Page:Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp.djvu/29

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xix

of the difficulty (or rather impossibility) of obtaining a perfect copy of the work; whereupon Hanna (as he always calls him) appears to have volunteered to help him to fill the lacune by furnishing him with suitable Oriental stories for translation in the same style as those already rendered by him and then and there (says Galland) “told me some very fine Arabian tales, which he promised to put into writing for me.” There is no fresh entry on the subject till May 5 following, when (says Galland) “The Maronite Hanna finished telling me the tale of the Lamp.”[1]

Hanna appears to have remained in Paris till the autumn of the year 1709 and during his stay, Galland’s Diary records the communication by him to the French savant of the following stories, afterwards included in the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth volumes of the latter’s translation, (as well as of several others which he probably intended to translate, had he lived,)[2] i.e. (May 10, 1709) “Baba Abdalla” and “Sidi Nouman,” (May 13, 1709) “The Enchanted Horse,” (May 22,

  1. i.e. Aladdin.
  2. Galland died in 1715, leaving the last two volumes of his translation (which appear by the Diary to have been ready for the press on the 8th June, 1713) to be published in 1717.