unmarried, I will give him my daughter; if he is married, I will give him two measures of gold." Ninu presented himself to the king and said: "Your Majesty, it was I." The king burst out laughing, and asked: "Are you married or single?" He said: "Your Majesty, I am single." And the king said: "Will you be satisfied with my daughter, or with two measures of gold?" "Your Majesty," he said, "I want to marry; give me your daughter." So he did, and they had a grand banquet.30
The story in The Seven Wise Masters, known as "Inclusa" or "The Elopement," is found only in Pitrè (No. 176), where it is told of a tailor who lived next to the king's palace, with which his house communicated by a secret door known only to the king and the tailor's wife. The tailor, while at work in the palace, imagines he sees his wife there, and pretending that he has forgotten his shears, etc., rushes home to find his wife there. She finally elopes with the king, leaving at her window an image that deceives her husband until she is beyond pursuit.31
Far more curious than any of the stories above given is the last one we shall mention from The Seven Wise Masters. The story in this collection known as "Avis," or "The Talking Bird," is briefly as follows: A jealous husband has a talking bird that is a spy upon his wife's actions. In order to impair his confidence in the bird, one night while he is absent the wife orders a servant to shower water over the bird's cage, to make a heavy sound like thunder, and to imitate the flashing of lightning with candles. The bird, on its master's return, tells him of the terrific storm the night before, and is killed for its supposed falsehood. This story is found in both the Eastern and Western versions of The Seven Wise Masters, and practically constitutes the framework of another famous Oriental collection, the Çukasaptati (from çuka, a parrot, and saptati, seventy, The Seventy Tales of a Parrot), better known by its Persian and Turkish name, Tûtî-Nâmeh, Tales of a Parrot.32 The frame, or groundwork, of the various Ori-
