husband cannot but believe that he has left her at home, and she will be so apparelled that he cannot recognise her.  This plan is accordingly carried out.  The lover asks the husband for the hand of his niece in marriage, to which he joyously consents, and without knowing it makes a present of his own wife.  “All his life long the lover possessed her, because the husband gave and did not lend her; nor could he ever get her back.”

Le Grand mentions that this fabliau is told at great length in the tales of the Sieur d’Ouville, tome iv. p. 255.  In the “Facetiae Bebelianae,” p. 86, three women wager which of them will play the best trick on her husband.  One causes him to believe he is a monk, and he goes and sings mass, the second husband believed himself to be dead, and allows himself to be carried to that mass on a bier; and the third sings in it quite naked.  (There is a very similar story in Campbell’s “Popular Tales of the West Highlands.”) It is also found, says Le Grand, in the “Convivales Sermones,” tome i. p. 200, in the “Delices de Verboquet,” p. 166; and in the Facetiae of Lod.  Domenichi, p. 172.  In the “Comes pour Rire,” p. 197, three women find a diamond, and the arbiter whom they select promises it, as in the fabliau, to her who concocts the best device for deceiving her husband, but their ruses are different.

End of Supplemental Nights Volume 2.

Arabian Nights, Volume 12
Footnotes

[FN#1] Bresi.  Edit., vol. xi. pp. 321-99, Nights dccccxxx-xl.

[FN#2] Arab.  “Iklim” from the Gr. {Greek}, often used as amongst us (e.g. “other climes”) for land.

[FN#3] Bibars whose name is still famous and mostly pronounced “Baybars,” the fourth of the Baharite Mamelukes whom I would call the “Soldans.”  Originally a slave of Al-Salih, seventh of the Ayyubites, he rose to power by the normal process, murdering his predecessor, in A. D. 1260; and he pushed his conquests from Syria to Armenia.  In his day “Saint” Louis died before Tunis (A.  D. 1270).

[FN#4] There are sundry Sahils or shore-lands.  “Sahil Misr” is the River-side of Cairo often extended to the whole of Lower Egypt (vol. i. 290):  here it means the lowlands of Palestine once the abode of the noble Philistines; and lastly the term extends to the sea-board of Zanzibar, where, however, it is mostly used in the plur.  “Sawahil"=the Shores.

[FN#5] Arab.  “Sammar” (from Samar,=conversatio nocturna),=the story-teller who in camp or house whiles away the evening hours.

[FN#6] “Flag of the Faith:”  Sanjar in old Persian=a Prince, a King.

[FN#7] “Aider of the Faith.”