Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/128

120 time, he returns to Kabul with his wife, escorted by Marids, who destroy King Kafid's army, though the king himself receives a contemptuous dismissal, his life being granted him at Shamssah's request. After this Janshah and his wife pass a pleasant life, spending one year at Kabul and another at the Castle of Jewels, till Shamssah is killed by a shark while bathing, and Janshah sits by her grave weeping for the rest of his days.

The story of Janshah, though purely Arab in its present form, is combined in the Arabian Nights with two other tales, those of Hasib and Bulukiya, which are very decidedly Indian in their characteristics.

The last of the tales on our list is the great prose epic of Hasan of Bassorah, one of the longest, most interesting, and most coherent of the tales of The Thousand and One Nights. Hasan is no prince but a poor goldsmith, who is drugged by a Persian fire-worshipper, and carried by a great bird to the summit of the Mountain of the Clouds, whence he flings down several bundles of wood to the expectant Magian, who, it is implied, uses them in the preparation of the philosopher's stone. From thence Hasan dives from a precipice into a lake, and, after swimming ashore, he arrives at a palace inhabited by seven damsels, the daughters of a powerful King of the Jinn. The youngest of the maidens adopts Hasan as her foster-brother, and he remains in the palace for some time, till the sisters are summoned to a wedding; and they depart for two months, giving Hasan their keys, and forbidding him to open one door. Within it he finds a staircase leading to the terraced roofs of the palace, with a view over the gardens, and he wanders over the roof till he reaches a splendid pavilion, in the midst of which is a great basin of water. Thither ten birds repair, not sisters, but a princess and her handmaids. Hasan's foster-sister recognises the former by description as the daughter of the supreme King of the Jinn. When the princess returns, Hasan steals her feather-dress, and, after waiting till her companions have flown away, he drags her into the palace by her hair—which Sir Richard Burton explains as a symbolic marriage by capture, thereby legalising their union. This may be correct, for the first impression conveyed by this proceeding, which is specially insisted upon by Hasan's foster-sister, is that of needless if not brutal violence. Hasan's beloved is told