The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XV Part 31

[FN#351] [The MS. has: "Ya Gharati a-Zay ma huna Rajil;" "Ya Gharati" will recur presently, p. 195, along with "ya Musibati" = Oh my calamity! I take it therefore to be an exclamation of distress from "Gharat" = invasion, with its incidents of devastation, rapine and ruin. It would be the natural outcry of the women left helpless in an unprotected camp when invaded by a hostile tribe. In "a-Zay ma" the latter particle is not the negative, but the p.r.o.noun, giving to "a-Zay" = "in what manner,"

"how ?" the more emphatical sense of "how ever?" In the same sense we find it again, infra, Night 754, "a-Zay ma tafutni" = how canst thou quit me? I would therefore render: "Woe me I am undone, how ever should there be a man here?" or something to that purpose.--ST.]

[FN#352] In Persian he would be called "Pari-stricken,"--smitten by the Fairies.

[FN#353] A quarter-staff (vols. i, 234; viii. 186) opp. to the "Dabbus," or club-stick of the Badawin, the Caffres' "k.n.o.b- kerry," which is also called by the Arabs "Kana," p.r.o.n. "Gana."

[FN#354] Scott's "Story of the Lady of Cairo and her four Gallants" (vol. vi. 380): Gauttier, Histoire d' une Dame du Caire et de ses Galans (vi. 400). This tale has travelled over the Eastern world. See in my vol. vi. 172 "The Lady and her Five Suitors," and the "Story of the Merchant's Wife and her Suitors"

in Scott's "Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters" (Cadell, London, 1800), which is in fact a garbled version of the former, introduced into the repertoire of "The Seven Wazirs." I translate the W. M. version of the tale because it is the most primitive known to me; and I shall point out the portions where it lacks finish.

[FN#355] This t.i.tle does not appear till p. 463 (vol. v.) of the MS., and it re-appears in vol. vi. 8.

[FN#356] i.e. in her haste: the text has "Kharrat." The Persians who rhetorically exaggerate everything say "rising and sinking like the dust of the road." [I doubt whether "Kharrat" could have the meaning given to it in the translation. The word in the MS.

has no Tashdid and I think the careless scribe meant it for "Kharajat," she went out.--ST.]

[FN#357] I read "Nas malmumin=a.s.sembled men, a crowd of people."- -ST.]

[FN#358] "Rajul Khwaja:" see vol. vi. 46, etc. For "Shahbandar"=king of the port, a harbourmaster, whose post I have compared with our "Consul," see vol. iv. 29. It is often, however, applied to Government officials who superintend trade and levy duties at inland marts.

[FN#359] Arab. "Khimar," a veil or rather a covering for the back of the head. This was the especial whorishness with which Shahrazad taxes the Goodwife: she had been too prodigal of her charms, for the occiput and the "back hair" should not be displayed even to the moon.

[FN#360] These four become five in the more finished tale--the King, the Wazir, the Kazi, the Wali or Chief of Police and the Carpenter. Moreover each one is dressed in different costume, gowns yellow, blue, red and patched with headgear equally absurd.

[FN#361] In text "Turtur"=the Badawi's bonnet: vol. ii. 143. Mr.

Doughty (i. 160) found at Al-Khuraybah the figure of an ancient Arab wearing a close tunic to the knee and bearing on poll a coif. At Al-'Ula he was shown an ancient image of a man's head cut in sandstone: upon the crown was a low pointed bonnet. "Long caps" are also noticed in i. 562; and we are told that they were "worn in outlandish guise in Arabia."

[FN#362] In text "Embarah" (p.r.o.n. 'Marah); pop. for Al-barihah=the last part of the preceding day or night, yesterday. The vulgar Egyptian uses it as if it were a corruption of the Pers. "in bar"=this time. The Arab Badawin p.r.o.nounce it El-beyrih (with their exaggerated "Imalah") and use it not only for "yesterday," but also for the past afternoon.

[FN#363] This device is far inferior in comic effect to the carpenter's press or cabinet of five compartments, and it lacks the ludicrous catastrophe in which all the lovers make water upon one another's heads.

[FN#364] Scott (vi. 386) "The Cauzee's story:" Gauttier (vi. 406) does not translate it.

