Sir Amys and the lady bright
To bed gan they go;
And when they weren in bed laid,
Sir Amys his sword out-brayed
And held it between them two.
This occurs in the old French romance of Amys and Amyloun which is
taken into the tale of the Ravens in the Seven Wise Masters where
Ludovic personates his friend Alexander in marrying the King of Egypt’s
daughter and sleeps every night with a bare blade between him and the
bride. See also Aladdin and his lamp. An Englishman remarked, “The
drawn sword would be little hindrance to a man and maid coming
together.” The drawn sword represented only the Prince’s honour.
[FN#428] Arab. “Ya Sáki’ al-Wajh,” which Lane translates by “lying” or
“liar.”
[FN#429] Kamín (in Bresl. Edit. “bayn” = between) Al-Bahrayn =
Ambuscade or lurking-place of the two seas. The name of the city in
Lane is “‘Emareeych” imaginary but derived from Emarch (‘imárah) =
being populous. Trébutien (ii. 161) takes from Bresl. Edit. “Amar” and
translates the port-name, “le lieu de refuge des deux mers.”
[FN#430] _i.e._ “High of (among) the Kings.” Lane proposes to read ‘Ali
al-Mulk = high in dominion.
[FN#431] Pronounce Mu’inuddeen = Aider of the Faith. The Bresl. Edit.
(iv. 266) also read “Mu’in al-Riyásah” = Mu’in of the Captaincies.
[FN#432] Arab. “Shúm” = a tough wood used for the staves with which
donkeys are driven. Sir Gardner Wilkinson informed Lane that it is the
ash.
[FN#433] In Persian we find the fuller metaphorical form, “kissing the
ground of obedience.”
[FN#434] For the Shaykh of the Sea(-board) in Sindbad the
Seaman see vol. vi. 50.
[FN#435] That this riding is a facetious exaggeration of the
African practice I find was guessed by Mr. Keightley.
[FN#436] Arab. “Kummasra”: the root seems to be “Kamsara” = being
slender or compact.
[FN#437] Lane translates, “by reason of the exhilaration produced by
intoxication.” But the Arabic here has no assonance. The passage also
alludes to the drunken habits of those blameless Ethiopians, the races
of Central Africa where, after midday a chief is rarely if ever found
sober. We hear much about drink in England but Englishmen are mere
babes compared with these stalwart Negroes. In Unyamwezi I found all
the standing bedsteads of pole-sleepers and bark-slabs disposed at an
angle of about 20 degrees for the purpose of draining off the huge
pottle-fulls of Pombe (Osirian beer) drained by the occupants; and,
comminxit lectum potus might be said of the whole male population.
[FN#438] This is not exaggerated. When at Hebron I saw the biblical
spectacle of two men carrying a huge bunch slung to a pole, not so much
for the weight as to keep the grapes from injury.
[FN#439] The Mac. and Bul. Edits. add, “and with him a host of
others after his kind”; but these words are omitted by the
Bresl. Edit. and apparently from the sequel there was only one
Ghul-giant.
[FN#440] Probably alluding to the most barbarous Persian practice of
plucking or tearing out the eyes from their sockets. See Sir John
Malcolm’s description of the capture of Kirmán and Morier (in Zohrab,
the hostage) for the wholesale blinding of the Asterabadian by the
Eunuch-King Agha Mohammed Shah. I may note that the mediæval Italian
practice called _bacinare_, or scorching with red-hot basins, came from
Persia.
[FN#441] Arab. “Laban” as opposed to “Halíb”: in Night dcclxxiv.
(_infra_ p. 365) the former is used for sweet milk, and other passages
could be cited. I have noted that all galaktophagi, or milk-drinking
races, prefer the artificially soured to the sweet, choosing the
fermentation to take place outside rather than inside their stomachs.
Amongst the Somal I never saw man, woman or child drink a drop of fresh
milk; and they offered considerable opposition to our heating it for
coffee.
[FN#442] Arab. “Tákah” not “an aperture” as Lane has it, but an arched
hollow in the wall.
