THE ROGUERIES OF DALILAH THE CRAFTY AND HER DAUGHTER ZAYNAB THE CONEY-CATCHER.[179]
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Source notes
200. Arab. “Uzrah.”
201. i.e. “Thou art unjust and violent enough to wrong even the Caliph!”
202. I may note that a “donkey-boy” like our “post-boy” can be of any age in Egypt.
203. They could legally demand to be recouped but the chief would have found some pretext to put off payment. Such at least is the legal process of these days.
204. i.e. drunk with the excess of his beauty.
205. A delicate way of offering a fee. When officers commanding regiments in India contracted for clothing the men, they found these douceurs under their dinner-napkins. All that is now changed; but I doubt the change being an improvement: the public is plundered by a “Board” instead of an individual.
206. This may mean, I should know her even were my eyes blue (or blind) with cataract and the Bresl. Edit. ix., 231, reads “Ayní” = my eye; or it may be, I should know her by her staring, glittering, hungry eyes, as opposed to the “Hawar” soft-black and languishing (Arab. Prov. i. 115, and ii. 848). The Prophet said “blue-eyed (women) are of good omen.” And when one man reproached another saying “Thou art Azrak” (blue-eyed!) he retorted, “So is the falcon!” “Zurk-an” in Kor. xx. 102, is translated by Mr. Rod well “leaden eyes.” It ought to be blue-eyed, dim-sighted, purblind.
207. Arab. “Zalábiyah bi-’Asal.”
208. Arab. “Ká’ah,” their mess-room, barracks.
209. i.e. Camel shoulder-blade.
210. So in the Brazil you are invited to drink a copa d’agua and find a splendid banquet. There is a smack of Chinese ceremony in this practice which lingers throughout southern Europe; but the less advanced society is, the more it is fettered by ceremony and “etiquette.”
211. The Bresl. Edit. (ix. 239) prefers these lines:—
Some of us be hawks and some sparrow-hawks, ✿ And vultures some which at carrion pike;
And maidens deem all alike we be ✿ But, save in our turbands, we’re not alike.
212. Arab. Shar’a = holy law; here it especially applies to Al-Kisás = lex talionis, which would order her eye-tooth to be torn out.
213. i.e., of the Afghans. Sulaymáni is the Egypt and Hijazi term for an Afghan and the proverb says “Sulaymáni harámi”—the Afghan is a villainous man. See Pilgrimage i. 59, which gives them a better character. The Bresl. Edit. simply says, “King Sulaymán.”