Stories from the Arabian Nights retold by Laurence Housman with drawings by Edmund Dulac (London 1907)

by Laurence Housman

Stories from

The Arabian Nights

Retold by Laurence Housman

 

 

With Drawings by Edmund Dulac

 

Hodder and Stoughton
Publishers, London

All Rights Reserved

Printed in 1907

 

Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London

PREFACE

Scheherazadè, the heroine of the Thousand and one Nights, ranks among the great story-tellers of the world much as does Penelope among the weavers. Procrastination was the basis of her art; for though the task she accomplished was splendid and memorable, it is rather in the quantity than the quality of her invention—in the long spun-out performance of what could have been done far more shortly—that she becomes a figure of dramatic interest. The idea which binds the stories together is greater and more romantic than the stories themselves; and though, both in the original and in translation, the diurnal interruption of their flow is more and more taken for granted, we are never quite robbed of the sense that it is Scheherazadè who is speaking—Scheherazadè, loquacious and self-possessed, sitting up in bed at the renewed call of dawn to save her neck for the round of another day. Here is a figure of romance worth a dozen of the prolix stories to which it has been made sponsor; and often we may have followed the fortunes of some shoddy hero and heroine chiefly to determine at what possible point of interest the narrator could have left hanging that frail thread on which for another twenty-four hours her life was to depend.

Yes, the idea is delightful; and, with the fiction of Scheherazadè to colour them, the tales acquire a rank which they would not otherwise deserve; their prolixity is then the crowning point of their art, their sententious truisms have a flavour of ironic wit, their repetitions become humorous, their trivialities a mark of light-hearted courage; even those deeper indiscretions, which Burton has so faithfully recorded, seem then but a wise adaptation of vile means to a noble end. And yet we know that it is not so; for, as a matter of fact, the "Arabian Nights Entertainment" is but a miscellany gathered from various sources, of various dates, and passing down to us, even in its collocated form, under widely differing versions. None but scholars can know how little of the unadulterated originals has come into our possession; and only those whose pious opinions shut their eyes to obvious facts can object in principle to the simplification of a form which, from the point of view of mere story-telling, can so easily be bettered. Even the more accurate of the versions ordinarily available are full of abridgement, alteration, and suppression; and if you have to eliminate Scheherazadè and select your stories mainly with a view to illustration, then you have very largely done away with the reasons for treating tenderly that prolixity which in an impatient age tends to debar readers from an old classic.

And so, in the present version, whoever shall care to make comparison will find that the original material has been treated with considerable freedom in the direction of brevity, and with an almost uniform departure from the exact text, save where essentials of plot or character or local colour required a closer accuracy. In the case also of conflicting versions, there has been no reluctance to choose and combine in order to secure a livelier result; and a further freedom has sometimes been taken of giving to an incident more meaning and connexion than has been allowed to it in the original. That is, perhaps, the greatest licence of all, but it is the one that does least harm in formal result; for no one can read the majority of the tales in their accepted versions without perceiving that, as regards construction and the piecing of event with event, they are either incredibly careless or discreditably perfunctory. We have to reckon with them as the product of a race keenly alive to the value of colour and pictorial description, but a race whose constructive imagination was feeble and diffuse, lacking almost entirely that great essential for the development of art in its finer forms—the economy of means toward ends.

But because they contain, though at a low pressure, the expression of so much life, habit and custom, so many coloured and secluded interiors, so quaint a commingling of crowds, so brilliant and moving a pageantry of Eastern mediævalism, because of all these things the "Arabian Nights" will still retain their perennial charm. Those of us who read are all travellers; and never is our travelling sense so awakened perhaps, as when we dip into a book such as this where the incredible and the common-place are so curiously blended, and where Jinn and Efreet and Magician have far less interest for us now than the silly staring crowds, and the bobbing camels in the narrow streets, and Scheherazadè spinning her poor thin yarn of wonders that she may share for another night the pillow of a homicidal maniac.

CONTENTS

	PAGE
The Fisherman and the Genie	1
The Story of the King of the Ebony Isles	17
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves	31
The Story of the Magic Horse	66
The Story of the Wicked Half-Brothers	100
The Story of the Princess of Deryabar	111

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Scheherazadè, the heroine of the Thousand and One Nights	Frontispiece
	Page
2. And there in its midst stood a mighty Genie	2
3. When having brought into submission all the rest of my race	4
4. No sooner had the monarch seen them, so strange of form and so brilliant and diverse in hue	9
5. Thereupon the damsel upset the pan into the fire	10
6. Recalling the fisherman by a swift messenger.	10
7. He arrived within sight of a palace of shining marble	14
8. The Queen of the Ebony Isles	17
9. Supposing me asleep, they began to talk	17
10. The cup of wine which she gives him each night contains a sleeping-draught	18
11. She went on to vent her malice upon the city and islands	22
12. Began to heap upon me terms of the most violent and shameful abuse	22
13. Thus by her wicked machinations the city became a lake	22
14. Great was the astonishment of the Vizier and the Sultan's escort	27
15. Their chief in a low but distinct voice uttered the two words "Open Sesame!"	32
16. Ali Baba departed for the town a well satisfied man	34
17. As soon as he came in she began to jeer at him	36
18. Greater still was the exultation of a greedy nature like that of Cassim's	38
19. Mustapha doubted much of his ability to refrain from question	43
20. This way and that she led him blindfold	44
21. Having transformed himself by disguise	46
22. "Sir," said he, "I have brought my oil a great distance to sell to-morrow"	51
23. She poured into each jar in turn a sufficient quantity of the boiling oil to scald its occupant to death	54
24. When Morgiana, who had remained all this time on the watch	56
25. Then for the last figure of all she drew out the dagger	63
26. At so arrogant a claim all the courtiers burst into loud laughter	68
27. As he descended, the daylight in which hitherto he had been travelling faded from view	72
28. He saw black eunuchs lying asleep	73
29. She gave orders for a rich banquet to be prepared	75
30. Till the tale of her mirror contented her	76
31. She cried: "O miserable man, what sorry watch is this that thou hast kept"	77
32. All this time the Princess had been watching the combat from the roof of the palace	84
33. In the garden of the summer palace all was silence and solitude	85
34. Sat by the lake and solaced themselves sweetly with love	85
35. It was in vain that all the wisest physicians in the country were summoned into consultation	93
36. For many months he travelled without clue	94
37. And ever with the tears falling down from her eyes she sighed and sang	96
38. There appeared before him an old man of venerable appearance	100
39. Pirouzè, the fairest and most honourably born	101
40. Reaching his farthest wounded the giant in the knee	107
41. The lady advanced to meet him	107
42. A city among the Isles named Deryabar	111
43. Presently in the distance he perceived a light	111
44. The ship struck upon a rock	115
45. And presently, feeling myself lifted by men's hands	115
46. The Princess of Deryabar	119
47. She found to her grief the place where Codadad had lain left vacant	121
48. She and her companion arrived at the city of Harran	123
49. And taking her hand he led her to the apartments of the Queen Pirouzè	127
50. After these, maidens on white horses, with heads unveiled, bearing in their hands baskets of precious stones	129