The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1, by Richard F. Burton

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Title: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1

Author: Richard F. Burton

Posting Date: December 3, 2010 [EBook #3435] Release Date: September, 2003 [This file was first posted on March 20, 2001]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS ***

Produced by J.C. Byers at [email protected]. Proofreaders were: J.C. Byers, Norm Wolcott, Dianne Doefler and Charles Wilson.

                        THE BOOK OF THE
                  THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT
                A Plain and Literal Translation
              of the Arabian Nights Entertainments

                  Translated and Annotated by
                       Richard F. Burton

VOLUME ONE

                    Inscribed to the Memory
                               of
                       My Lamented Friend
                  John Frederick Steinhaeuser,
                     (Civil Surgeon, Aden)
                              who
                   A Quarter of a Century Ago
                Assisted Me in this Translation.

"To the pure all things are pure" (Puris omnia pura)
                           - Arab Proverb.

"Niuna corrotta mente intese mai sanamente parole."
                           - "Decameron" - conclusion.

"Erubuit, posuitque meum Lucretia librum Sed coram Bruto. Brute!
reced, leget.
                           - Martial.

"Miculx est de ris que de larmes escripre, Pour ce que rire est le propre des hommes." - Rabelais.

"The pleasure we derive from perusing the Thousand and One
Stories makes us regret that we possess only a comparatively
small part of these truly enchanting fictions."
                           - Crichton's "History of Arabia."

Contents of the First Volume

Introduction
Story Of King Shahryar and His Brother
     a. Tale of the Bull and the Ass
1. Tale of the Trader and the Jinni
     a. The First Shaykh's Story
     b. The Second Shaykh's Story
     c. The Third Shaykh's Story
2. The Fisherman and the Jinni
     a. Tale of the Wazir and the Sage Duban
          ab. Story of King Sindibad and His Falcon
          ac. Tale of the Husband and the Parrot
          ad. Tale of the Prince and the Ogress
     b. Tale of the Ensorcelled Prince
3. The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad
     a. The First Kalandar's Tale
     b. The Second Kalandar's Tale
          ba. Tale of the Envier and the Envied
     c. The Third Kalandar's Tale
     d. The Eldest Lady's Tale
     e. Tale of the Portress
     Conclusion of the Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies
4. Tale of the Three Apples
5. Tale of Nur Al-din Ali and his Son
6. The Hunchback's Tale
     a. The Nazarene Broker's Story
     b. The Reeve's Tale
     c. Tale of the Jewish Doctor
     d. Tale of the Tailor
     e. The Barber's Tale of Himself
          ea. The Barber's Tale of his First Brother
          eb. The Barber's Tale of his Second Brother
          ec. The Barber's Tale of his Third Brother
          ed. The Barber's Tale of his Fourth Brother
          ee. The Barber's Tale of his Fifth Brother
          ef. The Barber's Tale of his Sixth Brother
     The End of the Tailor's Tale

The Translator's Foreword.

This work, labourious as it may appear, has been to me a labour of love, an unfailing source of solace and satisfaction. During my long years of official banishment to the luxuriant and deadly deserts of Western Africa, and to the dull and dreary half clearings of South America, it proved itself a charm, a talisman against ennui and despondency. Impossible even to open the pages without a vision starting into view; with out drawing a picture from the pinacothek of the brain; without reviving a host of memories and reminiscences which are not the common property of travellers, however widely they may have travelled. From my dull and commonplace and "respectable" surroundings, the Jinn bore me at once to the land of my pre-direction, Arabia, a region so familiar to my mind that even at first sight, it seemed a reminiscence of some by gone metem-psychic life in the distant Past. Again I stood under the diaphanous skies, in air glorious as aether, whose every breath raises men's spirits like sparkling wine. Once more I saw the evening star hanging like a solitaire from the pure front of the western firmament; and the after glow transfiguring and transforming, as by magic, the homely and rugged features of the scene into a fairy land lit with a light which never shines on other soils or seas. Then would appear the woollen tents, low and black, of the true Badawin, mere dots in the boundless waste of lion tawny clays and gazelle brown gravels, and the camp fire dotting like a glow worm the village centre. Presently, sweetened by distance, would be heard the wild weird song of lads and lasses, driving or rather pelting, through the gloaming their sheep and goats; and the measured chant of the spearsmen gravely stalking behind their charge, the camels; mingled with bleating of the flocks and the bellowing of the humpy herds; while the reremouse flitted overhead with his tiny shriek, and the rave of the jackal resounded through deepening glooms, and—most musical of music—the palm trees answered the whispers of the night breeze with the softest tones of falling water.

And then a shift of scene. The Shaykhs and "white beards" of the tribe gravely take their places, sitting with outspread skirts like hillocks on the plain, as the Arabs say, around the camp fire, whilst I reward their hospitality and secure its continuance by reading or reciting a few pages of their favourite tales. The women and children stand motionless as silhouettes outside the ring; and all are breathless with attention; they seem to drink in the words with eyes and mouths as well as with ears. The most fantastic flights of fancy, the wildest improbabilities, the most impossible of impossibilities, appear to them utterly natural, mere matters of every day occurrence. They enter thoroughly into each phase of feeling touched upon by the author: