The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VIII Part 26

[FN#14] There are many kinds of Kohls (Hindos. Surma and Kajjal) used in medicine and magic. See Herklots, p. 227.

[FN#15] Arab. "Sabikah" = bar, lamina, from "Sabk" = melting, smelting: the lump in the crucible would be hammered out into an ingot in order to conceal the operation

[FN#16] i.e. 375.

[FN#17] Such report has cost many a life: the suspicion was and is still deadly as heresy in a "new Christian" under the Inquisition.

[FN#18] Here there is a double entendre: openly it means, "Few men recognise as they should the bond of bread and salt:" the other sense would be (and that accounts for the smile), "What the deuce do I care for the bond?"

[FN#19] Arab. "Kabbat" in the Bresl. Edit. "Ka'aban ": Lane (iii. 519) reads "Ka'ab plur. of Ka'ab a cup."

[FN#20] A most palpable sneer. But Hasan is purposely represented as a "softy" till aroused and energized by the magic of Love.

[FN#21] Arab. "Al-iksir" (see Night dcclxxix, supra p. 9): the Greek word which has returned from a trip to Arabia and reappeared in Europe as "Elixir."

[FN#22] "Awak" plur. of "Ukiyah," the well-known "oke," or "ocque," a weight varying from 1 to 2 lbs. In Morocco it is p.r.o.nounced "Wukiyah," and = the Spanish ounce (p. 279 Rudimentos del Arabe Vulgar, etc., by Fr. Jose de Lorchundi, Madrid, Rivadencyra, 1872).

[FN#23] These lines have occurred in vol. iv. 267, where references to other places are given. I quote Lane by way of variety. In the text they are supposed to have been written by the Persian, a hint that Hasan would never be seen again.

[FN#24] i.e. a superfetation of iniquity.

[FN#25] Arab. "Kurban" = offering, oblation to be brought to the priest's house or to the altar of the tribal G.o.d Yahveh, Jehovah (Levit. ii, 2-3 etc.). Amongst the Maronites Kurban is the host (-wafer) and amongst the Turks 'Id al-Kurban (sacrifice-feast) is the Greater Bayram, the time of Pilgrimage.

[FN#26] Nar = fire, being feminine, like the names of the other "elements."

[FN#27] The Egyptian Kurbaj of hippopotamus-hide (Burkh. Nubia, pp. 62,282) or elephant-hide (Turner ii. 365). Hence the Fr.

Cravache (as Cravat is from Croat).

[FN#28] In Mac. Edit. "Bahriyah": in Bresl. Edit. "Nawatiyah."

See vol. vi. 242, for , navita, nauta.

[FN#29] In Bresl. Edit. (iv. 285) "Ya Khwajah," for which see vol. vi. 46.

[FN#30] Arab. "Tabl" (vulg. baz) = a kettle-drum about half a foot broad held in the left hand and beaten with a stick or leathern thong. Lane refers to his description (M.E. ii. chapt.

v.) of the Dervish's drum of tinned copper with parchment face, and renders Zakhmah or Zukhmah (strap, stirrup-leather) by "plectrum," which gives a wrong idea. The Bresl. Edit. ignores the strap.

[FN#31] The "Spartivento" of Italy, mostly a tall headland which divides the clouds. The most remarkable feature of the kind is the Dalmatian Island, Pelagosa.

[FN#32] The "Rocs" (Al-Arkhakh) in the Bresl. Edit. (iv. 290).

The Rakham = aquiline vulture.

[FN#33] Lane here quotes a similar incident in the romance "Sayf Zu al-Yazan," so called from the hero, whose son, Misr, is sewn up in a camel's hide by Bahram, a treacherous Magian, and is carried by the Rukhs to a mountain-top.

[FN#34] These lines occurred in Night xxvi. vol. i. 275: I quote Mr. Payne for variety.

[FN#35] Thus a Moslem can not only circ.u.mcise and marry himself but can also bury canonically himself. The form of this prayer is given by Lane M. E. chapt. xv.

[FN#36] i.e. If I fail in my self-imposed duty, thou shalt charge me therewith on the Judgment-day.

[FN#37] Arab. "Al-Alwan," plur. of laun (colour). The latter in Egyptian Arabic means a "dish of meat." See Burckhardt No.

279. I repeat that the great traveller's "Arabic Proverbs" wants republis.h.i.+ng for two reasons. First he had not sufficient command of English to translate with the necessary laconism and a.s.sonance: secondly in his day British Philistinism was too rampant to permit a literal translation. Consequently the book falls short of what the Oriental student requires; and I have prepared it for my friend Mr. Quaritch.

[FN#38] i.e. Lofty, high-builded. See Night dcclxviii. vol. vii.

p. 347. In the Bresl. Edit. Al-Masid (as in Al-Kazwini): in the Mac. Edit. Al-Mas.h.i.+d

[FN#39] Arab. "Munkati" here = cut off from the rest of the world. Applied to a man, and a popular term of abuse in Al-Hijaz, it means one cut off from the blessings of Allah and the benefits of mankind; a pauvre sire. (Pilgrimage ii. 22.)

[FN#40] Arab. "Baras au Juzam," the two common forms of leprosy.

See vol. iv. 51. Popular superst.i.tion in Syria holds that coition during the menses breeds the Juzam, Daa al-Kabir (Great Evil) or Daa al-Fil (Elephantine Evil), i.e. Elephantiasis and that the days between the beginning of the flow (Sabil) to that of coition shows the age when the progeny will be attacked; for instance if it take place on the first day, the disease will appear in the tenth year, on the fourth the fortieth and so on. The only diseases really dreaded by the Badawin are leprosy and small-pox.

