The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume X Part 12

All the natives declare that G.o.d brought upon them a punishment proportioned to the enormity of their offence. When they were engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and terrible fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued a shining Angel with a glittering sword, wherewith at one blow they were all killed and the fire consumed them.[FN#415] There remained a few bones and skulls which G.o.d allowed to bide unconsumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment. In the Hakluyt Society's bowdlerisation we read of the Tumbez Islanders being "very vicious, many of them committing the abominable offence" (p. 24); also, "If by the advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is thought little of and they call him a woman." In chapters lii.

and lviii. we find exceptions. The Indians of Huancabamba, "although so near the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do not commit the abominable sin;" and the Serranos, or island mountaineers, as sorcerers and magiclans inferior to the coast peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.

The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas shows that the evil was of a comparatively modern growth. In the early period of Peruvian history the people considered the crime "unspeakable:" if a Cuzco Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days. One of the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys, but one here and one there, "nor was it a habit of all the inhabitants but only of certain persons who practised it privately," the ruler ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and their houses, crops and trees destroyed: moreover, to show his abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13).

Elsewhere we learn, "There were sodomites in some provinces, though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in secret. In some parts they had them in their temples, because the Devil persuaded them that the G.o.ds took great delight in such people, and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil of shame that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom them to commit it in public and in common."

During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had become the rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de Guzman in 1530 "The last which was taken, and which fought most couragiously, was a man in the habite of a woman, which confessed that from a childe he had gotten his liuing by that filthinesse, for which I caused him to be burned." V. F. Lopez[FN#416] draws a frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru. Under the reigns which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc) Amauri, the country was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from the sea: they practiced pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the conquered tribes were compelled to fly(p. 271). Under the pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name. "Toutes ces hontes et toutes ces miseres provenaient de deux vices infames, la b.e.s.t.i.a.lite et la sodomie. Les femmes surtout etaient offensees de voir la nature frustree de tous ses droits. Wiles pleuraient ensemble en leurs reunions sur le miserable etat dans loquel elles etaient tombees, sur le mepris avec lequel elles etaient traitees. * * * * Le monde etait renverse, les hommes s'aimaient et etaient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remedier au mal; elles employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arreter les progres incessants du vice. Cet etat de choses const.i.tua un veritable moyen age, qui aura jusqu'a l'etabliss.e.m.e.nt du gouvernement des Incas" (p. 277).

When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. "Ni la prudence de l'Inca, ni les lois severes qu'il avait promulguees n'avaient pu extirper entierement le peche contre nature. I1 reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si jalouses qu'un grand nombre d'elles tuerent leurs maris. Les devins et les sorciers pa.s.saient leurs journees a fabriquer, avec certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous ceux qui en mangaient, et les femmes en faisaient prendre, soit dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, a ceux dont elles etaient jalouses'' (p. 291).

I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous for cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood followed in the path of the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da Costa Aguiar[FN#417] is outspoken upon this point. "A crime which in England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of abject depravity, pa.s.ses with impunity amongst us by the partic.i.p.ating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou de muitos) Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of punishing such crimes (delictos), more than one city of this Empire, more than a dozen, would pa.s.s into the category of the Sodoms and Gomorrains" (p. 30). Till late years pederasty in the Brazil was looked upon as a peccadillo; the European immigrants following the practice of the wild men who were naked but not, as Columbus said, "clothed in innocence." One of Her Majesty's Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a "fashionable" a.s.sembly by the open declaration of a young gentleman that his mulatto "patient" had suddenly turned upon him, insisting upon becoming agent. Now, however, under the influences of improved education and respect for the public opinion of Europe, pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians has been reduced to the normal limits.

Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not endemic: yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where p.u.b.erty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has been the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and pederasty to flourish. The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice; yet San'a the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population have long been and still are thoroughly infected. History tells us of Zu Shanatir, tyrant of "Arabia Felix," in A.D. 478, who used to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use to be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last poniarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as "Zu Nowas." The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and tribadism. Yet Joan dos Sanctos[FN#418] found in Cacongo of West Africa certain "Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale d.a.m.nation an honor."

Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prost.i.tutes kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses.

North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances.

