Mendicant in The Arabian Nights[1] It is too well known to require any recapitulation of incidents; and the variants with which I am acquainted follow it so closely that they will not detain us long. The story as a whole, in its motive and details, is of a very different character from that of most of the types we have previously considered: perhaps the nearest approach to it is that of Marya Morevna. The horse discovered within the forbidden chamber may remind us of The Teacher and his Scholar, and Scabby John. But there, except for the Forbidden Chamber itself, the resemblance ceases. The hero is ruled by fate from end to end of his story; and it is not simply curiosity which overcomes him and severs him from the life he had found so agreeable. This may be due to the Mohammedan colouring in which the tale appears in The Thousand and One Nights. The same predestination reappears, however, in a version given by Signor Nerucci,[2] as told at Montale, in Tuscany. I confess that all Signor Nerucci's tales display a fulness of detail, and an artistic polish which convey a certain suspicion to my mind. But they are received as genuine in Italy, and the story referred to is, in particular, stamped with the acceptance of Signor Comparetti by his admission of it into his collection. Its identity (I cannot call it similarity) with the Arabian story is most striking; for, with the omission of the lodestone-rock, and a few unimportant variations, it follows the exact course of The Third Royal Mendicant. We may make what allowance we will for literary adornment by the collector; nothing short of absolute disbelief in the genuineness of his stories as folk-tales will get rid of this remarkable unity; and this short and easy method seems closed to us. The tale may, of course, have been, and probably was, imported into the neighbourhood of Pistoja from some of the Moorish conquerors of southern Italy; but, if so, it is somewhat strange that Pitré should not have found it surviving in Sicily. In any case its form, as well as its spirit, is so thoroughly oriental that it is impossible to believe it has been domesticated in Europe for a very long period.
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THE FORBIDDEN CHAMBER.
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