Mar 23– From The Thousand and One Nights translated by William Lane and Stanley Lane-Poole
Summary: A bunch of guys with animals they claim to be related to trick a djinn into sparing a man's life.
Commentary: I generally enjoy the 1001 Nights stories when we get them. This is probably the least of the three we've had so far, but still decent. As I said in the first one, it gets meta pretty quickly, with the merchant using almost the same trick on the djinn (he accidentally killed his son when he tossed a date pit) that Scheherazade is using on the sultan.
O thou Jinni, and crown of the kings of the Jann, if I relate to thee the story of myself and this gazelle, and thou find it to be wonderful, and more so than the adventure of this merchant, wilt thou give up to me a third of thy claim to his blood?
He has 3 guys tell 3 stories, each asking for 1/3 of the claim. The first one starts like this.
THEN said the sheykh, Know, O ‘Efrit, that this gazelle is the daughter of my paternal uncle, and she is of my flesh and my blood. I took her as my wife when she was young, and I lived with her about thirty years; but I was not blessed with a child by her; so I took to me a concubine slave, and by her I was blessed with a male child, like the rising full moon, with beautiful eyes, and delicately-shaped eyebrows, and perfectly-formed limbs; and he grew up by little and little until he attained the age of fifteen years. At this period, unexpectedly had occasion to journey to a certain city, and went thither with a great stock of merchandise.
That's quite an opening! He eventually has a son with the concubine who his wife/gazelle turns into a cow.
The others aren't quite as exciting. The third one has three brothers bury some money. Unlike the time that happened in Christianity, they don't get punished for it.
The last thing of interest here is the bookends Scheherazade uses at the end of each night and tale.
Here Shahrazad perceived the light of morning, and discontinued the recitation with which she had been allowed thus far to proceed. Her sister said to her, How excellent is thy story! and how pretty! and how pleasant! and how sweet!—but she answered, What is this in comparison with that which will relate to thee in the next night, if I live, and the King spare me! And the King said, By Allah, I will not kill her until I hear the remainder of her story. Thus they pleasantly passed the night until the morning, when the King went forth to his hall of judgment, and the Wezir went thither with the grave-clothes under his arm: and the King gave judgment, and invested and displaced, until the close of the day, without informing the Wezir of that which had happened; and the minister was greatly astonished. The court was then dissolved; and the King returned to the privacy of his palace.
We get an editor's note about not including them after:
[On the second and each succeeding night, Shahrazad continued so to interest King Shahriyar by her stories as to induce him to defer putting her to death, in expectation that her fund of amusing tales would soon be exhausted; and as this is expressed in the original work in nearly the same words at the close of every night, such repetitions will in the present translation be omitted.]
On the one hand, it is a pretty long bumper. On the other, I think something like that can be good for the rhythm of a story, and I wonder if a shorter version that repeated would be more palatable.
But this, said Shahrazad, is not more wonderful than the story of the fisherman.
Ends the story, and similar phrases are at the end of other sections, so they remain at least.
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