[FN#365] In the text the message is delivered verbatim: this iteration is well fitted for oral work, with its changes of tone and play of face, and varied "gag"; but it is most annoying for the more critical reader.

[FN#366] Arab. "Lukmah"=a balled mouthful: vols. i. 261, vii.

367.

[FN#367] The "Miftah" (prop. "Miftah") or key used throughout the Moslem East is a bit of wood, 7?14 inches long, and provided with 4?10 small iron pins which correspond with an equal number of holes in the "Dabbah" or wooden bolt. If one of these teeth be withdrawn the lock will not open. Lane (M.E. Introduction) has a sketch of the "Miftah" and "Dabbah."

[FN#368] In text "Ayoh" which is here, I hold, a corruption of "i (or Ayy) hu"="yes indeed he." [I take "aywah" (as I would read the word) to be a different spelling for "aywa"=yes indeed, which according to Spitta Bey, Gr. p. 168 is a contraction of "Ay (i) wa'llahi," yes by Allah. "What? thy lover?" asks the husband, and she emphatically affirms the fact, to frighten the concealed tailor--ST.]

[FN#369] In the Arab. "Al-Ashkhakh," plur. of "Shakhkh" and literally "the stales" meaning either dejection. [I read: "bi 'l-Shakhakh," the usual modern word for urine. "'Alayya Shakhakh"

is: I want to make water. See Dozy Suppl. s.v.-ST.]

[FN#370] In text "Ahu ma'i"--pure Fellah speech.

[FN#371] In the Arab. "laklaka-ha"--an onomatopoeia.

[FN#372] In text "Ila an yasir Karmu-hu." Karm originally means cutting a slip of skin from the camel's nose by way of mark, in lieu of the normal branding.

[FN#373] In text "Yazghaz-ha fi s.h.i.+kkati-ha," the verb being probably a clerical error for "Yazaghzagh," from "Zaghzagha,"=he opened a skin bag.

[FN#374] This is the far-famed balcony-scene in "f.a.n.n.y" (of Ernest Feydeau translated into English and printed by Vizetelly and Co.) that phenomenal specimen of morbid and unmasculine French (or rather Parisian) sentiment, which contrasts so powerfully with the healthy and manly tone of The Nights. Here also the story conveys a moral lesson and, contrary to custom, the husband has the best of the affair. To prove that my judgment is not too severe, let me quote the following pa.s.sages from a well-known and popular French novelist, translated by an English litterateur and published by a respectable London firm.

In "A Ladies' Man:" by Guy de Maupa.s.sant, we read:--

Page 62.--And the conversation, descending from elevated theories concerning love, strayed into the flowery garden of polished blackguardism. It was the moment of clever, double meanings; veils raised by words, as petticoats are lifted by the wind; tricks of language, cleverly disguised audacities; sentences which reveal nude images in covered phrases, which cause the vision of all that may not be said to flit rapidly before the eyes of the mind, and allow well-bred people the enjoyment of a kind of subtle and mysterious love, a species of impure mental contact, due to the simultaneous evocations of secret, shameful and longed-for pleasures.

Page 166.--George and Madeleine amused themselves with watching all these couples, the woman in summer toilette and the man darkly outlined beside her. It was a huge flood of lovers flowing towards the Bois, beneath the starry and heated sky. No sound was heard save the dull rumble of wheels. They kept pa.s.sing by, two by two in each vehicle, leaning back on the seat, clasped one against the other, lost in dreams of desire, quivering with the antic.i.p.ation of coming caresses. The warm shadow seemed full of kisses. A sense of spreading l.u.s.t rendered the air heavier and more suffocating. All the couples, intoxicated with the same idea, the same ardour, shed a fever about them.

Page 187--As soon as she was alone with George, she clasped him in her arms, exclaiming: "Oh! my darling Pretty-boy, I love you more and more every day."

The cab conveying them rocked like a s.h.i.+p.

"It is not so nice as our own room," said she.

He answered; "Oh, no." But he was thinking of Madame Waller.