Master Christopher Burrough[FN#419] describes on the western side of the Volga "a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak, and adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom, *

* * which was swallowed into the earth by the justice of G.o.d, for the wickednesse of the people." Again: although as a rule Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions. Perhaps the most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the middle ages: "Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus, salutaris medicine" (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under "Vayer") the infamous book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, "De laudibus Sodomiae,"[FN#420] vulgarly known as "Capitolo del Forno." The same writer refers (under "Sixte iv.") to the report that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice, had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the pet.i.tion "Be it done as they demand." Hence the Faeda Venus of Battista Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb "Aux mods qui n'ont pas d' R, peu embra.s.ser et bien boire." But in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are inevitable: witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-git un Jesuite, etc.

In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance, the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years, also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to Naples, whence originated the term "Il vizio Inglese." It would be invicious to detail the scandals which of late years have startled the public in London and Dublin: for these the curious will consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong devour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion, manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr.

Gaspar,[FN#421] a well-known authority on the subject, adduces many interesting cases, especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices. Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him that not only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and Platen(?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg to name only a few places. Frederick the Great is said to have addressed these words to his nephew, "Je puis vous a.s.surer, par mon experience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu agreable a cultiver." This suggests the popular anecdote of Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an "experience" and found it far from satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter informed the Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and provoked the exclamation, "Once a philosopher: twice a sodomite!"

The last revival of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires, in opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.

Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but, whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not: hence we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public. For France of the xviith century consult the "Histoire de la Prost.i.tution chez tous les Peuples du Monde," and "La Prance devenue Italienne," a treatise which generally follows"L'Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules" by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.[FN#422] The headquarters of male prost.i.tution were then in the Champ Flory, i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low courtesans. In the xviiith century, "quand le Francais a tete folle," as Voltaire sings, invented the term "Peche philosophique," there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his "Apologie de la Secte Anandryne" was published in L'Espion Anglais. In those days the Allee des Veuves in the Champs Elysees had a "fief reserve des Ebugors"[FN#423]--"veuve" in the language of Sodom being the maitresse en t.i.tre, the favourite youth.

At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau[FN#424] declares that pederasty was reglementee and adds, Le gout des pederastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le regne desquel les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement[FN#425] sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des progres considerables. On salt que cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d'?uvre de police; en consequence, il y a des lieux publics autorises a cet effet. Les jeunes yens qui se destinent a la professign, vent soigneus.e.m.e.nt encla.s.ses; car les systemes reglementaires s'etendent jusques-la.

On les examine; ceux qui peuvent etre agents et patients, qui vent beaux, vermeils, bien faits, poteles, sont reserves pour les grands seigneurs, ou se font payer tres-cher par les eveques et les financiers. Ceux qui vent prives de leurs testicules, ou en termes de l'art (car notre langue est plus chaste qui nos m?urs), qui n'ont pas le poids du tisserand, mais qui donnent et recoivent, forment la seconde cla.s.se; ils vent encore chers, parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu'ils servent aux hommes.

Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d'erection tant ils sont uses, quoiqu'ils aient tous ces organes necessaires au plaisir, s'inscrivent comme patiens purs, et composent la troisieme cla.s.se: mais celle qui preside a ces plaisirs, verifie leur impuissance. Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas ouvert par la moitie inferieure; deux filles les caressent de leur mieux, pendant qu'une troisieme frappe doucement avec desorties naissantes le siege des desire veneriens. Apres un quart d'heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l'a.n.u.s un poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considerable; on pose sur les echauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde fine de Caudebec, et l'on pa.s.se le gland au camphre. Ceux qui resistent a ces epreuves et ne donnent aucun signe d'erection, servent comme patiens a un tiers de paie seulement.[FN#426]

The Restoration and the Empire made the police more vigilant in matters of politics than of morals. The favourite club, which had its mot de pa.s.se, was in the Rue Doyenne, old quarter St Thomas de Louvre; and the house was a hotel of the xviith century. Two street-doors, on the right for the male gynaeceum and the left for the female, opened at 4 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer. A decoy-lad, charmingly dressed in women's clothes, with big haunches and small waist, promenaded outside; and this continued till 1826 when the police put down the house.

