midable guardians of the royal palace: the 400 gates were guarded by
bears, lions, and other ferocious beasts, who suffered no one to pass
unless they were fed with flesh. But when Moses and Aaron came, they
gathered about them, and licked the feet of the prophets, accompanying
them to Pharaoh.--Readers who are familiar with the _Thousand and One
Nights_ and other Asiatic story-books will recollect many tales in which
palaces are similarly guarded. In the spurious "Canterbury" _Tale of
Beryn_ (taken from the first part of the old French romance of the
Chevalier Berinus), which has been re-edited for the Chaucer Society,
the palace-garden of Duke Isope is guarded by eight necromancers who
look like "abominabill wormys, enough to frighte the hertiest man on
erth," also by a white lion that had eaten five hundred men.

III

LEGENDS OF DAVID AND SOLOMON, ETC.

Muhammed, the great Arabian lawgiver, drew very largely from the
rabbinical legends in his composition of the Kuran, every verse of which
is considered by pious Muslims as a miracle, or wonder (_ayet_). The
well-known story of the spider weaving its web over the mouth of the
cave in which Muhammed and Abu Bekr had concealed themselves in their
flight from Mecca to Medina was evidently borrowed from the Talmudic
legend of David's flight from the malevolence of Saul: Immediately after
David had entered the cave of Adullam, a spider spun its web across the
opening. His pursuers presently passing that way were about to search
the cave; but perceiving the spider's web, they naturally concluded that
no one could have recently entered there, and thus was the future king
of Israel preserved from Saul's vengeance.

King David once had a narrow escape from death at the hands of Goliath's
brother Ishbi. The king was hunting one morning when Satan appeared
before him in the form of a deer.[72] David drew his bow, but missed
him, and the feigned deer ran off at the top of his speed. The king,
with true sportsman's instinct, pursued the deer, even into the land of
the Philistines--which, doubtless, was Satan's object in assuming that
form. It unluckily happened that Ishbi, the brother of Goliath,
recognised in the person of the royal hunter the slayer of the champion
of Gath, and he immediately seized David, bound him neck and heels
together, and laid him beneath his wine-press, designing to crush him to
death. But, lo, the earth became soft, and the Philistine was baffl