[5] The more fatal aspect of the dove has tended to invest the pigeon, especially wild pigeons, which in Oldenburg, and many other regions, are supposed to bode calamity and death if they fly round a house.
[6] Sir Nathaniel Wraxall’s Memoirs.
[7] Matt. xii. 31.
[8] Mark iii. 28.
[9] I have before me an account by a christian mother of the death of her child, whom she had dedicated to the Lord before his birth, in which she says, ‘A full breath issued from his mouth like an etherial flame, a slight quiver of the lip, and all was over.’
[10] ‘Serpent poison.’ It is substantially the same word as the demonic Samaël. The following is from Colonel Campbell’s ‘Travels,’ ii. p. 130:—‘It was still the hot season of the year, and we were to travel through that country over which the horrid wind I have before mentioned sweeps its consuming blasts; it is called by the Turks Samiel, is mentioned by the holy Job under the name of the East wind, and extends its ravages all the way from the extreme end of the Gulf of Cambaya up to Mosul; it carries along with it flakes of fire, like threads of silk; instantly strikes dead those that breathe it, and consumes them inwardly to ashes; the flesh soon becoming black as a coal, and dropping off the bones. Philosophers consider it as a kind of electric fire, proceeding from the sulphurous or nitrous exhalations which are kindled by the agitations of the winds. The only possible means of escape from its fatal effects is to fall flat on the ground, and thereby prevent the drawing it in; to do this, however, it is necessary first to see it, which is not always practicable.’
[11] The ‘Sacred Anthology,’ p. 425. Nizami uses his fable to illustrate the effect of even an innocent flower on one whom conscience has made a coward.
[12] Nothing is more natural than the Triad: the regions which may be most simply distinguished are the Upper, Middle, and Lower.
[13] Bhàgavàt-Gita.
[14] Gulistan.