" These entertaining tales are reproduced in
_Le Cabinet des Fees_, ed. 1786, tome xxv.--It will be
observed that the first part of the story bears a close
resemblance to that of our childhood's favourite, the
Arabian tale of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," of
which many analogues and variants, both European and
Asiatic, are cited in the first volume of my _Popular
Tales and Fictions_, 1887;--see also a supplementary
note by me on Aladdin's Lamp in _Notes and Queries_,
Jan. 5, 1889, p. 1.
* * * * *
A warning against avarice is intended to be conveyed in the tale, or
rather apologue, or perhaps we should consider it as a sort of allegory,
related by the sagacious bird on the 47th Night, according to the India
Office MS., but the 16th Night of Kadiri's abridgment. It is to the
following effect, and may be entitled
_The Four Treasure-Seekers._
Once on a time four intimate friends, who made a common fund of all
their possessions, and had long enjoyed the wealth of their industrious
ancestors, at length lost all their goods and money, and, barely saving
their lives, quitted together the place of their nativity. In the course
of their travels they meet a wise Brahman, to whom they relate the
history of their misfortunes.
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