The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XII Part 30

[FN#464] The practice of fumigating gugglets is universal in Egypt (Lane, M. E., chapt. v.); but I never heard of musk being so used.

[FN#465] Arab. "Laysa fi 'l-diyari dayyar"--a favourite jingle.

[FN#466] Arab. "Khayr Kathir" (p.r.o.n. Katir) which also means "abundant kindness."

[FN#467] Dozy says of "Hunayni" (Haini), Il semble etre le nom d'un vetement. On which we may remark, Connu!

[FN#468] Arab. Harisah: see vol. i. 131. Westerns make a sad mess of this dish when they describe it as une sorte d'olla podrida (the hotch-pot), une patee de viandes, de froment et de legumes secs (Al-Mas'udi viii. 438). Whenever I have eaten it, it was always a meat-pudding, for which see vol. i. 131.

[FN#469] Evidently one escaped because she was sleeping with the Caliph, and a second because she had kept her a.s.signation.

[FN#470] Mr. Payne ent.i.tles it, "The Merchant of Cairo and the Favourite of the Khalif el Mamoun el Hakim bi Amrillah."

[FN#471] See my Pilgrimage (i. 100): the seat would be on the same bit of boarding where the master sits or on a stool or bench in the street.

[FN#472] This is true Cairene chaff, give and take; and the stranger must accustom himself to it before he can be at home with the people.

[FN#473] i.e. In Rauzah-Island: see vol. v. 169.

[FN#474] There is no historical person who answers to these name, "The Secure, the Ruler by Commandment of Allah." The cognomen applies to two soldans of Egypt, of whom the later Abu al-Abbas Ahmad the Abbaside (A.D. 1261-1301) has already been mentioned in The Nights (vol. v. 86). The tale suggests the earlier Al-Hakim (Abu Ali al-Mansur, the Fatimite, A.D. 995-1021), the G.o.d of the Druze "persuasion;" and the tale-teller may have purposely blundered in changing Mansur to Maamun for fear of offending a sect which has been most dangerous in the matter of a.s.sa.s.sination and which is capable of becoming so again.

[FN#475] Arab. "'Ala kulli hal" = "whatever may betide," or "w.i.l.l.y-nilly." The phrase is still popular.

[FN#476] The dulce desipere of young lovers, he making a buffoon of himself to amuse her.

[FN#477] "The convent of Clay," a Coptic monastery near Cairo.

[FN#478] i.e. this is the time to show thyself a man.

[FN#479] The Eastern succedaneum for swimming corks and other "life-preservers." The practice is very ancient; we find these guards upon the monuments of Egypt and Babylonia.

[FN#480] Arab. "Al-Khalij," the name, still popular, of the Grand Ca.n.a.l of Cairo, whose banks, by-the-by, are quaint and picturesque as anything of the kind in Holland.

[FN#481] We say more laconically "A friend in need."

[FN#482] Arab. "n.a.z.ir al-Mawaris," the employe charged with the disposal of legacies and seizing escheats to the Crown when Moslems die intestate. He is usually a prodigious rascal as in the text. The office was long kept up in Southern Europe, and Camoens was sent to Macao as "Provedor dos defuntos e ausentes."

[FN#483] Sir R. F. Burton has since found two more of "Galland's"

tales in an Arabic text of The Nights, namely, Aladdin and Zeyn al-Asnam.

[FN#484] i.e. wondering; thus Lady Macbeth says:

"You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting, With most admired disorder."---Macbeth, iii. 4

[FN#485] Ludovicus Vives, one of the most learned of Spanish authors, was born at Valentia in 1492 and died in 1540.

[FN#486] There was an older "Tuti Nama," which Nakhshabi modernised, made from a Sanskrit story-book, now lost, but its modern representative is the "Suka Saptati," or Seventy (Tales) of a Parrot in which most of Nakhshabi's tales are found.

[FN#487] According to Lescallier's French translation of the "Bakhtyar Nama," made from two MSS. = "She had previously had a lover, with whom, unknown to her father, she had intimate relations, and had given birth to a beautiful boy, whose education she secretly confided to some trusty servants."

