Berber tale and such or such a version. From thence comes the presumption
of borrowed matter. But, for the best results to be gained, one should be
in possession of all the versions. When it relates to celebrated personages
among the Mussulmans, like Solomon, or the features of a legend of which no
trace remains of the names, one can certainly conclude that it is borrowed
from the Arabs. It is the same with the greater number of fairy tales,
whose first inventors, the Arabs, commenced with the "Thousand and One
Nights," and presented us with "The Languages of the Beasts," and also with
funny stories.

The principal personage of these last is Si Djeha, whose name was borrowed
from a comic narrative existing as early as the eleventh century A.D. The
contents are sometimes coarse and sometimes witty, are nearly all more
ancient, and yet belong to the domain of pleasantries from which in Germany
sprung the anecdotes of Tyll Eulenspiegel and the Seven Suabians, and in
England the Wise Men of Gotham. In Italy, and even in Albania, the name of
Djeha is preserved under the form of Guifa and Guicha; and the Turks, who
possess the richest literature on this person, have made him a Ghadji Sirii
Hissar, under the name of Nasr-eddin Hodja (a form altered from Djoha). The
traits attributed to such persons as Bon Idhes, Bon Goudous, Bon
Kheenpouch, are equally the same as those bestowed upon Si Djeha.

But if the Berbers have borrowed the majority of their tales, they have
given to their characters the manners and appearance and names of their
compatriots. The king does not differ from the Amir of a village, or an
Amanokul of the Touaregs. The palace is the same as all those of a
Haddarth, and Haroun al Raschid himself, when he passes into Berber
stories, is plucked of the splendor he possesses in the "Thousand and One
Nights," and in Oriental stories. This anachronism renders the heroes of
the tales more real, and they are real Berbers, who are alive, and who