282 BIBLIOGRAPHY OP FOLK-LORE.
palace like a madman. The fisherman had to supply a fish's heart for the king daily, but one day the princess would not let him go and said she would find a heart for him. So she sent a tray and a knife to her mad lover outside to get the heart, but he cut out his own heart and died. The heart was taken to the king, and on the table it said: "thou hast not fulfilled thy promise, nor hast thou given up thy fraud and tyranny and oppression;" on which the king ordered it to be placed in the street, that some one might explain what it meant. The poet Shekh Sa'adí passed by and said to it: "Being a lover thou shouldst suffer in silence." The poet then explained to the king what had happened, and when the princess heard of it she died of grief and was buried in her lover's grave.[1]
In the city of Khashkhásh there was a king named Mansúr, who had a Wazír called Khushhál, but they had no issue, till they met a durvesh who gave them an apple each to eat. After which the king begat a son named Lál, and the Wazír twins, boy and girl, named Mahmúd and Agar. The boys were spirited away by a Jinn called Lál Deo, and the girl, who was of a masculine temperament, succeeded to the throne as Prince Agar, in which capacity she subdued forty kings and, having learnt the arts of a jogí the Jinns also. She further learnt the art of flying through the air. Meanwhile Prince Lál was living comfortably with Lál Deo, who had married him to a lovely fairy named Máhparwar, and so was Agar's brother Mahmúd, to whom the Jinn had married his own daughter the Fairy Gulnár. One day the Prince Gul, son of Lál Deo, met the Princess Agar, dressed as a man, at the jogí's hut, learning the art of magic, and wanted to make
- ↑ This must be a variant of the well-known tale in the Alif Laila.
