merchant, who had struck his mother
because she would not sanction his going on a trading voyage, in the
course of his wanderings discovers a man "on whose head there was placed
an iron wheel, this wheel was red with heat, and glowing as from a
furnace, terrible to behold. Seeing this terrible sight, Maitri
exclaimed: 'Who are you? Why do you carry that terrible wheel on your
head?' On this the wretched man replied: 'Dear sir, is it possible you
know me not? I am a merchant chief called Gorinda.' Then Maitri asked
him and said: 'Pray, then, tell me, what dreadful crime have you
committed in former days that you are constrained to wear that fiery
wheel on your head.' Then Gorinda answered: 'In former days I was angry
with and struck my mother as she lay on the ground, and for this reason
I am condemned to wear this fiery iron wheel around my head.' At this
time Maitri, self-accused, began to cry out and lament; he was filled
with remorse on recollection of his own conduct, and exclaimed in agony:
'Now am I caught like a deer in the snare.' Then a certain Yaksha, who
kept guard over that city, whose name was Viruka, suddenly came to the
spot, and removing the fiery wheel from off the head of Gorinda, he
placed it on the head of Maitri. Then the wretched man cried out in his
agony and said: 'O what have I done to merit this torment?' to which the
Yaksha replied: 'You, wretched man, dared to strike your mother on the
head as she lay on the ground; now, therefore, on your head you shall
wear this fiery wheel; through 60,000 years your punishment shall last:
be assured of this, through all these years you shall wear this wheel.'"

III

THE SINGING ASS: THE FOOLISH THIEVES: THE FAGGOT-MAKER AND THE MAGIC
BOWL.

Some of the Parrot's recitals have other tales sphered within them, so
to say--a plan which must be familiar to all readers of the _Arabian
Nights_. In the following amusing tale, which is perhaps the best of the
whole series (it is the 41st of the India Office MS. No. 2573, and the
31st in Kadiri's version), there are two subordinate stories:

_The Singing Ass._

At a certain period of time, as ancient historians inform us, an ass and
an elk were so fond of each other's company that they were never seen
separate. If the plains were deficient in pasture, they repaired to the
meadows; or, if famine pervaded the valleys, they overleaped the
garden-fence, and, like friends, divided the spoil.

One night,