[FN#443] In Trébutien (ii. 168) the cannibal is called “Goul
Eli-Fenioun” and Von Hammer remarks, “There is no need of such likeness
of name to prove that al this episode is a manifest imitation of the
adventures of Ulysses in Polyphemus’s cave; * * * and this induces the
belief that the Arabs have been acquainted with the poems of Homer.”
Living intimately with the Greeks they could not have ignored the Iliad
and the Odyssey: indeed we know by tradition that they had
translations, now apparently lost. I cannot however, accept Lane’s
conjecture that “the story of Ulysses and Polyphemus may have been of
Eastern origin.” Possibly the myth came from Egypt, for I have shown
that the opening of the Iliad bears a suspicious likeness to the proem
of Pentaur’s Epic.
[FN#444] Arab. “Shakhtúr”.
[FN#445] In the Bresl. Edit. the ship is not wrecked but lands Sa’id in
safety.
[FN#446] So in the Shah-nameh the Símurgh-bird gives one of her
feathers to her protégé Zál which he will throw into the fire when she
is wanted.
[FN#447] Bresl. Edit. “Al-Zardakhánát” Arab. plur. of Zarad-Khánah, a
bastard word = armoury, from Arab. Zarad (hauberk) and Pers. Khánah =
house etc.
[FN#448] Some retrenchment was here found necessary to avoid “damnable
iteration.”
[FN#449] _i.e._ Badi’a al-Jamal.
[FN#450] Mohammed.
[FN#451] Koran xxxv. “The Creator” (Fátir) or the Angels, so called
from the first verse.
[FN#452] In the Bresl. Edit. (p. 263) Sayf al-Muluk drops asleep under
a tree to the lulling sound of a Sákiyah or water-wheel, and is seen by
Badi’a al-Jamal, who falls in love with him and drops tears upon his
cheeks, etc. The scene, containing much recitation, is long and well
told.
[FN#453] Arab. “Lukmah” = a _bouchée_ of bread, meat, fruit or pastry,
and especially applied to the rice balled with the hand and delicately
inserted into a friend’s mouth.
[FN#454] Arab. “Saláhiyah,” also written Saráhiyah: it means an
ewer-shaped glass-bottle.
[FN#455] Arab. “Sarmújah,” of which Von Hammer remarks that the
dictionaries ignore it; Dozy gives the forms Sarmúj, Sarmúz, and
Sarmúzah and explains them by “espèce de guêtre, de sandale ou de mule,
qu’on chausse par-dessus la botte.”
[FN#456] In token of profound submission.
[FN#457] Arab. “Misr” in Ibn Khaldún is a land whose people are settled
and civilised hence “Namsur” = we settle; and “Amsár” = settled
provinces. Al-Misrayn was the title of Basrah and Kufah the two
military cantonments founded by Caliph Omar on the frontier of
conquering Arabia and conquered Persia. Hence “Tamsír” = founding such
posts, which were planted in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt. In these
camps were stationed the veterans who had fought under Mohammed; but
the spoils of the East soon changed them to splendid cities where
luxury and learning flourished side by side. Sprenger (Al-Mas’údi pp.
19, 177) compares them ecclesiastically with the primitive Christian
Churches such as Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch. But the Moslems
were animated with an ardent love of liberty and Kufah under Al-Hajjaj
the masterful, lost 100,000 of her turbulent sons without the thirst
for independence being quenched. This can hardly be said of the Early
Christians who, with the exception of a few staunch-hearted martyrs,
appear in history as pauvres diables and poules mouillées, ever
oppressed by their own most ignorant and harmful fancy that the world
was about to end.
[FN#458] _i.e._ Waiting to be sold and wasting away in single cursedness.
[FN#459] Arab. “Yá dádati”: dádat is an old servant-woman or slave,
often applied to a nurse, like its congener the Pers. Dádá, the latter
often pronounced Daddeh, as Daddeh Bazm-árá in the Kuisum-nameh
(Atkinson’s “Customs of the Women of Persia,” London, 8vo, 1832).
[FN#460] Marjánah has been already explained. D’Herbelot derives from
it the Romance name _Morgante la Déconvenue_, here confounding Morgana
with Urganda; and Keltic scholars make Morgain = Mor Gwynn—the white
maid (p. 10, Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, London, Whittaker, 1833).