When I was a child, my mother had taught me how to read even before I went to kindergarten.  She did so through telling my sister and I stories from a variety of sources and embarrassingly perhaps by allowing me to look at the pictures and words in comic books.  The way she told it before she passed away was always that I had fairly much taught myself how to read by making up stories to match the frames of comic books until one day when I was approximately three or four, I was reading the story as the comic told.  While I find this flattering, I know better.  And … I remember the stories she shared and how these drove me to want to know and read and learn more.

One of the series of tales she shared was One Thousand and One Nights.  I then later read these tales again before the sixth grade and then twice since as I have gotten older.  Each time has been an enchanting experience.  This collection consists of Middle Eastern and South Asian tales that were collected originally in Arabic.  This is why, these tales were first known when published in English, in 1706,  as the Arabian Nights or Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.

As time went on, I learned to trace the roots of various old legends and myths from a variety of sources.  I did so for two reasons, first I grew up in those days that there was much speculation as to the grains of truth behind each of the old tales and myths from around the world.  Secondly, because I had started to write and illustration my own comics.  I did this so much so that there has been more than one person who never understood why I didn’t go on to do this as a living.  I suppose the answer was that I lost my way in part and found another in music and other endeavors.

Whatever, the case, I came to find that The Arabian Nights had added on as time went on and tales were added throughout Asia, Persia (now Iran), Arabic, Indian, Jewish and even Egyptian folklore and literature.  Much of the framing of these tales is believed to have drawn on the Pahlavi Persian traditions.  These in turn found their source originally in Indian roots.

The framework find that Scheherazade (Persian for “Of Noble Lineage”) read these tales to Shahryar (Persian for “King or Sovereign”).  Some have the added beauty of consisting of tales within tales of tales.  There’s a poem waiting to be writing about that.  Of this much I am certain.    In any case, most of the text is in prose although there is some use of verse to incorporate songs and riddles.  It’s a very useful literary device that heightens the emotions felt by the reader and those read these tales.  For example, my daughters love the couplets and quatrains.  Between my own poetry and tales such as these, my princesses have it much in mind to write stories and poetry.  It’s the sort of continuing tradition that comes from such works as The Arabian Nights.

Some of the tales have come to have a literary life of their own.  Examples of this are found in Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.  There’s a whispered rumor that I don’t want to believe.  That these tales were actually added to the original by European translators such as Antoine Galland.  (I do, however, suppose that it heartens me that maybe two centuries afterward there will be even more beautiful tales for even more parents to share with their dearly loved and listening children…)

Today’s tale is that of The Story Told By the Tailor.  It may be read in its entirety here:

http://www.bartleby.com/16/405.html

Or, listened to as part of the complete tales in the audio book linked here: