men, and over rice you are so finical as to eat it with a pin!” The wife is so enraged at learning that her husband knows of her doings that she goes to the water-bucket, fills a small bottle from it, and having muttered certain words over the water flings it upon him and he instantly becomes transformed into a dog.  A provision merchant sees him running about, and takes and sets him on his counter.  When the people come to buy provisions the dog examines the money to see if it be good, and the false coin he throws on the ground.  One day a man comes to buy bacon and offers false coin.  The provision merchant refuses to take it; they dispute over the matter, and it is referred to the dog, who throws the money on the ground.  The man is astonished, and returning home tells his wife, who at once says that the dog is not a dog, and desires her husband to bring her the animal that she may see it.  The man returns to the provision merchant and begs him to lend him the dog for a little while, and takes it home.  The wife, who is a companion of the wife of him who has been changed into a dog, and understands witchcraft, fills a bottle with water, pronounces certain words over it, and throws the water upon the dog, who immediately becomes a man again, and she advises him to do to his wife as she had done to him, and imparts the secret to him.  As soon as he returns home he fills the bottle with water from the bucket, says the words he had learned, and throws the water over his wife, who becomes a mare.  He drives her out of the house and beats her as flax is beaten.  To every one who asks why he is thrashing the mare he tells his story, and the people say, “Serve her right!” This goes on for some time.  At last, when the husband sees that his wife has voided enough foam from the mouth, with another dash of water he changes her back to her proper form, and henceforward she eats whatever is set before her, obeys her husband in all things, and never goes out by night again.  So they live long, happy and contented.

This version from the Abruzzi so closely resembles the story of Sidi Nu’man that we should perhaps be justified in concluding it to have been directly derived from Galland’s Nights, in the absence of any Venetian version, which might well have been imported independently from the East, but however this may be, the story in Galland bears unquestionable internal evidence that it is a genuine Arabian narrative, having nothing peculiarly European in its details.

A somewhat similar story is quite familiar to me, but I cannot at present call to mind whether it occurs in a Persian collection or in The Nights, in which the woman going out when she thinks her husband asleep, the latter follows her to a hut at some distance which she enters, and peeping into the hut, he sees a hideous black give her a severe beating for not coming sooner, while she pleads that she could not venture to quit the house until her husband was sound asleep.