feature, who play on sweet- toned instruments which discourse heart-ravishing strains of melody;—­meanwhile the beauteous Peri Banu is seated on a throne adorned with diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and pearls and other gems, and by her side is the thrice-happy Prince Ahmad, who feels himself amply indemnified for the loss of his fair cousin Princess Nur-en-Nihar.  Auspicious was that day when he shot the arrow which the enamoured Peri Banu caused to be wafted through the air much farther than arm of flesh could ever send the feathered messenger!  And when the Prince feels a natural longing to visit his father in the land of mortals from time to time, behold the splendid cavalcade issue from the portals of the fairy palace—­the gallant jinn-born cavaliers, mounted on superb steeds with gorgeous housings, who accompany him to his father’s capital.  But alas! the brightest sky is sooner or later overcast—­human felicity is—­etc., etc.  The old king’s mind is poisoned against his noble son by the whisperings of a malignant and envious minister—­a snake in the grass—­a fly in the ointment of Prince Ahmad’s beatitude!  And to think of the old witch gaining access to the fairy palace—­ it was nothing less than an atrocity!  And the tasks which she induces the king to set Prince Ahmad to perform—­but they are all accomplished for him by his fairy bride.  The only thing to regret—­the fatal blemish in the tale—­is the slaughter of the old king.  Shabbar did right well to dash into the smallest pieces the wicked vazir and the foul witch and all who aided and abetted them, but “to kill a king!” and a well-meaning if soft-headed king, who was, like many better men, led astray by evil counsellors!

Having thus blown off the steam—­I mean to say, having thus ventilated the enthusiasm engendered by again reading the tale of Prince Ahmad and the Peri Banu, I am now in a fitter frame of mind for the business of examining some versions and variants of it, for though the tale has not yet been found in Arabic, it is known from the banks of Ganga to the snow-clad hills and vales of Iceland—­that strange land whose heart is full of the fiercest fires.  This tale, like that of Zayn al-Asnam, comprises two distinct stories, which have no necessary connection, to wit, (1) the adventures of the Three Princes, each in quest of the rarest treasure, wherewith to win the beautiful Princess Nur-en-Nihar; and (2) the subsequent history of the third Prince and the Peri Banu.  The oldest known form of the story concludes with the recovery of the lady—­not from death’s door, but from a giant who had carried her off, and the rival claims of the heroes to the hand of the lady are left undecided:  certainly a most unsatisfactory ending, though it must be confessed the case was, as the priest found that of Paddy and the stolen pullet, somewhat “abstruse.”  In the “Vetalapanchavinsati,” or Twenty-five Tales of a Vampyre (concerning which collection see Appendix to the preceding volumes, p. 230), the fifth recital is to this purpose: