Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/131

Rh Shawahi then return to their own country, while Hasan and his family pursue their journey to the palace of the princesses. Here they rest awhile; and Abd El Kuddoos begs the talismans for himself and Abu-r-Ruweysh. Hasan's sister reproaches Menar-es-Sena with deserting her husband, and she answers with a laugh, "Whoso beguileth folk, him shall Allah beguile." Sir Richard Burton explains this as an allusion to Hasan having stolen her feather-dress; but I understand it rather to refer to her own desertion of her husband, and to the illtreatment she afterwards experienced from her sister.

Scott's MS., in addition to the story of Hasan of Bassorah, contains an abridgment (translated in vol. vi. of his Arabian Nights, and included in my own New Arabian Nights) under the title of "Mazin of Khorassaun." It differs little, except in length, and in some of the details of the journeys, and in the account of the talismans. Gauttier's French translation, and Habicht's German translation, which is derived from it, give Scott's story under the title of "Azem and the Queen of the Genii."

I might have mentioned that when the hero arrived at the palace of the princesses he finds two of them playing at chess—but chess is frequently mentioned in the Arabian Nights.

In the latter part of my paper I fear I have wandered a little from my main subject; but I have used it partly as a peg on which to hang various notes connected with the series of Arabian stories of forbidden doors, and I hope they have not been found altogether uninteresting.

While I was engaged on this paper, Mr. Nutt kindly referred me to Mr. Sidney Hartland's paper on the "Forbidden Chamber" (Folk-Lore Journal, vol. iii. pp. 193-242); but I found that Mr. Hartland had taken a different line to mine, and that it was unnecessary for me to remodel my own essay. I was, however, much interested to find the abstract of a story quoted by Hartland, p. 223, from Spitta Bey's Contes Arabes Modernes (a book which I had not seen), which is clearly derived from the same source as Chavis and Cazotte's story of the Maugraby, proving that Gauttier was quite wrong in supposing that the latter was based upon the rather bald and uninteresting story of Prince Benazir (Compare Gauttier, Mille et une Nuits, vol. vii.