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. Andrew Lang says amusingly that he has left out of his special versions “all the pieces that are suitable only for Arabs and old gentlemen,” and we have done the same; but we have taken no undue liberties. We have removed no genies nor magicians, however terrible; have cut out no base deed of Vizier nor noble deed of Sultan; have diminished the size of no roc’s egg, nor omitted any single allusion to the great and only Haroun Alraschid, Caliph of Bagdad, Commander of the Faithful, who must have been a great inspirer of good stories.
Enter into this “treasure house of pleasant things,” then, and make yourself at home in the golden palaces, the gem-studded caves, the bewildering gardens. Sit by its mysterious fountains, hear the plash of its gleaming cascades, unearth its magic lamps and talismans, behold its ensorcelled princes and princesses.
