The following tales were taken down in the first place as a help to my own endeavours to master the language of Zanzibar, and are now printed chiefly as a help to those who are to follow me in the same work. I have tried therefore to make the translation as literal as possible, and to reproduce in English something like the mixture of familiar phrases and unfamiliar ideas which makes up the originals.
All the tales are printed exactly as they were related, and most of them have some touches put in by the narrator on the inspiration of the moment. Of this kind is the substitution, out of compliment to us, of church for mosque in the story of the 'Kites and the Crows.' Another piece of local colouring occurs in the story of 'Mohammed the Languid,' where the merchants fire their cannon when they get home, as all dhows do when they enter the harbour of Zanzibar, though there is not a hint of such a thing in the Arabic original.
I cannot pretend to give any complete account of the sources whence the various tales are derived. Three of them occur in the Arabian Nights, 'Mohammed the Languid' (p. 149), which is Chapter XIV.
