Supplemental Nights to The Book of the Thousand and One Nights by Sir Richard Francis Burton (online e book reader .TXT) 📖

an opportunity for tall-talk.

 

[FN#490] This is a rechauff� of “The House with the Belvedere;”

see vol. vi. 188.

 

[FN#491] Arab. “Mast�rah,”=veiled, well-guarded, confined in the Harem.

 

[FN#492] Arab. “‘Aj�z nahs”=an old woman so crafty that she was a calamity to friends and foes.

 

[FN#493] Here, as in many places the text is painfully concise: the crone says only, “The Wuzu for the prayer!”

 

[FN#494] I have followed Mr. Payne who supplies this sentence to make the Tale run smoothly.

 

[FN#495] i.e. the half of the marriagesettlement due to the wife on divorcement and whatever monies he may have borrowed of her.

 

[FN#496] Here we find the vulgar idea of a rape, which is that a man can, by mere force, possess a woman against her will. I contend that this is impossible unless he use drugs like chloroform or violence, so as to make the patient faint or she be exceptionally weak. “Good Queen Bess” hit the heart of the question when she bade Lord High Chancellor sheath his sword, she holding the scabbard-mouth before him and keeping it in constant motion. But it often happens that the woman, unless she have a loathing for her violator, becomes infected with the amorous storge, relaxes her defense, feels pleasure in the outer contact of the parts and almost insensibly allows penetration and emission. Even conception is possible in such cases as is proved in that curious work, “The Curiosities of Medical Experience.”

 

[FN#497] i.e. thou wilt have satisfied us all three.

 

[FN#498] Here I follow Mr. Payne who has skilfully fine-drawn the holes in the original text.

 

[FN#499] See vol. vii. 363; ix. 238.

 

[FN#500] Arab. “Musall�,” which may be either a praying carpet, a pure place in a house, or a small chapel like that near Shiraz which Hafiz immortalised,

 

“Bring, boy, the sup that’s in the cup; in highest Heaven man ne’er shall find

Such watery marge as Rukn�b�d, MusalI�‘s mazes rose entwined.”

 

[FN#501] Arab. “Ihtid�,”=divine direction to Hud� or salvation.

The old bawd was still dressed as a devotee, and keeps up the cant of her caste. No sensible man in the East ever allows a religious old woman to pass his threshold.

 

[FN#502] In this tale “poetical justice” is neglected, but the teller skilfully caused the wife to be ravished and not to be a particeps criminis. The lover escapes scot-free because Moslems, as well as Hindus, hold that the amourist under certain conditions is justified in obtaining his object by fair means or foul. See p. 147 of “Early Ideas, a Group of Hindoo Stories,”

collected and collated by Anaryan: London, Allens, 1881.

 

[FN#503] This is supplied from the “Tale of the King and his Wazir’s Wife,” vol. vi. 129.

 

[FN#504] Arab. “Ibl,” a specific name: it is presently opposed to “N�kah,” a she-dromedary, and “R�hilah,” a riding-camel.

 

[FN#505] Here “Amsaytu” is used in its literal sense “I evened”

(came at evening), and this is the case with seven such verbs, Asbaha, Ams�, Azh�, Azhara, A’tama, Zalla, and B�ta, which either conjoin the sense of the sentence with their respective times, morning, evening, forenoon, noon and the first sundown watch, all day and all night or are used “elegantly,” as grammarians say, for the simple “becoming” or “being.”

 

[FN#506] The Badawi dogs are as dangerous as those of Montenegro but not so treacherous: the latter will sneak up to the stranger and suddenly bite him most viciously. I once had a narrow escape from an ignoble death near the slaughter-house of Alexandria-Ramlah, where the beasts were unusually ferocious. A pack assailed me at early dawn and but for an iron stick and a convenient wall I should have been torn to pieces.

 

[FN#507] These elopements are of most frequent occurrence: see Pilgrimage iii. 52.

