The Arabian Nights Entertainments
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Lang, Andrew
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 614534
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: arabian.al
subject: princess
subject: prince
subject: sultan
subject: king
subject: time
subject: man
subject: proofread
subject: christy
subject: phillips
subject: caphilli
subject: hawk
subject: syr
subject: edu
subject: public
subject: domain
subject: lang
subject: andrew
subject: arabian
subject: nights
subject: entertainments
subject: english
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: lang-arabian-200.txt
concordance: http://infomotions.com/alex/cgi-bin/concordance.pl
plain html: lang-arabian-200.htm
sort title: Arabian Nights Entertainments, The
full text: [pg/etext94/arabn10.txt] The Arabian Nights Entertainments, by Andrew Lang May, 1994 [Etext #128] Intro through page 48 typed by Christy Phillips. The rest of the etext scanned by John Hamm (john_hamm@mindlink.bc.ca). Proofread by Christy Phillips (Caphilli@hawk.syr.edu) This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Selected and Edited by Andrew Lang after the edition of Longmans, Green and Co, 1918 (1898) Preface The stories in the Fairy Books have generally been such as old women in country places tell to their grandchildren. Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first. The children of Ham, Shem and Japhet may have listened to them in the Ark, on wet days. Hector's little boy may have heard them in Troy Town, for it is certain that Homer knew them, and that some of them were written down in Egypt about the time of Moses. People in different countries tell them differently, but they are always the same stories, really, whether among little Zulus, at the Cape, or little Eskimo, near the North Pole. The changes are only in matters of manners and customs; such as wearing clothes or not, meeting lions who talk in the warm countries, or talking bears in the cold countries. There are plenty of kings and queens in the fairy tales, just because long ago there were plenty of kings in the country. A gentleman who would be a squire now was a kind of king in Scotland in very old times, and the same in other places. These old stories, never forgotten, were taken down in writing in different ages, but mostly in this century, in all sorts of languages. These ancient stories are the contents of the Fairy books. Now "The Arabian Nights," some of which, but not nearly all, are given in this volume, are only fairy tales of the East. The people of Asia, Arabia, and Persia told them in their own way, not for children, but for grown-up people. There were no novels then, nor any printed books, of course; but there were people whose profession it was to a…