Mussulman ideas.

_Sultan Darai_, the Swahili _Puss in Boots_, really contains two tales.
The first is about a wicked step-mother; the second begins when the
hero, losing his wife and other kinsfolk, takes to vicious courses, and
becomes so poor that he passes his time scratching for grains of millet
on the common dustheap. While thus scratching he finds a piece of money,
with which he buys a gazelle. The gazelle has pity on him, and startles
him by saying so: 'Almighty God is able to do all things, to make me to
speak, and others more than I.' The story comes, therefore, through
narrators who marvel, as in the fairy world nobody does marvel, at the
miracle of a speaking beast.

The gazelle, intent on helping the man, finds a splendid diamond, which
he takes to the sultan, just as puss took the game, as 'a present from
Sultan Darai.' The sultan is much pleased; the gazelle proposes that he
shall give his daughter to Sultan Darai, and then comes the old trick of
pretending the master has been stripped by robbers, 'even to his
loin-cloth.' The gazelle carries fine raiment to his master, and, as in
the French popular and traditional form, bids him speak as little as may
be. The marriage is celebrated, and the gazelle goes off, and kills a
great seven-headed snake, which, as in Russia, is the owner of a rich
house. The snake, as he travels, is accompanied (as in the Kaffir story
of _Five Heads_) by a storm of wind, like that which used to shake the
'medicine lodges' of the North American Indians, puzzling the
missionaries. The snake, like the ogre in all _Hop o' My Thumb_ tales,
smells out the gazelle, but is defeated by that victorious animal. The
gazelle brings home his master, Sultan Darai, and the Princess to the
snake's house, where they live in great wealth and comfort.

Now comes in the moral: the gazelle falls sick, Sultan Darai refuses to
see it, orders coarse food to be offered it; treats his poor benefactor,
in short, with all the arrogant contempt of an ungrateful beggar
suddenly enriched. As the ill-used cat says in the _Pentamerone_--

De riche appauvri Dieu te gard'
Et de croquant passe richard!

Finally the gazelle dies of sorrow, and Sultan Darai dreams that he is
scratching on his old dustheap. He wakens and finds himself there, as
naked and wretched as ever, while his wife is wafted to her father's
house at home.

The moral is obvious, and the story is told in a very touching manner,
moreover