his (the king's} offensive breath, as the youth alleged. The king accordingly resolves to have him burnt to death, &c.

It is also found to the same effect in the old Italian collection of stories called the ' Cento Novelle Antiche, 1 but only in the edition of Borghini of 1572, where it forms the sixty-eighth. It does not occur in the edition of Gualterrazi, and was apparently taken by Borghini from ' Libro di Miracoli di nostra Donna' to make up the number of the 'Novelle' to 100. (See 'Le Novelle Antiche,' edited by Guido Biagi, Firenze, 1880, p. 245.)

We also find it told of the Emperor Martin and his nephew Fulgentius in No. 98 of the English ' Gesta Romanorum,' of which an analysis will be found in Douce's 'Illustra- tions to Shakespeare,' p. 565 of the edition in one volume, 1839. The story itself may be found in the introduction to Swan's trans- lation of the Latin text at p. 1 of the edition in one volume published in " Bohn's Library " ; and it forms the seventieth of the English 'Gesta' as edited by Herrtage for the Early

English Text Society, and is also given in Latin in Oesterley's edition of the ' Gesta,' where it is No. 283, appendix 87, p. 688, in the notes to which, p. 749, will be found a large number of parallels for which no space can be found here, and most of which relate, not to the particular incident of the offensive breath, but only to the story of the treacherous man who. seeking to encompass the death of some one else, is himself killed.

It is also stated to be in the ' Summa Pre- dicantia' of Bromyard, 'Invidia,' I. vi. 26, and in the ' Liber de Donis ' of Etienne de Borbonne, the references to which I am unable at present to check. Clouston, in his 'Popu- lar Tales and Fictions,' vol. ii. p. 444, states that it is in the ' Anecdotes Chretiennes de 1'Abbe Reyre '; and Douce, in his ' Illustra- tions,' &c., refers to the ' Patraiias de Timo- neda,' pat. 17, and says it is reproduced by Minsheu in his address before his ' Spanish Grammar,' 1623. The above references I regret I am unable at the moment to verify.

It also forms an incident in the 'Nugse Curialium' of Walter Mapes, ob. 1182, ' De Contrarietate Parii et Lausi,' dist. iii. cap. iii. pp. 124-31 of the edition of that work by Wright, published for the Camden Society, 1850.

It is told very shortly in ' Dialogus Crea- turum,' dial. 120, of Nicolaus Pergamenus, an Italian physician of Milan, named May no de' Mayneri, born between 1290 and 1295. (See an article by Pio Rajna in the Giornale Storico delta Litteratura Italiana, iii. i. x. 42, and afterwards published separately under the title of 'Intorno al Cosidetto Dialogus Creaturum ed al suo Autore,' Turin, 1888; see also p. Ixxxiv of 'Exempla' of Jacques de Vitry, edited by T. F. Crane, 1890.)

It will be found at p. 276 of the edition of Diebeiden altesten lateinischenFabelbiicher des Mittelalters, des Bischofs Cyrillus Specu- lum Sapientine und des Nicolaus Pergamenus Dialogus Creaturum, herausgegeben von Dr. J. C. Th. Graesse," 1880 (Stuttgart, Litter. Vereins). Here it is told of the emperor's tailor, who says the barber complains of the emperor's breath when he is shaving the latter.

The tale also belongs to the East, for it is the lady's twenty-second tale in the collec- tion of tales called ' The Forty Vazirs of Sheykh-Zada ' (p. 239 of the complete trans- lation in English by E. J. W. Gibb, 18F6). Here the king is told that his favourite courtier said that he had leprosy, in proof of which he would see that the courtier avoided the king's breath. The next day the courtier is given a dish flavoured with garlic, and told