Vol. Il, No. 9.] Some Arab Folk Tales from Hazramaut. 405 
[N.S. 
grandfather?” Said the boy, “It is so; for my father taught 
is thine allowance, and let thy coming and thy going to me be at 
thy will; but remain ever near me.” When I left them, he and his 
father were enjoying seventeen! blessings, after having endured 
penury. 
VI. THE STORY OF THE ELOQUENT PREACHER. 
re was once a preacher attached to a mosque, and every 
Friday he used to preach afresh sermon, which he made up out 
of his own head. One day his wife said to him, “It is not thou 
that preachest and composest. It is I that preach; it is I that 
compose.” The preacher said, “None but I can preach; none but 
every Friday a new sermon.” ‘Very well,” said his wife. On 
the next Thursday the preacher took pen and paper to write his 
sermon. Said his wife to herself, “I will just show him, him that 
dares to say that it is he that preaches and composes. If he were 
: r 
there are no onions; no fuel; no tamarind.” While she was 
enumerating these things, he absent-mindedly wrote down her 
words in his sermon. At last he laid down his pen and went to 
the market, and brought her her wants. The next day, which 
was Friday, she said to him, “You have no clothes. Will you 
go to the mosque without decent clothes?” The reacher went 
to the market and bought himself clothes, thinking all the while 
that he had written his sermon, He returned from the market on 
the stroke of eleven, and found breakfast ready. He breakfasted, 
took his sermon, and reaching the mosque found the congregation 
ing at his sermon he saw written, “ There is no flour in the 
house ; there is no butter in the house ; td oe fuel ; there are 
i de own he 
and preach it: I cannot do so,” The other agreed, took a some 
preached it, and acted as Imam.* When prayers wry phan! ‘ e 
preacher went home and said to his wife, “By God! it af on 
that preachest ; it 7s thou that composest—and here are the he 
do what thon likest in the house, and let me alone to ponder on the 
mosque and its Fridays.’ The woman took the keys saying, 
1 Seventeen; a local idiom. The reason for this particular number is. 
not known. 
2 i.e., Leader in prayer. 
