[30]. Lit. “The rose in the sleeves or calyces.” I take my English equivalent from Jeremy Taylor, “So I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood,” etc.
[31]. These lines are from the Bresl. Edit. (v. 35.) The four couplets in the Mac. Edit. are too irrelevant.
[32]. Polo, which Lane calls “Goff.”
[33]. Arab. “Muffawak” = well-notched, as its value depends upon the notch. At the end of the third hemistich Lane’s Shaykh very properly reads “baghtatan” (suddenly) for “burhatan” = during a long time.
[34]. “Uns” (which the vulgar pronounce Anas) “al-Wujúd” = Delight of existing things, of being, of the world. Uns wa júd is the normal pun = love-intimacy and liberality; and the paronomasia (which cannot well be rendered in English) reappears again and again. The story is throughout one of love; hence the quantity of verse.
[35]. The allusion to a “written N” suggests the elongated not the rounded form of the letter as in Night cccxxiv.
[36]. The fourteenth Arabic letter in its medial form resembling an eye.
[37]. This is done by the man passing his fingers over the brow as if to wipe off perspiration; the woman acknowledges it by adjusting her head-veil with both hands. As a rule in the Moslem East women make the first advances; and it is truly absurd to see a great bearded fellow blushing at being ogled. During the Crimean war the fair sex of Constantinople began by these allurements but found them so readily accepted by the Giaours that they were obliged to desist.
[38]. The greatest of all explorers and discoverers of the world will be he who finds a woman confessing inability to keep a secret.