Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/206

 198 all students of folk-lore. The members of the Society know full well from Comparetti's Treatise on Sindibad the position held by this remarkable cycle of stories, and as Sir William Ouseley's translation of the Bakhtyār Nama has become extremely scarce it is particularly fortunate that we should at this juncture be able to place Mr. Clouston's edition side by side with the Sindibad. The Bakhtyār Nama is founded upon the false accusation by ten viziers of the favourite of the king Bakhtyār. He saves himself from execution by the relation of stories apropos to his own situation, and the ten viziers counteract his stories by stories of their own. At the last Bakhtyār is discovered to be the son of the king, having been left as an infant by the side of a well and adopted by robbers. Thus there is the same framework as in the Sindibad. One cannot help reading these stories quite independently of their folk-lore value, because they possess all the charm and interest which generally accompanies Eastern romance. Mr. Clouston, however, leaving the stories to speak for themselves, has added a most useful and valuable appendix of notes illustrative of the manners and customs referred to in these tales. Such notes direct attention to the archaic origin of some of the story incidents and hence to the stories themselves. It is very remarkable what a life these stories have had; and the western world no doubt owes much of its romantic literature to these wonderful productions of the east. Standing as this country does in such close connection with one great home of romance, India, it becomes the duty, as it would very soon become the pleasure, of the cultured and the studious to learn as much as scholars can produce of this great body of eastern literature.

A valuable collection of 109 Servian, Bosnian, Croatian, and other South Slavonic tales and traditions, translated into German from the following printed and MS. sources: 18 from the collection of Vuk Vrcevic, originally published in the Slovinac, a Ragusa Magazine; 19 from Valjavec's Narodne pripojedke skupio u i oko Varazdina,