As regards the Legend itself, which shows such a curious mixture of Christian and Parsi elements, it is related some 350 years earlier by Mas’udi:  “In the Province of Fars they tell you of a Well called the Well of Fire, near which there was a temple built.  When the Messiah was born the King Koresh sent three messengers to him, the first of whom carried a bag of Incense, the second a bag of Myrrh, and the third a bag of Gold.  They set out under the guidance of the Star which the king had described to them, arrived in Syria, and found the Messiah with Mary His Mother.  This story of the three messengers is related by the Christians with sundry exaggerations; it is also found in the Gospel.  Thus they say that the Star appeared to Koresh at the moment of Christ’s birth; that it went on when the messengers went on, and stopped when they stopped.  More ample particulars will be found in our Historical Annals, where we have given the versions of this legend as current among the Guebers and among the Christians.  It will be seen that Mary gave the king’s messengers a round loaf, and this, after different adventures, they hid under a rock in the province of Fars.  The loaf disappeared underground, and there they dug a well, on which they beheld two columns of fire to start up flaming at the surface; in short, all the details of the legend will be found in our Annals.”  The Editors say that Mas’udi had carried the story to Fars by mistaking Shiz in Azerbaijan (the Atropatenian Ecbatana of Sir H. Rawlinson) for Shiraz.  A rudiment of the same legend is contained in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy.  This says that Mary gave the Magi one of the bands in which the Child was swathed.  On their return they cast this into their sacred fire; though wrapt in the flame it remained unhurt.

We may add that there was a Christian tradition that the Star descended into a well between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  Gregory of Tours also relates that in a certain well, at Bethlehem, from which Mary had drawn water, the Star was sometimes seen, by devout pilgrims who looked carefully for it, to pass from one side to the other.  But only such as merited the boon could see it.

(See Abbott in J.  R. G. S. XXV. 4-6; Assemani, III. pt. 2, 750; Chardin, II. 407; N. et Ext. II. 465; Dict. de la Perse, 2, 56, 298; Cathay, p. 51; Mas’udi, IV. 80; Greg.  Turon.  Libri Miraculorum, Paris, 1858, I. 8.)

Several of the fancies that legend has attached to the brief story of the Magi in St. Matthew, such as the royal dignity of the persons; their location, now in Arabia, now (as here) at Saba in Persia, and again (as in Hayton and the Catalan Map) in Tarsia or Eastern Turkestan; the notion that one of them was a Negro, and so on, probably grew out of the arbitrary application of passages in the Old Testament, such as:  “Venient legati ex Aegypto:  AETHIOPIA praevenit manus ejus Deo” (Ps.