The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VII Part 24

amends it to "a cl.u.s.ter of henna-flowers." The Solomonic (?) description is very correct; the shrub affects vineyards, and about Bombay forms fine hedges which can be smelt from a distance.

[FN#295] Hardly the equivalent of the Arab. "Kataba" (which includes true tattooing with needles) and is applied to painting "patches" of blue or green colour, with sprigs and arabesques upon the arms and especially the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of women.

"Kataba" would also be applied to striping the fingers with Henna which becomes a s.h.i.+ning black under a paste of honey, lime and sal-ammoniac. This "patching" is alluded to by Strabo and Galen (Lane M. E. chapt. ii.); and we may note that savages and barbarians can leave nothing of beauty unadorned; they seem to hate a plain surface like the Hindu silversmith, whose art is shown only in chasing.

[FN#296] A violent temper, accompanied with voies de fait and personal violence, is by no means rare amongst Eastern princesses; and terrible tales are told in Persia concerning the daughters of Fath Ali Shah. Few men and no woman can resist the temptations of absolute command. The daughter of a certain Dictator all-powerful in the Argentine Republic was once seen on horseback with a white bridle of peculiar leather; it was made of the skin of a man who had boasted of her favours. The slave-girls suffer first from these masterful young persons and then it is the turn of the eunuchry.

[FN#297] A neat touch; she was too thorough-bred to care for herself first.

[FN#298] Here the ground or earth is really kissed.

[FN#299] Corresponding with our phrase, "His heart was in his mouth."

[FN#300] Very artful is the contrast of the love-lorn Princess's humility with her furious behaviour, in the pride of her purity, while she was yet a virginette and fancy free.

[FN#301] Arab. "Suhbat-hu" lit.=in company with him, a popular idiom in Egypt and Syria. It often occurs in the Bresl. Edit.

[FN#302] In the Mac. Edit. "Shahzaman," a corruption of Shah Zaman=King of the Age. (See vol. i. 2)

[FN#303] For a note on this subject see vol. ii. 2.

[FN#304] i.e. bathe her and apply cosmetics to remove ail traces of travel.

[FN#305] These pretentious and curious displays of coquetry are not uncommon in handsome slave-girls when newly bought; and it is a kind of pundonor to humour them. They may also refuse their favours and a master who took possession of their persons by brute force would be blamed by his friends, men and women. Even the most despotic of despots, Fath Ali Shah of Persia, put up with refusals from his slave-girls and did not, as would the mean-minded, marry them to the grooms or cooks of the palace.

[FN#306] Such continence is rarely shown by the young Jallabs or slave-traders; when older they learn how much money is lost with the chattel's virginity.

[FN#307] Midwives in the East, as in the less civilised parts of the West, have many nostrums for divining the s.e.x of the unborn child.

[FN#308] Arabic (which has no written "g") from Pers. Gulnar (Gul-i-anar) pomegranate-flower the Gulnare" of Byron who learnt his Orientalism at the Mekhitarist (Armenian) Convent, Venice. I regret to see the little honour now paid to the gallant poet in the land where he should be honoured the most.

The systematic depreciation was begun by the late Mr.

Thackeray, perhaps the last man to value the n.o.ble independence of Byron's spirit; and it has been perpetuated, I regret to see, by better judges. These critics seem wholly to ignore the fact that Byron founded a school which covered Europe from Russia to Spain, from Norway to Sicily, and which from England pa.s.sed over to the two Americas. This exceptional success, which has not yet fallen even to Shakespeare's lot, was due to genius only, for the poet almost ignored study and poetic art. His great misfortune was being born in England under the Gerogium Sidus. Any Continental people would have regarded him s one of the prime glories of his race.

[FN#309] Arab. "Fi al-Kamar," which Lane renders "in the moonlight" It seems to me that the allusion is to the Comorin Islands; but the sequel speaks simply of an island.

[FN#310] The Mac. Edit. misprints Julnar as Julnaz (so the Bul Edit. ii. 233), and Lane 's Jullanar is an Egyptian vulgarism.

He is right in suspecting the "White City" to be imaginary, but its sea has no apparent connection with the Caspian. The mermen and mermaids appear to him to be of an inferior order of the Jinn, termed Al-Ghawwasah, the Divers, who fly through air and are made of fire which at times issues from their mouths.

