The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 61

[FN#38] Arab. "Wa la Kabbata hamiyah," a Cairene vulgarism meaning, "There came nothing to profit him nor to rid the people of him."

[FN#39] Arab. "Kammir," i.e. brown it before the fire, toast it.

[FN#40] It is insinuated that he had lied till he himself believed the lie to be truth--not an uncommon process, I may remark.

[FN#41] Arab. "Rijal"=the Men, equivalent to the Walis, Saints or Santons; with perhaps an allusion to the Rijal al-Ghayb, the Invisible Controls concerning whom I have quoted Herklots in vol.

ii. 211.

[FN#42] A saying attributed to Al-Hariri (Lane). It is good enough to be his: the Persians say, "Cut not down the tree thou plantedst," and the idea is universal throughout the East.

[FN#43] A quotation from Al-Hariri (a.s.s. of the Badawin). Ash'ab (ob. A.H. 54), a Medinite servant of Caliph Osman, was proverbial for greed and sanguine, Micawber-like expectation of "windfalls."

The Scholiast Al-Sharis.h.i.+ (of Xeres) describes him in Theophrastic style. He never saw a man put hand to pocket without expecting a present, or a funeral go by without hoping for a legacy, or a bridal procession without preparing his own house, hoping they might bring the bride to him by mistake. * * * When asked if he knew aught greedier than himself he said "Yes; a sheep I once kept upon my terrace-roof seeing a rainbow mistook it for a rope of hay and jumping to seize it broke its neck!"

Hence "Ash'ab's sheep" became a by-word (Preston tells the tale in full, p. 288).

[FN#44] i.e. "Show a miser money and hold him back, if you can."

[FN#45] He wants 40,000 to begin with.

[FN#46] i.e. Arab. "Sabihat al-'urs" the morning after the wedding. See vol. i. 269.

[FN#47] Another sign of modern composition as in Kamar al-Zaman II.

[FN#48] Arab. "Al-Jink" (from Turk.) are boys and youths mostly Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, who dress in woman's dress with long hair braided. Lane (M. E. chapts. xix. and xxv.) gives same account of the customs of the "Gink" (as the Egyptians call them) but cannot enter into details concerning these catamites.

Respectable Moslems often employ them to dance at festivals in preference to the Ghawazi-women, a freak of Mohammedan decorum.

When they grow old they often preserve their costume, and a glance at them makes a European's blood run cold.

[FN#49] Lane translates this, "May Allah and the Rijal retaliate upon thy temple!"

[FN#50] Arab. "Ya aba 'l-lithamayn," addressed to his member.

Lathm the root means kissing or breaking; so he would say, "O thou who canst take her maidenhead whilst my tongue does away with the virginity of her mouth." "He breached the citadel"

(which is usually square) "in its four corners" signifying that he utterly broke it down.

[FN#51] A mystery to the Author of Proverbs (x.x.x. 18-19),

There be three things which are too wondrous for me, The way of an eagle in the air; The way of a snake upon a rock; And the way of a man with a maid.

[FN#52] Several women have described the pain to me as much resembling the drawing of a tooth.

[FN#53] As we should say, "play fast and loose."

[FN#54] Arab. "Nahi-ka" lit.=thy prohibition but idiomatically used=let it suffice thee!

[FN#55] A character-sketch like that of Princess Dunya makes ample amends for a book full of abuse of women. And yet the superficial say that none of the characters have much personal individuality.

[FN#56] This is indeed one of the touches of nature which makes all the world kin.

[FN#57] As we are in Tartary "Arabs" here means plundering nomades, like the Persian "Iliyat" and other shepherd races.

[FN#58] The very cruelty of love which hates nothing so much as a rejected lover. The Princess, be it noted, is not supposed to be merely romancing, but speaking with the second sight, the clairvoyance, of perfect affection. Men seem to know very little upon this subject, though every one has at times been more or less startled by the abnormal introvision and divination of things hidden which are the property and prerogative of perfect love.

[FN#59] The name of the Princess meaning "The World," not unusual amongst Moslem women.

[FN#60] Another pun upon his name, "Ma'aruf."

[FN#61] Arab. "Naka," the mound of pure sand which delights the eye of the Badawi leaving a town. See vol. i. 217, for the lines and explanation in Night cmlxiv. vol. ix. p. 250.

[FN#62] Euphemistic: "I will soon fetch thee food." To say this bluntly might have brought misfortune.

[FN#63] Arab. "Kafr"=a village in Egypt and Syria e.g. Capernaum (Kafr Nahum).

[FN#64] He has all the bonhomie of the Cairene and will do a kindness whenever he can.

[FN#65] i.e. the Father of Prosperities: p.r.o.n. Aboosa'adat; as in the Tale of Hasan of Ba.s.sorah.

[FN#66] Koran lx.x.xix. "The Daybreak" which also mentions Thamud and Pharaoh.

[FN#67] In Egypt the cheapest and poorest of food, never seen at a hotel table d'hote.

[FN#68] The beautiful girls who guard ensorcelled h.o.a.rds: See vol. vi. 109.

[FN#69] Arab. "Asakir," the ornaments of litters, which are either plain b.a.l.l.s of metal or tapering cones based on crescents or on b.a.l.l.s and crescents. See in Lane (M. E. chapt. xxiv.) the sketch of the Mahmal.

[FN#70] Arab. "Amm"=father's brother, courteously used for "father-in-law," which suggests having slept with his daughter, and which is indecent in writing. Thus by a pleasant fiction the husband represents himself as having married his first cousin.

[FN#71] i.e. a calamity to the enemy: see vol. ii. 87 and pa.s.sim.

[FN#72] Both texts read "Asad" (lion) and Lane accepts it: there is no reason to change it for "Hasid" (Envier), the Lion being the Sultan of the Beasts and the most majestic.

[FN#73] The Cairene knew his fellow Cairene and was not to be taken in by him.

[FN#74] Arab. "Hizam": Lane reads "Khizam"=a nose-ring for which see appendix to Lane's M. E. The untrained European eye dislikes these decorations and there is certainly no beauty in the hoops which Hindu women insert through the nostrils, camel-fas.h.i.+on, as if to receive the cord-acting bridle. But a drop-pearl hanging to the septum is at least as pretty as the heavy pendants by which some European women lengthen their ears.

[FN#75] Arab. "Shamta," one of the many names of wine, the "speckled" alluding to the bubbles which dance upon the freshly filled cup.

[FN#76] i.e. in the cask. These "merry quips" strongly suggest the dismal toasts of our not remote ancestors.

[FN#77] Arab. "A'laj" plur. of "'Ilj" and rendered by Lane "the stout foreign infidels." The next line alludes to the cupbearer who was generally a slave and a non-Moslem.

[FN#78] As if it were a bride. See vol. vii. 198. The stars of Jauza (Gemini) are the cupbearer's eyes.

[FN#79] i.e. light-coloured wine.

[FN#80] The usual homage to youth and beauty.

[FN#81] Alluding to the cup.

[FN#82] Here Abu Nowas whose name always ushers in some abomination alluded to the "Ghulamiyah" or girl dressed like boy to act cupbearer. Civilisation has everywhere the same devices and the Bordels of London and Paris do not ignore the "she-boy,"

who often opens the door.