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土耳其

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Once upon a time that was no time there were two brothers. Their father
and mother had died and divided all their property between them. The
elder brother opened a shop, but the younger brother, who was but a
feather-brain, idled about and did nothing; so that at last, what with
eating and drinking and gadding abroad, the day came when he had no more
money left. Then he went to his elder brother and begged a copper or two
of him, and when that all was spent he came to him again, and so he
continued to live upon him.

At last the elder brother began to grow tired of this waste, but seeing
that he could not be quit of his younger brother, he turned all his
possessions into sequins, and embarked on a ship in order to go into
another kingdom. The younger brother, however, had got wind of it, and
before the ship started he managed to creep on board and conceal
himself without any one observing him. The elder brother suspected that
if the younger one heard of his departure he would be sure to follow
after, so he took good care not to show himself on deck. But scarcely
had they unfurled the sails when the two brothers came face to face, and
the elder brother found himself saddled with his younger brother again.

The elder brother was not a little angry, but what was the use of
that!--for the ship did not stop till it came to Egypt. There the elder
brother said to the younger brother: “Thou stay here, and I will go and
get two mules that we may go on further.” The youth sat down on the
shore and waited for his brother, and waited, but waited in vain. “I
think I had better look for him,” thought he, and up he got and went
after his elder brother.

He went on and on and on, he went a short distance and he went a long
distance, six months was he crossing a field; but once as he looked over
his shoulder, he saw that for all his walking he walked no further than
a barley-stalk reaches. Then he strode still more, he strode still
further, he strode for half a year continuously; he kept plucking
violets as he went along, and as he went striding, striding, his feet
struck upon a hill, and there he saw three youths quarrelling with one
another about something. He soon made a fourth, and asked them what they
were tussling about.

“We are the children of one father,” said the youngest of them, “and our
father has just died and left us, by way of inheritance, a turban, a
whip, and a carpet. Whoever puts the turban on his head is hidden from
mortal eyes. Whoever extends himself on the carpet and strikes it once
with the whip can fly far away, after the manner of birds; and we are
eternally quarrelling among ourselves as to whose shall be the turban,
whose the whip, and whose the carpet.”

“All three of them must belong to one of us,” cried they all. “They are
mine, because I am the biggest,” said one.--“They are mine by right,
because I am the middling-sized brother,” cried the second.--“They are
mine, because I am the smallest,” cried the third. From words they
speedily came to blows, so that it was as much as the youth could do to
keep them apart.

“You can’t settle it like that,” said he; “I’ll tell you what we’ll do.
I’ll make an arrow from this little piece of wood, and shoot it off. You
run after it, and he who brings it to me here soonest shall have all
three things.” Away flew the dart, and after it pelted the three
brothers, helter-skelter; but the wise youth knew a trick worth two of
that, for he stuck the turban on his head, sat down on the carpet,
tapped it once with the whip, and cried: “Hipp--hopp! let me be where my
elder brother is!” and when he awoke a large city lay before him.

He had scarce taken more than a couple of steps through the street, when
the Padishah’s herald came along, and proclaimed to the inhabitants of
the town that the Sultan’s daughter disappeared every night from the
palace. Whoever could find out what became of her should receive the
damsel and half the kingdom. “Here am I!” cried the youth, “lead me to
the Padishah, and if I don’t find out, let them take my head!”

So they brought the fool into the palace, and in the evening there lay
the Sultan’s daughter watching, with her eyes half-closed, all that was
going on. The damsel was only waiting for him to go to sleep, and
presently she stuck a needle into her heel, took the candle with her,
lest the youth should awake, and went out by a side door.

The youth had his turban on his head in a trice, and no sooner had he
popped out of the same door than he saw a black efrit standing there
with a golden buckler on his head, and on the buckler sat the Sultan’s
daughter, and they were just on the point of starting off. The lad was
not such a fool as to fancy that he could keep up with them by himself,
so he also leaped on to the buckler, and very nearly upset the pair of
them in consequence. The efrit was alarmed, and asked the damsel in
Allah’s name what she was about, as they were within a hair’s-breadth of
falling. “I never moved,” said the damsel; “I am sitting on the buckler
just as you put me there.”

The black efrit had scarcely taken a couple of steps, when he felt that
the buckler was unusually heavy. The youth’s turban naturally made him
invisible, so the efrit turned to the damsel and said: “My Sultana, thou
art so heavy to-day that I all but break down beneath thee!”--“Darling
Lala!” replied the girl, “thou art very odd to-night, for I am neither
bigger nor smaller than I was yesterday.”

Shaking his head the black efrit pursued his way, and they went on and
on till they came to a wondrously beautiful garden, where the trees were
made of nothing but silver and diamonds. The youth broke off a twig and
put it in his pocket, when straightway the trees began to sigh and weep
and say: “There’s a child of man here who tortures us! there’s a child
of man here who tortures us!”

The efrit and the damsel looked at each other. “They sent a youth in to
me to-day,” said the damsel, “maybe his soul is pursuing us.”

