The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume I Part 28

[FN#419] "Miao" or "Mau" is the generic name of the cat in the Egyptian of the hieroglyphs.

[FN#420] Arab. "Ya Mah'um" addressed to an evil spirit.

[FN#421] "Heehaw!" as we should say. The Bresl. Edit. makes the cat cry "Nauh! Nauh!" and the a.s.s-colt "Manu! Manu!" I leave these onomatopoeics as they are in Arabic; they are curious, showing the unity in variety of hearing inarticulate sounds. The bird which is called "Whip poor Will" in the U.S. is known to the Brazilians as "Joam corta pao" (John cut wood); so differently do they hear the same notes.

[FN#422] It is usually a slab of marble with a long slit in front and a round hole behind. The text speaks of a Kursi (= stool); but this is now unknown to native houses which have not adopted European fas.h.i.+ons.

[FN#423] This again is chaff as she addresses the Hunchback. The Bul. Edit. has "O Abu s.h.i.+hab" (Father of the shooting-star = evil spirit); the Bresl. Edit. "O son of a heap! O son of a Something!" (al-afsh, a vulgarism).

[FN#424] As the reader will see, Arab ideas of "fun" and practical jokes are of the largest, putting the Hibernian to utter rout, and comparing favourably with those recorded in Don Quixote.

[FN#425] Arab. "Sarawil" a corruption of the Pers. "Sharwal"; popularly called "libas" which, however, may also mean clothing in general and especially outer-clothing. I translate "bag- trousers" and "petticoat-trousers," the latter being the divided skirt of our future. In the East, where Common Sense, not Fas.h.i.+on, rules dress, men, who have a protuberance to be concealed, wear petticoats and women wear trousers. The feminine article is mostly baggy but sometimes, as in India, collant- tight. A quasi-sacred part of it is the inkle, tape or string, often a most magnificent affair, with ta.s.sels of pearl and precious stones; and "laxity in the trouser-string" is equivalent to the loosest conduct. Upon the subject of "libas," "sarwal" and its variants the curious reader will consult Dr. Dozy's "Dictionnaire Detaille des Noms des Vetements chez les Arabes," a most valuable work.

[FN#426] The turban out of respect is not put upon the ground (Lane, M. E., chapt. i.).

[FN#427] Arab. "Madfa" showing the modern date or the modernization of the tale. In Lebid "Madafi" (plur. of Madfa') means water-courses or leats.

[FN#428] In Arab. the "he" is a "she;" and Habib ("friend") is the Attic {Greek Letters}, a euphemism for lover. This will occur throughout The Nights. So the Arabs use a phrase corresponding with the Stoic {Greek Letters}, i.e. is wont, is fain.

[FN#429] Part of the Azan, or call to prayer.

[FN#430] Arab. "s.h.i.+hab," these mentors being the flying shafts shot at evil spirits who approach too near heaven. The idea doubtless arose from the showers of August and November meteors (The Perseides and Taurides) which suggest a battle raging in upper air. Christendom also has its superst.i.tion concerning these and called those of August the "fiery tears of Saint Lawrence,"

whose festival was on August 10.

[FN#431] Arab. "Takiyah" = Pers. Arak-chin; the calotte worn under the Fez. It is, I have said, now obsolete and the red woollen cap (mostly made in Europe) is worn over the hair; an unclean practice.

[FN#432] Often the effect of cold air after a heated room.

[FN#433] i.e. He was not a Eunuch, as the people guessed.

[FN#434] In Arab. "this night" for the reason before given.

[FN#435] Meaning especially the drink prepared of the young leaves and florets of Cannabis Sativa. The word literally means "day gra.s.s" or "herbage." This intoxicant was much used by magicians to produce ecstasy and thus to "deify themselves and receive the homage of the genii and spirits of nature."

[FN#436] Torrens, being an Irishman, translates "and woke in the morning sleeping at Damascus."

[FN#437] Arab. "Labbayka," the cry technically called "Talbiyah"

and used by those entering Meccah (Pilgrimage iii. 125-232). I shall also translate it by "Adsum." The full cry is:--

Here am I, O Allah, here am I!

No partner hast Thou, here am I: Verily the praise and the grace and the kingdom are thine: No partner hast Thou: here am I!

A single Talbiyah is a "Shart" or positive condition: and its repet.i.tion is a Sunnat or Custom of the Prophet. See Night xci.

[FN#438] The staple abuse of the vulgar is curing parents and relatives, especially feminine, with specific allusions to their "shame." And when dames of high degree are angry, Nature, in the East as in the West, sometimes speaks out clearly enough, despite Mistress Chapone and all artificial restrictions.

[FN#439] A great beauty in Arabia and the reverse in Denmark, Germany and Slav-land, where it is a sign of being a were-wolf or a vampire. In Greece also it denotes a "Brukolak" or vampire.