Under Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algiers had evil results, according to the Marquis de Boissy. He complained without ambages of m?urs Arabes in French regiments, and declared that the result of the African wars was an effrayable debordement pederastique, even as the verole resulted from the Italian campaigns of that age of pa.s.sion, the xvith century. From the military the fleau spread to civilian society and the Vice took such expansion and intensity that it may be said to have been democratised in cities and large towns; at least so we gather from the Dossier des Agiss.e.m.e.nts des Pederastes. A general gathering of "La Sainte Congregation des glorieux Padarastes" was held in the old Pet.i.te Rue des Marais where, after the theatre, many resorted under pretext of making water. They ranged themselves along the walls of a vast garden and exposed their podices: bourgeois, richards and n.o.bles came with full purses, touched the part which most attracted them and were duly followed by it. At the Allee des Veuves the crowd was dangerous from 7 to 8 p.m.: no policeman or ronde de nun' dared venture in it; cords were stretched from tree to tree and armed guards drove away strangers amongst whom, they say, was once Victor Hugo. This nuisance was at length suppressed by the munic.i.p.al administration.

The Empire did not improve morals. b.a.l.l.s of sodomites were held at No. 8 Place de la Madeleine where, on Jan. 2, '64, some one hundred and fifty men met, all so well dressed as women that even the landlord did not recognise them. There was also a club for sotadic debauchery called the Cent Gardes and the Dragons de l'Imperatrice.[FN#427] They copied the imperial toilette and kept it in the general wardrobe: hence "faire l'Imperatrice" meant to be used carnally. The site, a splendid hotel in the Allee des Veuves, was discovered by the Procureur-General, who registered all the names; but, as these belonged to not a few senators and dignitaries, the Emperor wisely quashed proceedings. The club was broken up on July 16, '64. During the same year La Pet.i.te Revue, edited by M. Loredan Larchy, son of the General, printed an article, "Les echappes de Sodome": it discusses the letter of M.

Castagnary to the Progres de Lyons and declares that the Vice had been adopted by plusieurs corps de troupes. For its latest developments as regards the chantage of the tantes (pathics), the reader will consult the last issues of Dr. Tardieu's well-known etudes.[FN#428] He declares that the servant-cla.s.s is most infected; and that the Vice is commonest between the ages of fifteen and twenty five.

The pederasty of The Nights may briefly be distributed into three categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly practical joke of masterful Queen Budur (vol. iii. 300-306) and the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv.

226). The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas[FN#429] debauches the three youths (vol. v. 64 69); whilst in the third form it is wisely and learnedly discussed, to be severely blamed, by the Shaykhah or Reverend Woman (vol v. 154).

To conclude this part of my subject, the eclairciss.e.m.e.nt des obscanites. Many readers will regret the absence from The Nights of that modesty which distinguishes "Amadis de Gaul," whose author, when leaving a man and a maid together says, "And nothing shall be here related; for these and suchlike things which are conformable neither to good conscience nor nature, man ought in reason lightly to pa.s.s over, holding them in slight esteem as they deserve." Nor have we less respect for Palmerin of England who after a risque scene declares, "Herein is no offence offered to the wise by wanton speeches, or encouragement to the loose by lascivious matter." But these are not oriental ideas, and we must e'en take the Eastern as we find him. He still holds "Naturalla non sunt turpia," together with "Mundis omnia munda"; and, as Bacon a.s.sures us the mixture of a lie cloth add to pleasure, so the Arab enjoys the startling and lively contrast of extreme virtue and horrible vice placed in juxtaposition.

Those who have read through these ten volumes will agree with me that the proportion of offensive matter bears a very small ratio to the ma.s.s of the work. In an age saturated with cant and hypocrisy, here and there a venal pen will mourn over the "p.o.r.nography" of The Nights, dwell upon the "Ethics of Dirt" and the "Garbage of the Brothel"; and will lament the "wanton dissemination (!) of ancient and filthy fiction." This self- const.i.tuted Censor morum reads Aristophanes and Plato, Horace and Virgil, perhaps even Martial and Petronius, because "veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language"; he allows men Latine loqui; but he is scandalised at stumbling-blocks much less important in plain English. To be consistent he must begin by bowdlerising not only the cla.s.sics, with which boys' and youths'

minds and memories are soaked and saturated at schools and colleges, but also Boccaccio and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rabelais; Burton, Sterne, Swift, and a long list of works which are yearly reprinted and republished without a word of protest.