Coition during the menses is forbidden by all Eastern faiths under the severest penalties. Al-Mas'udi relates how a man thus begotten became a determined enemy of Ali; and the ancient Jews attributed the magical powers of Joshua Nazarenus to this accident of his birth, the popular idea being that sorcerers are thus impurely engendered.

[FN#41] By adoption - See vol. iii. 151. This sudden affection (not love) suggests the "Come to my arms, my slight acquaintance!" of the Anti-Jacobin. But it is true to Eastern nature; and nothing can be more charming than this fast friends.h.i.+p between the Princess and Hasan.

[FN#42] En tout bien et en tout honneur, be it understood.

[FN#43] He had done nothing of the kind; but the feminine mind is p.r.o.ne to exaggeration. Also Hasan had told them a fib, to prejudice them against the Persian.

[FN#44] These nervous movements have been reduced to a system in the Turk. "Ihtilajnameh" = Book of palpitations, prognosticating from the subsultus tendinum and other involuntary movements of the body from head to foot; according to Ja'afar the Just, Daniel the Prophet, Alexander the Great; the Sages of Persia and the Wise Men of Greece. In England we attend chiefly to the eye and ear.

[FN#45] Revenge, amongst the Arabs, is a sacred duty; and, in their state of civilization, society could not be kept together without it. So the slaughter of a villain is held to be a sacrifice to Allah, who amongst Christians claims for Himself the monopoly of vengeance.

[FN#46] Arab. "Zindik." See vol. v. 230.

[FN#47] Lane translates this "put for him the remaining food and water;" but Ai-Akhar (Mac. Edit.) evidently refers to the Najib (dromedary).

[FN#48] We can hardly see the heroism of the deed, but it must be remembered that Bahram was a wicked sorcerer, whom it was every good Moslem's bounden duty to slay. Compare the treatment of witches in England two centuries ago.

[FN#49] The mother in Arab tales is ma mere, now becoming somewhat ridiculous in France on account of the over use of that venerable personage.

[FN#50] The forbidden closet occurs also in Sayf Zu al-Yazan, who enters it and finds the bird-girls. Trebutien ii, 208 says, "Il est a.s.sez remarquable qu'il existe en Allemagne une tradition a peu pres semblable, et qui a fourni le sujet d'un des contes de Musaeus, ent.i.tule, le voile enleve." Here Hasan is artfully left alone in a large palace without other companions but his thoughts and the reader is left to divine the train of ideas which drove him to open the door.

[FN#51] Arab. "Buhayrah" (Bresl. Edit. "Bahrah"), the tank or cistern in the Hosh (court-yard) of an Eastern house. Here, however, it is a rain-cistern on the flat roof of the palace (See Night dcccviii).

[FN#52] This description of the view is one of the most gorgeous in The Nights.

[FN#53] Here again are the "Swan-maidens" (See vol. v. 346) "one of the primitive myths, the common heritage of the whole Aryan (Iranian) race." In Persia Bahram-i-Gur when carried off by the Div Sapid seizes the Peri's dove-coat: in Santhali folk-lore Torica, the Goatherd, steals the garment doffed by one of the daughters of the sun; and hence the twelve birds of Russian Story. To the same cycle belong the Seal-tales of the Faroe Islands (Thorpe's Northern Mythology) and the wise women or mermaids of Shetland (Hibbert). Wayland the smith captures a wife by seizing a mermaid's raiment and so did Sir Hagan by annexing the wardrobe of a Danubian water-nymph. Lettsom, the translator, mixes up this swan-raiment with that of the Valkyries or Choosers of the Slain. In real life stealing women's clothes is an old trick and has often induced them, after having been seen naked, to offer their persons spontaneously. Of this I knew two cases in India, where the theft is justified by divine example. The blue G.o.d Krishna, a barbarous and grotesque Hindu Apollo, robbed the raiment of the pretty Gopalis (cowherdesses) who were bathing in the Arjun River and carried them to the top of a Kunduna tree; nor would he restore them till he had reviewed the naked girls and taken one of them to wife. See also Imr al-Kays (of the Mu'allakah) with "Onaiza" at the port of Daratjuljul (Clouston's Arabian Poetry, p.4). A critic has complained of my tracing the origin of the Swan-maiden legend to the physical resemblance between the bird and a high-bred girl (vol. v. 346). I should have explained my theory which is shortly, that we must seek a material basis for all so-called supernaturalisms, and that anthropomorphism satisfactorily explains the Swan-maiden, as it does the angel and the devil.

There is much to say on the subject; but this is not the place for long discussion.

[FN#54] Arab. "Nafs Ammarah," corresponding with our canting term "The Flesh." Nafs al-Natikah is the intellectual soul or function; Nafs al-Ghazabiyah = the animal function and Nafs al Shahwaniyah = the vegetative property.

[FN#55] The lines occur in vol. ii. 331: I have quoted Mr.

Payne. Here they are singularly out of place.

[FN#56] Not the "green gown" of Anglo-India i.e. a white ball-dress with blades of gra.s.s sticking to it in consequence of a "fall backwards."

[FN#57] These lines occur in vol. i. 219: I have borrowed from Torrens (p. 219).

[FN#58] The appearance of which ends the fast and begins the Lesser Festival. See vol. i. 84.