[146] Asiatic ladies tinge the inner edges of their eyelids with lamp-black in order to increase the lustre of the eyes; it is believed, moreover, to strengthen the sight.
[148] This incident is common to folk-tales almost everywhere: sometimes it is a bird who gives the hero one of his feathers, which serves the same purpose.
[149] This was a very unusual condescension on the part of the monarch, even though in honour of his own sons. The common practice (in Persia) is for the sháh to send a deputation the distance of two days’ journey to meet and welcome any distinguished visitors. The deputation is called istikbál, and those sent, písh váz, openers of the way. A day’s journey is twenty miles.
[150] Kettle-drum.
[151] “Happy.”
[152] Similar question and answer occur in the story of “The Sultan of Yaman and his Three Sons,” one of the tales translated by Jonathan Scott from the Wortley-Montague MS. text of the Alf Layla wa Layla, or Thousand and One Nights, which are comprised in the sixth vol. of his edition of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, p. 81.
[153] According to Muslim ideas, the shooting stars are stones flung at demons who approach the portals of heaven to listen to the divine communications; and Satan is “stoned” every year by the pilgrims at Makka—for which see Burton’s Pilgrimage to Meccah and Medinah.
[154] Chief of police.