Perizade and the Speaking Bird, also commonly titled The Sisters who Envied Their Cadette and The Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Water, is found in Antoine Galland’s translation of The Arabian Nights. Perizade and her two older brothers are each victims in a plot by their jealous aunts, who switch them at birth with puppy’s and cast them in baskets down the river. The superintendent of the Sultan’s gardens rescues the baskets and secretly raises the royal siblings as his own children. They inherit a beautiful palace when their adopted father passes away, and are visited by an old Muslim woman who tells them of a Talking Bird that draws other birds with its voice, a Singing Tree, whose leaves produce songs, and a Golden Water that can fill a basin and never exhaust nor overflow. After a series of adventures, the treasures are procured. With these treasures, the siblings help their father discover the truth of the deception made at his expense.
Appearance List Literary: One Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights with first English-language edition c. 1706–1721, The Arabian Nights: Their Best-known Tales by Smith, Wiggin, and Parrish (1909) [Library of Congress], et. al.
Sample Read The Arabian Nights: Their Best-known Tales by Smith, Wiggin, and Parrish [PG]
Description Perizade and the Speaking Bird, also commonly titled The Sisters who Envied Their Cadette and The Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Water, is found in Antoine Galland’s translation of The Arabian Nights. Perizade and her two older brothers are each victims in a plot by their jealous aunts, who switch them at birth with puppy’s and cast them in baskets down the river. The superintendent of the Sultan’s gardens rescues the baskets and secretly raises the royal siblings as his own children. They inherit a beautiful palace when their adopted father passes away, and are visited by an old Muslim woman who tells them of a Talking Bird that draws other birds with its voice, a Singing Tree, whose leaves produce songs, and a Golden Water that can fill a basin and never exhaust nor overflow. After a series of adventures, the treasures are procured. With these treasures, the siblings help their father discover the truth of the deception made at his expense.
