nights, while she lies asleep on the bed. Whenever the youth appears, he hides a set of keys under the cushion, which the girl takes to open 40 doors. Behind the last one she sees a garden where a pair is asleep: a youth with a girl next to him, and a cradle nearby. The human girl places a shawl on the girl then leaves. The asleep girl, the daughter of the Padishah of the Peris, wakes up, sees the shawl and accuses her companion of consorting with a human, then flies away. The youth goes to live with the human girl, but, one night, she does not drink her sherbet and feigns sleep. She turns to her bedmate and sees a padlock on his navel; she opens it and sees inside a great Tscharschi filled with people making cushions and carpets for the girl's unborn child she will bear to the snake prince. The human girl leaves the padlock and closes it again, but the snake prince, in human form, realizes his wife opened the padlock and orders his Arab servant to expel her from his palace. The girl, pregnant, wanders off until she reaches a Seraj that belongs to her elder sister-in-law, who does not welcome her. This repeats again with the second sister-in-law, but her husband's youngest sister takes her in just as she is ready to give birth. The third sister-in-law notices that the child, a boy, has a padlock on his navel, just like his father. Meanwhile, the snake prince, regretting his actions, goes after his human wife and pays a visit to his three sisters, in hopes of finding her again. At last, he arrives at his youngest sister's palace and leaves his snakeskin outside. Inside the palace, the human girl is advised by her sister-in-law to take the snakeskin and burn it, while he is occupied with his sister. It happens thus, and the snake prince, fully human, reconciles with his human wife. Africa Scholar Hasan M. El-Shamy collected a tale from a teller who lived in a Nubian village in Southern Egypt. In this tale, titled The Sultan of the Underwater, a childless woman goes to the river Nile and prays to God to have a daughter and she will fulfill a vow. A daughter is born to her. Years later, the girl tells her mother that whenever she goes to the