Lastly, why does not this inconsistent puritan purge the Old Testament of its allusions to human ordure and the pudenda; to carnal copulation and impudent wh.o.r.edom, to adultery and fornication, to onanism, sodomy and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity? But this he will not do, the whited sepulchre! To the interested critic of the Edinburgh Review (No. 335 of July, 1886), I return my warmest thanks for his direct and deliberate falsehoods:--lies are one- legged and short-lived, and venom evaporates.[FN#430] It appears to me that when I show to such men, so "respectable" and so impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there lying in a field-corner.

-- V ON THE PROSE-RHYME AND THE POETRY OF THE NIGHTS

A.--The Saj'a.

According to promise in my Foreword (p. xiii.), I here proceed to offer a few observations concerning the Saj'a or rhymed prose and the Shi'r, or measured sentence, that is, the verse of The Nights. The former has in composition, metrical or unmetrical three distinct forms. Saj'a mutawazi (parallel), the most common is when the ending words of sentences agree in measure, a.s.sonance and final letter, in fact our full rhyme; next is Saj'a mutarraf (the affluent), when the periods, hemistichs or couplets end in words whose terminal letters correspond, although differing in measure and number; and thirdly, Saj'a muwazanah (equilibrium) is applied to the balance which affects words corresponding in measure but differing in final letters.[FN#431]

Al-Saj'a, the fine style or style fleuri, also termed Al-Badi'a, or euphuism, is the basis of all Arabic euphony. The whole of the Koran is written in it; and the same is the case with the Makamat of Al-Hariri and the prime masterpieces of rhetorical composition: without it no translation of the Holy Book can be satisfactory or final, and where it is not the a.s.semblies become the prose of prose. Thus universally used the a.s.sonance has necessarily been abused, and its excess has given rise to the saying "Al-Saj's faj'a"--prose rhyme's a pest. English translators have, unwisely I think, agreed in rejecting it, while Germans have not. Mr Preston a.s.sures us that "rhyming prose is extremely ungraceful in English and introduces an air of flippancy": this was certainly not the case with Friedrich Ruckert's version of the great original and I see no reason why it should be so or become so in our tongue. Torrens (Pref. p.

vii.) declares that "the effect of the irregular sentence with the iteration of a jingling rhyme is not pleasant in our language:" he therefore systematically neglects it and gives his style the semblance of being "scamped" with the object of saving study and trouble. Mr. Payne (ix. 379) deems it an "excrescence born of the excessive facilities for rhyme afforded by the language," and of Eastern delight in ant.i.thesis of all kinds whether of sound or of thought; and, aiming elaborately at grace of style, he omits it wholly, even in the proverbs.

The weight of authority was against me but my plan compelled me to disregard it. The dilemma was simply either to use the Saj'a or to follow Mr. Payne's method and "arrange the disjecta membra of the original in their natural order"; that is, to remodel the text. Intending to produce a faithful copy of the Arabic, I was compelled to adopt the former, and still hold it to be the better alternative. Moreover I question Mr. Payne's dictum (ix. 383) that "the Seja-form is utterly foreign to the genius of English prose and that its preservation would be fatal to all vigour and harmony of style." The English translator of Palmerin of England, Anthony Munday, attempted it in places with great success as I have before noted (vol. viii. 60); and my late friend Edward Eastwick made artistic use of it in his Gulistan. Had I rejected the "Cadence of the cooing dove" because un-English, I should have adopted the balanced periods of the Anglican marriage service[FN#432] or the essentially English system of alliteration, requiring some such artful aid to distinguish from the vulgar recitative style the elevated and cla.s.sical tirades in The Nights. My attempt has found with reviewers more favour than I expected; and a kindly critic writes of it, "These melodious fray meets, these little eddies of song set like gems in the prose, have a charming effect on the ear. They come as dulcet surprises and mostly recur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in nature or art. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice, but really it arises from a profound study of the situation, as if the Tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break into the rhythmic strain."

B.--The Verse.

