apless Hasan that if
he loves her he may come and seek her there. Now the islands of Wak were
seven islands, wherein was a mighty host, all virgin girls, and the
inner isles were peopled by satans and marids and warlocks and various
tribesmen of the Jinn, and whoso entered their land never returned
thence; and Hasan's wife was one of the king's daughters. To reach her
he would have to cross seven wadys and seven seas and seven mighty
mountains. Undaunted, however, by the difficulties wherewith he is
threatened, he determines to find her, swearing by Allah never to turn
back till he regain his beloved, or till death overtake him. By the help
of sundry potentates of more or less forbidding aspect and supernatural
power, to whom he gets letters of introduction, and who live in gorgeous
palaces amid deserts, and are served by demons only uglier and less
mighty than themselves, he succeeds in traversing the Land of Birds, the
Land of Wild Beasts, the country of the Warlocks and the Enchanters, and
the Land of the Jinn, and enters the islands of Wak--there to fall into
the hands of that masterful virago, his wife's eldest sister. After a
preliminary outburst against Hasan, this amiable creature pours, as is
the wont of women, the full torrent of her wrath against her erring
sister. From the tortures she inflicts, Hasan at length rescues his
wife, with their two sons, by means of a cap of invisibility and a rod
conferring authority over seven tribes of the Jinn, which he has stolen
from two boys who are quarrelling over them. When his sister-in-law
with an army of Jinn pursues the fugitives, the subjects of the rod
overcome her. His wife begs for her sister's life and reconciles her
husband to her, and then returns with her husband to his home in Bagdad,
to quit him no more.[185]

Such in meagre outline is this wonderful story. Its variants are legion,
and I can only refer to a few of them which are of special interest. In
dealing with these I shall confine my attention to the essential points
of the plot, touching only such details as are germane to the questions
thus evoked. We shall accordingly pass in review the maiden's disguise
and capture, her flight and her recapture; and afterwards turning to
other types of the tale, we shall look at the corresponding incidents to
be met with therein, reserving for another chapter the consideration of
the meaning of the myth, so far as it can be traced.

The bird whose shape is assum