This third volume of John Payne's Tales from the Arabic draws on the Breslau and Calcutta (1814–18) editions of The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, presenting stories not found in other printed texts. The opening tale, “Noureddin Ali of Damascus and the Damsel Sitt El Milah,” begins with a merchant's prayer for a son, a motif familiar to readers of the Nights, but quickly introduces a distinctive pattern: the hero is described as “a piece of the moon,” a phrase that recurs in later descriptions of beauty. Payne's translation preserves the elaborate, rhythmic prose of the original, with frequent use of parallel clauses and formulaic blessings.

Embedded Songs and Their Function

Throughout the excerpts, characters break into verse, often introduced with a formula such as “improvised and sang the following verses.” These songs are not mere decoration; they advance emotional arcs and signal shifts in power. In the story of El Abbas, five damsels each sing a poem, and their performances lead directly to their emancipation. The verses themselves are dense with conventional imagery—beloveds, separation, union, and the “cup of love-delight”—but they also contain specific references to the speaker's situation. For instance, Rihaneh's lines “My heart is grown hoar, ere eld's snows have left on my tresses their trail” use premature aging as a metaphor for longing, a trope that appears in multiple poems. The king's response to the songs is to praise them as causing yearning for “dwellings and homesteads,” linking the verses to nostalgia and place.

The Role of Generosity and Emancipation

Generosity is a structural principle in these tales. In the El Abbas story, the king counsels his son to free the ten damsels “for the love of God the Most High,” and El Abbas complies immediately. The act is followed by a ritualized response: the women “kissed the hands of the king and his son and prostrated themselves in thanksgiving.” This sequence—performance, praise, reward, and liberation—recurs in other Nights tales but here is given unusual weight. The damsels then “put off that which was upon them of ornaments and laying aside the lutes … clave to their houses, veiled, and went not forth.” The detail that they abandon their instruments and withdraw from public life suggests that their musical skill was a temporary, licensed role, not a permanent identity. The tale thus contrasts the public display of art with the private virtue of seclusion.

Patterns of Description and Formulaic Language

Payne's translation retains the formulaic epithets of the Arabic originals. Characters are introduced with set phrases: “as he were a piece of the moon,” “put to shame the sun and the resplendent moon,” “perfect of attributes.” These descriptions are not individualized but rather place the character within a typology of ideal beauty. Similarly, the narrative uses repeated structural elements: a child is born after prayer, taught various arts at age seven and ten, and grows up “pleasant and subtle and goodly and lovesome.” The accumulation of adjectives creates a rhythmic, almost incantatory effect. The tales also employ parallel phrasing in dialogue and action, such as “he made banquets to the folk and clad the poor and the widows.” This formulaic style is characteristic of oral storytelling and gives the text a ceremonial quality, even in translation.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to the interplay between prose and verse, as the songs often carry the emotional climax of a scene. The tales are self-contained but share a common vocabulary of beauty, longing, and divine providence. Payne's notes and the appended tables of contents and verse first lines provide useful orientation for tracing motifs across the collection. The volume rewards those who read the poems aloud, as their rhythm and rhyme are central to the effect.