So Scheherazade rejoiced, and thus,
on the first night of the Thousand Nights and a Night, she began her
recitations.
THE FISHERMAN AND THE JINNI
IT hath reached me, O auspicious King, that there was a fisherman
well stricken in years who had a wife and three children, and withal
was of poor condition. Now it was his custom to cast his net every day
four times, and no more. On a day he went forth about noontide to
the seashore, where he laid down his basket and, tucking up his
shirt and plunging into the water, made a cast with his net and waited
till it settled to the bottom. Then he gathered the cords together and
haled away at it, but found it weighty. And however much he drew it
landward, he could not pull it up, so he carried the ends ashore and
drove a stake into the ground and made the net fast to it. Then he
stripped and dived into the water all about the net, and left not
off working hard until he had brought it up.
He rejoiced thereat and, donning his clothes, went to the net,
when he found in it a dead jackass which had torn the meshes. Now
when he saw it, he exclaimed in his grief, "There is no Majesty and
there is no Might save in Allah the Glorious, the Great!" Then quoth
he, "This is a strange manner of daily bread," and he began reciting
in extempore verse:
"O toiler through the glooms of night in peril and in pain,
Thy toiling stint for daily bread comes not by might and main!
Seest thou not the fisher seek afloat upon the sea
His bread, while glimmer stars of night as set in tangled skein?
Anon he plungeth in despite the buffet of the waves,
The while to sight the bellying net his eager glances strain,
Till joying at the night's success, a fish he bringeth home
Whose gullet by the hook of Fate was caught and cut in twain.
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