ALAEDDIN AND THE ENCHANTED LAMP.[1]
There[2] was [once] in a city of the cities of China a man, a tailor and poor, and he had a son by name Alaeddin, who was perverse and graceless from his earliest childhood. When he came to ten years of age, his father would fain have taught him his own craft, for that, because he was poor, he could not spend money upon him to have him taught [another] trade or art[3] or the like;[4] so he carried him to his shop, that he might teach him his craft of tailoring; but, forasmuch as the lad was perverse and wont still to play with the boys of the quarter,[5] he would not sit one day in the shop; nay, he would watch his
- ↑ El kendil el meshhour. The lamp is however more than once mentioned in the course of the tale by the name of “wonderful” (ajib, see post, p. 88, note 4) so familiar to the readers of the old version.
- ↑ Night DXIV.
- ↑ Ilm.
- ↑ Khilafahu, lit. “the contrary thereof;” but the expression is constantly used (instead of the more correct gheirahu) in the sense of “other than it,” “the like,” etc.
- ↑ Or “street-boys” (auladu ’l hhareh).
