[443]. The notion of the white colour of the moon is also the foundation of one of the Hebrew names of the moon. In the verse Ẓabyatun admâʾu mithla-l-hilâlî ‘a gazelle red like the new moon’ (Aġânî, VI. 122. 21) the moon is treated as red. But in the appellation al-layâli al-bîḍ ‘white nights,’ by which are meant nights illumined throughout by the moon, the moonshine is associated with a white colour.
[444]. Die Höllenfahrt der Istar, p. 75.
[445]. Halévy, ibid., p. 556.
[446]. See [Excursus I].
[447]. See [Excursus K].
[448]. Among the Arabic names of the sun, we find the curious appellation al-jaunâ (Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 324), a word of colour, which belongs to the aḍdâd of the Arabic philologians, i.e. words with contradictory signification, and may denote either white or black (see Redslob, Die arab. Wörter mit entgegengesetzter Bedeutung, Göttingen 1873, p. 27). Al-jaunâ is especially the setting sun, e.g. lâ âtîhi ḥatta taġîb al-jaunâ, ‘I cannot come to him till the jaunâ sets;’ and the setting sun is well described by a colour-word which, by its faculty of standing for either white or black, answers to the transition from sunshine to darkness.
[449]. Communicated by Henne Am Rhyn, Deutsche Volkssagen &c., p. 219. no. 427.
[450]. Nagyidai Czigányok. In the original Hungarian:
Most az Éj fölvette tolvajköpönyegét,
Eltakará azzal pitykés öltözetét.