[FN#488] There is a slight mistake in the pa.s.sage in p. 313 supplied from the story in vol. vi. It is not King Shah Bakht, but the other king, who a.s.sures his chamberlain that "the lion"

has done him no injury.

[FN#489] Such was formerly the barbarous manner of treating the insane.

[FN#490] From "Tarlton's Newes out of Purgatorie."

[FN#491] A basket

[FN#492] In the fabliau "De la Dame qui atrappa un Pretre, un Prevot, et un Forestier" (or Constant du Hamel), the lady, on the pretext that her husband is at the door, stuffs her lovers, as they arrive successively, unknown to each other, into a large tub full of feathers and afterwards exposes them to public ridicule.

[FN#493] Until

[FN#494] Requite

[FN#495] Accidents

[FN#496] A boarding

[FN#497] The letter I is very commonly subst.i.tuted for "ay" in 16th century English books.

[FN#498] Oesterley mentions a Sanskrit redaction of the Vampyre Tales attributed to Sivadasa, and another comprised in the "Katharnava."

[FN#499] And well might his sapient majesty "wonder"! The humour of this pa.s.sage is exquisite.

[FN#500] In the Tamil version (Babington's translation of the "Vedala Kadai") there are but two brothers, one of whom is fastidious in his food, the other in beds: the latter lies on a bed stuffed with flowers, deprived of their stalks. In the morning he complains of pains all over his body, and on examining the bed one hair is found amongst the flowers. In the Hindi version, the king asks him in the morning whether he had slept comfortably. "O great King," he replied; "I did not sleep all night." "How so?" quoth he. "O great King, in the seventh fold of the bedding there is a hair, which p.r.i.c.ked me in the back, therefore I could not sleep." The youth who was fastidious about the fair s.e.x had a lovely damsel laid beside him, and he was on the point of kissing her, but on smelling her breath he turned away his face, and went to sleep. Early in the morning the king (who had observed through a lattice what pa.s.sed) asked him, "Did you pa.s.s the night pleasantly?" He replied that he did not, because the smell of a goat proceeded from the girl's mouth, which made him very uneasy. The king then sent for the procuress and ascertained that the girl had been brought up on goat's milk.

[FN#501] Melusine: Revue de Mythologie, Littarature Populaire, Traditions, et Usages. Dirigee par H. Gaidoz et E. Rolland.-- Paris

[FN#502] The trick of the clever Magyar in marking all the other sleepers as the king's mother had marked herself occurs in the folk-tales of most countries, especially in the numerous versions of the Robbery of the King's Treasury, which are brought together in my work on the Migrations of Popular Tales and Fictions (Blackwood), vol. ii., pp. 113-165.

[FN#503] A mythical saint, or prophet, who, according to the Muslim legend, was despatched by one of the ancient kings of Persia to procure him some of the Water of Life. After a tedious journey, Khizr reached the Fountain of Immortality, but having drank of its waters, it suddenly vanished. Muslims believe that Khizr still lives, and sometimes appears to favoured individuals, always clothed in green, and acts as their guide in difficult enterprises.

[FN#504] "Spake these words to the king"--certainly not those immediately preceding! but that, if the king would provide for him during three years, at the end of that period he would show Khizr to the king.

[FN#505] Mr. Gibb compares with this the following pa.s.sage from Boethius, "De Consolatione Philosophiae," as translated by Chaucer: "All thynges seken ayen to hir propre course, and all thynges rejoysen on hir retourninge agayne to hir nature."

[FN#506] In this tale, we see, Khizr appears to the distressed in white raiment.

[FN#507] In an old English metrical version of the "Seven Sages,"

the tutors of the prince, in order to test his progress in general science, secretly place an ivy leaf under each of the four posts of his bed, and when he awakes in the morning--

"Par fay!" he said, "a ferli cas!

Other ich am of wine y-drunk, Other the firmament is sunk, Other wexen is the ground, The thickness of four leaves round!

So much to-night higher I lay, Certes, than yesterday."

[FN#508] See also the same story in The Nights, vols. vii. and viii., which Mr. Kirby considers as probably a later version.

(App. vol. x. of The Nights, p. 442).