The Shi'r or metrical part of The Nights is considerable amounting to not less than ten thousand lines, and these I could not but render in rhyme or rather in monorhyme. This portion has been a bugbear to translators. De Sacy noticed the difficulty of the task (p. 283). Lane held the poetry untranslatable because abounding in the figure Tajnis, our paronomasia or paragram, of which there are seven distinct varieties,[FN#433] not to speak of other rhetorical flourishes. He therefore omitted the greater part of the verse as tedious and, through the loss of measure and rhyme, "generally intolerable to the reader." He proved his position by the bald literalism of the pa.s.sages which he rendered in truly prosaic prose and succeeded in changing the facies and presentment of the work. For the Shi'r, like the Saj'a, is not introduced arbitrarily; and its unequal distribution throughout The Nights may be accounted for by rule of art. Some tales, like Omar bin al-Nu'man and Tawaddud, contain very little because the theme is historical or realistic; whilst in stories of love and courtship as that of Rose-in-hood, the proportion may rise to one-fifth of the whole. And this is true to nature. Love, as Addison said, makes even the mechanic (the British mechanic!) poetical, and Joe Hume of material memory once fought a duel about a fair object of dispute.

Before discussing the verse of The Nights it may be advisable to enlarge a little upon the prosody of the Arabs. We know nothing of the origin of their poetry, which is lost in the depths of antiquity, and the oldest bards of whom we have any remains belong to the famous epoch of the war Al-Basus, which would place them about A.D. 500. Moreover, when the Muse of Arabia first shows she is not only fully developed and mature, she has lost all her first youth, her beaute du diable, and she is a.s.suming the characteristics of an age beyond "middle age." No one can study the earliest poetry without perceiving that it results from the cultivation of centuries and that it has already a.s.sumed that artificial type and conventional process of treatment which presages inevitable decay. Its n.o.blest period is included in the century preceding the Apostolate of Mohammed, and the oldest of that epoch is the prince of Arab songsters, Imr al-Kays, "The Wandering King." The Christian Fathers characteristically termed poetry Vinum Daemonorum. The stricter Moslems called their bards "enemies of Allah"; and when the Prophet, who hated verse and could not even quote it correctly, was asked who was the best poet of the Peninsula he answered that the "Man of Al-Kays," i.e.

the worshipper of the Priapus-idol, would usher them all into h.e.l.l. Here he only echoed the general verdict of his countrymen who loved poetry and, as a rule, despised poets. The earliest complete pieces of any volume and substance saved from the wreck of old Arabic literature and familiar in our day are the seven Kasidahs (purpose-odes or tendence-elegies) which are popularly known as the Gilded or the Suspended Poems; and in all of these we find, with an elaboration of material and formal art which can go no further, a subject-matter of trite imagery and stock ideas which suggest a long ascending line of model ancestors and predecessors.

Scholars are agreed upon the fact that many of the earliest and best Arab poets were, as Mohammed boasted himself, unalphabetic[FN#434] or rather could neither read nor write. They addressed the ear and the mind, not the eye. They "spoke verse,"

learning it by rote and dictating it to the Rawi, and this reciter again transmitted it to the musician whose pipe or zither accompanied the minstrel's song. In fact the general practice of writing began only at the end of the first century after The Flight.

The rude and primitive measure of Arab song, upon which the most complicated system of metres subsequently arose, was called Al-Rajaz, literally "the trembling," because it reminded the highly imaginative hearer of a pregnant she-camel's weak and tottering steps. This was the carol of the camel-driver, the lover's lay and the warrior's chaunt of the heroic ages; and its simple, unconstrained flow adapted it well for extempore effusions. Its merits and demerits have been extensively discussed amongst Arab grammarians, and many, noticing that it was not originally divided into hemistichs, make an essential difference between the Sha'ir who speaks poetry and the Raj.i.z. who speaks Rajaz. It consisted, to describe it technically, of iambic dipodia (U-U-), the first three syllables being optionally long or short It can generally be read like our iambs and, being familiar, is pleasant to the English ear. The dipodia are repeated either twice or thrice; in the former case Rajaz is held by some authorities, as Al-Akhfash (Sa'id ibn Masadah), to be mere prose. Although Labid and Antar composed in iambics, the first Kasidah or regular poem in Rajaz was by Al-Aghlab al-Ajibi temp. Mohammed: the Alfiyah-grammar of Ibn Malik is in Rajaz Muzdawij, the hemistichs rhyming and the a.s.sonance being confined to the couplet. Al-Hariri also affects Rajaz in the third and fifth a.s.semblies. So far Arabic metre is true to Nature: in impa.s.sioned speech the movement of language is iambic: we say "I will, I will," not "I will."

