The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 8 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (great books for teens TXT) 📕

pp. 18-20.)

[FN#83] This is a popular saying but hardly a “vulgar proverb.”

(Lane iii. 522.) It reminds rather of Shakespear’s: “So loving to my mother,

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly.”

[FN#84] i.e. God forbid that I should oppose thee!

[FN#85] Here the writer again forgets apparently, that Shahrazad is speaking: she may, however, use the plural for the singular when speaking of herself.

[FN#86] i.e. She would have pleaded ill-treatment and lawfully demanded to be sold.

[FN#87] The Hindus speak of “the only bond that woman knows—her heart.”

[FN#88] i.e. a rarity, a present (especially in Persian).

[FN#89] Arab. “Al-bis�t” wa’l-masnad lit. the carpet and the cushion.

[FN#90] For “B�b al-bahr” and “B�b al-Barr” see vol. iii. 281.

[FN#91] She was the daughter of Ja’afar bin Mans�r; but, as will be seen, The Nights again and again called her father Al-K�sim.

[FN#92] This is an error for the fifth which occurs in the popular saying, “Is he the fifth of the sons of Al-Abb�s!” i.e.

Harun al-Rashid. Lane (note, in loco) thus accounts for the frequent mention of the Caliph, the greatest of the Abbasides in The Nights. But this is a causa non causa.

[FN#93] i.e. I find thy beauty all-sufficient. So the proverb “The son of the quarter (young neighbour) filleth not the eye,”

which prefers a stranger.

[FN#94] They are mere doggerel, like most of the pieces de circonstance.

[FN#95] Afterwards called W�k W�k, and in the Bresl. Edit. W�k al-W�k. See Lane’s notes upon these Islands. Arab Geographers evidently speak of two Wak Waks. Ibn al-Fakih and Al-Mas’�di (Fr. Transl., vol. iii. 6-7) locate one of them in East Africa beyond Zanzibar and Sofala. “Le territoire des Zendjes (Zanzibar-Negroids) commence au canal (Al-Khalij) d�riv� du haut Nil (the Juln River?) et se prolonge jusqu’au pays de Sofalah et des Wak-Wak.” It is simply the peninsula of Guardafui (Jard Hafun) occupied by the Gallas, pagans and Christians, before these were ousted by the Moslem Somal; and the former perpetually ejaculated “Wak” (God) as Moslems cry upon Allah. This identification explains a host of other myths such as the Amazons, who as Marco Polo tells us held the “Female Island”

Socotra (Yule ii. 396). The fruit which resembled a woman’s head (whence the puelloe Wakwakienses hanging by the hair from trees), and which when ripe called out “Wak Wak” and “Allah al-Khall�k”

(the Creator) refers to the Calabash-tree (Adausonia digitata), that grotesque growth, a vegetable elephant, whose gourds, something larger than a man’s head, hang by a slender filament.

Similarly the “cocoa” got its name, in Port. = Goblin, from the fancied face at one end. The other Wak Wak has been identified in turns with the Seychelles, Madagascar, Malacca, Sunda or Java (this by Langl�s), China and Japan. The learned Prof. de Goeje (Arabishe Berichten over Japan, Amsterdam, Muller, 1880) informs us that in Canton the name of Japan is Wo-Kwok, possibly a corruption of Koku-tan, the ebony-tree (Diospyros ebenum) which Ibn Khor-d�bah and others find together with gold in an island 4,500 parasangs from Suez and East of China. And we must remember that Basrah was the chief starting-place for the Celestial Empire during the rule of the Tang dynasty (seventh and ninth centuries). Colonel J. W. Watson of Bombay suggests New Guinea or the adjacent islands where the Bird of Paradise is said to cry “Wak Wak!” Mr. W. F. Kirby in the Preface (p. ix.) to his neat little book “The New Arabian Nights,” says: “The Islands of Wak-Wak, seven years’ journey from Bagdad, in the story of Hasan, have receded to a distance of a hundred and fifty years’ journey in that of Majin (of Khorasan). There is no doubt(?) that the Cora Islands, near New Guinea, are intended; for the wonderful fruits which grow there are Birds of Paradise, which settle in flocks on the trees at sunset and sunrise, uttering this very cry.” Thus, like Ophir, Wak Wak has wandered all over the world and has been found even in Peru by the Turkish work T�rikh al-Hind al-Gharbi = History of the West Indies (Orient. Coll. iii 189).

