This Friday is the 18th day of the moon of Safar, in the year 653 [i.e. of the heg´ira, or A.D. 1255] since the retreat of the great prophet from Mecca to Medi´na; and in the year 7320 of the epoch of the great Iskander with the two horns.—Arabian Nights (“The Tailor’s Story”).
Island of the Seven Cities, a kind of Dixie’s land, where seven bishops, who quitted Spain during the dominion of the Moors, founded seven cities. The legend says that many have visited the island, but no one has ever quitted it.
Islands of the Blest, called by the Greeks “Happy Islands,” and by the Latins “Fortunate Islands;” imaginary islands somewhere in the West, where the favorites of the gods are conveyed at death, and dwell in everlasting joy.
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds that echo further West
Than your sire’s Islands of the Blest.
Byron.
Isle of Lanterns, an imaginary country, inhabited by pretenders to knowledge, called “Lanternois.”—Rabelais, Pantag´ruel, v. 32, 33 (1545).
⁂ Lucien has a similar conceit, called The City of Lanterns; and Dean Swift, in his Gulliver’s Travels, makes his hero visit Laputa, which is an empire of quacks, false projectors, and pretenders to science.
Islington (The marquis of), one of the companions of Billy Barlow, the noted archer. Henry VIII. jocosely created Barlow “duke of Shoreditch”[Shoreditch”], and his two companions “earl of Pancras” and “marquis of Islington.”