he eloped with Na’uzah, the daughter of his master, and presently when broiling a fish found therein his missing property.  In the Moslem version, Solomon had taken prisoner Aminah, the daughter of a pagan prince, and had homed her in his Harem, where she taught him idolatry.  One day before going to the Hammam he entrusted to her his signet- ring presented to him by the four angelic Guardians of sky, air, water and earth when the mighty Jinni Al-Sakhr (see vol. i. 41; v. 36), who was hovering about unseen, snatching away the ring, assumed the king’s shape, whereby Solomon’s form became so changed that his courtiers drove him from his own doors.  Thereupon Al-Sakhr, taking seat upon the throne, began to work all manner of iniquity, till one of the Wazirs, suspecting the transformation, read aloud from a scroll of the law:  this caused the demon to fly shrieking and to drop the signet into the sea.  Presently Solomon, who had taken service with a fisherman, and received for wages two fishes a day, found his ring and made Al-Sakhr a “Bottle-imp.”  The legend of St. Kentigern or Mungo of Glasgow, who recovered the Queen’s ring from the stomach of a salmon, is a palpable imitation of the Biblical incident which paid tribute to Caesar.

[FN#93] The Magician evidently had mistaken the powers of the Ring.  This is against all probability and possibility, but on such abnormal traits are tales and novels founded.

[FN#94] These are the Gardens of the Hesperides and of King Isope (Tale of Beryn, Supplem.  Canterbury Tales, Chaucer Soc. p. 84):—­

          In mydward of this gardyn stant a feire tre
          Of alle manner levis that under sky be
          I-forgit and i- fourmyd, eche in his degre
          Of sylver, and of golde fyne, that lusty been to see.

So in the Katha (S.  S.) there are trees with trunks of gold, branches of pearls, and buds and flowers of clear white pearls.

[FN#95] The text causes some confusion by applying “Sullam” to staircase and ladder, hence probably the latter is not mentioned by Galland and Co., who speak only of an escalier de cinquante marches.  “Sullam” (plur.  “Salalim”) in modern Egyptian is popularly used for a flight of steps:  see Spitta-Bey’s “Contes Arabes Modernes,” p. 70.  The H. V. places under the slab a hollow space measuring four paces (kadam = 2.5 feet), and at one corner a wicket with a ladder.  This leads to a vault of three rooms, one with the jars of gold; the second not to be swept by the skirts, and the third opening upon the garden of gems.  “There thou shalt see a path, whereby do thou fare straight forwards to a lofty palace with a flight of fifty steps leading to a flat terrace:  and here shalt thou find a niche wherein a lamp burneth.”

[FN#96] In the H.V. he had thrust the lamp into the bosom of his dress, which, together with his sleeves, he had filled full of fruit, and had wound his girdle tightly around him lest any fall out.