[FN#96] I accept the emendation of Lane’s Shaykh, “Nas�m “

(Zephyr) for “Nad�m ” (cup-companion).

[FN#97] “Jannat al-N�‘im” = Garden of Delights is No. V Heaven, made of white diamond.

[FN#98] This appears to her very prettily put.

[FN#99] This is the “House of Sadness” of our old chivalrous Romances. See chapt. vi. of “Palmerin of England,” by Francisco de Moraes (ob. 1572), translated by old Anthony Munday (dateless, 1590?) and “corrected” (read spoiled) by Robert Southey, London, Longmans, 1807.

[FN#100] The lines have occurred in Night clix. (vol. iii. 183), I quote Mr. Payne who, like Lane, prefers “in my bosom” to “beneath my ribs.”

[FN#101] In this tale the Bresl. Edit. more than once adds “And let us and you send a blessing to the Lord of Lords” (or to “Mohammed,” or to the “Prophet”); and in vol. v. p. 52 has a long prayer. This is an act of contrition in the tale-teller for romancing against the expressed warning of the Founder of Al-Islam.

[FN#102] From Bresl. Edit. (vi. 29): the four in the Mac. Edit.

are too irrelevant.

[FN#103] Arab. “Ghay�r”—jealous, an admirable epithet which Lane dilutes to “changeable”—making a truism of a metaphor.

[FN#104] These lines have occurred before. I quote Mr. Payne.

[FN#105] i.e. One fated to live ten years.

[FN#106] This poetical way of saying “fourteen” suggests Camoens (The Lusiads) Canto v. 2.

[FN#107] Arab. “Surrah,” lit. = a purse: a few lines lower down it is called “‘Ulbah” = a box which, of course, may have contained the bag.

[FN#108] The month which begins the Moslem year.

[FN#109] As an Arab often does when deep in thought. Lane appositely quotes John viii. 6. “Jonas stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground.” Mr. Payne translates, “He fell a-drumming on the earth with his fingers,” but this does not complete the sense.

[FN#110] i.e.“And the peace of Allah be upon thee! that will end thy story.” The Arab formula, “Wa al-Sal�m” (pron. Wassal�m) is used in a variety of senses.

[FN#111] Like Camoens, one of the model lovers, he calls upon Love to torment him still more—ad majorern Dei (amoris) gloriam.

[FN#112] Pron. Aboor-Ruwaysh. “The Father of the little Feather”: he is afterwards called “Son of the daughter of the accursed Iblis”; yet, as Lane says, “he appears to be a virtuous person.”

[FN#113] Arab. “Kantara al-lij�m fi Karb�s (bow) sarjih.”

[FN#114] I do not translate “beckoned” because the word would give a wrong idea. Our beckoning with the finger moved towards the beckoner makes the so-beckoned Eastern depart in all haste.

To call him you must wave the hand from you.

[FN#115] The Arabs knew what large libraries were; and a learned man could not travel without camel-loads of dictionaries.

[FN#116] Arab. “Adim;” now called Bulgh�r, our Moroccan leather.

[FN#117] Arab. “Zin�d,” which Lane renders by “instruments for striking fire,” and Mr. Payne, after the fashion of the translators of Al-Hariri, “flint and steel.”

[FN#118] A congener of Hasan and Husayn, little used except in Syria where it is a favourite name for Christians. The Muh�t of Butrus Al-Bost�ni (s.v.) tells us that it also means a bird called Ab� Hasan and supplies various Egyptian synonyms. In Mod.

Arab. Grammar the form Fa”�l is a diminutive as Hamm�d for Ahmad, ‘Amm�r for ‘Amr�. So the fem. form, Fa”�lah, e.g.