For many generations the Sons of the Desert were satisfied with Nature's teaching; the fine perceptions and the nicely trained ear of the bard needing no aid from art. But in time came the inevitable prosodist under the formidable name of Abu Abd al- Rahman al-Khalil, i. Ahmad, i. Amru, i. Tamim al-Farahidi (of the Farahid sept), al-Azdi (of the Azd clan), al Yahmadi (of the Yahmad tribe), popularly known as Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Basri, of Ba.s.sorah, where he died aet. 68, scanning verses they say, in A.H. 170 (= 786-87). Ibn Khallikan relates (i. 493) on the authority of Hamzah al-Isfahani how this "father of Arabic grammar and discoverer of the rules of prosody" invented the science as he walked past a coppersmith's shop on hearing the strokes of a hammer upon a metal basin: "two objects devoid of any quality which could serve as a proof and an ill.u.s.tration of anything else than their own form and shape and incapable of leading to any other knowledge than that of their own nature."[FN#435] According to others he was pa.s.sing through the Fullers' Bazar at Basrah when his ear was struck by the Dak dak (Arabic letters) and the Dakak-dakak (Arabic letters) of the workmen. In these two onomapoetics we trace the expression which characterises the Arab tongue: all syllables are composed of consonant and vowel, the latter long or short as B and B ; or of a vowelled consonant followed by a consonant as Bal, Bau (Arabic) .

The grammarian, true to the traditions of his craft which looks for all poetry to the Badawi,[FN#436] adopted for metrical details the language of the Desert. The distich, which amongst Arabs is looked upon as one line, he named "Bayt," nighting- place, tent or house; and the hemistich Misra'ah, the one leaf of a folding door. To this "scenic" simile all the parts of the verse were more or less adapted. The metres, our feet, were called "Arkan," the stakes and stays of the tent; the syllables were "Usul" or roots divided into three kinds: the first or "Sabab" (the tent-rope) is composed of two letters, a vowelled and a quiescent consonant as "Lam."[FN#437] The "Watad" or tent peg of three letters is of two varieties; the Majmu', or united, a foot in which the two first consonants are moved by vowels and the last is jazmated or made quiescent by apocope as "Lakad"; and the Mafruk, or disunited, when the two moved consonants are separated by one jazmated, as "Kabla." And lastly the "Fasilah"

or intervening s.p.a.ce, applied to the main pole of the tent, consists of four letters.

The metres were called Buhur or "seas" (plur. of Bahr), also meaning the s.p.a.ce within the tent-walls, the equivoque alluding to pearls and other treasures of the deep. Al-Khalil, the systematiser, found in general use only five Dairah (circles, cla.s.ses or groups of metre); and he characterised the harmonious and stately measures, all built upon the original Rajaz, as Al- Tawil (the long),[FN#438] Al-Kamil (the complete), Al-Wafir (the copious), Al-Basit (the extended) and Al-Khafif (the light).[FN#439] These embrace all the Mu'allakat and the Hamasah, the great Anthology of Abu Tammam; but the crave for variety and the extension of foreign intercourse had multiplied wants and Al- Khalil deduced from the original five Dairah, fifteen, to which Al-Akhfash (ob. A.D. 830) added a sixteenth, Al-Khabab. The Persians extended the number to nineteen: the first four were peculiarly Arab; the fourteenth, the fifteenth and seventeenth peculiarly Persian and all the rest were Arab and Persian.[FN#440]

Arabic metre so far resembles that of Greece and Rome that the value of syllables depends upon the "quant.i.ty" or position of their consonants, not upon accent as in English and the Neo-Latin tongues. Al-Khalil was doubtless familiar with the cla.s.sic prosody of Europe, but he rejected it as unsuited to the genius of Arabic and like a true Eastern Gelehrte he adopted a process devised by himself. Instead of scansion by pyrrhics and spondees, iambs and trochees, anapaests and similar simplifications he invented a system of weights ("wuzun"). Of these there are nine[FN#441] memorial words used as quant.i.tive signs, all built upon the root "fa'l" which has rendered such notable service to Arabic and Hebrew[FN#442] grammar and varying from the simple "fa'al," in Persian "fa'ul" (U _), to the complicated "Mutafa'ilun"(UU - U -) , anapaest + iamb. Thus the prosodist would scan the Shahnameh of Firdausi as

Fa'ulun, fa'ulun, fa'ulun, fa'al.

