Introduction xi
Owing probably to foreign conquests, there was
nothing in Egypt corresponding to the Keltic bardic
schools, or to the Romance ballad singers, that was
capable of carrying on a literary tradition through an
illiterate age. The Egyptian stock of folk stories is
certainly a very rich one ; for the main amusement in
Egypt, fis all over the East, has always been listening
to professional story-tellers. But these stories seem to
be all importations. They have been analysed by Yakub
Artin Pasha (Contes populaires inedites du Nil) into four
groups : The Turco-Persian, which are picturesque and
poetic, peopled with djinns, fairies, fair ladies, and
handsome princes. The Graeco-European, which have a
Byzantine setting, or are animal fables. The Arabo-
Berber, mostly with a religious motif and with the
familiar scenery of Bagdad. Finally, negro tales of black
magic and " ghouls." Of later literary sources the
Thousand and One Nights and similar collections are
much in evidence.
But Yakub Artin also claims that one class of tale is
typically Egyptian, a class which he distinguishes as
such by three characteristics ; that they are picaresque,
feminist, and pantheist. In this class he includes
borrowed themes that have been worked over to suit
the local taste. And this class of tale is certainly interest-
ing to students of the Egyptian national character as
suggesting that it is even more curiously feminine than
that of other peoples long ruled by an alien authority.
Moreover, the details of these Egyptian stories give us
some interesting sidelights on the national mind; while
in their general point of view we find very useful clues
to the reactions of Egypt in respect of her successive
alien masters, whether Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mame-
lukes, Turks, Arnauts, or British,