[233]. A posture of peculiar submission; contrasting strongly with the attitude afterwards assumed by Prince Charming.
[234]. A mere term of vulgar abuse not reflecting on either parent: I have heard a mother call her own son, "Child of adultery."
[235]. Arab. "Ghazá," the Artemisia (Euphorbia?) before noticed. If the word be a misprint for Ghadá it means a kind of Euphorbia which, with the Arák (wild caper-tree) and the Daum-palm (Crucifera thebiaca), is one of the three normal growths of the Arabian desert (Pilgrimage iii. 22).
[236]. Arab. "Banát al-Na'ash," usually translated daughters of the bier, the three stars which represent the horses in either Bear, "Charles' Wain," or Ursa Minor, the waggon being supposed to be a bier. "Banát" may be also sons, plur. of Ibn, as the word points to irrational objects. So Job (ix. 9 and xxxviii. 32) refers to U. Major as "Ash" or "Aysh" in the words, "Canst thou guide the bier with its sons?" (erroneously rendered "Arcturus with his sons"). In the text the lines are enigmatical, but apparently refer to a death-parting.
[237]. The Chapters are: 2, 3, 36, 55, 67 and the two last ("Daybreak" cxiii. and "Men" cxiv.), which are called Al-Mu'izzatáni (vulgar Al-Mu'izzatayn), the "Two Refuge-takings or Preventives," because they obviate enchantment. I have translated the two latter as follows:—
"Say:—Refuge I take with the Lord of the Daybreak ✿ from mischief of what He did make ✿ from mischief of moon eclipse-showing ✿ and from mischief of witches on cord-knots blowing ✿ and from mischief of envier when envying."
"Say:—Refuge I take with the Lord of men ✿ the sovran of men ✿ the God of men ✿ from the Tempter, the Demon ✿ who tempteth in whisper the breasts of men ✿ and from Jinnis and (evil) men."
[238]. The recitations were Náfilah, or superogatory, two short chapters only being required; and the taking refuge was because he slept in a ruin, a noted place in the East for Ghuls as in the West for ghosts.
[239]. Lane (ii. 222) first read "Múroozee" and referred it to the Murúz tribe near Herat: he afterwards (iii. 748) corrected it to "Marwazee," of the fabric of Marw (Margiana), the place now famed for "Mervousness." As a man of Rayy (Rhages) becomes Rází (e.g. Ibn Fáris al-Rází), so a man of Marw is Marázi, not Murúzi nor Márwazi. The "Mikna'" was a veil forming a kind of "respirator," defending from flies by day and from mosquitos, dews and draughts by night. Easterns are too sensible to sleep with bodies kept warm by bedding, and heads bared to catch every blast. Our grandfathers and grandmothers did well to wear bonnets-de-nuit, however ridiculous they may have looked.
[240]. Iblis, meaning the Despairer, is called in the Koran (chapt. xviii. 48) "One of the genii (Jinnis) who departed from the command of his Lord." Mr. Rodwell (in loco) notes that the Satans and Jinnis represent in the Koran (ii. 32, etc.) the evil-principle and finds an admixture of the Semitic Satans and demons with the "Genii from the Persian (Babylonian?) and Indian (Egyptian?) mythologies."