[FN#440] This is not physiologically true: a bride rarely conceives the first night, and certainly would not know that she had conceived. Moreover the number of courses furnished by the bridegroom would be against conception. It is popularly said that a young couple often undoes in the morning what it has done during the night.

[FN#441] Torrens (Notes, xxiv.) quotes "Fleisher" upon the word "Ghamghama" (Diss. Crit. De Glossis Hab.i.+.c.htionis), which he compares with "Dumb.u.ma" and Humb.u.ma," determining them to be onomatopoeics, "an incomplete and an obscure murmur of a sentence as it were lingering between the teeth and lips and therefore difficult to be understood." Of this family is "Taghum"; not used in modern days. In my Pilgrimage (i. 313) I have noticed another, "Khyas', Khyas'!" occurring in a Hizb al-Bahr (Spell of the Sea).

Herklots gives a host of them; and their sole characteristics are harshness and strangeness of sound, uniting consonants which are not joined in Arabic. The old Egyptians and Chaldeans had many such words composed at will for theurgic operations.

[FN#442] This may mean either "it is of Mosul fas.h.i.+on" or, it is of muslin.

[FN#443] To the English reader these lines would appear the reverse of apposite; but Orientals have their own ways of application, and all allusions to Badawi partings are effective and affecting. The civilised poets of Arab cities throw the charm of the Desert over their verse by images borrowed from its scenery, the dromedary, the mirage and the well as naturally as certain of our bards who hated the country, babbled of purling rills, etc. thoroughly to feel Arabic poetry one must know the Desert (Pilgrimage iii., 63).

[FN#444] In those days the Arabs and the Portuguese recorded everything which struck them, as the Chinese and j.a.panese in our times. And yet we complain of the amount of our modern writing!

[FN#445] This is mentioned because it is the act preliminary to naming the babe.

[FN#446] Arab. "Kahramanat" from Kahraman, an old Persian hero who conversed with the Simurgh-Griffon. Usually the word is applied to women-at-arms who defend the Harem, like the Urdu- begani of India, whose services were lately offered to England (1885), or the "Amazons" of Dahome.

[FN#447] Meaning he grew as fast in one day as other children in a month.

[FN#448] Arab. Al-Arif; the tutor, the a.s.sistant-master.

[FN#449] Arab. "Ibn haram," a common term of abuse; and not a factual reflection on the parent. I have heard a mother apply the term to her own son.

[FN#450] Arab. "Khanjar" from the Persian, a syn. with the Arab.

"Jambiyah." It is noted in my Pilgrimage iii., pp. 72,75. To "silver the dagger" means to become a rich man. From "Khanjar,"

not from its fringed loop or strap, I derive our silly word "hanger." Dr. Steinga.s.s would connect it with Germ. Fanger, e.g.

Hirschfanger.

[FN#451] Again we have "Dastur" for Izn."

[FN#452] Arab. "Iklim"; the seven climates of Ptolemy.

[FN#453] Arab. "Al-Ghadir," lit. a place where water sinks, a lowland: here the drainage-lakes east of Damascus into which the Baradah (Abana?) discharges. The higher eastern plain is "Al- Ghutah" before noticed.

[FN#454] The "Plain of Pebbles" still so termed at Damascus; an open s.p.a.ce west of the city.

[FN#455] Every Guide-book, even the Reverend Porter's "Murray,"

gives a long account of this Christian Church 'verted to a Mosque.

[FN#456] Arab. "Nabut"; Pilgrimage i. 336.

[FN#457] The Bres. Edit. says, "would have knocked him into Al- Yaman," (Southern Arabia), something like our slang phrase "into the middle of next week."

[FN#458] Arab. "Khadim": lit. a servant, politely applied (like Agha = master) to a castrato. These gentry wax furious if baldly called "Tawas.h.i.+" = Eunuch. A mauvais plaisant in Egypt used to call me The Agha because a friend had placed his wife under my charge.

[FN#459] This sounds absurd enough in English, but Easterns always put themselves first for respect.

[FN#460] In Arabic the World is feminine.

[FN#461] Arab. "Sahib" = lit. a companion; also a friend and especially applied to the Companions of Mohammed. Hence the Sunnis claim for them the honour of "friends.h.i.+p" with the Apostle; but the s.h.i.+a'hs reply that the Arab says "Sahaba-hu'l- himar" (the a.s.s was his Sahib or companion). In the text it is a Wazirial t.i.tle, in modern India it is = gentleman, e.g. "Sahib log" (the Sahib people) means their white conquerors, who, by the by, mostly misp.r.o.nounce the word "Sab."

[FN#462] Arab. "Suwan," prop. Syenite, from Syene (Al-Suwan) but applied to flint and any hard stone.