[168]. This nauseous Joe Miller has often been told in the hospitals of London and Paris. It is as old as the Hitopadesa.
[169]. Koran iv. 81, “All is from Allah;” but the evil which befals mankind, though ordered by Allah, is yet the consequence of their own wickedness (I add, which wickedness was created by Allah).
[170]. The Bresl. Edit. (xii. 266) says “bathing.”
[171]. This tale is much like that told in the Fifth Night (vol. i. 54). It is the story of the Prince and the Lamia in the Book of Sindibad wherein it is given with Persian rhetoric and diffuseness.
[172]. Arab “Wa’ar” = rocky, hilly, tree-less ground unfit for riding. I have noted that the three Heb. words “Year” (e.g. Kiryath-Yearim = City of forest), “Choresh” (now Hirsh, a scrub), and “Pardés” (παράδεισος a chase, a hunting-park opposed to κῆπος, an orchard) are preserved in Arabic and are intelligible in Palestine (Unexplored Syria, i. 207).
[173]. The privy and the bath are favourite haunts of the Jinns.
[174]. Arab history is full of petty wars caused by trifles. In Egypt the clans Sa’ad and Harám and in Syria the Kays and Yaman (which remain to the present day) were as pugnacious as Highland Caterans. The tale bears some likeness to the accumulative nursery rhymes in “The House that Jack Built,” and “The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence;” which find their indirect original in an allegorical Talmudic hymn.
[175]. This is “The Story of the Old Man who sent his Young Wife to the Market to buy Rice,” told with Persian reflections in the “Book of Sindibad.”
[176]. Koran xii. 28. The words were spoken by Potiphar to Joseph.
[177]. Koran iv. 78. A mis-quotation, the words are, “Fight therefore against the friends of Satan, for the craft of Satan shall be weak.”