 

[FN#508] The principal incidents, the loss and recovery of wife and children, occur in the Story of the Knight Placidus (Gesta Romanorum, cx.). But the ecclesiastical taleteller does not do poetical justice upon any offenders, and he vilely slanders the great C�sar, Trajan.

 

[FN#509] i.e. a long time: the idiom has already been noticed.

In the original we have “of days and years and twelvemonths” in order that “A’w�m” (years) may jingle with “Ayy�m” (days).

 

[FN#510] Nothing can be more beautiful than the natural parks which travellers describe on the coasts of tropical seas.

 

[FN#511] Arab. “Khayy�l” not only a rider but a good and a hard rider. Hence the proverb “Al-Khayy�l” kabr maft�h=uomo a cavallo sepoltura aperta.

 

[FN#512] i.e. the crew and the islanders.

 

[FN#513] Arab. “Hadas,” a word not easy to render. In grammar Lumsden renders it by “event” and the learned Captain Lockett (Miut Amil) in an awful long note (pp. 195 to 224) by “mode,”

grammatical or logical. The value of his disquisition is its proving that, as the Arabs borrowed their romance from the Persians, so they took their physics and metaphysics of grammar and syntax; logic and science in general, from the Greeks.

 

[FN#514] We should say the anchors were weighed and the canvas spread.

 

[FN#515] The rhymes are disposed in the quaintest way, showing extensive corruption. Mr. Payne has ordered them into couplets with a “bob” or refrain. I have followed suit, preserving the original vagaries of rhymes.

 

[FN#516] Arab. “Nuwab,” broken plur. (that is, noun of multitude) of Naubah, the Anglo-Indian Nowbut. This is applied to the band playing at certain intervals before the gate of a Rajah or high official.

 

[FN#517] Arab. “H�jib”; Captain Trotter (“Our Mission to the Court of Morocco in 1880”: Edinburgh, Douglas, 1881) speaks, passim, of the “cheery little H�jeb or Eyebrow.” Really this is too bad: why cannot travellers consult an Orientalist when treating of Oriental subjects?

 

[FN#518] Suicide is rare in Moslem lands, compared with India, China, and similar “pagan” countries; for the Mussulman has the same objection as the Christian “to rush into the presence of his Creator,” as if he could do so without the Creator’s permission.

The Hindu also has some curious prejudices on the subject; he will hang himself, but not by the neck, for fear lest his soul be defiled by exiting through an impure channel. In England hanging is the commonest form for men; then follow in due order drowning, cutting or stabbing, poison, and gun-shot: women prefer drowning (except in the cold months) and poison. India has not yet found a Dr. Ogle to tabulate suicide; but the cases most familiar to old Anglo-Indians are leaping down cliffs (as at Giruar), drowning, and starving to death. And so little is life valued that a mother will make a vow obliging her son to suicide himself at a certain age.

 

[FN#519] Arab. “Zarad-Kh�nah,” before noticed: vol. vii. 363.

Here it would mean a temporary prison for criminals of high degree. De Sacy, Chrestom, ii. 179.

 

[FN#520] Arab. “‘Ad�l,” I have said, means in Marocco, that land of lies and subterfuges, a public notary.

 

[FN#521] This sentence is inserted by Mr. Payne to complete the sense.

 

[FN#522] i.e. he intended to marry her when time served.

 

[FN#523] Arab. from Pers. Khw�jah and Khaw�j�t: see vol. vi. 46.

 

[FN#524] Probably meaning by one mother whom he loved best of all his wives: in the next page we read of their sister.

 

[FN#525] Come down, i.e. from heaven.

 

[FN#526] This is the Bresl. Edit.‘s form of Shahry�r=city-keeper (like Marzb�n, guardian of the Marches), for city-friend. The learned Weil has preferred it to Shahry�r.

 

[FN#527] Sic: in the Mac. Edit. “Shahr�z�d” and here making nonsense of the word. It is regretable that the king’s reflections do not run at times as in this text: his compunctions lead well up to the d�no�ement.

