[173] Captain Newbold (p. 288) tells a curious tale of a Fehemi (wise woman), who threw a cowrie into a basin of clear water, and muttered an invocation over it; when the pot began to boil, the shell was shot out—doubtless by some chemical substance—to the distance of several feet. Some of the water accompanied it, with a slight explosion like that of a percussion cap thrown into the fire.
[174] The word should be written Dár-For, the abode or region of the For tribe.
[175] The latter material is that originally used in the Arab Darb el Raml (throwing of the sand), briefly called El Raml (the sand), that is, geomancy.
[176] In conversation Von Kremer quoted the name Sabáijeh, a “broken plural,” of which no singular is known, as alternating with Zutt in old Arab historians. Newbold enumerates among the “distinct classes” of Ghagar the Meddáhín, Gharrádín, Barmekí (Barmekides), Walad Abú Tenná, Bayt el Rífá'í (?), Hemmeli, and Románi (p. 292).
[177] This was written before 1863; in 1877 the old camping-ground of the Uzbeg Tatars had become a kind of Parisian quarter.
[178] Kremer gives “Kurudāti”; the word is generally in the diminutive form Kurayd, a little Kird (baboon).
[179] From the Persian Pahlewán, a brave, a wrestler, an athlete.
[180] Generally written 'Id el Zuhá, the great Meccan festival when the victims are offered.
[181] Their active habits make them a fine race. Newbold says that “one of the most magnificent women he had ever seen in the East” was a Ghagar rope-dancer at the palace of one of the Cairene Beys; he complains only that she had disfigured herself by tattooing her under lip and chin—a practice very common among the Arab women of Syria and Egypt.
[182] At the end of 1763 the Gazette of Vienna printed a letter from the Hungarian captain, Szekely de Doba. The latter related how a Protestant pastor, when studying at Leyden, made the acquaintance of some Malabar youths, who spoke of a province Zingania (of course Zigeuner), and whose language was that of the Gypsies. He made a vocabulary of about a thousand words, and returning home to Almasch or Almas, near Komorn, he found, to his surprise, that the “tinklers” understood them. The Hindustani grammars published in England (1773) and in Portugal (1778) enabled Grellman, Richardson, Marsden, Ludolf, and others to trace the resemblance with a firm hand. See Mayo and Quindalé, who in p. 45 fall into the vulgar error that the “Mongol-Hindustani jargon” began to be used in India only after the Moghol Conquests. These authors declare that when the celebrated Mezzofanti, of Bologna, became deranged in 1832, he never confused Gypsy with his other thirty-two tongues. Borrow’s Translation of St. Luke is also said to have retained several Spanish words from Padre Scio. As regards the “Germania” argot of Spain, a vocabulary was published about the middle of the last century by Juan Hidalgo; and though mostly obsolete, the useless farrago was textually reproduced in the Diccionario de la Academia.