casket of silver.  He ordered her to cook it, but told her that if anybody else ate a piece, he would rip him up.  The musician’s son came in, while the fowl was cooking, and as his mother would not give him any, he seized the gizzard, and ate it, when one of the slaves warned him to fly before the arrival of the Jew.  The Jew pursued the boy, and would have killed him, but the latter took him up with one hand, and dashed him to pieces on the ground.  The musician’s son continued his journey, and arrived at a town where thirty-nine heads of suitors who had failed to conquer the princess in wrestling, were suspended at the gate of the palace.  On the first day the youth wrestled with the princess for two hours without either being able to overcome the other; but during the night the king ordered the doctors to drug the successful suitor, and to steal the talisman.  Next morning when the youth awoke, he perceived his weakness, and fled.  Presently he met three men quarrelling over a flying carpet, a food-producing cup, and a money mill.  He threw a stone for them to run after and transported himself to Mount Kaf, where he made trial of the other talismans.  Then he returned to the palace, called to the princess to come down to wrestle with him, and as soon as she stepped on the carpet, carried her away to Mount Kaf, when she promised to restore the gizzard, and to marry him.  She deserted him, and he found two date-trees, one bearing red and the other yellow dates.  On eating a yellow date, a horn grew from his head[FN#443] and twisted round the two date-trees.  A red date removed it.  He filled his pockets, and travelled night and day for two months.[FN#444] He cried dates out of season, and the princess bought sixteen yellow ones, and ate them all; and eight [sixteen ?] horns grew from her head, four to each wall.  They could not be sawn off, and the king offered his daughter to whoever could remove them.  When the musician’s son married the princess, and became wazir, he said to his bride, “Where is my carpet, &c.”  She replied, “Is it you?” “Yes,” said he, “Is my trick or yours the best?” She admitted that she was beaten, and they lived together in harmony.

X.—­Histoire du rossignol chanteur.

Three brothers built a palace for their mother and sister after their father’s death.  The sister loved someone of whom the brothers disapproved.  An old woman advised the sister to send her brothers for the singing nightingale.  The two eldest would not wait till the bird was asleep, but while they were trying to shut his cage, he dusted sand over them with his claws, and sunk them to the seventh earth.  The beads and the ring gave warning of their deaths at home; but the third, who left a rose with his mother, to fade if he died captured the bird, and received sand from under the cage.  When he scattered it on the ground, more than a thousand men rose up, some negroes and some Turks.  The brothers were not among them, so the youngest was told to scatter white