Khadd�gah = little Khadijah and Naff�sah=little Nafisah; Ar’�rah = little clitoris - whereas in Heb. it is an incrementative e.g.

dabb�lah a large dablah (cake or lump of dried figs, etc.).

[FN#119] In the Mac. Edit. “Soldiers of Al-Daylam” i.e. warlike as the Daylamites or Medes. See vol. ii. 94.

[FN#120] Bilk�s, it will be remembered, is the Arab. name of the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon. In Abyssinia she is termed Kebra z� negest or z� makad�, the latter (according to Ferdinand Werne’s “African Wanderings,” Longmans, 1852) being synonymous with Ityopia or Habash (Ethiopia or Abyssinia).

[FN#121] Arab. “Dakkah,” which Lane translates by “settee.”

[FN#122] Arab. “Ambar al-Kh�m” the latter word (raw) being pure Persian.

[FN#123] The author neglects to mention the ugliest part of old-womanhood in the East, long empty breasts like tobacco-pouches. In youth the bosom is beautifully high, arched and rounded, firm as stone to the touch, with the nipples erect and pointing outwards. But after the girl-mother’s first child (in Europe le premier embellit) all changes. Nature and bodily power have been overtasked; then comes the long suckling at the mother’s expense: the extension of the skin and the enlargement of its vessels are too sudden and rapid for the diminished ability of contraction and the bad food aids in the continual consumption of vitality. Hence, among Eastern women age and ugliness are synonymous. It is only in the highest civilisation that we find the handsome old woman.

[FN#124] The name has occurred in the Knightly tale of King Omar and his sons, Vol. ii. 269. She is here called Mother of Calamities,but in p. 123, Vol. iv. of the Mac. Edit. she becomes “Lady (Z�t) al-Daw�hi.” It will be remembered that the title means calamitous to the foe.

[FN#125] By this address she assured him that she had no design upon his chastity. In Moslem lands it is always advisable to accost a strange woman, no matter how young, with, “Y� Umm�!” = O

my mother. This is pledging one’s word, as it were, not to make love to her.

[FN#126] Apparently the Wakites numbered their Islands as the Anglo-Americans do their streets. For this they have been charged with “want of imagination”; but the custom is strictly classical. See at Pompeii “Reg (io) I; Ins (ula) 1, Via Prima, Secunda,” etc.

[FN#127] These are the Puell� Wakwakienses of whom Ibn Al-Wardi relates after an ocular witness, “Here too is a tree which bears fruits like women who have fair faces and are hung by their hair.

They come forth from integuments like large leathern bags (calabash-gourds?) and when they sense air and sun they cry ‘Wak!

Wak!’ (God! God!) till their hair is cut, and when it is cut they die; and the islanders understand this cry wherefrom they augure ill.” The Aj�ib al-Hind (chapt. xv.) places in Wak-land the Samandal, a bird which enters the fire without being burnt evidently the Egyptian “Pi-Benni,” which the Greeks metamorphised to “Phoenix.” It also mentions a hare-like animal, now male then female, and the Somal behind Cape Guardafui tell the same tale of their Cynhy�nas.

[FN#128] i.e. I will keep thee as though thou wert the apple of my eye.

[FN#129] A mere exaggeration of the “Gull-fairs” noted by travellers in sundry islands as Ascension and the rock off Brazilian Santos.

[FN#130] Arab. “K�mil wa Bas�t wa W�fir” = the names of three popular metres, for which see the Terminal Essay.

[FN#131] Arab. “Man�shif” = drying towels, Plur. of Minshafah, and the popular term which Dr. Jonathan Swift corrupted to “Munnassaf.” Lane (Nights, Introduct. p. ix.).

[FN#132] Arab. “Shafaif” opposed to “Shafah” the mouth-lips.

[FN#133] Fountains of Paradise. This description is a fair instance of how the Saj’a (prose-rhyme) dislocates the order; an Arab begins with hair, forehead, eyebrows and lashes and when he reaches the nose, he slips down to the toes for the sake of the assonance. If the latter be neglected the whole list of