Then they went on still further, till they came to another garden, where
every tree was sparkling with gold and precious stones. Here too the
youth broke off a twig and shoved it into his pocket, and immediately
the earth and the sky shook, and the rustling of the trees said:
“There’s a child of man here torturing us, there’s a child of man here
torturing us,” so that both he and the damsel very nearly fell from the
buckler in their fright. Not even the efrit knew what to make of it.

After that they came to a bridge, and beyond the bridge was a fairy
palace, and there an army of slaves awaited the damsel, and with their
hands straight down by their sides they bowed down before her till their
foreheads touched the ground. The Sultan’s daughter dismounted from the
efrit’s head, the youth also leaped down; and when they brought the
princess a pair of slippers covered with diamonds and precious stones,
the youth snatched one of them away, and put it in his pocket. The girl
put on one of the slippers, but being unable to find the other, sent for
another pair, when, presto! one of these also disappeared. At this the
damsel was so annoyed that she walked on without slippers; but the
youth, with the turban on his head and the whip and the carpet in his
hand, followed her everywhere like her shadow. So the damsel went on
before, and he followed her into a room, and there he saw the black
Peri, one of whose lips touched the sky, while the other lip swept the
ground. He angrily asked the damsel where she had been all the time, and
why she hadn’t come sooner. The damsel told him about the youth who had
arrived the evening before, and about what had happened on the way, but
the Peri comforted her by saying that the whole thing was fancy, and she
was not to trouble herself about it any more. After that he sat down
with the damsel, and ordered a slave to bring them sherbet. A black
slave brought the noble drink in a lovely diamond cup, but just as he
was handing it to the Sultan’s daughter the invisible youth gave the
hand of the slave such a wrench that he dropped and broke the cup to
pieces. A piece of this also the youth concealed in his pocket.

“Now didn’t I say that something was wrong?” cried the Sultan’s
daughter. “I want no sherbet nor anything else, and I think I had better
get back again as soon as possible.”--“Tush! tush!” said the efrit, and
he ordered other slaves to bring them something to eat. So they brought
a little table covered with many dishes, and they began to eat together;
whereupon the hungry youth also set to work, and the viands disappeared
as if three were eating instead of two.

And the black Peri himself began to be a little impatient, when not only
the food but also the forks and spoons began to disappear, and he said
to his sweetheart, the Sultan’s daughter, that perhaps it would be as
well if she did make haste home again. First of all the black efrit
wanted to kiss the girl, but the youth slipped in between them, pulled
them asunder, and one of them fell to the right and the other to the
left. They both turned pale, called the Lala with his buckler, the
damsel sat upon it, and away they went. But the youth took down a sword
from the wall, bared his arm, and with one blow he chopped off the head
of the black Peri. No sooner had his head rolled from his shoulders than
the heavens roared so terribly, and the earth groaned so horribly, and a
voice cried so mightily: “Woe to us, a child of man hath slain our
king!” that the terrified youth knew not whether he stood on his head or
his heels.

He seized his carpet, sat upon it, gave it one blow with his whip, and
when the Sultan’s daughter returned to the palace, there she found the
youth snoring in his room. “Oh, thou wretched bald-pate,” cried the
damsel viciously, “what a night I’ve had of it. So much the worse for
thee!” Then she took out a needle and pricked the youth in the heel, and
because he never stirred she fancied he was asleep, and lay down to
sleep herself also.

Next morning when she awoke she bade the youth prepare for death, as his
last hour had come. “Nay,” replied he, “not to thee do I owe an account
of myself; let us both come before the Padishah.”

Then they led him before the father of the damsel, but he said he would
only tell them what had happened in the night if they called all the
people of the town together. “In that way I shall find my brother,
perhaps,” thought he. So the town-crier called all the people together,
and the youth stood on a high daïs beside the Padishah and the Sultana,
and began to tell them the whole story, from the efrit’s buckler to the
Peri king. “Believe him not, my lord Padishah and father; he lies, my
lord father and Padishah!” stammered the damsel; whereupon the youth
drew from his pocket the diamond twig, the twig of gems, the golden
slipper, the precious spoons and forks. Then he went on to tell them of
the death of the black Peri, when all at once he caught sight of his
elder brother, whom he had been searching for so long. He had now
neither eyes nor ears for anything else, but leaping off the daïs, he
forced his way on and on through the crowd to his brother, till they
both came together.

Then the elder brother told _their_ story, while the younger brother
begged the Padishah to give his daughter and half the kingdom to his
elder brother. He was quite content, he said, with the magic turban and
the magic whip and carpet to the day of his death, if only he might live
close to his elder brother.

But the Sultan’s daughter rejoiced most of all when she heard of the
death of the Peri king. He had carried her off by force from her room
one day, and so enchanted her with his power that she had been unable to
set herself free. In her joy she agreed that the youth’s elder brother
should be her lord; and they made a great banquet, at which they feasted
forty days and forty nights with one another. I also was there, and I
begged so much pilaw[11] from the cook, and I got so much in the palm of
my hand, that I limp to this day.

[11] Boiled rice, with flesh added and scalded butter.