The Arabian Nights: Their Best-known Tales

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THE ARABIAN NIGHTS




THE
ARABIAN NIGHTS

THEIR BEST-KNOWN TALES

EDITED BY

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN
AND
NORA A. SMITH

ILLUSTRATED BY MAXFIELD PARRISH

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MCMIX

Copyright, 1909, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published October, 1909




PREFACE

_Little excuse is needed, perhaps, for any fresh selection from the
famous "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights," provided it be
representative enough, and worthy enough, to enlist a new army of
youthful readers. Of the two hundred and sixty-four bewildering,
unparalleled stories, the true lover can hardly spare one, yet there
must always be favourites, even among these. We have chosen some of the
most delightful, in our opinion; some, too, that chanced to appeal
particularly to the genius of the artist. If, enticed by our choice and
the beauty of the pictures, we manage to attract a few thousand more
true lovers to the fountain-book, we shall have served our humble turn.
The only real danger lies in neglecting it, in rearing a child who does
not know it and has never fallen under its spell._

_You remember Maimoune, in the story of Prince Camaralzaman, and what she
said to Danhasch, the genie who had just arrived from the farthest
limits of China? "Be sure thou tellest me nothing but what is true or I
shall clip thy wings!" This is what the modern child sometimes says to
the genies of literature, and his own wings are too often clipped in
consequence._

   _"The Empire of the Fairies is no more.
   Reason has banished them from ev'ry shore;
   Steam has outstripped their dragons and their cars,
   Gas has eclipsed their glow-worms and their stars."_

_Edouard Laboulaye says in his introduction to Nouveaux Contes Bleus:
"Mothers who love your children, do not set them too soon to the study
of history; let them dream while they are young. Do not close the soul
to the first breath of poetry. Nothing affrights me so much as the
reasonable, practical child who believes in nothing that he cannot
touch. These sages of ten years are, at twenty, dullards, or what is
still worse, egoists."_

_When a child has once read of Prince Agib, of Gulnare or Periezade,
Sinbad or Codadad, in this or any other volume of its kind, the magic
will have been instilled into the blood, for the Oriental flavour in the
Arab tales is like nothing so much as magic. True enough they are a vast
storehouse of information concerning the manners and the customs, the
spirit and the life of the Moslem East (and the youthful reader does not
have to study Lane's learned foot-notes to imbibe all this), but beyond
and above the knowledge of history and geography thus gained, there
comes something finer and subtler as well as something more vital. The
scene is Indian, Egyptian, Arabian, Persian; but Bagdad and Balsora,
Grand Cairo, the silver Tigris, and the blooming gardens of Damascus,
though they can be found indeed on the map, live much more truly in that
enchanted realm that rises o'er "the foam of perilous seas in faery
lands forlorn." What craft can sail those perilous seas like the book
that has been called a great three-decker to carry tired people to
Islands of the Blest? "The immortal fragment," says Sir Richard Burton,
who perhaps knew the Arabian Nights as did no other European, "will
never be superseded in the infallible judgment of childhood. The
marvellous imaginativeness of the Tales produces an insensible
brightness of mind and an increase of fancy-power, making one dream that
behind them lies the new and unseen, the strange and unexpected--in
fact, all the glamour of the unknown."_

_It would be a delightful task to any boy or girl to begin at the
beginning and read the first English version of these famous stories,
made from the collection of M. Galland, Professor of Arabic in the Royal
College of Paris. The fact that they had passed from Arabic into French
and from French into English did not prevent their instantaneous
popularity. This was in 1704 or thereabouts, and the world was not so
busy as it is nowadays, or young men would not have gathered in the
middle of the night under M. Galland's window and cried: "O vous, qui
savez de si jolis contes, et qui les racontez si bien, racontez nous en
un!"_

_You can also read them in Scott's edition or in Lane's (both of which,
but chiefly the former, we have used as the foundation of our text),
while your elders--philologists or Orientalists--are studying the
complete versions of John Payne or Sir Richard Burton. You may leave the
wiseacres to wonder which were told in China or India, Arabia or Persia,
and whether the first manuscript dates back to 1450 or earlier._

_We, like many other editors, have shortened the stories here and there,
omitting some of the tedious repetitions that crept in from time to time
when Arabian story-tellers were adding to the text to suit their
purposes._

_Mr.