Looking for a children’s book with a yellow cloth cover and a drawing of a red tree on the front. It had stories about djinns in it and a story about a tree with three different colored branches, and a story about a dress woven from spider webs and so fine it fit into a walnut shell, and a story about a prince who disguised himself with tripe on his head to pretend to be a beggar.
My friend thought the book was Arabian folktales. She saw this book when she was a child, about 20 years ago.
Thanks!!
I don’t know the anthology, but the story about the dress that fits into a walnut shell is an Irish tale known as “Catskin” or “The Princess and the Catskin,” which was also collected by the Brothers Grimm and written up by authors of other nationalities. So the anthology must contain that, and it’s probably not 100% Arabian tales.
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been searching for it for years as well. I would have read it in the early 70s, and from the gold foil label I remember on the spine, I thought it was published by Doubleday or Knopf, but that could be totally imagined.
Good luck!
It might be Gertrude Mittelmann’s “Bird of the Golden Feather” collection. Sometimes the author’s name is written as Mittleman, sometimes Mittelmann.
Arabian tales. Does include the tripe story, tree branches, and djinns, not sure about the walnut one.
Contents given as:
The bird of the golden feather.
Gulaida.
The two brothers.
The rogue from Cairo and the rogue from Damascus.
The talking nightingale.
The tree of the three branches.
Hasan and Husain.
Woman’s guile triumphs over man’s.