to the staircase, and has covered her without spitting upon her.”  The King went and met Arab Zandyk and asked, “Why have you covered her?” Said she, “Give orders that she be conducted to the bath, cleansed, and dressed in a royal robe, after which I will relate her history.”  The King gave the required orders, and when she was decked in a royal robe they conducted her into the divan.  Then said the King to Arab Zandyk, “Tell me now the history.”  Said she, “Listen, O King, the fisherman will speak,” and then Arab Zandyk said to the fisherman, “Is it true that your wife gave birth to Muhammed and his sister at one time or at separate times?” He replied, “My wife has no children.”  “Where, then did you get them?” Quoth he, “I went one morning to fish, and found them in a box on the bank of the river.  I took them home, and my wife brought them up.”  Arab Zandyk then said, “Hast thou heard, O King?” and turning to his wife, “Are these thy children, O woman?” Said she, “Tell them to uncover their heads that I may see them.”  When they uncovered their heads, they were seen to have alternately hair of gold and hair of hyacinth.  The King then asked her, “Are these thy children?” “Tell them to weep:  if it thunders and rains, they are my children, and if it does not thunder or rain, they are not mine.”  The children wept, and it thundered and rained.  Then he asked her again, “Are these thy children?” And she said, “Tell them to laugh:  if the sun and moon appear, they are my children.”  They told them to laugh, and the sun and moon appeared.  Then he asked her once more, “Are these thy children?” and she said, “They are my children!” Then the King appointed the fisherman vazir of his right hand, and commanded that the city be illuminated for forty whole days; on the last day he caused his other wife and the old witch (the midwife) to be led out and burnt, and their ashes to be dispersed to the winds.

The variations between this and Galland’s story are very considerable, it must be allowed, and though the fundamental outline is the same in both, they should be regarded as distinct versions of the same tale, and both are represented by Asiatic and European stories.  Here the fairy Arab Zandyk plays the part of the Speaking-Bird, which, however, has its equivalent in the preceding tale (No. x.) of Spitta Bey’s collection: 

A man dies, leaving three sons and one daughter.  The sons build a palace for their sister and mother.  The girl falls in love with some one who is not considered as an eligible parti by the brothers.  By the advice of an old woman, the girl asks her brothers to get her the singing nightingale, in hope that the bird would throw sand on them and thus send them down to the seventh earth.  The eldest before setting out on this quest leaves his chaplet with his younger brother, saying that if it shrank it would be a token that he was dead.  Journeying through the desert some one tells him that many persons have been lost