And, like a lobster boil’d, the Morn
From black to red began to turn’—
—says Hudibras, canto II.
[416]. In the Babyl. Talmûd, Yômâ 28. b, the falling of the shades of night is described as the time when meshacharê kôthâlê ‘the walls are black.’
[417]. Called by Freytag an eagle.—Tr.
[418]. In Harîrî (Paris edition, 2nd ed.), p. 644. 4, we read of the Dawn: ḥîna naṣal chiḍâb al-ẓalâm ‘when the dye of darkness was washed off.’ The Arabic word here used for ‘dye’ is generally employed of gay colours, e.g. al-ḥinnâ; but it is self-evident that here only al-kuḥl can be meant.
[419]. In Persian black hair is called mû i-Zengî ‘Gipsies’ hair,’ and zulf-i-Hindu, ‘Indian hair,’ i.e. black like an Indian’s (e.g. Rückert, Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser, p. 287). So in the well-known verse of Ḥafiẓ, in which the poet gives away all Bochara and Samarkand for the black mole (bechâl-i-Hinduwesh, ‘Indian mole’) of his Turkish boy (Dîwân Râ, no. 8. v. 1; ed. Rosenzweig, I. 24).
[420]. Saḳt-al-zand, I. 91. 7.
[421]. E.g. Romance of ʿAntar, VII. 115. line 4 from below: wa-kasa-l-leylu ḥullat al-sawâd.
[422]. Varro treats it as self-evident that ‘black’ is the most suitable epithet for Night, and is thereby tempted to a very curious etymology in his work De ratione vocabulorum. He explains the word fur ‘thief’ by saying that in the old Latin fur-vum was equivalent to ‘black,’ and thieves practise their dark deeds at night. ‘Sed in posteriore ejusdem libri parte docuit (scil. Varro) furem ex eo dictum quod veteres Romani furvum atrum appellaverint: at fures per noctem quae atra sit facilius furentur’ (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, I. 18. 3–6).