Page 198.--He kissed her neck, her eyes, her lips with eagerness, without her being able to avoid his furious caresses, and whilst repulsing him, whilst shrinking from his mouth, she, despite herself, returned his kisses. All at once she ceased to struggle, and, vanquished, resigned, allowed him to undress her. One by one he neatly and rapidly stripped off the different articles of clothing with the light fingers of a lady's maid. She had s.n.a.t.c.hed her bodice from his hands to hide her face in it, and remained standing amidst the garments fallen at her feet. He seized her in his arms and bore her towards the couch. Then she murmured in his ear in a broken voice, "I swear to you, I swear to you, that I have never had a lover."

And he thought, "That is all the same to me."

[FN#375] In text "Ant' amilta maskhara (for maskharah) matah (for mata)," idiomatical Fellah-tongue.

[FN#376] Scott (Appendix vol. vi. 460) simply called this tale "The Syrian." In M. Clouston's "Book of Noodles" (pp. 193?194) we find a man who is searching for three greater simpletons than his wife, calling himself "Saw ye ever my like?" It is quoted from Campbell's "Popular Tales of the West Highlands" (ii. 385?387), but it lacks the canopic wit of the Arabo-Egyptian. I may note anent the anecdote of the Gabies (p. 201), who proposed, in order to make the tall bride on horseback enter the low village-gate, either to cut off her head or the legs of her steed, that precisely the same tale is told by the biting wits of Damascus concerning the b.o.o.bies of Halbun. "Halbaun," as these villagers call their ancient hamlet, is justly supposed to be the Helbon whose wine is mentioned by Ezekiel in the traffic of Damascus, although others less reasonably identify it with Halab=Aleppo.

[FN#377] In text "La'bat Shawaribu-hu"=lit. his mustachios played.

[FN#378] For the "Wakalah," or caravanserai, see vol. i. 266.

[FN#379] In text "Kabut," plur. Kababit:

Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote, In his snowy camise and his s.h.a.ggy capote?

"Childe Harold," Canto II.

And here I cannot but notice the pitiful contrast (on the centenary of the poet's nativity, Jan. 22nd, '88) between the land of his birth and that of his death. The gallant Greeks honoured his memory with wreaths and panegyrics and laudatory articles, declaring that they will never forget the anniversaries of his nativity and his decease. The British Pharisee and Philistine, true to his miserable creed, ignored all the "real Lord Byron"--his generosity, his devotion to his friends, his boundless charity, and his enthusiasm for humanity. They exhaled their venom by carping at Byron's poetry (which was and is to Europe a greater boon than Shakespeare's), by condemning his morality (in its dirty s.e.xual sense) and in prophesying for him speedy oblivion. Have these men no shame in presence of the n.o.ble panegyric dedicated by the Prince of German poets, Goethe, to his brother bard whom he welcomed as a prophet? Can they not blush before Heine (the great German of the future), before Flaubert, Alfred de Musset, Lamartine, Leopardi and a host of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese notables? Whilst England will not forgive Byron for having separated from his unsympathetic wife, the Literary society of Moscow celebrated his centenary with all honour; and Prof. Nicholas Storojenko delivered a speech which has found an echo

further west Than his sires' "Islands of the Blest."

He rightly remarked that Byron's deadly sin in the eyes of the Georgian-English people was his Cosmopolitanism. He was the poetical representative of the Sturm und Drang period of the xixth century. He reflected, in his life and works, the wrath of n.o.ble minds at the collapse of the cause of freedom and the reactionary tendency of the century. Even in the distant regions of Monte Video Byron's hundredth birthday was not forgotten, and Don Luis Desteffanio's lecture was welcomed by literary society.

[FN#380] He cried out thinking of the mystical meaning of such name. So {Greek}, would mean in Sufi language--Learn from thyself what is thy Lord;--corresponding after a manner with the Christian "looking up through Nature to Nature's G.o.d."

[FN#381] The phrase prob. means so drunk that his circulation had apparently stopped.

[FN#382] This is the article usually worn by the professional buffoon. The cap of the "Sutari" or jester of the Arnaut (Albanian) regiments--who is one of their professional braves--is usually a felt cone garnished with foxes' brushes.

[FN#383] In Arab. "Sabbal alayhim (for Alayhinna, the usual masc.

pro fem.) Al-Sattar"=lit. the Veiler let down a curtain upon them.