The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XI Part 22

[FN#409] This is a fancy t.i.tle, but it suits the tale better than that in the text (xi. 183) "The Richard who lost his wealth and his wits." Mr. Clouston refers to similar stories in Sacchetti and other early Italian novelists.

[FN#410] Arab. "Al-Muwaswis": for "Wiswas" see vol. i. 106. This cla.s.s of men in stories takes the place of our "cunning idiot,"

and is often confounded with the Saudawi, the melancholist proper.

[FN#411] Arab. "Hamhama," an onomapoeic, like our hum, hem, and haw.

[FN#412] Arab. "Barniyah," a vessel either of gla.s.s or pottery like that in which the manna was collected (Exod. xvi. 33).

[FN#413] A hasty man, as Ghazban=an angry man.

[FN#414] The Bresl. Edit. misprint. "Khablas" in more places than one, now with a Sin, then with a Sad. Khalbas suggests "Khalbus," a buffoon, for which see vol. ii. 143. In Egypt, however, the latter generally ends in a Sad (see Lane's "Khalboos," M. E. chap. xxvii).

[FN#415] This story is a rechauffe of the Jewish Kazi and his pious wife; see vol. v. 256.

[FN#416] The Arab form of "Nayshapur"=reeds of (King) Shapur: see vol. ix. 230.

[FN#417] Arab. "Ala Tarik al-Satr wa al-Salamah," meaning that each other's wives did not veil before their brothers-in-law as is usually done. It may also mean that they were under Allah's protection and in best of condition.

[FN#418] i.e. he dared not rape her.

[FN#419] i.e. her "yes" meant "yes" and her "no" meant "no."

[FN#420] "Ignorance" (Jahl) may, here and elsewhere, mean wickedness, forwardness, folly, vicious folly or uncalled-for wrath. Here Arabic teaches a good lesson, for ignorance, intemperance and egoism are, I repeat, the roots of all evil.

[FN#421] So Mohammed said of a child born in adultery "The babe to the blanket (i.e. let it be nursed and reared) and the adultress to the stone."

[FN#422] Arab. "Wa ha," etc., an interjection corresponding with the Syriac "ho" lo! (i.e., look) behold! etc.

[FN#423] This paragraph is supplied by Mr. Payne: something of the kind has evidently fallen out of the Arab text.

[FN#424] i.e. in the presence of witnesses, legally.

[FN#425] Lit. a myriad, ten thousand dirhams. See vol. iv. 281.

[FN#426] The fire was intended to defend the mother and babe from Jinns, bad spirits, the evil eye, etc. Romans lit candles in the room of the puerpara; hence the G.o.ddess Candelifera, and the term Candelaria applied to the B.V. In Brand's Popular Antiquities (ii. 144) we find, "Gregory mentions an ordinary superst.i.tion of the old wives who dare not trust a child in a cradle by itself alone without a candle;" this was for fear of the "night-hag" (Milton, P. L., ii. 662). The same idea prevailed in Scotland and in Germany: see the learned Liebrecht (who translated the Pentamerone) "Zur Folkskunde," p. 31. In Sweden if the candle go out, the child may be carried off by the Trolls (Weckenstedt, Wendische Sagen, p. 446). The custom has been traced to the Malay peninsula, whither it was probably imported by the Hindus or the Moslems, and amongst the Tajiks in Bokhara.

For the Hindu practice, see Katha S. S. 305, and Prof. Tawney's learned note a.n.a.lysed above.

[FN#427] Arab. "Kahinah," fem. of Kahin (Cohen): see Kahanah, vol. i. 28.

[FN#428] i.e. for a long time, as has been before explained.

[FN#429] i.e. at his service. Arabia was well provided with Hetairae and public women long before the days of Al-Islam.

[FN#430] Arab. "Athar"=sign, mark, trail.

[FN#431] i.e. Persia. See vol. v. 26.

[FN#432] Arab. "'Akakir" plur. of 'Akkar prop.=aromatic roots; but applied to vulgar drugs or simples, as in the Tale of the Sage Duban, i. 46.

[FN#433] Arab. "Si'at rizki-h" i.e., the ease with which he earned his copious livelihood.

[FN#434] i.e. the ten thousand dirhams of the bond, beside the unpaid and contingent portion of her "Mahr" or marriage-settlement.

[FN#435] Arab. "Al-Hazur" from Hazr=loquacity, frivolous garrulity. Every craft in the East has a jargon of its own and the goldsmith (Zargar) is famed for speaking a language made unintelligible by the constant insertion of a letter or letters not belonging to the word. It is as if we rapidly p.r.o.nounced How d'ye do=Howth doth yeth doth?

[FN#436] Arab. "Asma al-Adwiyah," such as are contained in volumes like the "Alfaz al-Adwi-yah" (Nomenclature of Drugs).

[FN#437] I am compelled to insert a line in order to make sense.

