Princess Blanche, of Castile, and transmitted by her to France about 1275.  This romance must have traveled to Spain from the East.  It is the same as “The Enchanted Horse” in The Thousand and One Nights, and through Keightley’s proof, is originally Persian.  Keightley also selected the Straparola tale, The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Beautiful Green Bird, and proved it to be the same as Grimm’s Three Little Birds, as a Persian Arabian Night’s tale, and also as La Princesse Belle Etoile, of D’Aulnoy.  But as Galland’s translation appeared only the year after Madame D’Aulnoy’s death, Madame D’Aulnoy must have obtained the tale elsewhere than from the first printed version of Arabian Nights.

     No date. The Thousand and One Days.  This is a Persian
     collection containing the “History of Calaf.”

1550. Straparola’s Nights, by Straparola.  This collection of jests, riddles, and twenty-one stories was published in Venice.  The stories were taken from oral tradition, from the lips of ten young women.  Some were agreeable, some unfit, so that the book was forbidden in Rome, in 1605, and an abridged edition prepared.  There was a complete Venetian edition in 1573, a German translation in 1679, a French one in 1611, and a good German one with valuable notes, by Schmidt, in 1817.  Straparola’s Nights contained stories similar to the German The Master Thief, The Little Peasant, Hans and the Hedge-Hog, Iron Hans, The Four Brothers, The Two Brothers, and Dr. Know-all.

1637. The Pentamerone, by Basile.  Basile spent his early youth in Candia or Crete, which was owned by Venice.  He traveled much in Italy, following his sister, who was a noted singer, to Mantua.  He probably died in 1637.  There may have been an earlier edition of The Pentamerone, which sold out.  It was republished in Naples in 1645, 1674, 1714, 1722, 1728, 1749, 1788, and in Rome in 1679.  This was the best collection of tales formed by a nation for a long time.  The traditions were complete, and the author had a special talent for collecting them, and an intimate knowledge of dialect.  This collection of fifty stories may be looked upon as the basis of many others.  Basile wrote independently of Straparola, though a few tales are common to both.  He was very careful not to alter the tale as he took it down from the people.  He told his stories with allusions to manners and customs, to old stories and mythology.  He abounds in picturesque, proverbial expressions, with turns and many similes, and displays a delightful exuberance of fancy.  A valuable translation, with notes, was written by Felix Liebrecht, in 1842, and an English one by John Edward Taylor, in 1848.  Keightley, in Fairy Mythology, has translated three of these tales and in Tales and Popular Fictions, two tales.  Keightley’s were the first translations of these tales into