the magician.  But he contrives to escape in the form of a crow and the magician pursues him for two days and nights in the form of a hawk, when he descends into the garden of the king whose daughter he had rescued from the magician, and changes himself into a pomegranate on a tree.  The magician asks for and receives the pomegranate, when it bursts, and the seed containing the life of Mohammed rolls under the king’s throne.  The magician changes himself into a cock, and picks up the seeds, but while he is searching for the last, it changes into a dagger, and cuts him in two.  The princess acknowledges Mohammed as her deliverer and they are married.

Ii.  Histoire de l’Ours de Cuisine.

This begins as a swan-maiden story.[FN#439] A king steals the feather-dress of a bathing maiden, who will only marry him on condition that she shall tear out the eyes of his forty women (39 white slaves and a princess).  The king answers, “C’est bien, il n’y a pas d’inconvenient.”  The forty blind women are shut up in a room under the kitchen, where they give birth to children whom they cut up and divide; but the princess saves her shares and thus preserves her son, whom she calls “Mohammed l’Avise,” and teaches to read.  He steals food from the kitchen, calling himself “Ours de Cuisine,” the queen hears of him, pretends to be ill, and demands that he shall be sent to fetch the heart of the Bull of the Black Valley.  He finds a Ghuleh sitting with her breasts thrown back on her shoulders so he tastes her milk unperceived, and she at once adopts him as her son.  She gives him a ball and a dagger, warning him that if he strikes the bull more than once, he will sink into the earth with him.  The ball rolls before him, and when it stops, the bull rises from the ground.  Mohammed kills him, refusing to repeat the blow, returns the ball and dagger to the Ghuleh, and returns home.  A few days afterwards, the queen sends Mohammed to fetch the heart of the Bull of the Red Valley, and when he informs the Ghuleh, she says “Does she wish to kill her second brother too?” “Are these her brothers ?” asked Mohammed.  She answered, “Yes, indeed, they are the sons of the Sultan of the Jann.”  He kills the Bull as before.  A fortnight afterwards, the queen hides a loaf of dry bread under her mattress.  When its cracking gives rise to the idea that she is very ill, and she complains of great pain in the sides.  She demands a pomegranate from the White Valley, where the pomegranates grow to the weight of half a cantar.[FN#440] The Ghuleh tells him she cannot help him, but he must wait for her son Adberrahym.  When he arrives he remarks, “Hum! mother, there’s a smell of man about you, bring him here to me to eat for breakfast.”  But his mother introduces Mohammed to him as his foster brother, and he becomes friendly at once, but says that the pomegranate is the queen’s sister.  He tells Mohammed to get an ardebb of small round loaves in a basket, along with a piece of meat, and a piece of liver.  The