U - - U - - U - - -

These weights also show another peculiarity of Arabic verse. In English we have few if any spondees: the Arabic contains about three longs to one short; hence its gravity, stateliness and dignity. But these longs again are peculiar, and sometimes strike the European ear as shorts, thus adding a difficulty for those who would represent Oriental metres by western feet, ictus and accent. German Arabists can register an occasional success in such attempts: Englishmen none. My late friend Professor Palmer of Cambridge tried the tour de force of dancing on one leg instead of two and notably failed: Mr. Lyall also strove to imitate Arabic metre and produced only prose bewitched.[FN#443]

Mr. Payne appears to me to have wasted trouble in "observing the exterior form of the stanza, the movement of the rhyme and (as far as possible) the ident.i.ty in number of the syllables composing the beits." There is only one part of his admirable version concerning which I have heard competent readers complain; and that is the metrical, because here and there it sounds strange to their ears.

I have already stated my conviction that there are two and only two ways of translating Arabic poetry into English. One is to represent it by good heroic or lyric verse as did Sir William Jones; the other is to render it after French fashion, by measured and balanced Prose, the little sister of Poetry. It is thus and thus only that we can preserve the peculiar cachet of the original. This old world Oriental song is spirit-stirring as a "blast of that dread horn," albeit the words be thin. It is heady as the "Golden Wine" of Liba.n.u.s, to the tongue water and brandy to the brain--the clean contrary of our nineteenth century effusions. Technically speaking, it can be vehicled only by the verse of the old English ballad or by the prose of the Book of Job. And Badawi poetry is a perfect expositor of Badawi life, especially in the good and gladsome old Pagan days ere Al-Islam, like the creed which it abolished, overcast the minds of men with its dull grey pall of realistic superst.i.tion. They combined to form a marvellous picture--those contrasts of splendour and squalor amongst the sons of the sand. Under airs pure as aether, golden and ultramarine above and melting over the horizon into a diaphanous green which suggested a resection of Kaf, that unseen mountain-wall of emerald, the so-called Desert, changed face twice a year; now brown and dry as summer-dust; then green as Hope, beautified with infinite verdure and broad sheetings of rain-water. The vernal and autumnal shiftings of camp, disruptions of homesteads and partings of kith and kin, friends and lovers, made the life many-sided as it was vigorous and n.o.ble, the outcome of hardy frames, strong minds and spirits breathing the very essence of liberty and independence. The day began with the dawn-drink, "generous wine bought with shining ore," poured into the crystal goblet from the leather bottle swinging before the cooling breeze. The rest was spent in the practice of weapons, in the favourite arrow game known as Al- Maysar, gambling which at least had the merit of feeding the poor; in racing for which the Badawin had a mania, and in the chase, the foray and the fray which formed the serious business of his life. And how picturesque the hunting scenes; the greyhound, like the mare, of purest blood; the falcon cast at francolin and coney; the gazelle standing at gaze; the desert a.s.s scudding over the ground-waves; the wild cows or bovine antelopes browsing with their calves and the ostrich-chickens flocking round the parent bird! The Musamarah or night-talk round the camp-fire was enlivened by the lute-girl and the glee-man, whom the austere Prophet described as "roving distraught in every vale" and whose motto in Horatian vein was, "To day we shall drink, to-morrow be sober, wine this day, that day work."

Regularly once a year, during the three peaceful months when war and even blood revenge were held sacrilegious, the tribes met at Ukadh (Ocaz) and other fairsteads, where they held high festival and the bards strave in song and prided themselves upon doing honour to women and to the successful warriors of their tribe.

Brief, the object of Arab life was to be--to be free, to be brave, to be wise; while the endeavours of other peoples was and is to have--to have wealth, to have knowledge, to have a name; and while moderns make their "epitome of life" to be, to do and to suffer. Lastly the Arab's end was honourable as his life was stirring: few Badawin had the crowning misfortune of dying "the straw-death."