 

[FN#528] The careless text says “couplets.” It has occurred in vol. i. 149: so I quote Torrens (p. 149).

 

[FN#529] In the text Salma is made to speak, utterly confusing the dialogue.

 

[FN#530] The well-known Baloch province beginning west of Sind: the term is supposed to be a corruption of M�h�-Khor�n=Ichthyophagi. The reader who wishes to know more about it will do well to consult “Unexplored Baluchistan,” etc.

(Griffith and Farran, 1882), the excellent work of my friend Mr.

Ernest A. Floyer, long Chief of the Telegraphic Department, Cairo.

 

[FN#531] Meaning the last city in Makran before entering Sind.

Al-Sharr would be a fancy name, “The Wickedness.”

 

[FN#532] i.e. think of nothing but his present peril.

 

[FN#533] Arab. “Munkati’ah”=lit. “cut off” (from the weal of the world). See Pilgrimage i. 22.

 

[FN#534] The lines are in vol. i. 207 and iv. 189. 1 here quote Mr. Payne.

 

[FN#535] I have another proposal to make.

 

[FN#536] i.e. In my heart’s core: the figure has often occurred.

 

[FN#537] These sudden elevations, so common in the East and not unknown to the West in the Napoleonic days, explain how the legend of “Joanna Papissa” (Pope John XIII), who succeeded Leo IV. in A.D. 855 and was succeeded by Benedict III., found ready belief amongst the enemies of papacy. She was an English woman born in Germany who came to Rome and professed theology with �clat, wherefore the people enthroned her. “Pope Joan” governed with exemplary wisdom, but during a procession on Rogation Sunday she was delivered of a fine boy in the street: some make her die on the spot; others declare that she perished in prison.

 

[FN#538] That such things should happen in times of famine is only natural; but not at other seasons. This abomination on the part of the butcher is, however, more than once alluded toin The Nights: see vol. i. 332.

 

[FN#539] Opinions differ as to the site of this city, so celebrated in the medi�val history of AlIslam: most probably it stood where Hyderabad of Sind now is. The question has been ably treated by Sir Henry M. Elliot in his “History of India,” edited from his posthumous papers by Professor Dowson.

 

[FN#540] Which, by-the-by, the average Eastern does with even more difficulty than the average European. For the most part the charge to secrecy fixes the matter in his mind even when he has forgotten that it is to be kept secret. Hence the most unpleasant results.

 

[FN#541] Such an act appears impossible, and yet history tells us of a celebrated Sufi, Khayr al-Nass�j (the Weaver), who being of dark complexion was stopped on return from his pilgrimage at Kufah by a stranger that said, “Thou art my negro slave and thy name is Khayr.” He was kept at the loom for years, till at last the man set him free, and simply said, “Thou wast not my slave”

(Ibn Khall. i. 513).

 

[FN#542] These lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne for variety.

 

[FN#543] Arab. “Tasill saliata ‘l-Munkat’�n”=lit. “raining on the drouth-hardened earth of the cut-off.” The metaphor is admissible in the eyes of an Arab who holds water to be the chiefest of blessings, and makes it synonymous with bounty and beneficence.”

 

[FN#544] Possibly this is said in mere fun; but, as Easterns are practical physiognomists, it may hint the fact that a large nose in womankind is the sign of a masculine nature.

 

[FN#545] Arab. “Zak�t wa Sadakat,”=lit. paying of poor rate and purifying thy property by almsdeeds. See vol. i. 339.

 

[FN#546] I have noted (i. 293) that Kam�s ( , Chemise, Cameslia, Camisa) is used in the Hindostani and Bengali dialects.

Like its synonyms pr�texta and shift, it has an equivocal meaning and here probably signifies the dress peculiar to Arab devotees and devout beggars.

 

[FN#547] I omit here and elsewhere the parenthetical formula “K�la al-R�wi,” etc.=The Story-teller sayeth, reminding the reader of its