[FN#311] Arab. " la Kulli hal," a popular phrase, like the Anglo-American " anyhow."

[FN#312] In the text the name does not appear till near the end of the tale.

[FN#313] i.e. Full moon smiling.

[FN#314] These lines have occurred in vol. iii. 264. so I quote Lane ii. 499.

[FN#315] 'These lines occurred in vol. ii. 301. I quote Mr.

Payne.

[FN#316] Arab. "Khadd" = cheek from the eye-orbit to the place where the beard grows; also applied to the side of a rough highland, the side-planks of a litter, etc. etc.

[FN#317] The black hair of youth.

[FN#318] This manner of listening is not held dishonourable amongst Arabs or Easterns generally; who, however, hear as little good of themselves as Westerns declare in proverb.

[FN#319] Arab. "Hasab wa nasab," before explained as inherited degree and acquired dignity. See vol. iv. 171.

[FN#320] Arab. "Mujajat"=spittle running from the mouth: hence Lane, "is like running saliva," which, in poetry is not pretty.

[FN#321] Arab. and Heb. "Salmandra" from Pers. Samandal (-- dar--duk--dun, etc.), a Salamander, a mouse which lives in fire, some say a bird in India and China and others confuse with the chameleon (Bochart Hiero. Part ii. chapt. vi).

[FN#322] Arab. "Maha" one of the four kinds of wild cows or bovine antelopes, bubalus, Antelope defa.s.sa, A. Ieucoryx, etc.

[FN#323] These lines have occurred in vol. iii. 279; so I quote Lane (iii. 274) by way of variety; although I do not like his " bowels."

[FN#324] The last verse (286) of chapt. ii. The Cow: "compelleth" in the sense of "burdeneth."

[FN#325] Salih's speeches are euphuistic.

[FN#326] From the Fatihah.

[FN#327] A truly Eastern saying, which ignores the "old maids"

of the West.

[FN#328] i.e naming her before the lieges as if the speaker were her and his superior. It would have been more polite not to have gone beyond " the unique pearl and the h.o.a.rded jewel :" the offensive part of the speech was using the girl's name.

[FN#329] Meaning emphatically that one and all were n.o.bodies.

[FN#330] Arab Badr, the usual pun.

[FN#331] Arab. "Kirat" ( ) the bean of the Abrus precatorius, used as a weight in Arabia and India and as a bead for decoration in Africa. It is equal to four Kamhahs or wheat grains and about 3 grs. avoir.; and being the twenty fourth of a miskal, it is applied to that proportion of everything. Thus the Arabs say of a perfect man, " He is of four-and-twenty Kirat" i.e. pure gold. See vol. iii. 239.

[FN#332] The (she) myrtle: Kazimirski (A. de Biberstein) Dictionnaire Arabe-Francais (Pairs Maisonneuve 1867) gives Marsin=Rose de Jericho: myrte.

[FN#333] Needless to note that the fowler had a right to expect a return present worth double or treble the price of his gift. Such is the universal practice of the East: in the West the extortioner says, "I leave it to you, sir!"

[FN#334] And she does tell him all that the reader well knows.

[FN#335] This was for sprinkling him, but the texts omit that operation. Arabic has distinct terms for various forms of metamorphosis. " Naskh " is change from a lower to a higher, as beast to man; " Maskh " (the common expression) is the reverse, " Raskh " is from animate to inanimate (man to stone) and "Faskh" is absolute wasting away to corruption.

[FN#336] I render this improbable detail literally: it can only mean that the s.h.i.+p was dashed against a rock.

[FN#337] Who was probably squatting on his shop counter. The "Bakkal" (who must not be confounded with the epicier), lit.

"vender of herbs" =greengrocer, and according to Richardson used incorrectly for Baddal ( ?) vendor of provisions.

Popularly it is applied to a seller of oil, honey, b.u.t.ter and fruit, like the Ital. "Pizzicagnolo"=Salsamentarius, and in North-West Africa to an inn-keeper.

[FN#338] Here the Shaykh is mistaken: he should have said, "The Sun in old Persian." "Almanac" simply makes nonsense of the Arabian Circe's name. In Arab. it is "Takwim," whence the Span. and Port. "Tacuino:" in Heb. Hakamatha-Takunah=sapientia dis positionis astrorum (Asiat. Research. iii.120).

[FN#339] i.e. for thy daily expenses.