[FN#438] "Galen," who is considered by Moslems as a kind of pre-Islamitic Saint; and whom Rabelais (iii. c. 7) calls Le gentil Falot Galen, is explained by Eustathius as the Serene {Greek} from {Greek}=rideo.

[FN#439] Arab. "Sahah" the clear s.p.a.ce before the house as opposed to the "Bathah" (Span. Patio) the inner court.

[FN#440] A nave description of the nave style of reclame adopted by the Eastern Bob Sawyer.

[FN#441] Which they habitually do, by the by, with an immense amount of unpleasant detail. See Pilgrimage i. 18.

[FN#442] The old French name for the phial or bottle in which the patient's water is sent.

[FN#443] A descendant from Mohammed, strictly through his grandson Husayn. See vol. iv. 170.

[FN#444] Arab. "Al-Futuh" lit. the victories; a euphemistic term for what is submitted to the "musculus guineaorum."

[FN#445] Arab. "Firasah" lit. judging the points of a mare (faras). Of physiognomy, or rather judging by externals, curious tales are told by the Arabs. In Al-Mas'udi's (chapt. lvi.) is the original of the camel blind of one eye, etc., which the genius of Voltaire has made famous throughout Europe.

[FN#446] I here quote Mr. Payne's note. "Sic in the text; but the pa.s.sage is apparently corrupt. It is not plain why a rosy complexion, blue eyes and tallness should be peculiar to women in love. Arab women being commonly short, swarthy and blackeyed, the attributes mentioned appear rather to denote the foreign origin of the woman; and it is probable, therefore, that this pa.s.sage has by a copyist's error, been mixed up with that which relates to the signs by which the mock physician recognised her strangerhood, the clause specifying the symptoms of her love-lorn condition having been crowded out in the process, an accident of no infrequent occurrence in the transcription of Oriental works."

[FN#447] Most men would have suspected that it was her lover.

[FN#448] The sumptuary laws, compelling for instance the Jews to wear yellow turbans, and the Christians to carry girdles date from the Capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 636 by Caliph Omar. See vol. i. 77; and Terminal Essay -- 11.

[FN#449] i.e. Our Sunday: the Jewish week ending with the Sabbath (Sat.u.r.day). I have already noted this term for Saturn's day, established as a G.o.d's rest by Commandment No. iv. How it lost its honours amongst Christians none can say: the text in Col. ii. 16, 17, is insufficient to abolish an order given with such pomp and circ.u.mstance to, and obeyed, so strictly and universally by, the Hebrews, including the Founder of Christianity. The general idea is that the Jewish Sabbath was done away with by the Christian dispensation (although Jesus kept it with the usual scrupulous care), and that sundry of the Councils at Colossae and Laodicea anathematised those who observed the Sat.u.r.day after Israelitish fas.h.i.+on. With the day its object changed; instead of "keeping it holy," as all pious Jews still do, the early Fathers converted it into the "Feast of the Resurrection," which could not be kept too joyously. The "Sabbatismus" of the Sabbatarian Protestant who keeps holy the wrong day is a marvellous perversion and the Sunday feast of France, Italy, and Catholic countries generally is far more logical than the mortification day of England and the so-called Reformed countries.

[FN#450] Harais, plur. of Harisah: see vol. i. 131.

[FN#451] It would have been cooked on our Thursday night, or the Jewish Friday night and would be stale and indigestible on the next day.

[FN#452] Marw (Margiana), which the Turkomans p.r.o.nounce "Mawr,"

is derived by Bournouf from the Sansk. Maru or Marw; and by Sir H. Rawlinson from Marz or Marj, the Lat. Margo; Germ. Mark; English March; Old French Marche and Neo-Lat. Marca. So Marzban, a Warden of the Marches: vol. iii. 256. The adj. is not Marazi, as stated in vol. iii. 222; but Marwazi, for which see Ibn Khallikan, vol. i. p. 7, etc.: yet there are good writers who use "Marazi" as Razi for a native of Rayy.

[FN#453] i.e. native of Rayy city. See vol. iv. 104.

[FN#454] Normally used for fuel and at times by funny men to be put into sweetmeats by way of practical joke: these are called "Nukl-i-Pishkil"=goat-dung bonbons. The tale will remind old Anglo-Indians of the two Bengal officers who were great at such "sells" and who "swopped" a spavined horse for a broken-down "buggy."

[FN#455] In the text "khanadik," ditches, trenches; probably (as Mr. Payne suggests) a clerical or typographical error for "Fanadik," inns or caravanserais; the plural of "Funduk" (Span.

Fonda), for which see vol. viii. 184.

[FN#456] This sentence is supplied by Mr. Payne to remedy the incoherence of the text. Moslems are bound to see True Believers decently buried and the poor often beg alms for the funeral. Here the tale resembles the opening of Hajji Baba by Mr. Morier, that admirable picture of Persian manners and morals.