[136] “That a salamander is able to live in flames,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “to endure and put out fire, is an assertion not only of great antiquity but confirmed by frequent and not contemptible authority.… All which notwithstanding, there is on the negative authority and experience.… The ground of this opinion might be some sensible resistance of fire observed in the salamander; which being, as Galen determineth, cold in the fourth and moist in the third degree, and having also a mucus humidity above and under the skin, by virtue thereof it may a while endure flame, which being consumed it can resist no more.”—Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, ch. xiv.
[137] See the note on pp. 108-9.
[138] To swear by Solomon, especially by Solomon’s signet-ring, is the most binding oath which the jinn and the fairies can take, since its breach would entail a dreadful punishment.
[139] “Hammála” may mean a woman who carries: Garcin de Tassy calls her “porteuse.”
[140] “Praiseworthy”: “Belauded.”
[141] Badakshán is a mountainous tract of country in Afghán Túrkestán, famous for mines yielding the finest rubies, lapis-lazuli, etc.
[142] The romance writers of mediæval Europe, after the first Crusade, drew largely from Oriental fictions. Thus, for example, in The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, among the many wonders which the hero sees in his journey to the court of the Soudan of Babylon is an underground river, the bed of which was composed of the most precious stones, which possessed a variety of curative properties.
[143] “The heavenly orbs, according to the principles of philosophy, possess a reasonable mind.”—Akhlák-i Jalálí. “This,” remarks W.F. Thomson, the translator, “is inferred from continuity of motion and influence without perceptible external cause, and it seems men’s earliest conclusion and the origin of star-worship. Admitting Plato’s notion that souls were introduced, or perhaps kindled, by the heavenly bodies, nothing could be more reasonable than to attempt, by observation and induction, to ascertain the influence contributed by each. The premises only are to be attacked; and for these the chiefs of classical as well as Oriental literature are responsible.”
[144] The cypress, which is in Europe associated with sombre ideas, is by Asiatics commonly employed as a comparison for the graceful stature of a pretty girl.
[145] Muslims are perfectly familiar with the principal narratives in the Bible, from which the Kurán is largely composed.