Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/124

116 forbidding him to open a particular door, within which he finds a winged horse which carries him back to the first palace, where it whisks out his eye with its tail, and the eleven one-eyed men banish him from their company. This story is distinguished from the others by the hero losing an eye, and by his falling in love with forty damsels at once. The heroes of all the other tales of this class content themselves with one bride only. I do not discuss the remainder of the Third Kalandar's story, as it has little or no connection either with forbidden doors or with any of the other stories which relate to them. In the stories of Janshah and Hasan we have far more elaborate developments, nor do the heroes encounter any calamity which they are unable to surmount, if we except the death of Shamssah at the end of Janshah's adventures. The story of Janshah again introduces us to a prince, who, like Seyf El Mulook in The Thousand and One Nights, and the Prince of Kharezm in The Forty Vezirs, is predestined from his birth to hardship and wandering. (The Traveller's Tales of The Thousand and One Nights form a large and highly interesting series, one or two of which touch upon our present subject.) I have already mentioned that Von Hammer's version of this tale is unintelligible ; but there is positive proof that it does not exist in its original form even in the genuine text of The Nights, for we find Janshah boasting to Bulukiya that he has "looked upon our lord Solomon in his life," though, when he comes to tell his story, it turns out that he has merely visited the courts of Solomon's vice-gerents. Janshah was the prince of Kabul, a city second to none in the glories of Eastern romance ; for here Rudabeh was wooed by Zal, and became the mother of Rustem. Janshah's adventures begin by his being driven out to sea with a few attendants. In The Nights, most if not all the voyages seem to be coasting voyages, and if the vessel is once driven out of sight of land, or upon a coast unknown to the captain and crew, every one is at fault ; but Janshah was simply cruising about in a fishing-boat. Once out of their reckoning, Janshah and his men sail from island to island and meet with various adventures. On one island they find cannibal